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
Which Catholic Moral Teaching Do You Reject?
Questions Covered:
17:00 – I do not understand why the Catholic Church does not support gay marriage.
33:42 – I reject Catholic moral teaching on natural law.
44:50 – I question Catholic teaching on NFP and contraception.
Resources Mentioned:
What We Can’t Not Know by J Bud Budziszewski
Evidence for Catholic Moral Teaching by Trent Horn
Made This Way: How to Prepare Kids to Face Today’s Tough Moral Issues
Inseparable: Five Perspectives on Sex, Life, and Love in Defense of Humanae Vitae
…
Was Fr. Junipero Serra a dark part of history, deserving of his statues and memorials’ desecration, or was he a holy man of God who directly resisted the mistreatment and enslavement of the native peoples he evangelized? Find out here, with Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone.
CK:
Hello, and welcome to Catholic Answers Focus. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thank you so much for being with us. Strange times continue that we’re living through. Very, very odd and, in some ways, maybe a bit obsessive ideological times. That reality has expressed itself here in the state of California and other places in the tearing down of statues. Here to talk about the tearing down of the statues and, in some places, the kind of preventive peaceful removing of the statues, I suppose, of the man who is … I guess from the time we’re at about fourth grade here in California, we learn he’s more or less the guy who made California, Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan priest and missionary. Here to tell us about what’s happening in San Francisco and also to talk about the man Serra himself, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, the Archbishop of San Francisco. Archbishop, thank you for being with us.
ASC:
You’re welcome. Good to be on the show.
CK:
So I know in Ventura, they’re going to take a statue down. Some of the missions are taking the statues down just so that nobody hurts the statues, I guess.
ASC:
Yes.
CK:
But in San Francisco, it got out of hand. What happened there?
ASC:
Last Friday night, basically a mob went into Golden Gate Park and tore down three statues for some form of protest. One must wonder what they were protesting, because Junipero Serra was one of them, but they also pulled down a statue of Francis Scott Key and another one of Ulysses S Grant. We’re seeing these protests against racism, but Grant, of course, was an abolitionist and went to war to free the slaves. Junipero Serra, the real story isn’t known, so he’s associated with something that he actually stood against for in his life.
CK:
Well, you can see why Francis Scott Key, though. He did write the national anthem, and I suppose somebody will find a way to make the national anthem a racist document of some sort, but okay, so Father Serra, and I gathered, too, that in the statue, he’s holding up a crucifix. He has Christ crucified in his hand.
ASC:
Yes.
CK:
So this mania for destroying these things, I don’t want to read too much into it, but Father Serra is the target, but there’s also a sense in which any representative of the past is a target, and I think actually Christ Himself, in a way, is a target, because people don’t see the coming of the good news to the Americas as a good thing.
ASC:
It seems to me it’s a rebellion against our Western civilization-
CK:
[crosstalk 00:02:45].
ASC:
… the legacy of Western civilization, which the Church built. The Church built on her Christian faith and her Christian principles. So I agree with you totally. Ultimately, it’s a rebellion against Christ, and I hate to say this. I would not be surprised if the defacing of statues would go that far.
CK:
Yeah, would go down to just tearing down statues of Christ himself, wherever they are.
ASC:
Yes.
CK:
Yeah. Well, eventually, your city will have to be renamed, won’t it? Ours will, too, here in San Diego. St. Francis, a Catholic saint. I mean, you just get the sense of there’s almost a French Revolution mentality about it, of just get us to year zero. Get rid of all of this.
ASC:
It is exactly that. It is exactly that. They want to erase the Christian heritage, our two millennia, millennium and a half of Christian heritage here in the West. You’re right. I mean, at the time of those revolutions in Europe led by the French revolution and others, there was a literal renaming of streets and of town squares, not so much of cities, but of many place names were changed.
