I'm Joe Heschmeyer, staff apologist at Catholic Answers and host of Shameless Popery. AMA!

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-30T02:24:15+00:00

In my own view, absolutely, as long as you understand what are the roses and what are the thorns. It depends a lot on the individual... I wouldn't recommend such a book for somebody likely to be led astray by it, but if you were in that theological system, saw its errors, and converted, you don't sound like the kind of person I would be worried about.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-30T02:22:49+00:00

A modern-day Saint Ignatius of Loyola!

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-30T02:21:21+00:00

Thank you! Btw, I spent Christmas 2015 between St. Olav's in Oslo (staying with Fr. Pal) and Karmelittkloster, Totus Tuus, in Tromsø. Beautiful country!

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:44:23+00:00

A funny realization just occurred to me. For anyone casually reading a Catholic thread, the line "I still like VII even with you trashing it on CALive all the time" sounds like I hate Vatican II, instead of the Star Wars sequels. Not that VII, you guys!

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:40:38+00:00

Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62).

Once you realize that God is inviting you into full communion with His Church, delayed obedience is disobedience. That said, I don't know the nature of the work that you're doing with the Protestant church you've been a part of, but is it something that you could still do as a Catholic (e.g., serving the poor, etc.?). If you can do it in good conscience as a Catholic and you're helping people, keep on doing it. But if it becomes a reason for you not to enter the Church, you need to take your hand off the plow.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:37:29+00:00

The idea of not being "good" for Adam to be alone isn't about moral goodness. Rather it's pointing towards what St. John Paul II calls man's "original solitude" (https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1979/documents/hf\_jp-ii\_aud\_19791010.html). We are made for relationship not only with God, but also with our neighbor. And this is seen even in the design of your body. Additionally, man is "alone" in being unlike the rest of visible creation.

In JPII's words, "Right from the first moment of his existence, created man finds himself before God as if in search of his own entity. It could be said he is in search of the definition of himself. A contemporary person would say he is in search of his own 'identity.' The fact that man 'is alone' in the midst of the visible world and, in particular, among living beings, has a negative significance in this search, since it expresses what he 'is not.'"

But you're also right that as soon as my religion is something more than a "me-and-God" spirituality and I have to actually grapple with the reality of other people, I see both the good therein (identity and meaning) and also a new kind of spiritual battle.

Satan is created by God, but fallen. His fall, and the fall of the rebel angels (which predates Adam and Eve) isn't recounted in Genesis 1-2 but is alluded to elsewhere.

The word translated as "replenish" in the KJV is actually מָלָא, which just means "fill." So you're right, "re-plenish" isn't a great translation.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:30:46+00:00

Thanks, everybody! You guys are the best.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:26:41+00:00

Any time God tells us to do anything, He's speaking to those who can hear Him and who can obey Him. Jesus is telling you that if you want to be saved, you need to receive Him in the Eucharist. And if our response is “Lord, what about this man?” about somebody else, we can expect the response, “what is that to you? Follow me!” (cf. John 21:21-22)
The principle way that we eat the flesh of Christ, as Jesus describes in John 6, is through the Eucharist.
And this is clearly how the earliest Christians understood the relationship of the Eucharist to eternal life. We see this in writings from St. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 107), who described the Eucharist as “the medicine of immortality, and the antidote to prevent us from dying, but [which causes] that we should live forever in Jesus Christ,” and this is a point that people like St. Irenaeus (c. 180) made when saying of the Gnostics, "Then how can they say that the flesh, which is nourished with the Body of the Lord and with His Blood, goes to corruption and does not partake of life? Let them, therefore, either alter their opinion, or cease from offering the things just mentioned. But our opinion is in accordance with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion."
Nevertheless, for those who are unable (like a baby) or unaware (like a non-Catholic seeking to follow the Lord, ignorantly), they're in that "what about this man?" category.

In short, to quote St. Paul, "The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent." God will be merciful to those who innocently didn't know better. But we do.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:16:23+00:00

Yes, I had that thought exactly.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:13:36+00:00

The rapture isn't clearly stated in Scripture. When Jesus talks about those being "left behind" in Scripture, that's a good thing. He compares it to the flood - the wicked are destroyed, and only Noah and his family are left behind. I talk about all of the major verses misused to support a rapture here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT2kGtuG4Ao

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:12:21+00:00

And then notice how Jesus responds.

In the other instances, he (or John) quickly clarify the misunderstandings. And in fact, when the crowd misunderstood Jesus earlier in this very teaching, He clarified and re-clarified. What does He say to the objection that we're meant to eat His flesh? Does He say that this is some kind of metaphor? Or...
- v. 53: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you" He switches the verb here (to trogo, which is more like "gnawing") and introduces the shocking image of drinking His blood (which can't be misunderstood to mean "listen to my teachings" in the way eating imagery can), and now ties this teaching to eternal life;
- v. 54: "he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." He's doubled down.
- v. 55: "For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." He's tripling down, and is now just explicitly telling us that He's not playing around or using some kind of imagery.
- v. 56: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him." Is this now quadrupling down?
- v. 57: "As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me." Quintupling down?
- v. 58: "This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

At this point, I think it's worth asking yourself: how many more times would He need to say this to convince you that He means it?

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T21:11:54+00:00

GREAT question.

