#12475 Do Guardian Angels Influence Non-Believers? Praying to Saints - Joe Heschmeyer

Summary

Catholic Answers Live – Episode #12475

Topic: Do Guardian Angels Influence Non-Believers? Praying to Saints
Guest: Joe Heschmeyer
Date: November 26, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of Catholic Answers Live features apologist Joe Heschmeyer and host Psy Kel in a lively, pre-Thanksgiving “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) format. Topics range from the history of the papacy—specifically the tumultuous time of multiple popes—through apologetics on guardian angels, intercession of saints, and Protestant/Catholic conversations. The tone is light-hearted, playful, and conversational, with historical deep-dives and practical advice for living the faith.

---

Main Themes & Key Discussion Points

1. Pre-Thanksgiving Banter & Catholic Culture

[00:31–06:00]

• Psy Kel and Joe Heschmeyer exchange jokes about office holiday moods and “living aloha” in holiday traffic.
• Discussion about the word “holiday”:
  • Holiday means “holy day,” and Catholics should reclaim the term from being purely secularized.
  • Notable Quote:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [04:48]:
      "If you're offended by the term holiday sounding too secular, you're objecting to the wrong thing. The problem isn’t that people are saying holiday. The problem is that people have secularized the word holiday and they’re in the process of doing the same thing to the word Christmas."
• Humor about bank holidays, snow maps for callers, and references to Catholic in-jokes.

---

2. Church History Deep-Dive: The Papal Schism

[07:06–23:05]

• Psy Kel asks Joe to “tell the story” of the Western Schism (1378–1417), when rival claimants (anti-popes) vied for the papacy, leading to confusion within the Church.
• Joe provides an accessible and detailed summary:
  • Urban VI elected in Rome, but disliked; French cardinals elect anti-Pope Clement VII in Avignon.
  • A third claimant is added at Pisa—at one point, “three popes.”
  • Impact of these confusions on apostolic succession and Catholic claims about papal continuity.
  • Key Insight:
    • Despite appearances, there was never more than one true pope at a time; others were “anti-popes.”
    • The schism did not break apostolic succession or invalidate Catholic teaching about the papacy.
  • Notable Quotes:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [12:14]:
      "The easiest answer is we didn’t have three popes… They elected anti-popes. So there’s only ever one pope. But there could be any number of people claiming to be pope."
    • Joe Heschmeyer [17:03]:
      "It’s like if you decided, you know what, I’m going to get remarried…and you’d say, oh, when did your wife die? And you’d say, oh, she didn’t. I just decided it was a good time. It’s like, it doesn’t work like that. That’s bigamy. You can’t do that. That’s a fake wife."
    • Gregory XII’s resignation helped resolve the crisis.
    • The difference between this historical confusion and sedevacantism (the belief there’s currently no valid pope): during the Schism, all believed a true pope had to exist; confusion was about the identity, not the office’s existence.
  • Historical perspective:
    • Ordinary Catholics, even saints, were confused by the competing claims.
    • Modern analogies are discussed, e.g., uncertainty over decades about who the true pope is.

---

3. Apologetics Questions & Answers

A. LDS Belief: Is John the Apostle Still Alive?

[25:02–34:48]

• Caller Bryce (Utah) asks: How confident can we be that John the Apostle died and didn’t live on as LDS tradition teaches?
• Joe’s Response:
  • The Mormon reading of John 21 (that John would live forever) is mistaken; the Gospel itself rebuts this idea.
  • Early Christian testimony (Irenaeus, Eusebius, Jerome) affirm John died in Ephesus.
  • Quote:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [29:10]:
      "John himself is very clear. Jesus is not promising me immortality. He is just saying, ‘mind your business,’ to Peter. That’s it."

---

B. Guardian Angels and Non-Believers

[36:14–39:58]

• Caller Sam (North Dakota): Do non-believers have guardian angels, and do angels influence their lives?
• Joe’s Answer:
  • The Catechism (CCC 336) refers primarily to “every believer” and emphasizes the role of guardian angels among the baptized.
  • There is no explicit Church teaching on whether every unbaptized or non-believer is assigned a guardian angel, though God grants spiritual aids to all.
  • Distinction Drawn:
    • Baptized, especially Christians, can be certain of receiving an angelic protector.
    • Non-believers may experience angelic aid, but whether each has a formal “guardian angel” is less clear.
  • Notable Clarification:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [39:24]:
      "There are certainly spiritual aids that God gives…whether they have a guardian angel, but there are certainly angelic forces that are interceding for them."

---

C. Praying with Reading Material during Adoration

[43:16–47:29]

• Caller Amber (Washington, DC): Is it proper to read, even Scripture, during adoration, or should we focus on silent, contemplative prayer?
• Joe’s Wisdom:
  • It’s not wrong to use reading material or Scripture, especially for meditative prayer (Lectio Divina).
  • The higher form of prayer is contemplation (simple presence with God), and one should avoid using books as a “crutch” to avoid genuine encounter.
  • Quote:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [46:31]:
      "Is the book helping the conversation, or is the book getting in the way of the conversation?...There might be something higher where you could just have a conversation with Him."

---

D. Was the First Thanksgiving a Catholic Mass? (and More on Holidays)

[47:34–50:30]

• Amber’s Follow-Up: Is the claim that Thanksgiving began as a Catholic mass true? Or is this just “Catholic vs. pagan” holiday mythmaking?
• Joe’s Context:
  • There was a thanksgiving Mass celebrated in St. Augustine, Florida (1565)—before the Pilgrims.
  • The word “Eucharist” itself means “thanksgiving.”
  • The story of Squanto, a Catholic convert who helped the Pilgrims, is highlighted.
  • Quote:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [49:32]:
      "So here they are, trying to... go start their own land. And then they get there, and it’s like, here’s a Catholic already here. It’s like, you just can’t get away from us."

---

E. Praying to Saints & 1 Timothy 2:5 ("One Mediator")

[52:21–54:52]

• Caller Ava (Ontario): Protestants cite 1 Timothy 2:5 (“one mediator”) to object to praying to saints. How to answer?
• Joe’s Response:
  • Context is crucial: 1 Timothy 2:1 actually commands believers to pray, intercede, give thanks for all people—implying mediated prayer.
  • The “one mediator” refers specifically to Christ’s unique mediatorship in salvation by His death, not to intercessory prayer as such.
  • Quote:
    • Joe Heschmeyer [52:52]:
      "We want to distinguish between the unique mediation of Christ on the cross from intercession, praying for somebody else."

