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Why Can Only Practicing Catholics Receive the Sacraments?
In establishing his covenant with the Israelites, God also established three different leadership roles: priests, prophets, and kings. The role of the Israelite priests was to offer sacrifices as God described to Moses and his brother Aaron; Aaron and his descendants were to be the priests. The prophets were God’s spokesmen; he commissioned them to proclaim his laws and to warn the Israelites of the consequences when they violated these laws. Beginning with Saul, God appointed kings over the Isr
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May 28th 2024
Answering Protestant Comebacks: The Bread of Life Discourse
The Catholic Church teaches that when we partake of the Eucharist in Holy Communion, we are literally consuming the body and blood of Jesus Christ. A key passage from Scripture that Catholics, and other believers in the Real Presence, have looked to throughout the centuries as biblical support for this teaching is John 6:48-67. There are many reasons Catholics, and other believers in the Real Presence, give as to why we should take Jesus’ words, “eat my flesh, drink my blood,” literally. But p
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Aug 17th 2022
How Do We Know Which Books Early Christians Used in Liturgy?
As Valeriy Alikin of St. Petersburg Christian University explains,“Christians began to read apostolic epistles in their gatherings at the latest from the middle of the first century onwards.” At the end of his first letter to the Thessalonians, Paul instructs,“I adjure you by the Lord that this letter be read to all the brethren”(5:27). And after the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15, the leaders of theChurchsend Paul and St. Barnabas to Antioch with a letter addressed to“the brethren who are of
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Mar 21st 2022
The Servant of the Servants of God
Perhaps the clearest teaching on the papacy is at the Last Supper. That may surprise some readers. After all, there’s an all too common misconception that the Catholic claim for the papacy boils down entirely to Jesus’ words to Peter in Matthew 16:18 (“upon this rock, I will build my church”) and the identification of the rock with Peter himself. To be sure, we’ll cover that ground later, but it’s more important to start with the Last Supper. It’s there, after all, that we find the Twelve arguin
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Jun 29th 2020
Why Do We Have Sacraments?
CHALLENGE: If what is ultimately important is our faith in God, there is no reason for the Church to have sacraments.DEFENSE: Interior dispositions like faith are not the only thing that is important. We are also physical beings. The Church has sacraments because they correspond to human nature and thus Christ instituted them.Every religion has certain rites it regards as sacred. Such rites are a human universal, found in every religion, in every culture, which means they are rooted in human nat
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Feb 25th 2020