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Show 140: Death · The Uncensored Catholic

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All welcome today's show. Well start today. I'm going to turn two radio
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replies and the question is asking the priests about Jehoah's witnesses. What can I
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say? Hopefully you don't live where you have to worry a much about Jehovah's
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witnesses. I do. In fact, at one point, Jehovah's Witnesses were
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among the top three or five denominations in the two or three counties you know
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where I live, in those that surround me, it's a big, big
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Jehoah's witness community. And generally they're very nice. People went to school with
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a bunch of them, didn't know anything about the religion except that they didn't
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celebrate Christmas or Easter. And you know, it turns out they don't actually
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believe that Jesus is God. They are witnessing for Jehovah. They believe that
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they're somehow perfecting the Jewish faith. They're not really Christian. So when we
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talk about varying Christian denominations, they if you don't believe in Jesus Christ as
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God, you're not actually Christian. They like to come to your door.
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Usually you open the door, there's like this, you know, gorgeous girl,
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and I guess an equally attractive guy I have really noticed, say of
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the truth, and they want to witness to you. They want to tell
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you things about their faith and why you're wrong to be Catholic especially, but
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even Christian in general. And you know, all you gotta do really is
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take the Bible from their hand, open it up to the page where says
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all authority under Heaven is given to the Son of God, you know,
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son of Man. However, that reads to Jesus essentially, and you can
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pretty much dispel their kind of wack of beliefs easily. The thing is,
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they are generally I've run into a couple of bad ones. They're generally nice,
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well meaning people, so as opposed to like the Seven Day Adventists and
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the Primitive Baptists and such that are also pretty prevalent in my area. And
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of course the Mormons. Well, now, okay, but the Mormons tend
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to be actually fairly nice too, you know, totally messed up doctrine,
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but they don't seem to be angry, I guess I would say, whereas
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your Seven day Adventists and some of like the Primitive Baptists and science churches,
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they see your crucifix, they're gonna start screaming at you and telling you you're
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going to Hell and offer to help you get there faster. Not always the
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case, not always the case. Now, I don't mean to say they're
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all angry anti Catholic bigots, but I have run into far more Seven Day
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Adventists and Baptists, especially the country Baptist churches, as opposed to like,
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you know, you're in town kind of polite suit and tie wearing Baptists that
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you know is probably your doctor or something. Now, I mean like the
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Rual, like you know, fundamentalist churches. The more the Jehovah's witnesses especially
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tend to be somewhat ignorant, like on the lower end of the socioeconomic scale,
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without a lot of education, and they don't know that what they're telling
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you is false. And they're actually, in my experience, operating out of
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a you know, a misguided sense of Christian charity. And so you know,
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you can't blame them for that. It's good to just sit down and
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and talk with him for a while, be friendly, invite him back.
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I do, Like I said that a lot of them are really pretty especially
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where I live. I went to I went to school with a pair of
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twin sisters. They were Jehovah's witness. My first really encounter with the religion,
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and it was very confusing to me. I'm like, I mean,
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I'm like, you know, I'm thirteen years old or something. I'm like,
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so Jewish because there was a Jewish kid I went to school with as
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well, and I learned a lot about Judaism and they seem to have like
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ninety percent of the same beliefs and they're like, no, we're not Jewish,
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And turned out a lot of them were pretty anti Semitic, but they
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it makes no sense. They just reject the divinity of Christ. They do
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not believe in the Christian God, and they think they're doing what's right,
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you know. Along with several of these churches, especially seventy Adventist, your
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your Primitive Baptist, your Pentecostal, especially, most of these started after the
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Civil War when society was just shattered. As I've talked about extensively over the
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last two shows, just seems to keep coming up. Their adherents in the
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beginning were often illiterate, and when a charismatic minister or a lot of times
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it was a woman like the founder of Christian science, Mary Baker Eddie.
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I think we will probably get into her tomorrow. They were real con men,
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They're real shady characters, a lot of them, if I'm not mistaken.