---

Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Catholic Humor & Office Culture:
  • [04:02, Joe Heschmeyer]: “What days are holy to banks?”
  • [05:49, Joe Heschmeyer]: "The problem that our youth are facing today is too much Christmas spirit. You are actually the problem."
• On the Papal Schism:
  • [12:14, Joe Heschmeyer]: “There could be any number of claimants to the same office and still only one office holder. That’s not a hard principle...”
• On the LDS claim about John the Apostle:
  • [29:10, Joe Heschmeyer]: "John himself is very clear. Jesus is not promising me immortality. He is just saying, 'mind your business,' to Peter."
• On Guardian Angels:
  • [39:24, Joe Heschmeyer]: "There are certainly spiritual aids that God gives…whether they have a guardian angel, but there are certainly angelic forces that are interceding for them."
• On Contemplative Prayer:
  • [46:31, Joe Heschmeyer]: "Is the book helping the conversation, or is the book getting in the way of the conversation?"
• On the Catholic Roots of Thanksgiving:
  • [49:32, Joe Heschmeyer]: "You just can’t get away from us."
• On the Saints and Mediation:
  • [52:52, Joe Heschmeyer]: "We want to distinguish between the unique mediation of Christ on the cross from intercession, praying for somebody else."

---

Additional Highlights

• References to Relevant Church Documents:
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 336, 2705, 2709) on angels and prayer.
• Analogy to Modern Situations:
  • The Schism compared with today’s sedevacantist controversies.
• Listener Engagement:
  • Preference given to callers from snowy states.
  • Information on Joe Heschmeyer’s upcoming debates and outreach events.

---

Conclusion

This episode is an engaging example of Catholic apologetics in action. Joe Heschmeyer masterfully combines humor, historical insight, and theological clarity, answering questions ranging from obscure church history to practical spiritual life. For those unsure about complex historical episodes like the papal schism, the distinct role of guardian angels, or the legitimacy of praying to saints, this episode provides accessible, orthodox explanation—always couched in the Church’s original language, a spirit of welcome, and playful camaraderie.

If you’re seeking clarity—and a few laughs—about obscure or controversial aspects of Catholic faith and practice, this is an ideal listen or read.

Transcript

[Announcer]

Buying or selling your home. Real Estate for Life can connect you with a pro life real estate agent. When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers. Learn more at realestateforlife.org.

[Psy Kel]

Hello and welcome to CATHOLIC Answers Live. I am Psy Kel, your host. It's not Thanksgiving yet, but I'm in the Thanksgiving spirit. People talk about getting in the. I'm in the Thanksgiving spirit already. I'm going to tell you.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

We call this preheating the oven.

[Psy Kel]

I'm just saying, preheating the oven. Yeah, I'm getting preheated. Joe Hesch, that's the voice of Joe Heschmeyer, apologist here at Catholic Answers. He's our guest Both hours today, 888-318-7884. He'll also be our guest on Friday. We've got new shows for you all week. So we're not slacking? Well, we are kind of a little bit slacking off in this building today. I gotta tell you, Joe, you're all the way over there on the east coast in Kansas City. I don't know, somewhere near. Is it near Florida?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, very.

[Psy Kel]

Where's Kansas City?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

On the coast of the Ozark River.

[Psy Kel]

I don't know where things are, but. Okay, all the way over there. But let me just tell you something here in the building. Four people in the building right now, all in this studio. We have Jeff, who is this? I should say five people in the building. I apologize. Jeff is a person. No, I wasn't leaving you out, Jeff. Jeff's running the soundboard. Siobhan, her job title is so far above us here in the radio department, but she came down to be on the phones. Luke Bender, almost a human being. He is the. He's running the video cameras.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

He came up.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah, yeah. And then we got Charlie Superfan Charlie sitting in the seats over there. That's it. Other than that, this building is dark right now because everybody had to get home. And I don't know, they're probably stealing whipped cream. They're shooting when their spouse is not looking. They're shooting the whipped cream right into their mouth and putting it back into the refrigerator. If I know my colleagues, that's what they're doing right now.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah. I mean, they seem the type I don't want to profile, but all of them. But yeah, this is true. Yeah. This is the one thing that I'd say all of them are guilty of. And I will say as Southern Californians, man, when you have rush hour, start at 3 o'. Clock. Because that many people are leaving. I respect that.

[Psy Kel]

I told my wife, look, don't even expect me home tonight. I'm going to get in that i5 traffic and I'm just going to listen to books or something. I'm just going to be so patient and I'm going to live aloha. I always try to live aloha. You know what living aloha is? So when you let people cut you off, you just don't get upset. You're just peaceful. And I'm gonna try to do that all the way home because there's just no other way to deal with this. I know a lot of people are traveling. I do wanna say, and Siobhan, I know you're a big deal and everything, but if I can give you one direction. If anybody calls from Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, let's put them to the top because they're the only states getting snow right now. I just looked at the snow map. Those are the four states getting snow. If you're getting snow somewhere else, then the U.S. weather Service doesn't know about it or they're lying and nobody trusts them anyways. Don't believe that fake news on the U.S. weather Service, quote, unquote. But those are the four states that are getting snow. So I wanted to look because I'm in the holiday spirit. I want to see who's getting snowed in. Right now it's everybody in Minnesota and a couple states around Minnesota. 888-318-7884 is the number eight throughout.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Can I say something about the word holiday? So.

[Psy Kel]

Yes, please.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I'm sorry. Probably not in the middle of you giving the phone number, but that's the.

[Psy Kel]

Most Chris check move ever. Right in the middle of giving the phone number and you start talking about something else. It's not the flannel panel today. Calm down, Joe. Go ahead.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, we're matching shirts.

[Psy Kel]

I know I sound like I have a cold too, Joe, but I don't. I just sound horrible. I'm having some kind of allergic reaction to the holidays. But you wanted to say something about holiday.

[Announcer]

Go ahead.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah. Some people object to phrases like happy holidays or.

[Psy Kel]

We talked about this yesterday on the air.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Did we?

[Psy Kel]

Yeah, we did. Go on.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

You and who? I don't know.

[Psy Kel]

I don't remember. I mean, I know Carlo was here. I know Carlo was. Oh, no, it was not yesterday. It was when Rose Sweet was here on Monday.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Did they say that the term holiday is a Christian term we should reclaim?

[Psy Kel]

Yeah. Because it means holy day. That was exactly.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, it means holy day. Well, it's very funny when people use, like, the phrase bank holiday, where you're like, what. What days are holy to banks?

