Father Knows Best Show
Father Knows Best is a locally produced Question and Answer show on Siouxland Catholic Radio 88.1 FM. The show is hosted by Father Mark Stoll. He is a priest in the Sioux City diocese, canon lawyer, and trained media person on air. The program airs on Wednesdays at 9pm.
Father Knows Best Show
Father Knows Best—Episode 29: Fr. Stoll's Favorite Authors; Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory; and Reasons We Confess Our Sins to a Priest.
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Wednesday July 29, 9:00 pm on Siouxland Catholic Radio 88.1 FM
Episode #29 of Father Knows Best sponsored by St. Augustine Indian Mission in Winnebago, NE features Father Mark Stoll addressing questions about his favorite authors; Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory; and reasons we confess our sins to a priest.
Tune in tonight so we may discover, learn, and engage our hearts, souls and minds so we may be illuminated, informed and inspired. Please send your questions to fatherknowsbestshow@yahoo.com.
I have questions. I don't understand. I'm confused. What's going on? This is not what I learned in school. What does the church really teach? Welcome to Father Knows Best, the studios of 88.1 FM, KFAC, Poncasoo City, and KOIA Storm Lake. Brought to you by the St. Augustine Indian Mission, Winnebago. We all have questions and the curious about matters of faith as it is normal for humanity to ask questions and seek answers in the timeless quest for understanding regarding matters of faith in the church. We believe that there is no such thing as a foolish or dumb question. Sometimes an answer leads to more questions. Sometimes the questions and answers will lead us to insights we never considered. We at Siouxland Catholic Radio want to invite our listeners from Jackson, Nebraska to Elk Point, South Dakota, to Stromwick, Iowa, and everywhere in between and beyond, send your questions to us at Father Knows Best Show at Yahoo.com. Or mail them to Father Knows Best, Sioux Line Catholic Radio, 701 West Fifth Street, Sioux City, Iowa, 51103. During this time, once a week, I or another guest will do our best to answer some of the questions I received here at the studio so we may discover, learn, and engage our hearts and souls and minds, so we may be illuminated, informed, and inspired. So I thank you for tuning in. We invite you to open your mind, let the questions begin, and let your curiosity find its voice. I'm Father Mark Stowe, Priest of the Diocese City with you today. Joining me again is Tim Soudine, the executive director of Sioux Like Catholic Radio, presenting some of the questions I've received from your listeners. And so, Tim, are you ready for another round of questions?
SPEAKER_02I am. You know, many of our listeners, I hope, truly understand how blessed they are to be able to have this at their disposal every Wednesday night.
SPEAKER_00Amen. And so we also be grateful to Ann, who's here to run the control board and make it sound good. And she's gonna be reading up on one of the questions I'm gonna be answering a little bit. So, Tim, I believe the first question we have is actually from you. I do.
SPEAKER_02Ann and I actually do submit questions because as we get farther into this, we are just finding more and more information and more answers that we desire. The question I have is what Catholic authors and books do you find inspirational?
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Tim, for that question. And I I assume you mean besides the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_02Agreed, besides the Bible. Well, you know that there's Matthew Kelly, but that I don't know that he would be one of them, but just there's other Christian Catholic writers out there that are inspirational.