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The one that founded that Jehovah's Witness was arrested three or four times for
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selling false cancer cures and magic beans and such. So, you know,
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you have to understand society was broken. People were desperate for something to hold
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on to. They were grieving. They're poor, they're dirt starvation level poverty
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really in the South after the Civil War, and the North made sure of
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that with reconstruction. They did everything they could to punish the South for their
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rebellion. The churches that came about at that period, from you know,
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tent revivals, brush harbors, storefront preachers, a lot of them are really
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con men, and a lot of the people that believed in them really didn't
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know any better. And you can't blame somebody like that. I mean,
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they're literally illiterate. They can't read the Bible and someone tells them this is
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what the Bible says, or if they can read their like, you know,
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barely literate not really able to think out and reason and process. I
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mean, you know, honestly, I've seen in my own lifetime these people
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that will sign their name as just an X. They don't even know how
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to write their own name. I mean, seriously, there are still were
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when I was a kid. They probably still are extremely rural, economically depressed
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areas where life is not like anything you've experienced. Kind of think like the
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movie Old Brother or Art Thou and cross it with Elmer Gantry and yeah,
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I mean I knew one family comes to mind right away, and you're probably
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talking IQs in the double digits. Sweetest people, wonderful people, bizarre,
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extremely superstitious, very kind, sweet caring boy. They went to pray for
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you one hundred times a day if they could, and I mean they run
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over to you, grab your hands and start praying for you. And I
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mean that's that childlike faith that Jesus says is important. But you know it's
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also not the true church. But that's how they were raised. They don't
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know any better. You would think in this day and time, with the
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internet and television all that things would change, but actually it's it's actually gotten
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a lot more easy, a lot easier to fall into such an error because
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whatever heresy you follow, you can find a thousand websites that do nothing but
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teach that heresy. The Internet is a really nasty, dangerous place, frankly
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demonic in many ways. But people like that are just they're prey. But
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I mean the p r e y. I mean they are literally like,
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these are the kind of people that take their life savings and send it to
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a TV preacher, you know, televangelists like Jimmy Swagger or Jim Baker or
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something. They are, but they have such a sincere faith. God's not
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gonna hold it against them. You know, they're gonna be judgment there understanding.
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So you know, all I'm saying is as weird as the beliefs of
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the Jehovah's witnesses are. And they're very anti Catholic, especially the ones that
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are higher up in the hierarchy, the ones that do the writing like for
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the Watchtower and such. Most of the people you meet that are actually in
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that church, they don't know any better, you know, so just just
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be kind to them. Probably the best thing you can do is be kind
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to them, and then you know, someday they're gonna say, well,
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my Catholic friend treated me so nice, and it's gonna kind of undermine the
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more negative influences in their church. I think it's the best way to go
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now. I mean, I'm out in a very very rural area. A
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lot of inbreeding, you know, I see Applechia mountains. You know,
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it just is okay, there's a lot of inbreeding. I've got a lot
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of blind folks, a lot of dwarf Ism, sometimes gigantism. I can't
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you know, these are really weak people. Honestly, it's you know,
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a friend of her in Tennessee says, either the sweetest people you ever meet,
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And it's true. They're just friendly and open and you treat with him
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with respect and you're just like they're best friend for life. I mean,
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seriously, they're very simple, some of them. I'm not all obviously,
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but a percentage. Now, if you're in a city or something, you're
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in Chicago and a Jehovah's witness comes to your door, your experience is likely
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to be incredibly different than mine. So anyway, let's say, let's get
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into this. The person asks, have you any reason for the rejection of
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the witnesses of Jehovah. This Jehovah's witnesses, And they say the witnesses of
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Jehovah merely constitute a form of that sect known as Russellites. They have no
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evidence whatever that Jehovah asked them to be his witnesses. The Russellites were named
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after Pastor Charles T. Russell in America, and an American who started a
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new form of Protestantism. Their religion is based upon the conjecture that Christ's second
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coming is imminent. Yes, they very much believe that. They're always talking
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end times and rapture and all that. They pay little or no attention to
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the obvious things in scripture, but concentrate upon one point in particular, which
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Christ purposely left obscure, saying it is not given to man to know these
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things. They regard all organized churches and their clergy as agents of Satan.
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Let that sink in. They think that Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians,
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Lutherans, Anglicans, etc. Etc. Etc. Are all Satan worshipers.