[Psy Kel]

Yeah, right. I don't know. I don't know.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

April 15th, maybe bailout days.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, I am in a mood today. I am in a mood. Just stop me right now picking on banks and the U.S. weather Service. Yeah. Okay, so go ahead, tell us about holiday and holy. So you don't get offended if someone.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Says happy Holidays, are offended by the term holiday sounding too secular, they're objecting to the wrong thing. The problem isn't that people are saying holiday. The problem is that people have secularized the word holiday, and they're in the process of doing the same thing to the word Christmas. There was a court case where there was a bus driver who put up Christmas decorations, and she was being ordered to take them down because she's, you know, a public school bus driver. And she said this, you know, this isn't religious. This is Christmas. And I thought, no, don't say that. Like, that's first.

[Psy Kel]

I'm glad you have the decorations, but that's not the defense we want to go for.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Right? Exactly.

[Psy Kel]

Wait, who are the grinches who are, like, take down the Christmas decorations? Come on. I mean, I have to admit I probably have a Christian bias as a Christian person, but I gotta think, even if you are virulently agnostic or something, you don't care about a bus driver putting up Christmas decorations for the kids on the bus. What kind of people are we?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

The problem that our youth are facing today is too much Christmas spirit. You are actually the problem. There are a lot of real problems of vulgar and vile and unhelpful things people are exposed to and poisonous ideas and all sorts of horrendous stuff. And none of it is Santa Claus, none of it is Frosty, or none of it's even the Nativity, even if you don't believe in it. If your idea is like, you know, the problem the youth have today is they're being exposed to the story of Jesus from a bus driver on the way to school. That is just not at all what any sane person should spend even a moment of their time fretting about.

[Psy Kel]

I know judges have to be equitable, but are they allowed to just go, this is stupid, and just dismiss the case? They can't. They're not allowed to dismiss on the grounds of.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Oh, no, I think they absolutely should in a situation like this. There's A lot of things they could do. And one of the things you can do is. So there's. I assume you don't want to get super into the weeds on either, like, U.S. civil law or constitutional law.

[Psy Kel]

Dude, I don't even believe the U.S. weather Service. Do I seem like the guy that wants to get into constitutional law right now?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

That's a great point. Well, in that case, maybe we should see what colors have to say. All right.

[Psy Kel]

No, we're not getting to the callers because I thought, you know what would be fun right before Thanksgiving is to talk about some of the craziest years in the history of the Catholic Church. So I came prepared with a question.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Talking turkey now.

[Psy Kel]

Yes.

[Announcer]

Right.

[Psy Kel]

This is where I always feel like I should have a follow up to your puns, but I don't got nothing. Excuse my. Excuse my. Vernacular English there.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

All right.

[Psy Kel]

Crazy years for the Catholic Church between 1378 and 1417. And this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking people are driving in the car today a good little story about an insane time in church history. It'd be a little fun, and then I'll ask you a question about it.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

All right, let's do it.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, okay. I was waiting for you to approve of my. Of my idea.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I'm sorry. I was nodding, but then I realized that radio doesn't capture the nod waves very well.

[Psy Kel]

Might have missed that. Might have missed that. 1378, Pope Gregory IX dies. That's not the interesting part. All right. Popes die all the time.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Well, that one's death actually matters, but. Yeah, go ahead.

[Psy Kel]

Okay. So in the same year, 1378, it was a year like this year. We had a Pope die in that year and a Pope elected in that year. Urban VI is elected the Pope in Rome. And Urban VI has one feature of his personality that almost everyone agrees on, and that is he's a jerk. I don't know. He might have been a good and holy man. You can be a jerk and be a good and holy man. See St. John.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Thank God.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah, thank God, right? There are good and holy people, but nobody likes Pope Urban vi. He's just. He strikes everybody the wrong way.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

He's.

[Psy Kel]

I think the primary thing. This is not in the historical record, but this is my suspicion is he used puns all the time. He. He was constantly using puns, and everybody hated it. So Pope Urban VI is a jerk. So the French cardinals. Because there was a big. Oh, the French were. The French were. They were a little big for their britches during this period because they had had the papacy in France for, I don't know, 16.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Not actually the part I don't know historically is whether britches is historically accurate.

[Psy Kel]

But nevertheless, yeah, it might have been breeches. So the French elect their own pope because Urban VI is a jerk. And also they just wanted the pope back in Avignon. And so Clement VII is elected pope at the same time that Urban VI is still the pope in Rome. So now we have two popes. But this gets better. But wait, there's more. I'm like the ShamWow guy. So now we got two rivals.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Okay, real quick. Not the point of what you're saying. The ShamWow guy never says that. Everyone remembers him saying. But wait, there's more. Go find a clip.

[Psy Kel]

Who's the guy that says, wait, there's nobody.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Nobody. This is just a mass collection of delusion.

[Psy Kel]

Are you calling me delusional? Right before the holidays, you're calling me delusional?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

You were telling me delusional.

[Psy Kel]

All three of my kids are coming home. I'm gonna be called delusional? Enough. All right? When they. I don't need you adding to it. All right? Two popes. So by 1379, now we're up to 1379. We've got two popes, and there's this big division. All of Europe is divided for like 14 years. And then Urban VI dies. And then the Roman guys, they just elect a new pope, Boniface ix. And then Boniface ix, let me think, Boniface ix, I think he dies. And then Pope Clement is elected. So we go through several popes. All the while, there's a different pope over in France. France has its pope, Rome has its pope. So we got two popes going. We try to reconcile all this around 1404, in 1409, they go. Some of the cardinals go, let's just settle this once and for all. And they go to Pisa. I don't know why. Pisa does not seem like the place to solve problems. And they've never gone back there for any kind of conclave or anything.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

You can't even get a building straight. You're probably not going to get church straight.

[Psy Kel]

Why are we trying to straighten things out in Pisa? Wrong city to do that. So they just go, let's elect a new pope, and it's Alexander Van. And then Alexander V dies and John XXIII becomes the pope. And now we've got three different popes. We've got a Roman pope, a Pisan pope, and an Avignon pope, and three popes at One time. And nobody in Europe can straighten this out except Catherine of Siena. She knows the whole time. Even saints get this wrong. Vincent Ferrer, completely wrong. He's backing the wrong horse for decades. He's back in the fake Pope Benedict XIII over in France. So now we get into the 1400s and we've got three popes. Here's my question for you. There's only supposed to be one pope. How can we justify the idea of apostolic succession and papal succession and the see of St. Peter and all of that when we ourselves as Catholics have at a certain point in history gotten so crazy that we had three popes?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I mean, the easiest answer is we didn't have three popes.

[Psy Kel]

Did you just hear the whole thing that I just went through?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I did. I did hear.