CK:
S…
ROUND 1 PETER AND PAUL
1) In his second letter, Peter says we will one day:
a See the divine nature
b Touch the divine nature
c Share in the divine nature
2) Peter’s first successor of Peter as the leader of the Church in Rome was:
a) Forgotten by history
b) Linus
c) James the Just
3) In the letter to the Galatians:
a) Peter rebukes St Paul
b) St Paul rebukes Peter
c) Paul and Peter rebuke the Romans
4) Which of the following is true about St. Peter:
a) Has such a powerful healer that people laid the sick out in places where they thought Peter’s shadow might fall on them
b) He only healed when all the Apostles were gathered together
c) He showed no evidence of being a healer
5) The Apostle Paul was a:
a) Sadducee
b) Temple Priest
c) Pharisee
6) The bishops of the Orthodox Churches are:
a.) Not successors of the Apostles as Catholic bishops are
b.) Successors of the Apostles
c.) Successors only of St. Paul but not of St. Peter
ROUND 2 Sacrament of Marriage Questions
1) Even married couples may not resort to Invitro Fertilization because:
a.) God creates life without our cooperation, and we cannot interfere with that
b.) IVF separates a child’s conception from the conjugal act of its parents
c.) There is no certainty that an artificially conceived person will have a soul
2) Catholics believe that marriage is:
a) An eternal bond
b) A life-long bond
c) A life-long bond except in cases of annulment
3) When a baptized Protestant marries a baptized Catholic:
a.) Their marriage is sacramental
b.) Their marriage is valid but not sacramental
c.) There marriage is not valid
4) Marriage is the only sacrament:
a.) That was already an institution before Christ raised it to the status of sacrament
b.) That no priest of the Catholic Church can receive
c.) That the government has the right to deny
5) It is a grave offense against marriage:
a.) For spouses to attempt to regulate the spacing of children
b.) For governments to coerce parents to have fewer children
c.) For a person to seek an annulment if the spouse does not want it
6) The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls marriage:
a.) “a union of God with the human race”
b.) “a collaboration for raising children”
c.) “a partnership of the whole of life”
ROUND 3
True or False
True The earliest non-biblical Christian text is sometimes referred to as Teaching of the Twelve Apostles and is also called the Didache
FALSE The Gospel of Luke is probably based on the preaching of St Paul
TRUE The Gospel of Mark is probably based on the preaching of St Peter
TRUE In the First Letter to the Corinthians, St Paul argued forcefully that Christians should not be suing each other in Roman courts (1 Corinthians 6:1-1a)
FALSE The Apostolic Fathers were Peter, James, and John
TRUE St Paul urged his fellow Christians to work out their salvation in fear and trembling
TRUE Peter said that some things in the letters of St. Paul are hard to understand.
…
Was Jesus truly divine or was he just a holy man?
Questions Covered:
06:48 – Atheists claim that Josephus wrote the Bible. How would we respond to this?
16:53 – I have heard that God’s people are Muslims, Jews, and Christians. How does God work through Christ to bring all those people together?
30:10 – Jesus is not God. I think God works through Jesus. We are all vessels the way that Jesus was.
47:30 – Muslims quote Mark 14:32 and John 14:28 to prove that Jesus is not God. How do you respond to that?
…
Callers choose the topics during Open Forum, peppering our guests with questions on every aspect of Catholic life and faith, the moral life, and even philosophical topics that touch on general religious belief.
Questions Covered:
01:20 – How should I go about studying the Bible?
06:36 – What is the status of independent Catholic Churches that aren’t under their local diocese in their county?
14:00 – Are there any Catholic resources for help with schizophrenia or psychosis?
17:07 – My parish priest comes to our book club and dominates the conversation. We don’t mind him coming, if he comes as a guest and respects the rules of the club. How can we ask him to stop doing this?
24:26 – Why do people claim that the Latin Mass is the only valid rite of the Mass?
36:18 – A coworker told me that Jesus is referenced as the Son of God many times in the gospels, but only referred to as divine once or twice, so refuting the Trinitarian God. How can I defend the Trinity?
43:56 – How can we know that we are interpreting Scripture appropriately?
48:30 – What is the Church’s teaching on the illumination of conscience?
51:13 – Living in a Christian community, so many people around me believe in the Rapture. Is this really going to happen?
52:34 – Can Catholics try to pray someone out of purgatory?
Resources Mentioned:
Drray.com
catholiccounselors.com
Want more from Jimmy Akin?
The Bible Is A Catholic Book
Teaching with Authority
A Daily Defense: 365 Days (plus one) to Becoming a Better Apologist
The Fathers Know Best: Your Essential Guide to the Teachings of the Early Church
…