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So you may get a really nasty one sometimes, and their little booklets,
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their little tracks they put out are really vile. They entertain a special
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hatred of the Catholic Church, regarding the pope as the beasts predicted by Daniel
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and Saint John. They're exegetical, I guess, so you pronounce that gymnastics
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and the interpretation of the mystical text is astonishing. Meantime, they claimed to
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have originated in eighteen seventy four, which is just eight hundred and seventy four
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years too late for one who seeks the church actually established by Christ. Yes,
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if their church was established in eighteen seventy four, the Catholic Church was
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established in essentially thirty three AD, after the resurrection of our Lord. And
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if they are the true church, how could they have been established in eighteen
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seventy four? That would mean there was actually no true church until eighteenth First
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over oney, eight hundred and oh, what was it what I say?
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Thirty three? You know, I'm not. I could at math on my
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feet, but you can subtract thirty three from seventy four. Anyway, if
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what they're saying is true, there was no church until their church was established,
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and the church that gave them the Bible was an agent of Satan.
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And therefore they have absolutely no foundation for their belief because even their very Bible
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would have to be Satanic, and you can't be very bright to believe that.
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I mean, yeah, they may even be able to do math better
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than me, but you really cannot be very bright to actually believe the teachings
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of the Jehovah's witnesses if you've spent any time thinking about it, or have
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even a modicum of logic or a cursory knowledge of history. All right,
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so let's get on to today's topic from the exhaustive explanation of the Catechism,
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and we have gotten to the eleventh and twelfth articles of the Creed, the
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the last things, and we'll start with the subject of death. Yeah,
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that's where we're going to start today. So every day some eighty thousand men
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die, that is one death per second. Well, this was written in
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eighteen ninety. You can basically multiply that by about four or five. Now
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got a lot bigger population in the world. Saint Paul speaks of death has
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dissolution in two Timothy four six, and Saint Peter calls the body a tabernacle
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the soul. To Peter one fourteen, the body is, as it were,
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a shell through which the soul breaks to enter into its new life.
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The soul is freed from the prison. The soul is freed from its prison
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at death, is the expression of Saint Augustine. The body deprived of the
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soul is no longer alive because it has no longer the principle of life.
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At death, the spirit returns to God who gave it. As a reference
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to Ecclesiastes seven, Death, says Saint John Christostom is a journey into eternity.
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Hence, it is wrong to believe the ancient Egyptians that the soul joined
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to other forms, whether human or animals. The ancient Egyptians were actually one
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of the first big proponents of reincarnation basically, and there's well a lot of
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connection between ancient Egypt to ran in India, and you can kind of see
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where a lot of these beliefs began to come from. But that's your humor
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there the soul. Okay, those two are mistaken who think that the soul
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enters into a sort of sleep till the day of judgment. After the death,
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the body returns to the dust from which it came Genesis three eighteen.
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Exception was made, However, the case of the bodies of Christ and his
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blessed mother, and those bodies of some saints have been preserved from corruption to
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the present day. At the last day, our bodies will rise again.
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Death is represented symbolically as a skeleton carrying a scythe with which he cuts short
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our lives as to repromose the grass of the fields. Reference to Psalms.
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He has also represented carrying keys to open to us the gates of everlasting life.
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All men must die because death is the consequence of original sin. Our
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first parents lost by their sin the gift of immortality, and as a consequence
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we all have to die. By one man's sin entered into the world and
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by sin death, and so death passed upon all men in whom all have
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sinned Romans five twelve. Death is the punishment of man's ambition to be as
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God. From Genesis and what is the second Kings? Yeah, I think,
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But anyway, Enoch and Elijah were removed from the earth without dying,
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and they are to return before the last day and then die, So even
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they will die. Saint Thomas teaches that even those who survive till the day
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of judgment shall die. Christ alone was not under the law of death because
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he was free from all sin. His death for us was a purely voluntary
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act. Life, says Saint John Christossen, is a play and which for
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a short time one man represents a judge, another general, and so on.
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After the play, no further account is made of the dignity which each
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one had. We are all like so many chessmen chess pieces, who at
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the beginning of the game have our fixed places on the board, and the
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end are all tumbled into a box. The rich man cannot take his riches
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along with him. Reference to job after death, many who have been first
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on earth shall be last in the last first Matthew, nineteen thirty. Our
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days upon the earth are but a shadow Jobe eight nine. Our years should
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be considered as a spider's web. That's from Psalms. Life is a vapor
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which appears for a little while and afterwards shall vanish away. The hour of
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our death is unknown to us. We shall die when we expect it not
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Matthew twenty four forty four. Death will come like a thief. Matthew twenty
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four forty three do you use the expression of Saint Ephraim? Death is like
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the pounce of the hawk or the spring of the wolf. Saint Gregory of
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Nyssa compares life to a torch which a slight puff of wind may put out.