[Psy Kel]

I think I got at least 90% of that right.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Well, except for the critical details that the French elected their own pope and the Pisans elected their own Pope, because in a real sense they didn't. They elected anti popes. So there's only ever one pope. But there could be any number of people claiming to be Pope. Like tomorrow, Trent Horn could claim he's Pope.

[Psy Kel]

Yes.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

It doesn't mean he's actually the Pope. It just means he's tooting his own horn.

[Psy Kel]

No, I'm ignoring that.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Okay, yeah, I'm.

[Psy Kel]

I'm ignoring that. I'm just. Go on, go on.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Urban vi, who doesn't create a Tridentine papacy, that there's, you know, you, you can claim as many people as you want, can claim to be Pope, just like as many people as want could claim to have, you know, won the last presidential election or any number of things where there's only one actual occupant. There can be any number of claimants to the same office and still only one office holder. Like, that's not a hard principle in theory. Now look in practice. So it's very clear that Urban angering seemingly everybody and then them immediately calling into question the legitimacy of his election, undermined the papacy all around.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

So, you know, I mentioned before, when Gregory dies, his death is actually significant. And the reason I said that is the popes had been in France. This was what was sometimes called the Babylonian captivity of the papacy. So France was like the biggest power in Europe at the time and demanded that the popes reside in Avignon rather than in Rome. And Rome was. This is a recurring theme in history. Rome was in tumult. Like, Rome was chaotic and disease was everywhere. It was swampy and there were mobs of, you know, Criminals and people doing things violently and everything else. So Catherine urges strongly, Gregory to return to Rome. You know, he famously says, esto vir, like be a man. And just like challenges.

[Psy Kel]

Man up, don't be a child. That's what she told him. Basically. Man up in the language of the day. Stop being a French, don't be a chicken little child. Go back to Rome. Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And then he does, and then like almost immediately dies. And so then, you know, the papal conclave.

[Psy Kel]

Listen to a saint. Go ahead. I'm sorry.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

So then the papal conclave is happening in this question really at the beginning. Is, is the next Pope going to be kind of the puppet of the French? Is he going to be someone who will stand up to the French? Like, what's he going to do in relation to France? Like that's the, the kind of current beneath everything, because they're the biggest power of the day. Like, I mean, think about it today. When Pope Francis was pope, a lot of Americans said, oh, he just doesn't understand us. He's, he's not American. He doesn't really understand the US Et cetera, et cetera. And, and then we get an American as Pope and the whole question becomes, okay, what does this do for the biggest power on earth in its relationship to the Church? And so that national question is not the most important question for someone becoming pope, but it crosses cardinals minds. I mean, certainly, what does this person think? And what's their foreign policy going to be like? How are they going to, you know, handle things diplomatically? Well, the mobs in, in Rome want a Roman elected as pope, and they don't get a Roman, but they do get an Italian. He's from Naples. And the French are annoyed about this. And so then they, then it turns out not only is he from Naples, but he also doesn't play nice with everyone.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And so he is validly the Pope, but he also doesn't handle everything maybe as deftly as some other popes would have. And so as a result, you have people challenging the election, but people challenging a legitimate election doesn't disprove the election.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And the Church has been very clear. The Roman line was the correct line all along, that he was the Trupo. Catherine of Siena was correct about this and the French critics were wrong. And the Avignon line, the guy claiming to be pope there is excommunicated. Now the, the trickier thing was this attempt that the cardinals came up with where, okay, let's step back and say the cardinals created this problem because they didn't just accept that the pope was the pope. They wanted a redo. They wanted to kind of a mulligan election.

[Psy Kel]

Right.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

They created. Yeah. And so then another group of cardinals decide they can fix the problem by just rejecting both popes, the real one and the fake one, and electing a third guy. And obviously, this is a terrible idea because now there's just three people claiming to be pope rather than two. And they had no more legitimacy to create a new pope at Pisa than the French cardinals had the legitimacy to create a new pope at Avignon. That's not how it works. You can have a conclave to elect a pope when the seat of Peter is empty otherwise, but you can't just elect a new pope halfway through. It'd be like if you decided, you know what, I'm gonna get remarried. And we'd say, oh, when did your wife die? And you'd say, oh, she didn't. I just decided it was a good time. It's like, it doesn't work like that. That's bigamy. You can't do that. That's a fake wife.

[Psy Kel]

That's a great analogy. That's really helpful. Yeah. So the second marriage is not valid because the first wife is still alive. So none of those other popes are valid as long as Urban VI is alive or his successors are alive.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Right. These cardinals are trying to choose a second wife, so to speak. And it doesn't work like that.

[Psy Kel]

Ah, got it. I will say Gregory XII comes out good in all of this because he resigns in order to. He is actually the legitimate pope. He is, but he's. His deal is, look, I'll resign if everybody else will resign, and we can just start fresh. Which would have been. Which does kind of solve the problem. I mean, it does. He could have been like, no, I'm the pope. Get out of my way, everybody.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

He kind of tried that at first. Oh, did he?

[Psy Kel]

I didn't realize that.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Well, yeah. So originally, some of the cardinals met at Constance under the authority of the antipope in Pisa. And they were the early on sessions of the Council of Constance before it's an ecumenical council. You have these cardinals gathered at Constance and they think that the anti pope of Pisa is the real pope. And then that they think he's going to do the thing Gregory actually does. They think he'll resign and they can, you know, just start over. But then he doesn't actually do that. And so then they turn on him. And Gregory had been trying to get cardinals together for his own Counsel and is running into all sorts of obstacles. And he sees the writing on the wall. This is terrible for the Church. And so he does the humble thing where he just says, okay, you know, cardinals and constants, here's the Roman delegation. I will voluntarily submit my resignation and you guys can have a conclave and elect a real pope. And so they do that. Yeah, they leave open originally the question of whether the Pisan or the Roman line is correct. But later on the Church clarifies it was a Roman line. But because it at that point it became a moot issue, like who the right one was. Because we go from having, you know, three alleged popes, you know, three people claiming to be popes, to the excommunicated guy in Avignon and then the voluntary resignation of the Roman Pope and then the not so voluntary resignation of the peas and anti pope. So you go from three to zero pretty quickly. And then you can have a clean election and everybody can move forward. Yeah.

[Psy Kel]

Who doesn't come out good in this.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Is.

[Psy Kel]

The guy that was elected first in Avignon. Which one is that? Is that Boniface? No, I can't remember. Benedict.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yes, he claimed to be.