SPEAKER_00So I have a large library, personal library, lots of books. I like to read, and I've collected a lot of books, especially since high school and college and seminary, and in 34 years I've been a priest. And so I'm just gonna highlight some of the books that have kind of formed me as I look at my bookshelf. There's an author, Father Henry Nowen. Okay. In when I was in college, I got a whole book called With Open Hands. Again, it's a simple little writing, little simple little book, very inspirational. In uh 2011, I read a book, and a lot of people, I think some people have read this book called Return of the Prodigal Sun, is a reflection on Rembrandt's picture of the return of the prodigal son from that famous uh uh uh parable by Jesus. Um there's also uh ten other books that he's written, but again, those two that really stand out for me is With Open Hands and Return of the Prodigal Son, Father Henry Nowin. Okay. When I was in uh in college, also I read a book by Father Keith Clark. Again, it was part of my discernment becoming a priest, it was called Being Sexual and Celibate. Um Father Benedict Ochell wrote a book called The Courage to Be Chaste. Again, read that, read that during college as a discerning priesthood. And also there's a book called uh The First Year Priesthood by Father David O'Rourke. So it's kind of like what do you what can you expect in the first year of priesthood? So those are some of the books that kind of formed me as I was going through seminary and and and the light. Uh in 1994, I got a whole book called What If Jesus Had Never Been Born. It's written by Dr. James Kennedy and Jerry Newcomb. Again, an interesting book, kind of kind of speculating what would life be like if Jesus never was born. So it's again a wonderful book. I've actually used it for a couple of homilies in the past. Um Ernest Kurtz and Catherine Ketchum wrote a book called The Spirituality of Imperfection, Storytelling and the Journey to Wholeness. I read that book in 2012. Again, really focused on that. None of us are perfect. You know, how do we um you know what you know live our lives kind of in the spirit of imperfection, that working towards perfection? It's a wonderful book. Um Scott and Kimley Hahn wrote the book Rome, Sweet Rome. Rome, sweet Rome. Again, that's 2013. Again, a wonderful book about their journey to the Catholic Church. Again, very inspirational, you know, what non-Catholics saw that drew them into the Catholic Church. Um, I have read um many of Matthew Kelly's books because you know, we've done a lot of these parish book uh giveaways, things like that, such as the biggest lie in the history of Christianity, uh, holy moments, life is message, rediscover Catholicism. Um, a couple more books. Uh Ralph Martin, he appears once in a while on uh EW TV. Uh in 2014, I read two books of his. One was called The Fulfillment of All Desire, and another one's called Will Many Be Saved, What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization. Again, wonderful books about you know what is the real truth about the church, even what Vatican II taught, because again, there's a lot of things that people believe that Vatican II's taught, but actually didn't. So he kind of you know highlights, you know, what is the truth that we truly believe. And then there's various works of the saints that I've I've read, you know, such as the collected works of St. Teresa of Avalas. So those are just some of the books I've read. I'm gonna put that list on the Facebook page of those books if anybody wants to check them out. If you want a full bibliography of them, um you know, just send me an email to my email, father knows best show at youahood.com, and I can send you more bibliography on those uh books. But again, if you check out the Facebook page, those uh books will be listed, and then you can maybe check it out. But again, title author, uh that should get you to where you want. If you want if you want to get hold of them, read it.
SPEAKER_02One of the ones that I have heard of before is Scott Hahn. He's actually on the on EWTN radio quite a bit.
SPEAKER_00Yes, he does.
SPEAKER_02Could we be able to find these titles and authors in a general library, like downtown Sioux City Library?
SPEAKER_00I'm not sure. I really don't know, sure. Um, I mean you can go usually to like EWTNRC's got their catalog. Um you can probably find them there. I mean go to Amazon, other places online, you can probably find them. Go to a bookstore, you might be able to order them. So um, yeah, so check it out.
SPEAKER_02This was an incredibly interesting question. I'm glad I asked it.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for the welcome. Let's go to the second question.
SPEAKER_02This comes from our wonderful program director. Yes. We have a we have a twofer with her today, I think. I believe so. And from Sioux City sent you this question. Does everyone go to heaven when they die? What is purgatory? How do you know if your loved ones go to heaven, purgatory, or hell? How long can someone stay in purgatory? When it's your time to die, do you know if you are going to heaven? Do you see a light? God, loved ones. It's a pretty involved question.
