The Catholic Church is no stranger to controversy and scandal, whether it be the Crusades or the Inquisition or the role of Catholics in the colonization of the New World, or more recent scandals like the sexual abuse scandal. And non-Catholics might hear about all of these things and wonder, “how can you remain Catholic despite these things?” Here are some straightforward tips about what to say in response to that question… and what NOT to say.

 

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Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. I want to discuss the issue of responding to scandal today. I’m g...

Modern Christians tend to misunderstand two of Jesus’ most radical teachings: his prohibition against divorce and remarriage, and his teaching about the Church. But what if this isn’t just a coincidence? After all, the biblical texts explaining marriage tend to do so by comparing it to Christ’s relationship with the Church, and vice versa. Does this explain why the Protestant Reformers broke with the earliest Christians (and the New Testament) on both of these doctrines? And also… does getting this wrong open the door to polygamy?

 

Transcript:

Welcome back to Sham...

Jesus’ teaching on marriage (and particularly on divorce and remarriage) is so radical that his stunned disciples respond, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry” (Matt. 19:10). So what is Jesus’ radical teaching, and why don’t more Christians know about (or follow) that teaching? And is it true that Jesus creates an “exception” for divorce and remarriage in cases of adultery? (Answer: no.)

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In light of the war between Israel and Palestine, accusations of anti-Semitism in the fight between Ben Shaprio and Candace Owens, and some of your own comments… how SHOULD Christians think of biblical Israel, the Jewish people, and the modern nation-state of Israel? What role, if any, does the Old Covenant play today? And is it heretical to speak of the Jewish people as still the “people of God” in any sense?

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In Acts 5, when the Apostles are on trial before the Sanhedrin, a Pharisee named Gamaliel (the same Gamaliel that St. Paul studied under) provided a simple test to determine if a religion really came from God or not. So what was his test, and what does it mean for the credibility and legitimacy of Catholicism, Protestantism, Mormonism, and Islam?

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As Catholics, it’s easy to point out how divided Protestantism is, with all of its different denominations. But what about all of the divisions within Catholicism between “conservative” and “liberal” Catholics, Traditionalists, Charismatics, or a thousand other possible splits? As it turns out, the objection that Catholics are just as divided as Protestants isn’t a new one… and nor is the problem of unity within the one Church. So here’s how St. John Henry Newman, Cardinal Ratzinger, and St. Paul responded to this argument.

 

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Wel...

Catholics (and Orthodox) believe that the Church is infallible, whereas Protestants tend to believe that only the Bible is unerring in this way. But which of these approaches looks more like what we see in the Bible itself? Here’s how Jesus’ teachings only work with Infallibility.

 

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Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. So I want to do a two-week series this week and next week on the theme of Christian Unity, and I’m purposely syncing this up to tie with next week being holy Thursday in which we have the last Supper because it’s at...

Each year on St. Patrick’s Day, certain Baptists will claim that St. Patrick wasn’t REALLY a Catholic, but was instead a Baptist. But what do we learn from listening to St. Patrick in his own words? And what do we know about the world of St. Patrick from those who lived during his lifetime? As it turns out, Patrick was way more Catholic than you may realize… and he was quite explicit about this fact!

 

Transcript:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. So St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, which means I’m wearing a green shirt, ...

Christopher Hitchens famously claimed that “religion poisons everything,” and Steven Weinberg argued that “with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.” Here are six reasons those are silly arguments.

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. So about 20 years ago, we saw the rise of what’s sometimes called New Atheism, although it’s not that new anymore. It was kind of the convalescence of a number of authors and thinkers, people like Richard Dawkins, Christopher H...

To a lot of non-Catholics, it seems obvious that Catholics go overboard when it comes to Mary, and a lot of people assume this is just because of traditions or something.