[Psy Kel]

Claimed to be Benedict or was. Yeah. So in any case.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Oh, no, no, sorry. Clement vii.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, Clement vii. He was the one that was in Avignon and he was like, I'm still the Pope. I'm still the Pope. I'm still the Pope. Until everybody just stopped listening to him.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, he was the first one.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah. Okay. Now all of that, I like to just put this in modern terms. Imagine to put this in a time frame. What if we went from 1979 until today with an uncertainty about who the Pope is and having at any given time two or three seemingly plausible. Like the people that went with the wrong popes, they weren't always doing that in bad faith. They didn't know who the right Pope was. Imagine going from 19. No, it would have been 1989 until today. That that's the period of time that the Church was like, I don't know who the Pope is. I don't know.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

So this the Church? I mean. Yeah. The question, what do we mean by the Church knowing? Yeah.

[Psy Kel]

But the people, the people of Europe.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

A lot of ordinary Catholics were genuinely confused and justifiably so. I think some of our state of the contest listeners are like, you think that's a long time. We haven't known who the real Pope.

[Psy Kel]

Is for since bias.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

20 years. Longer than that. Right.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And I think to that I would say there's a difference between what happens in Avignon and the claims of state of a contest. Because this comes up, people will say, you know, because I will point out things like, obviously, City of a Continism is impossible. The first Vatican Council talks about the papacy being a perpetual institution. And if you just have this indefinite period of time where there is no pope and there's no conclave organized to elect a pope and there's no cardinals who are validly elected by a pope to even have a conclave, there's no way to ever get a pope again. That's very contrary to the papacy as a perpetual institution. And Vatican one condemns within an anathema people who hold that position. And people respond by saying, but what about this period where people didn't know for a long time who the Pope was? That's a good question. But notice through that everybody was convinced there was a valid Pope. They just weren't 100% sure who the Pope was. In contrast, the Sedevacante says there are zero valid popes on earth and zero cardinals who were, you know, made cardinals by popes. So there's no one with the actual authority to elect a pope. And that creates this, this kind of existential problem. Like if, if sedevacantism were true, the Catholic Church would be done.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And this is why Vatican I condemns it. It is, it is an impossible position to say there is no pope and no way of having a pope short of some, you know, supernatural miracle that God has just abandoned his church and, and only like direct divine intervention could save it now.

[Psy Kel]

888-318-7884 is the number. You can ask whatever you want. I'm going to start with Bryce in Ogden, Utah listening on the Catholic Answers app. Bryce, thank you for the call. Go ahead with your question for Joe Heschmeyer.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Hey Joe.

[Bryce]

Hey, Si. Joe, I'm super excited for your upcoming debate December 19th in Draper, Utah. Any Utah listeners, make sure to come get tickets. It'll be a lot of fun.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Perfect. I'm so glad you did that. Thank you.

[Psy Kel]

Is that the debate where Joe is debating a an LDS scholar and a Protestant scholar in all in the same debate?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Well, it's slightly different. Two back to back events.

[Psy Kel]

Okay.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

First there's going to be a sit down on December 18th where it'll be me, Jacob Hansen, who is of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and then a Protestant pastor as well. And we'll be having like an interfaith or inter religious dialogue. The Protestant pastor is Aaron Shafovlav. I'm sure I'm butchering his name. Yeah. S H a F O V a L O F F. So Shaffelflav. Nope, can't do it. I'm sorry. And then the next night, Jacob and I will be debating the question whether there is a great apostasy or not. And so that will be December 19th, 7pm Mountain time. And it'll be at St. John the Baptist Church in Draper, Utah. And tickets are available online. And. And we'd love to see as many people as possible. All right.

[Psy Kel]

So, Bryce, your question.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Awesome. Yeah.

[Bryce]

So one interesting LDS belief is they think that John the Apostle is immortal and that Jesus came to the Americas and created three more immortal Nephite apostles. But given it's like we knew that John the Apostle was not alive and did in fact die, that would cast quite the doubt on the. On the Book of Mormon claim. So how confident could we be that John the Apostle has not been roaming the earth for the last 2,000 years?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, we can be quite confident in that. So we have, for instance, the testimony within scripture itself. So the origins of this. Oh, you know what? I'll continue this on the other side of the break, and I'll be happy to give you the biblical and early Christian support to tell you about John the Baptist's death and what this means for certain Mormon claims.

[Psy Kel]

Can you hang on a minute, Bryce?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Can do.

[Michael O'Neill]

All right.

[Psy Kel]

We'll take a very brief break and find out what happened to John the Apostle right after this on Catholic Answers Live.

[Announcer]

We hope that one of the things that we communicate here at Catholic Answers Live is that our Catholic faith allows us to be fully serious about all the problems we encounter in the church and in the world.

[Psy Kel]

But it also lets us have light.

[Announcer]

Hearts and maybe even mix in a bit of fun. And that is exactly what our good friend Joe Heschmeyer does in his popular podcast, Shameless Potpourri. You should check it [e-mail] Joe's got a deep grasp of the faith, morals, the teachings of the Church, all that, but he's also got a witty conversational style. He entertains and he informs, but you will leave equipped to better answer the most common challenges, misconceptions, and questions about the Catholic faith. He's got insightful guests he does on air debates, and he takes a close look into all the things that you want to know about as a Catholic living today. You'll walk away knowledgeable and filled with joy. Look for Joe on his YouTube channel. Check him [e-mail] or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, become a patron.

[Steve Weidenkopf]

Throughout history, some Catholics have been among the worst kind of villains, right? Or were they in canceled? Historian Steve Weidenkopf digs into the lives and controversies of some of these Catholics whose reputations have been blackened, often unfairly. He takes on the anti Catholic versions of history and defends not only these figures, but the faith they represent. Order your copy of cancelled [e-mail] or ask for it at a good Catholic bookstore near you.

[Psy Kel]

What is the Catholic Church?

[Announcer]

Everybody seems to have an opinion, but the Church never quite fits into the boxes people try to make for it. In the Faith Unboxed, author Andrew Petaprin looks at some of the the most common boxes people put the Catholic Church in and explains why they don't fit in. Doing so, he brings us closer to what the Church really is, the institution founded by Christ. Order the Faith unbox [e-mail] or ask for it at a good Catholic bookstore near you.

