Catholic Answers LIVE
Catholic Answers Live, hosted by Cy Kellett, is a daily, two-hour radio program dedicated to Catholic apologetics and evangelization. According to listener surveys, it is a runaway favorite on Catholic stations across America.
As a call-in program, Catholic Answers Live connects listeners to prominent leaders in the Church today—including scholars, nuns, priests, bishops, and cardinals—and touches on every aspect of our lives as Christians. You'll hear discussions on just about everything relating to the Church: doctrinal controversies, family concerns, social issues, evangelization, ethics…you name it!
Catholic Answers Live airs every Monday through Friday from 6-8 PM Eastern (3-4 PM Pacific) on over 360 AM and FM stations in the United States, Sirius Satellite Radio channel 130, and through the Internet at catholic.com. If you can't listen live, you can subscribe to our podcast or download individual shows from our MP3 archive.
Call in with your question at 1-888-31-TRUTH!
Most Recent Episodes
Questions Covered:
01:59 – Can you explain the Biblical references in the Johnny Cash song “when the man comes to town” and is it biblically accurate? I’d love to be able to share Jimmy’s thoughts on this on social media.
12:55 – I understand that in devotional language the Blessed Mother is “The Spouse of the Holy Spirit”. But it’s confusing to hear in the same prayer that the Blessed Mother is also the spouse of Joseph. (Did Mary have two spouses?) Also, I once said that Joseph was the “husband of Mary” and was corrected that he was the “spouse of Mary” and that made a big difference. She explained the marriage of Joseph and Mary was only “for show” and the “real” marriage was to the Holy Spirit. So what’s the right way to explain this gently – without having to disturb the pious fictions that people have lived with for a long time?
17:22 – I am reading a book “The Rod of an Almond Tree in God’s Master Plan.” Basically, the theory is that God gave Adam a rod from the Tree of Life when He expelled Adam and Eve from Eden. The miraculous rod makes its way from Adam to Enoch, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Aaron, and David. David thrusts it into the ground while fleeing Jerusalem from his son Absalom. The miraculous rod grows into the tree that Christ was crucified upon to atone for our sins. Have you heard of this theory before? What do you think? Potential topic for “Mysterious World?”
21:15 – Is it possible the person of the Holy Spirit made brief appearances in the Bible? When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in the tomb (John 20:14-18), and to the two followers on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) and to the seven disciples fishing (John 21:1-14), is it possible that their eyes did not see Him because they were not seeing God the Son at first, but God the Holy Spirit for a brief time?
28:45 – In the Winter Soldier movie, Captain America meets his old love interest from before he travelled into the future and finds out that she married and grew old with someone else after she thought Captain America had died back in the 1940s. In the latest Avengers film, Captain America travels back in time to before Peggy Carter married this other man and marries her instead, thereby pre-empting the unnamed other man from ever marrying Peggy Carter. While Captain America was traveling back in time like this, would it have been adultery for him to have desire for and even make the move to pursue and marry a girl who he knew was married in his own future time but not in the time he was currently traveling to? Seems like this might be adultery for him, but not for her. What do you think?
33:34 – What’s the deal with St. Patrick and the snakes on the “plain”? I can’t find anything definitive out there.
39:22 – Why does the glorified Jesus not have the wounds of the Scourging at the Pillar or Crown of Thorns while keeping the nail marks and side wounds?
40:55 – Jesus’ nails were in his wrists (according to the Shroud of Turin), why do stigmatic saints have the wounds on their hands?
45:20 – How can genetic mutations cause evolution?
52:00 – Did Jesus bi-locate or multi-locate in the New Testament?
53:03 – Who would have cut Jesus’ umbilical cord? Or did the Virginal Birth not require this to happen?
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Questions Covered:
02:05 – Suppose there is a person that, while they are asleep and dreaming, has the capacity to recognize that they are having a dream and to guide their actions within the dream. How would sinful actions in their dreams affect their regular life? For example, if this person is married and one night has a dream with a celebrity in it that they find attractive, would it be sinful to act on their feelings within the dream? If it’s not inherently sinful, would it maybe just be a bad idea because it might open the door to similar behaviors in their regular life?
