Always fun and exhilarating to take questions from Catholics. We had some wonderful calls with interested guests. Enjoy!
Questions Covered:
06:29 – What’s the teaching on the Kabbalah tradition in Judaism?
11:33 – I’m protestant. What’s the rebuttal to the 7th day Adventist claim of the Sabbath still being on Saturday?
18:41 – Protestant caller: What important teachings are in the 7 books that Catholic bibles have that Protestants don’t have?
22:35 – Jewish caller: What’s the best argument for Jesus being the Messiah and that the Church was founded by Jesus?
35:39 – I’m protestant and my husband is Catholic. This is a second marriage for both of us. We believe that we both divorced due to biblical reasons. Why wouldn’t the Church recognize our marriage?
41:24 – Protestant caller: What’s the history of the Roman part of the Roman Catholic Church?
46:13 – Baptist caller: What’s your advice to a lifelong anti-Catholic Baptist who is now feeling drawn to the Church?
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With all due respect Mr. Ray , I would disagree with your position that Kabbalah is not forbidden in Catholicism. According to this article (https://www.catholic.com/encyclopedia/kabbala-kabbalah), ” Several of [the Zohar’s] doctrines recall to mind those of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, the neo-Platonists of Alexandria, the Oriental or Egyptian Pantheists, and the Gnostics of the earliest Christian ages. Its speculations concerning God‘s nature and relation to the universe differ materially from the teachings of Revelation. Finally, it has decidedly no right to be considered as an excellent means to induce the Jews to receive Christianity, although this has been maintained by such Christian scholars as R. Lully, Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, Knorr von Rosenroth, etc., and although such prominent Jewish Kabbalists as Riccio, Conrad, Otto, Rittangel, Jacob Franck, etc., have embraced the Christian Faith, and proclaimed in their works the great affinity of some doctrines of the Kabbala with those of Christianity.” Post-Temple Rabbinic Judaism is different from the Judaism of the Old Testament and in Jesus’s day. While it contains a great deal of truth, it would still be considered a false religion according to Catholic teaching due to its rejection of Christ as Saviour. I have also heard from a Catholic source that Kabbalah is related to occultism and magic, and might teach emanationism (i.e. that all realities evolved from the divine substance). If the last claim it true, then Kabbalah would have been indirectly condemned at Vatican I: “If anyone says that finite things, both corporal and spiritual, or at any rate, spiritual, emanated from the divine substance; or that the divine essence, by the manifestation and evolution of itself becomes all things or, finally, that God is a universal or indefinite being which by self determination establishes the totality of things distinct in genera, species and individuals: let him be anathema.”
STEVE RAY HERE: Dear Gentle Voice of Reason: First, thanks for listening to my segment on Catholic Answers Live and thanks for taking the time to comment on my answer about Kabbala. Second, I am certainly no expert on Kabbala and would never claim to be. Also, I own the Catholic Encyclopedia that you cite and read the article in full, and your concerns about Kabbala are well taken.
When you to an open Q & A you have no idea what people are going to ask. We do the best we can and at times I have just said, “I am sorry, I just don’t know the answer to that question.”
The question asked of me was in two parts, the first being “What is the Catholic Church’s teaching on Kabbala?” To which I answered “I don’t think the Catholic Church has any specific teaching on Kabbala.” That is correct since I know of no document in which the Catholic Church specifically addresses or condemns Kabbala. I have a massive library of the documents of Church Councils, Catechisms, Code of Canon Law, Church documents and papal teaching. I searched all of them in vain to find anything addressing Kabbala.
So, as I concluded on the show, I don’t think the Catholic Church has ever specifically addressed Kabbala. I think I am justified in saying so.
You make some speculations, based on the encyclopedia article, that Kabbala is in error and to be condemned and then say “If a certain claim is true…then it would be indirectly condemned by Vatican I.” That is not the same as the Church specifically teaching against Kabbala.
Thanks again for writing and your points are well taken about the content of Kabbala.
Now as to what Kabbala actually teaches, I did not address that. I simply said that it is a mystical wing of the Jewish religion and that the Jewish religion is the root of Christianity. Romans 11:24 For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.
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