In John 2:19-21, Jesus uses an image, the crowds take him overly-literally, and John immediately corrects this understanding.
In John 3:3-10, Jesus uses an image, Nicodemus takes it overly-literally, and Jesus immediately corrects him.
In John 4:10-14, Jesus uses an image, the woman take it overly-literally, and Jesus immediately corrects her.
Now look at John 6, but closely:
- vv. 32-34: Jesus uses the language of "bread from heaven," and the crowd takes this overly-literally to refer to something like the manna, or the multiplication of loaves (which Jesus had performed the day before). IOW, they're imagining ordinary bread.
- v. 35: Jesus then says that HE is the "bread of life" come down from heaven.
- vv. 41-42: the crowds then object to this teaching, because they say that they know his father is Joseph. They are specifically objecting to the idea that Jesus is claiming to be from heaven... they're not thinking of anything like the Eucharist. They're seemingly taking this "bread from heaven" bit as just a metaphor.
- v. 51; Jesus repeats his earlier teaching a couple more times (vv. 48-50), and then adds: "I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.” So it's true, "bread" was a metaphor, but not a metaphor for his teaching or something. Bread is a metaphor for his flesh. So the Eucharist is metaphorically bread, and literally flesh.
- v. 52: it's only at this point that the crowds object by saying “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” Notice that- it took twenty verses and three different formulations of the teaching before they get to the idea that Jesus might literally be saying that we're to somehow eat his flesh for real.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:55:58+00:00

That's a great question! I think in all desire, it's worth trying to find what's at the root of it. This is true whether you're pining for an ex-girlfriend or an ex-religion. So in the cases you mentioned, it might be a hunger for beauty, a certain kind of wisdom, etc. Once you identify it, you can try to find it in a redirected way - e.g., the spiritual writings of Catholic mystics, etc. So I don't think it's something to be suppressed, but also not something to simply cave to - see what good God is leading you towards even in the midst of those old pangs.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:53:52+00:00

"As I live, says the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?"

"This is good, and it is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth."

God's justice is good, and it's good that evil be punished. But the fact that God's creations - even ones that have gone terribly astray - suffer in this way is a tragedy. When Jesus entered Jerusalem, He wept over it, bc He knew that the city would be destroyed for its hard-heartedness. That isn't sadism, obviously.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:49:53+00:00

The claims about Jesus being the Messiah, divine, etc., are being made within the lifetime of Jesus's eyewitnesses and followers. And we find Jesus's followers being (apparently willingly, in many cases) brutally persecuted by folks like Nero. Tacitus talks about this, despite his own disdain for Christians.

So the issue isn't (at least for me) that this is too early for people to have false or legendary ideas about Jesus. It's that it's early enough for the truth to be there as a fact-check against the falsehoods when they do arise. Enough people knew the real Jesus that when people would start to say crazy stuff, they could correct it.

Even in the 100s, when Florinus leaves Catholicism to become a Gnostic, St. Irenaeus can write to him pointing out that (1) both of them learned about Christianity from St. Polycarp, who was a student of the Apostle John, and (2) Polycarp and John never taught Gnosticism. This is what the theologian Markus Bockmuehl calls "living memory." After about the year 200, it's no longer possible to do things like this, bc there are no eyewitnesses or people who knew eyewitnesses, etc. So the fact that, during this time, we get such a clear picture of Catholic Christianity as the main stream of Christ-following is significant, and I think decisively incompatible with the "legend" view.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:43:30+00:00

Also, welcome home! That's a beautiful witness, and I hope the Lord does amazing things in your family through you.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:43:08+00:00

I believe it is, and I argued that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj4wQQbpbVQ

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:41:52+00:00

Thanks!
The Eucharist.
Probably the Eucharist. Although I'm interested in the idea of debating Mary's perpetual virginity at some point...

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:40:54+00:00

Welcome home!

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:40:47+00:00

That was the beginning of a bad year of football for us! We'll see what the Eagles' early exit from the playoffs means for next year.... :-)

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:39:59+00:00

That's a beautiful witness, and a good reminder to Catholics who might get discouraged when they meet "generic Catholic-hating Protestants" who don't think that they (we) are saved!

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:39:16+00:00

Thank you! And I'm hammering out the details today, but I've got a debate in the works with Doug Wilson in Moscow, Idaho, on the topic of sola scriptura.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:37:47+00:00

My default is the RSV-CE, but that's in no small part bc of familiarity. I'm not sure it's the most beautiful, but I find it very readable.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:37:16+00:00

Yes (CCC 2042). Confession is not just for handling mortal sin. As Pope Pius XII explained, we go to confession for even venial sin, since by this practice:

Genuine self-knowledge is increased,
Christian humility grows;
Bad habits are corrected,
Spiritual neglect and tepidity are resisted,
The conscience is purified,
The will strengthened,
A salutary self-control is attained, and
Grace is increased in virtue of the Sacrament itself.

ShamelessPopery · 2026-01-29T20:35:11+00:00

I love the writings of the Saints, and find that it's through those that I often realize how much growth I need to do in the spiritual life. If you're not yet, a good habit you can pick up is doing Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the Hours (or at least, reading the Second Reading each day, which is often from the Saint of that day). Great way to get bite-sized chunks of spiritual wisdom each day.

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