06:27 – I saw this morning in a discussion with Father Mark Goring about aliens. My question is this: If there are aliens out there, and they’re just God’s creatures like us and the angels, as Jimmy Akin said, they’d also worship the one true God, the Trinity, just as we do, right? But the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity would have what for them would be an alien body, the God-man, Jesus Christ. I mean, how would they deal with a God who looked like us, and not like them. Wouldn’t that be kind of weird for them?
11:54 – If all matter were smaller and hotter prior to the Big Bang, then could it have contained life forms at those temperatures, or was life introduced after matter cooled enough to support life as we know it?
14:59 – If all matter comes from the Big Bang, I assume that matter was sent in all directions. So, are stars and matter that exploded towards the opposite direction from us visible to us, and appearing as moving away from us faster than matter moving in the same direction as we are?
17:55 – If Jesus sits at the right hand of God, who sits on the left?
19:30 – I was wondering if it would be the sin of presumption to attempt to travel into the future, since we don’t know when Christ is returning and can’t no that a particular future time will exist?
23:05 – Given that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant, would God have placed a punishment upon touching her as his did with the Ark of the Old Covenant, a la Uzzah?
28:25 – My girls have a question for Jimmy. They want to know if Bucky Barnes, from Marvel, would be morally responsible for the violence and mayhem he caused while under a trance. Specifically, would he need to go to confession? Would he go to hell for the crimes he committed while under a trance.
31:55 – After my 6-year-old was born with Down Syndrome, I wondered if he would have Down Syndrome in Heaven or in his resurrected body. At first, I thought not since it’s caused by an extra chromosome in the body, which is not part of the soul, but I’ve recently come to understand that the church says, our bodies are a fundamental part of our eternal existence. And certainly, our intellectual capability affects our desire and ability to seek God. Will people with intellectual or physical disabilities have the same or similar disabilities in Heaven or after the resurrection of the dead? And would his intellectual disability necessarily get him a get out of hell free card?
41:30 – If I happened to have a time machine and went back to the sixteenth century, would I be morally justified in kidnapping Martin Luther and bringing him back to my own time in order to stop the Reformation?
46:50 – Could the St. Gertrude Purgatory prayer be proof of intelligent life elsewhere? Follow my logic. The prayer is traditionally said to release 1000 souls from purgatory. There are around 1.2 billion Catholics on Earth. Let’s say 50% practice. That’s 600 million. Of those, let’s say 10% know about this prayer. That’s 60 million. Let’s say 10% of those actually say it on a regular basis. That’s 6 million. Well, 6,000,000 x 1,000 souls is 6 billion souls. It’s estimated that around 108 billion people have ever lived on Earth. So today’s 6 million people regularly saying this …
Catholic author and speaker Elizabeth Kelly joins us for a discussion of the supposed “anti-woman” bias in Christianity. Is it real, or is it just a modern story disconnected from historical reality? Kelly is the author of books for and about Christian women, including Love Like a Saint: Cultivating Virtue with Holy Women.
Cy Kellett:
Is Christianity anti-woman? Liz Kelly is next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome again to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We try to be current here. We try…
What does it mean to be a Catholic and a patriot?
Questions Covered:
35:20 – I had a conversation with someone who lived through WWII. He said that a common enemy really made patriots of people and the United States a family. Could we rally behind a common love rather than a common enemy?
47:21 – What do you think of the English who rebelled against their country to form this new nation?
50:42 – Can’t patriotism be used with antisocial motives? A person could claim that another person is “not American enough.”
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How and why is eastern Catholicism different and the same as Catholicism in the west?
Questions Covered:
15:57 – When a Byzantine liturgy is celebrated, why are candles carried around by the servers and what are those sticks with the sunbursts on top?
21:27 – I recently attended a Ukranian Catholic wedding and the priest said that marriage is forever, even in heaven. In the Roman Church, they say marriage ends at death. How can these both be true?
28:38 – When I was in Ukraine to adopt my daughter, we attended a Mass there. People made the sign of the Cross throughout the entire liturgy, and it doesn’t seem to have a rhyme or reason. Why do they do this?
37:40 – Why do you think there is so much liturgical churn in the western Church about various liturgical practices, but the east seems very peaceful and stable?
44:44 – My son is in the seminary, in his fourth year in the western Church. How do you feel about having a family and being a priest? Do you feel pulled in too many directions?
52:40 – Is it true that Eastern Catholics believe that there will still be more children born in heaven after the Second Coming?
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