#11920 AMA - Jimmy Akin

Catholic Answers Live

Questions Covered: 02:58 – Do you think God speaks to you? 07:22 – I’m actively reading and studying my Bible and one of my top concerns is if the Jewish people were given adequate chance to believe that Jesus was God and that his teachings were true? Obviously the Jewish people have continued on and is that not what God wanted? Any discussion on the topic would be appreciated, thank you to Jimmy and his team! 15:13 – Good evening Jimmy from the UK! I have a question about the Sacrament of Confession. In the Old Testament, people brought animal sacrifices to the priest to atone for their sins, with the size of the sacrifice corresponding to the severity of the sin (If I remember rightly). This is mirrored in the early Church, as confession was a public act, where individuals admitted their sins before the entire congregation. However, this practice evolved into the private, one-on-one confessions we know today, largely due to the influence of Irish monks, who introduced this method in the early medieval period. Some have argued that because the form of confession has changed over time, the Seal of Confession could also be altered. How can I explain this development to non-Catholics (and some Catholics too)? Thank you Jimmy, may God continue to Bless and Guide you all! 20:18 -I’ve watched your Mysterious Worlds episodes on young earth/old earth and the flood, but would it be permissible for a Catholic to interpret Genesis as a poetic narrative describing God’s creation of man and culling of the most evil men in our distant past by 1) reading Adam and Eve being earlier hominids when our ancestors became able to reason instead of being driven by instinct and in turn after sinning against God by eating from a possibly metaphorical tree of knowledge, our brain capacity started to expand causing more difficult births? And 2) reading the flood as being a story about God destroying more sinful versions of our ancestors, causing a population bottleneck as far back as 900,000 years ago? Converting to Catholicism from a secular background, reading the Old Testament as divinely inspired truths seen and expressed through a lens of the contemporary culture when each part of the OT was written removes all the stumbling blocks to finding my faith, but I don’t know if my interpretation stretches what is written too far. 34:56 – How is a narcissist saved if he’s in complete denial about being a narcissist? 37:10 – Is there a philosophical possibility that God exists without omnipotence? I heard an argument from a liberal Christian, Dr. Goff, which posits that a semi-powerful God would solve many theological quandaries, such as the problem of evil. 42:08 – Hello Mr Akin! What do you think of religious orders? 45:20 – Is it a correct understanding of the Catholic Faith to say that when Jesus suffered and died that only his human nature suffered and died and not the divine person?’ 48:06 – How to find the truth in the world of excess information? 49:55 – I would love to know a breakdown of the evidence for and against global warming and in particular the degree to which human activity plays a role in this. I ask this of Jimmy because he may be one of the only people I would trust to give an unbiased assessment. …