SPEAKER_00It is. It's a good question again. These questions are kind of like the question I addressed back on episodes six and seven and twelve on purgatory and hell. This question, you know, these questions actually go a little more in depth about purgatory. And so, first again, when we die, there's only two places we'll go, heaven or hell. Uh, when we die, we hope that we and everyone will go to heaven. However, again, as I mentioned in the previous episodes, no one knows, no one on earth has knows exactly how many people go to heaven or how many people go to hell. Jesus, of course, calls us to follow his commands that we may join him in heaven. However, it seems that not everyone is following Jesus' commands, thus, it would be safe to say that not everyone will go to heaven. In fact, in Matthew chapter 7, verse 13-14, Jesus speaks about how many people go to hell when he says, Enter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide, and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. And then there are other references about people going to hell made by various, such as the visionaries of Our Lady of Phanima and Saint Maria Faustina, as they report, many souls are in hell, but again, they never give us the firm number how many there. So again, there is no magisterial teaching specify specifies how many people go to heaven or how many go to hell. Again, we say only God knows. And we do not know for certain if our loved ones have gone to heaven, you know, unless we have that they have them officially canonized by the church through the canonization process, or maybe receive a rare private revelation that says they're in heaven. Essentially, we just basically have to hope and pray that they're in heaven, because not even the priest or the deacon or family member or loved one can guarantee the person is in heaven when we hear many times at funerals and wakes, oh she or he's in heaven. And so we can't guarantee that. We just have to hope and pray that they are going to heaven. The only time that we'll know for certain is when we die and hopefully we are received into heaven. Hopefully we don't go to hell, then I think that's when we'll know where our deceased loved ones are. When we die, we will know, you know, where we're going, heaven or hell. Especially if we end up in purgatory or not. If we find ourselves in purgatory, we will know we are going to heaven. Because, and I say most of us will have to spend at least some time in purgatory, because that is the process again, preparing to enter into heaven. Now, it is also possible that if we have made a good sacramental confession or we received the apostolic pardon shortly before death, we may go straight to heaven where we will see God, we'll see all the saints and angels, we will see our loved ones in heaven who are there, and we may of course see light, which of course is Christ Himself. However, if we do not go straight to heaven and we do not enter purgatory, we will find ourselves in hell, and there's no hope of being in heaven. And so hopefully when we die, we'll at least find ourselves in purgatory. So purgatory, there's kind of a little background on that, is was defined by a decree at section 25 of the Council of Trent on December 4th, 1563. And that decree acknowledged that we find purgatory defined in the sacred writings, in the ancient traditions of the church fathers, and in previous councils. And that decree says the following quote that there is a purgatory, and that the souls there are detained, are aided by the sufferings of the faithful, and chiefly by the acceptable sacrifice of the altar, which is the Mass, and that this sound doctrine of purgatory is to be believed, maintained, and taught. And so, kind of in summary there, that the purgatory is three parts of the Holy Church of God. The church militant, that's us here on earth, the church triumphant, that's the saints in heaven, and the church suffering, those are the souls who have died are now in purgatory. And so the word purgatory again comes from the Latin word meaning purge. And this word itself kind of indicates what purgatory is all about. It is about being purged of sin and the effects of sin that you know that are on the soul when we die. And so oftentimes we speak of purgatory as a place. But purgatory probably is more actually a condition of the soul when at the moment of death the soul is in a state of grace, but has not been completely expiated of all the sins and faults. And the soul has not yet comp reached that degree of purity which is necessary to enjoy the vision of God. And so, I kind of in in previous episode I talked about what purgatory is like. I'm gonna use a couple of other images. Purgatory is like a dishwasher. You know, we use to wash the dirty dishes before we turn them to the cupboard. Purgatory is like a washing machine. I've used this episode before where we wash our dirty clothes before we turn them to the closet. Purgatory might even be like a car wash, where we wash the car before we take the car to a car show. And so purgatory, again, is a reality that says that nothing impure may enter the heaven. So once we've been purged of all that impurities, then we will go enter heaven. So how long does it take to get