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To some of the saints, the hour of their death has been revealed,
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but from most men it is hidden. We see in this arrangement the
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action of God's wisdom and goodness. Since we did not know the hour of
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our death, we should always be ready to die. Wherefore be you also
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ready, because at that hour you know not the son of Man will come.
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Matthew twenty four forty four. The parable the Ten Virgins in Matthew twenty
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five is another warning on the subject. Death is great, says Saint Ephraim,
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waiting on no one and demanding that all wait upon him. As a
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man lives, so he dies. Those who put off reforming their lives are
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like those students who begin to study when the examination is already upon them.
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Death is terrible only to the center, in no wise to the just.
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To the central and self seeking only is death fearful, for it means the
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end of their enjoyment in the beginning of woe. The death of the just
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men, says Saint Vincent Ferrer, is like the pruning of a tree,
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preparing it to bear nobler fruit in the future, while the death of the
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sinner is the uprooting of the tree before it is cast into the fire.
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For the just man, there is no death, but a passing over into
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everlasting life. The saints rejoicing death, desiring like Saint Paul, to be
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dissolved and to be with Christ. Some Philippians one twenty three, Saint John
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Christouson compares the desire the saints for death with that of the traveler for the
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end of the journey, or a farmer for his harvest. In another place,
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he speaks of death as a change from a tumble down cottage should beautiful
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mansion. Oh how sweet it is to die if one's life has been a
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good one, exclaimed Saint Augustine. It is not the kind of death,
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but the state of the soul that is important. As a tree fall,
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so it shall lie, says Holy writ that he just means Ecclesiastes, So
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it is with a man. As his will was directed on earth, so
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it should be directed after death. Happy is the man whose will has always
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been fixed on God. In other words, who has in his heart the
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love of God and the sanctifying grace, he will see God unhappily. Many
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are bent solely on the things of this earth. Those for instance, who
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love the world and are not in a state of grace, they remain separated
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from God forever. In order to secure a happy to death, we should,
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in our daily prayer ask God to grace us a happy death, and
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of our own accord, detach ourselves from earthly goods and pleasures. He does
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a happy death who is reconciled with God and has put his worldly affairs in
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order. We ought often to pray that God may give us the grace to
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receive the last sacraments before dying. It is also a duty to make a
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will in good time? Did you know that it's actually a Catholic duty to
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make a will save a whole lot of families, a whole lot of trouble.
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I know it would have been in mind had my grandparents made a will.
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Yeah, I won't talk about that. To do this is to behave
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like a prudent captain who heaves his cargo overboard to avoid shipwreck. A sudden
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death is not a thing to be desired for. We cannot then put into
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order our spiritual or temporal affairs. Hence we pray in the litanys from a
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sudden and unprovided death, Deliver us o Lord. The Church often recalls the
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thought of death on all souls ash Wednesday and by passing Bill et cetera.
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The thought of death is useful for keeping us out of sin and all thy
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works, remember thy last in, and thou shalt never sin, it says
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an Ecclesiasts Ecclesiastes seven forty. They used to spill ecclesiasticus, so you know,
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I kind of stumble over it when I'm reading. Whoever thinks seriously of
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death will take as little pleasure in the things of the world as the condemned
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criminal in a good meal. He is another Democles with the sword hanging over
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him by a hair. Every day's sunset is a reminder from God of death,
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and the sleep and sleep is an image of it. We ought to
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detach ourselves even now from earthly goods and pleasures. After death, our eyes
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will no longer see, or our ears here, nor our tongues speak,
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and we should prepare for that state by our voluntary restraint. Now, oh,
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we should crush the curiosity of the eyes and ears, our unruly speech
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and in order enjoyment of good Following the council of Saint Basil or Basil,
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I think it's Basil. Let us die that we may live. The good
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works which the Church imposes on us, such as prayer, fasting, alms
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deeds, are nothing but a loosening of the heart from earthly ties. Only
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those who have this detachment shall see God after death. Blessed that are the
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clean of heart, they shall see God Matthew five eight. Immediately after death
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follow us a particular judgment. As soon as the soul leaves the body,
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says Saint Augustine. It is judged. We learn for the parables of Divys
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and Lazarus that boast were judged. Immediately after death. Saint Paul tells us
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it is appointed. A man wants to die, and after this the judgment
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Hebrews nine twenty seven. I believe in the hour of death, God will
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say to us, give us give an account of thy stewardship Luke sixteen two.