[Psy Kel]

Welcome back Catholic Answers live. Joe Heschmeyer is our guest. And Bryce in Utah is on the phone with a question about Latter Day Saints belief that John the Apostle never died. He's still wandering the earth, I assume cable TV now. I'm not sure, but what's up with John the Apostle? Yeah, you know, he's got cable. He's like, you know, he's a guy from the ancient world and he's like, I need, I need cable.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Speaking of guys from the ancient world who still has cable tv.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, that's true. Everybody cut the cord now, huh? He's probably got, I don't even, I don't know. I was going to come up with something good and now I got nothing good because I just proved your point that I'm really old.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

All right, all right, fair enough. Okay, so I want to explore the several different angles with this. So again, just to reiterate, there is this claim you'll sometimes find among the LDS Mormons that John didn't really die, that he is undying. And then he, you know, he came to the new world and it is everlasting. And I think the first thing to point out is if that claim were really true, that would actually undermine the LDS belief in the great apostasy because they believe simultaneously that the priesthood and the keys and everything was withdrawn from the church, that there is a failure of the apostles to pass on the church leadership to the next generation. And that this is why you don't see apostles after the first 12, you know, obviously Matthias and Paul, but then after that, you don't continue to see this part of church governance. They would say that's not because of the nature of, you know, the apostles being a first century phenomenon, as Acts 1 seems to say, but rather is because corruption in the church means, you know, there's this falling away. If that's true, then you're confronted with this thing. How can you simultaneously believe there's no more apostles and there's at least one apostle? Because John is still around somewhere. And so it seems to me that those two claims are contradictory. And I know others have pointed this out before. Second, the biblical support for this idea of John being undying is based on what seems like a fairly obvious misread of John 21. So in John 21, Jesus tells Peter that he's going to die. And Peter responds, lord, what about this man in regards to John? And Jesus says to him, if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me. And you'll notice if you've ever had two kids at least, and you tell one of them to do something, and they say, well, what does my sister have to do? And you say, mind your business. What if I want her to do nothing? Like, that's, that's none of your business. You do what I told you to do. That's the kind of response Jesus is giving. But in verse 23, it says the same spread among the brethren, that this disciple was not to die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die. But if it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? So John himself is very clear. Jesus is not promising me immortality. He is just saying, mind your business to Peter. That's it. And so this is the kind of embryo of the idea that maybe he won't die, but John seems to actually go out of his way to dispel that. You also have early sources that talk about the death of John. Now, sometimes these are more direct than others. So, for instance, Irenaeus talks about John being with the Christians in Asia until the time of Trajan, it says, and he remained among them up to the times of Trajan. Now, the natural reading of that text is that's when he died, I suppose someone could say, and that's when he, you know, transported to North America or something. But the normal way people have read that for 2000 years is that this is when he died. And similarly, in the book Church history by Eusebius. There's a controversy in the 170. Or, excuse me, one. When is that? 170s, 180s. 190s. It was late 1/ hundreds. I don't remember exactly when. Under the time of Pope Victor. Let me. This is going to drive me nuts. Pope Victor was. Oh, yeah, 180s. Okay. So Pope Victor has a disagreement about the dating of Easter with the bishops in modern day Turkey, what was in the province of Asia where John had served. And the bishops there point to the authority of the apostle John because they say that this is where John died. In their words, he fell asleep at Ephesus. So they're explicit about him dying. They mention it just in passing. But their point there isn't. John wasn't immortal after all. It was well established that John was mortal. John made clear he was mortal in the Gospel of John. Their point was that John lived and died amongst us, and he established this tradition of celebrating easter on the 14th day of the month of Nisan rather than on Sunday. And so that was their argument, but they mentioned in passing that he died. So all that's to say, we have plenty of early Christian sources that mention the life and death of John, including in the one hundreds. And. And I believe St. Jerome, in all An Illustrious men, mentions this as well, that he. He dies. And. Yeah, actually, we were told explicitly he died in the 68th year after our Lord's passion and was buried near the same city. So he even tells us the year he dies. All that's to say, there's no reason for anyone looking at the early evidence to come away thinking maybe John is still alive somewhere.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, does that.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

That's. That's what I've got. You're doing karate. I don't know what's going on here.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, just pay no attention to that. I wanted to know if Bryce was happy with the answer.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yes, great answer. That's a good question.

[Bryce]

Thank you. Very thorough, and I think you'll do a great job.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Oh, thank you very much. In December, are you gonna be there?

[Bryce]

Happy, Happy Thanksgiving. I am gonna be there with my LDS mother. So no pressure, but do a good job. So, you know.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Anyways. All right, I will do my best. I hope you and your mom can give me a report afterwards.

[Psy Kel]

And this is when? December.

[Bryce]

Thank you.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Thank you.

[Psy Kel]

December in Ogden or Salt Lake City? In Ogden.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Draper.

[Psy Kel]

In Draper. All right, I will check the weather report on that, because I'm.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

This is December 19th, 7:00pm Mountain Time, Draper, Utah.

[Psy Kel]

Thanks, Bryce. 888-318-7884 is the number. It's Ask Me Anything on Catholic Answers Live today, Joe Heschmeyer, our guest. Let's go to Sam in North Dakota. Did Sam get moved up because it's snowing?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

He did.

[Psy Kel]

Sam got moved up Cause it's snowing in North Dakota. Hey, Sam. Welcome.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I have never. What is the connection between those two things?

[Sam]

I heard we were getting preference.

[Announcer]

Yeah.

[Psy Kel]

Cause there's only four states that it's snowing in the day before Thanksgiving, and you're one of them.

[Sam]

We're past due, so we'll take it.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, we're pretty past due here in Southern California, too. I think we got snow in 1996. That was the last time we got it.

[Sam]

Well, maybe this year's your year.

[Psy Kel]

We can only hope.

[Sam]

My question is about guardian angels. And as Catholics, we are very aware of our guardian angels. And so I was wondering if, even since we're assigned a guardian angel upon birth, even those who are non believers, does a guardian angel have influence on their life? Even if you're not aware that you have a guardian angel.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah. So, okay, there's a few things. One is, what is the relationship of, like, an unbaptized person with guardian angels? Because the catechism actually has a fascinating nuance in paragraph 336. Let me pull that up here real quick, if you don't mind. It says, from its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. This refers to the angels. Beside every believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd. Lead him to life. And that line is from St. Basil, already here on earth, the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God. So it's the emphasis is on the angels in relation to believers. That's a very good question in terms of what that means for non believers. But I know that there are.

[Sam]

You.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Know, I honestly, I'm inclined to say yes, but I don't know that there's a place where the church has ever spoken on that in an explicit way. Because the emphasis when talking about guardian angels is always on, like, the angels of the faithful. And so, like, you know, when Jesus warns not to lead any of the little ones astray because their angels stand watch, you know, he says, see that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven, their angels always behold the face of my Father who's in heaven. He's still talking there about little Christians, like Christian infants and Children. I don't know of a place that explicitly addresses angels in relation to, like, the unbaptized and non believers. I think we could safely say this in regards to baptized people who've fallen away from the faith, that their angels are still interceding for them. And I think we could reasonably infer that there are spiritual aids given to everyone. But in terms of the church saying that, some are explicitly. I'm not aware of one.