into heaven? How long do people remain in purgatory? Again, the soul may remain in that condition of being purged for as long as it takes for it to be purged. How long that takes, we do not know. But we speak in human terms, in terms of this concept of time, despite the fact that for God, time doesn't exist. God's eternal. And so we kind of use this word time, and so we'll see when we talk about prayers and celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and other acts of charity, can quote, lessen the time that we'll have, or even the time that others may have to spend in purgatory. And so the church talks about there's indulgences that we offer for the remission of temporal punishment due to the sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, but they are received under circumcircum circumstances. So let me repeat that. Remission of sins are temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven, but we've still got that temporal punishment to take care of. So praying certain prayers such as the rosary or stages of the cross, going to confession, receiving Holy Communion, praying for the intentions of the Pope during various works of mercy are types of indulgences that we can acquire to lessen the time, however that is, however that means. A partial indulgence is about freeing a part of that temporal punishment. A plenary indulgence is about freeing the whole of temporal punishment. Again, both types can be applied to ourself or to those in purgatory. And again, how many indulgences are needed to free our soul from purgatory is uncertain. But again, the important thing there is what Jesus even talks about is to persist. To keep persisting our prayers and works of charity and going to mass and things like that to help those in purgatory to reach heaven sooner than later. And so I even like what the uh divine remissionaries do. They have a practice of praying specifically for each of their deceased members for 30 years. After 30 years, they quit praying specifically for a deceased member because basically they hope they're in heaven by then. Or if there is no hope, they're probably in hell, and after that, there's going to be no hope of saving them. So that's kind of an interesting uh tradition that the the uh divine missionaries have 30 years of praying. So just want to pause this briefly because if you're just tuning in, your listening father knows best here on Sue and Catholic Radio as I answer questions about faith in the Catholic Church. I'm Father Mark Stowe, and I'm joined by Tim Sabine, who's presenting some of the questions I've received from you, our listeners. And right now we're talking about the whole question of purgatory. You know, how do we know if our loved ones are in heaven or are going to hell? And again, to be honest, we know there is a reality of heaven, there's a reality of hell, there's the reality of purgatory. Again, all the details that we know about heaven, hell, and purgatory is based on what we find in the scriptures, in the tradition of the church, and the teachings of the church, and then writings of many saints. And I'm going to give you a little lately of saints who have presented materials, and I'm not going to go detail of each one. But we have uh Saint Mary Magdalene of Pazzi, Saint Francis of Rome, Saint Gregory the Great, Saint Francis de Sales, Pope Innocent III, Saint Gertrude, Saint Perpetua, Saint Maria Faustina. We have the visionaries of a later Fatima, which includes uh Sister Lucia de Santos, Blessed Francisco Marto, and Blessed Crescent Marsalto, Marto, excuse me, Marto, and then many others. So if you if you um do some research, there's a lot of saints who have talked about the reality of purgatory and hell and heaven. So again, there's a lot of material out there. So again, we're we're we're talking about something too that you know we don't know a lot about. It's some of this speculatory, um, but we know that those realities exist. But what is ultimately as important for each of us, for you and for me, is that we live our lives the best we can following the commands of God, the commands of Jesus, following his teaching, following the example of Christ. It's important that we pray. Again, we know that prayer not only helps ourselves, but helps others, even those who are in purgatory. Again, it's important for us to celebrate and live the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, reconcilation, penance, confession. Though all those sacraments are all about helping us, that's why they're so important. It's all good for us to again offer service to others because helping others, doing service, uh can also uh expiate sins. Um we also work towards not rejecting God in our thoughts, words, and deeds. And again, if we do this, we know uh I'm not, you know, again, if if we do all this, you know, what we've just talked about, um, living lives as best we can, praying summary sacraments, doing service. While we may not know for certain, I think we can be fairly confident that by the grace of God we will welcome into the glory of heaven when we die. Perhaps maybe have to spend a little time in purgatory. So that kind of hopefully covers a lot of the questions that we had about this about purgatory. How do we know?
