Questions Covered:

02:28 – Where does the idea of toll booths come from, and why didn’t it make its way into the Western church?

16:31 – Scotty had a little too much to drink again and staggers down to the control room at 2 am and accidentally beams up Cy. During the transport Scotty inadvertently pushes the wrong buttons and mistakenly erases Cy’s memory. Captain Kirk tells Spock to try the vulcan mind-meld hoping they can find out some information about this confused guy with the Society 315 t-shirt. During the mind-meld, Spock dies. Now Cy thinks he’s Spock. The crew decides to keep him around for entertainment purposes. Unfortunately, Cy begins worshiping Vulcan gods and then begins preaching about them and proselytizing to the crew like he’s Jimmy Swaggart. Kirk has had just about enough and drops him off on some planet in the delta quadrant where Cy lives out his days eating plants and worshiping green lava. Even though he’s now worshiping lava with full knowledge and consent, it’s through no fault of his own. He didn’t ask to be beamed up and have his memory erased and then brainwashed into thinking he’s Spock. Can he still be saved or is he lost in space?

24:02 – My question is: If a group of people were stranded on a deserted island, like in the TV show ‘Lost’, and there was no priest among them, could a lay person declare himself a priest and perform valid sacraments? Would the validity of the sacraments be contingent on how closely this person stuck to the teachings of the Church i.e. what if he had a suitcase full of Catholic books and was on his way to be ordained as a priest when the plane crashed?

33:38 – Seeing that “…the Lord opened the mouth of [Balaam’s] ass, and she said to Balaam, “What have I done to you, that you have struck me these three times?”…And the ass said to Balaam, “Am I not your ass, upon which you have ridden all your life long to this day? Was I ever accustomed to do so to you?”…..” (Num 22:28, 30) Did Balaam’s ass have a rational soul?

42:36 – Was it certain or contingent that Adam and Eve would fall or that the angels would fall? If it is certain, could God create other rational beings for whom their fall would be contingent and could they potentially persist perpetually in the state of grace and obedience to God? If it is contingent, could another human couple (same nature, different identity) have persisted in the state of grace and obedience to God perpetually in the Garden of Eden? For the angels, if they transcend space and time, how do we understand “before” and “after”, “in heaven” and “not in heaven” with respect to their fall?

49:54 – Suppose Middle-Earth really existed. Could God become incarnate as a man, an elf, a dwarf, and a hobbit all at the same time? If yes, could man, elf, dwarf, and hobbit Jesus interact with each other and maybe all go out for a pint?

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