[Psy Kel]

Okay.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Wait.

[Ava]

Okay.

[Sam]

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. That was kind of just the whole. It's, you know, if someone's not a believer but is, do they solve a guardian angel that could maybe help steer them in a better direction?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I mean, there are certainly spiritual aids that God gives. So whether. I think there's a. A very technical question about whether they have a guardian angel, but there are certainly angelic forces that are interceding for them. Does that distinction make sense?

[Sam]

Yes, that does. Thank you.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah. So either way, you should ask the angels to intercede and to help them. And certainly if they're baptized, we can say with a greater authority that they have guardian angels, that they have a guardian angel that is on their case, so to speak.

[Sam]

Okay, that's wonderful. Thank you.

[Psy Kel]

All right. Enjoy the snow, Sam.

[Sam]

Thanks. Happy Thanksgiving.

[Psy Kel]

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Thank you.

[Psy Kel]

Right back with more Ask Me Anything with Joe Heschmeyer on Catholic Answers Live.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Hang on.

[Steve Weidenkopf]

We'll be right back with more Catholic Answers Live.

[St. Paul Street Evangelization Representative]

The catechism defines evangelization as the proclamation of Christ and his gospel by word and the testimony of life. But what does that look like in real life? It looks like St. Paul street evangelists out in the public square sharing the good news. We're a Catholic nonprofit that starts conversations by handing out free sacramentals. Then we employ our method of listen, befriend, proclaim and invite. Catholic Answers is supported in part by St. Paul Street Evangelization. Visit streetevangelization.com to learn more.

[Michael O'Neill]

Hey, this is Michael O', Neill, the Miracle Hunter. I'll be delving into the fascinating world of miracles and taking you on a hunt that explores the greatest mysteries and marvels of the Catholic Church. I'll be examining what constitutes a miracle, how miracles are investigated and approved, and the role they play in the lives of the faithful. We'll look at the miracles of the Gospels in early Christianity, considering the claims of the miraculous in our own modern age.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

The Miracle Hunter, Saturday at 1pm and 7pm Eastern on EWTN Radio.

[Psy Kel]

Welcome back to Catholic Answers Live.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I don't know.

[Psy Kel]

I feel a little light hearted. Just because I feel like most people are either off or getting off soon for the holiday tomorrow. So I don't know. How do you feel, Joe? You feel a little more light hearted today? Feel like we can.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

I have this strange relationship with holidays. I'll just, you know, cards on the table. I try not to take episodes off of Seamus Potpourri.

[Psy Kel]

Okay.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

When I'm, you know, when there's an upcoming holiday. So it just means in the period before I am going to be gone, I'm just working a lot more.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, I know that.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And so I'm not like easing into it. I'm more like I'm going to be working for a long time and then I might do a little more work on Friday morning, but then I'll, you.

[Psy Kel]

Know, then it's going to be off.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

And we do that at Christmas time.

[Psy Kel]

December is not like December is not relaxing around here because we got to. Usually there's five or six days where we won't be here around Christmas. So we got to pre record all those shows. Frankly, that often means working with Trent Horn for a few days. So it's not an easy. It's not an easy time for us.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

This is our second Trent Horn joke, by the way. I think you and I do the Friday episode. I said that already. For people listening. This is live. That one won't be. We've already done it.

[Psy Kel]

Oh, you gave it away, man. You gave it away.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

But that one way better than this one.

[Psy Kel]

Way better. That's right. This is a horrible show compared to what you're going to get on Friday 8 at 8.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

3. Shai's already on vacation. He might as well be wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

[Psy Kel]

I got it on under this. I got my Hawaiian shirt on under this. 888-31-87884. Joe insisting on not allowing me to get the phone number out today. Amber is in Washington, D.C. watching on YouTube. We're awful glad you're here, Amber. Go ahead with your question.

[Amber]

Hi, Jo. Hi, Sy.

[Psy Kel]

Hi, Amber.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Hi.

[Amber]

So I just finished reading. The Eucharist is really Jesus.

[Psy Kel]

You okay?

[Amber]

And yes, loved it. Absolutely fantastic book.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

But.

[Amber]

So there was a part where you say, Joe, that we shouldn't bring reading material into adoration. And I was wondering if that extended also into Scripture. Is it more important to sit silently in prayer and adoration or to study scripture during adoration or is it more proper? I guess would be the.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, no, that's a great question. It's not inherently wrong to bring reading materials into adoration. And particularly Scripture itself. But studying is, I think, actually probably the most telling word like this should be a time of prayer. And you can have something called, you know, lectio divina, divine reading, where you take something that you're reading and you. You pray through it and you take it to God. But that's a different thing than simply, you know, doing a scripture study. So in talking about meditative prayer, the Catechism says in 2705, meditation is above all a quest. The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking. The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. We're usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them the sacred scriptures, particularly the Gospels. But then it also mentions holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and then of history, the page on which the today of God is written. In other words, as you're doing spiritual reading or scripture or any of these things, you should try to do it in conversation with God. That's part of what we call meditative prayer. But there is another kind of prayer as well, which is traditionally seen as even higher, called contemplative prayer. And in contemplative prayer, as 2709 of the Catechism says, this is in the words of St. Teresa of Avila, nothing else. In a close sharing between friends, it means taking time frequently to be alone with him who we know loves us. Like, if you had the chance to be in the room with Syllett and you took his, you know, new book with Steve Dawson, and you were reading that book, that's not bad, right? Like, it's. It's great that you're spending time in his presence reading it, and maybe you remember from time to time to look up and say, what did you mean by that? Why in the world did you say it that way? But there might be something higher where you could just have a conversation with Him. And you should at least be mindful of saying, is the book helping the conversation, or is the book getting in the way of the conversation? And God is infinitely greater than Sykellett, I'm sorry to say. Psy.

[Psy Kel]

No, I'm happy to hear it. Yeah, that actually is good news for me.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

So in that sense, we should be mindful of, am I approaching Scripture in such a way that I'm. I'm entering into the contemplation of God in a deeper way? Or is it a kind of crutch because speaking purely personally here, there are times where I don't want to just be in that face to face union with God. I'm overwhelmed or exhausted or I'm not wanting to ask a question, or, you know, there's something I want to kind of deflect. And in those places, it's easy to. To use even scripture as a kind of dodge to avoid just being before God in adoration and giving him the worship that he deserves or the honor that he deserves by having this kind of crutch of scripture. Does that make sense?