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After judgment comes a sentence. If God is ordered saying that the workmen
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should not be kept waiting for his wage, it is not likely that he
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would delay the reward of him who has labored faithfully. Death is the reward
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of merit, the crown of the harvest. At Saint Ambrose, Christ will
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sit as judge, and for the particular judgment. He will examine our whole
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lives, and will deal with us as we have dealt with our fellow men.
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Christ will be our judge. For neither doth the Father judge any man,
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but have given all judgment to the Son. John five twenty two.
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He promised his apostles at the Last Supper to return after his ascension and take
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them to himself John fourteen three. Evidently this meant at their death of Saint
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John two. He said, so I will have him remain till I come
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John twenty one two. The apostles rejoiced to the thought of Christ's seeing Christ
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again. So long as they were in the flesh, they were, in
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some sense far from Christ. Two Corinthians five to six. We are not
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to imagine that the soul was led before Christ's In heaven. He enlightens the
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departed soul in such a manner that is quite convinced that its Savior has passed
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a true judgment on it, as lightneth coming, as lightning cometh out of
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the east and appereth in the west. So also shall be the coming of
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the Son of Man Matthew twenty four to twenty seven. That is, as
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Blessed Clement Hofbauer puts it, at our death, when Christ comes to us,
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the whole of our life would be revealed to us with the rapidity and
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clearness of lightning. A man's work should be revealed at his death. All
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those who have been near to death say that in that moment all sorts of
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things long forgotten and occurring in childhood are presented to the mind. At death,
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too, our most secret deeds are brought to light. For there is
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not anything secret that shall not be manifest or hidden, that shall not come,
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not be known and come abroad Luca eight seventeen. We must give an
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account of every idle word that we have spoken, Matthew, twelve thirty six.
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That's gonna be a tough one for aish. We got the gift of
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the blarney afterwards. After all, Basil compares the soul to an artist who
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has produced a number of pictures. At the hour of death, the veil
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is removed from these, and they cover him with glory, or if they
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proved be wretched work, condemn him to disgrace. As the sun reveals to
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us the floating particles in the air, So when the sun of justice shines
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in our souls, we shall see that there. We shall see there even
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our slightest faults. On the day of judgment, says Saint Louis of Grenada,
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God will wear the same aspect to us as we have shown in our
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lifetime to our neighbors. God is, as it were, a mirror,
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reflecting most perfectly the image of Him who looks into it. With what measure
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you meet, you should be measured to you again Matthew seven to two.
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After the particular judgment, the souls of men go into hell or heaven or
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purgatory. We see from the parable of debates in Lazaruth that the sentence of
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the judge is carried out at once. That's Luke sixteen. The church is
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to find that those who have not sinned after baptism and those who have those
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who having sinned after baptism have expiated. Those sins on earth or in purgatory
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are received at once into Heaven, while those who die in mortal sin to
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send it once into hell. Saint Gregory the Great and Saint Justin taught the
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same in their time. Those are in error who believe, as in the
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Greek Schismatic Church, that the souls of the just have merely a foretaste of
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their blessedness after death, and have complete happiness only when they are joined to
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their bodies, and that the wicked experience full damnation only after the resurrection.
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They are very few who are inner heaven at once, for nothing defiled can
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enter into heaven. It's from Revelations twenty one to twenty seven. According to
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Bellerman, it is seldom even that a just man escapes purgatory, all having
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their power to be saved, but not all use their graces particular judgment.
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There is a general judgment in the form or the soul receives its punishment or
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reward for evil or good is done. In the latter, the body shares,
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and the dispensation as the instrument of the soul. All right, we're
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gonna leave it there for today. Tomorrow, God willing, we will continue
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on this topic and wrap it up. We're gonna talk about heaven. We're
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going to talk about purgatory, We're going to talk about hell. So yeah,
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we'll leave it here essentially with death and judgment, and we will get
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into the states of I guess essentially eternal life or eternal death or that place
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in between tomorrow. So, in the words of Saint Padre Pio, pray,
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hope and don't worry, and I'll talk to you next time.