[Amber]

Yes, it does. If I could ask one more question, please, if there's time.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yep.

[Amber]

So I saw a video on YouTube today that said that Thanksgiving was originally a Catholic situation, that the first Thanksgiving was a Catholic Mass. But I also see all of these videos where all of our holidays are pagan. So is this just the Catholic version of everything's pagan, everything's Catholic, or is this true?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

There is a Thanksgiving mass celebrated in 1565 in St. Augustine, Florida, and that happens well before the Pilgrims, because Catholics were here first. In fact, there's a great twist when, you know, the Pilgrims arrive and they don't know how to grow crops that are good for the environment they're in. I mean, look, if. If you want the best reenactment of the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving, go do like a hunting trip with your theology nerd friends, because that's what happens. Like the theology nerds on the Puritan side decide they're going to go start their own country or their own colony in Northeast America as it is today, and they have no idea what they're doing, and they don't know how to survive the winter. And the Wampanoag Indians have to save them. But there's this fascinating moment where imagine how surreal this is. They show up to what seems like a completely foreign land. And as they're struggling to literally survive through the winter, a Wampanoag Indian named Squanto says, hello, Englishman. And it turns out he had been kidnapped, brought to England enslaved, had escaped or gotten free somehow and had returned. But as memory serves, Squanto was himself a Catholic.

[Psy Kel]

He went to Spain first. That's where he was kidnapped, too, was Spain. Yeah. So he became a Catholic. Yeah.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

So here they are trying to. I mean, the Puritans are so named because they thought that the Church of England was too Catholic and they wanted to purify it of all of its vestiges of Catholicism. And even, like the Low Countries, which were thoroughly Dutch Reformed, that wasn't good enough, so they want to go start their own land. And then they get there, and it's like, hey, here's a Catholic already here. It's like, you just can't get away from us. It's the Catholicity part. So there is a deep Catholic connection, both for the Puritans. First Thanksgiving, which is what we really are usually celebrating, or if you want to go back an extra, you know, several decades to St. Augustine, Florida, then you can have the first Thanksgiving mass in the new World, which, given that Eucharist, means Thanksgiving, I think it's a legitimate point people can bring up as well.

[Psy Kel]

Are you contemplating that, Amber?

[Amber]

Well, on that note, Happy Thanksgiving.

[Psy Kel]

Well, Happy Thanksgiving to you, too. Happy Thanksgiving. Appreciate that. The call. I'm gonna go on to our friend Ava in Ontario, Canada. It is amazing. The story of Squanto is one of the most amazing things, though, too. All of that traveling to arrive in the new land. And there's a guy that speaks your language. Cause he's already been.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Oh, yeah. I mean, just imagine, like, if the next time NASA goes into, like, you land on the moon or you go to Mars, and somebody's just like, oh, hey, astronauts. Hey, what's up?

[Psy Kel]

I was kidnapped by the Spanish. I escaped, went to England and got a ship ride back over here. Walked back. But poor Squanto, when he got back there, his family had died, the smallpox had been there. It was horrible. But there he was. Austin. No, no, I'm sorry, Austin, we're going to get to you, but I got to go to Ava in Ontario, Canada. Ava, Just ignore.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

How about Columbus Day? Ava?

[Psy Kel]

Yeah, what day is it up there? We're celebrating a big thing down here.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

For those who don't get it, Columbus Day is Canadian Thanksgiving. So I just thought it'd be appropriate to refer to tomorrow's Canadian.

[Psy Kel]

But you're just going to work tomorrow, Ava, while we're all off eating turkey and watching American football.

[Ava]

Well, I'm homeschooled, so I get to stay home.

[Psy Kel]

So every day is Thanksgiving for you.

[Amber]

Yep.

[Ava]

Yeah.

[Psy Kel]

That's beautiful.

[Ava]

But we've already had Thanksgiving in October.

[Psy Kel]

Yes, I know. I know that you're better than us. I'm aware that Canadians are better than us.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Don't. Don't worry. They have to do it earlier because it is already the dead of winter.

[Psy Kel]

Yeah, that's right. That's true. It's October, and they're like, well, get the snowmobiles out. We've got to go celebrate Thanksgiving. Ava. It's always Glad. We are always glad when you are here. Unfortunately, I did not leave you a lot of time. So go ahead with your question for Joe.

[Ava]

Okay, thank you very much. So you know how often Protestants will use first Timothy2.5 to say you can't pray to saints because it says Jesus is the only mediator. I was wondering since, like the next verse, I believe says something like Jesus is the only mediator who became incarnate and died for us. So would it be a good response to say that it's saying he, not that he's the only mediator who can go to God for us, but he's the only mediator who died for us or what?

[Joe Heschmeyer]

Yeah, yeah. So specifically, we want to distinguish between the unique mediation of Christ on the cross from intercession, praying for somebody else. And so literally, the next time somebody pulls out first Timothy2.5 to you, which is half of a sentence, insist that they go read it in context and start with first Timothy 2, verse 1, and say, okay, remember, your position is you can't pray for other people. The saints can't pray for you. You can't go to them for prayers because that would violate the mediation of Christ. Now let's read first Timothy 2, because that's where you're claiming this comes from. And it begins, first of all, I urge supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men. So we're literally told that we can intercede for one another, we can pray for one another, we can supplicate for one another, we can offer thanksgiving for one another. So that's clearly not what 1st Timothy 2. 5 is saying, unless Paul completely forgot his own theology four verses later. Instead, if you read the full sentence is, as you say, for there is one God and there's one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all the testimony to which was born at the proper time. In other words, only one person bridges the gap between God and men by dying on the cross. That's Jesus. But we can bridge the gap, as it were, by prayer, by praying for other people. That's not the same as Jesus's unique mediation. So people using that to, you know, argue against the intercession of the Saints are using First Timothy 2 in a way that completely contradicts One Timothy 2. And the way to solve that is just to read the text with them.

[Psy Kel]

So that's beautiful, but I just want to. Ava is onto something. Correct. Then when she connects this to the death of Jesus, that's right.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

That him being the ransom for us all is about his unique death. Nobody else. The saints don't die on the cross. There's obviously a unique role that Jesus brings.

[Psy Kel]

It doesn't surprise me. Ava is crazy smart. Thanks for the call, Ava. I want to wish you Happy Thanksgiving so bad, but I know you're, you're not an American, so I can't do it.

[Joe Heschmeyer]

We'll be right back. We can offer Thanksgiving for other people first. Timothy 2:1.

[Psy Kel]

Well, I'm thankful for you, Ava. Right back with more Joe on Catholic ANSWERS Live.