SPEAKER_02Let me have a little bit of a follow-up.
SPEAKER_00You go right ahead.
SPEAKER_02Praying at home for a deceased parent. Yes. Lighting a candle at church, having a mass said. Yes. Is there a difference or are they all the same level of praying for a deceased relative?
SPEAKER_00Um I would say asking a priest to offer a mass for a deceased one probably is a higher because it's actually being celebrated at a mass. Correct. The the the the candle or praying in a home is a wonderful thing. And again, I would encourage you to, you know, everybody do that even for, you know, maybe 30 years after someone dies. But again, for priests, again, a lot of times we've experienced too, we can talk about this in another episode, but mass offerings and tensions and stipends. But um, again, with feudal priests, same number of masses, we're having, you know, less mass, I should say, we have an uh less opportunity to offer masses for everybody. And so again, you may, if you go to your parish, you may only have one or two masses a year. That's awesome. But not like we used to do, we maybe could do ten out a year. But again, offering that mass is a wonderful opportunity again for for the priest to pray as he acts in the person of Christ, as he celebrates the Holy Eucharist. Again, we believe that is a very, very powerful way to get for to helping the souls to move out of purgatory into heaven.
SPEAKER_02I think that's a wonderful way to put it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Keep praying, keep praying for our deceased loved ones because we don't know. And then one other question I might have sometimes people ask is what happens if my loved ones is in hell, and I'm still praying for them. Well, then that prayer will be applied to somebody else.
SPEAKER_02Another relative, maybe.
SPEAKER_00Another relative. Let's try another one.
SPEAKER_02This too is from Anne, as said, as I said before, we have a twofer from her. What is the biblical and traditional foundation for confessing sins to a priest rather than just praying directly to God?
SPEAKER_00Thank you for that question. Again, as I put on point out in previous episodes, we oftentimes, the three of us here, talk about some of these questions a little more in depth, and some that's where some of these questions come from. So, and I know these are questions that other people have. Uh in fact, if you listen to Call to Communion on EWTN radio, uh, this is one of the questions that often get raised. How come we confess our sins to a priest? So, again, it's very admirable for us to pray to God for forgiveness for sins. In fact, we are encouraged to every day, you know, do an examination of conscience and even you know pray the act of contrition. Right. Wonderful prayers. And there's different various forms of active contrition. So there's there's no one correct act of contrition as long as you pray in a act of contrition. There's many out there. It's a good thing to do. However, we must remember there's a difference between asking God for forgiveness and then you know being forgiven, which includes another step that is necessary to cleanse our souls, and that is the need for what's called absolution. And that absolution prayer is done by a priest and only by a priest, and can only be found in the penitentiary rite at the beginning of Mass for venial sins only, and in the sacramentation, also times called penance or confession, and that is for venial and moral sins. So again, absolution is very key. The biblical and the traditional foundation for the forgiveness and absolution of sins is found in several places in the Gospels and other writings in the New Testament, including, and especially in the Gospel of John chapter 20, verse 22 to 23, when we hear the account of Jesus visiting his apostles on the evening of the first Easter Sunday, when he breathes on them and says to them, Receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you have forgiven are forgiven them, whose sins you retain are retained. Again we find similar references in Matthew 16, verse 19, and also Matthew 18, verse 18. Based on Just these three references, the Council of Trent defined that this is the power to forgive sins as exercised in the sacrament of penance, also known as Reconciliation of Confession, which has been offered for many centuries even before the Council of Trent. Again, in this account, we find that only apostles are present. And so remember the apostles who they are. They were the disciples chosen by Jesus to be play a special role, becoming the very first priests and bishops of the church. And thus Jesus gave them the power to forgive sins. Again, Jesus did this forgiveness of sins many times, especially when he was doing various healing miracles. But he gave that authority to them to represent him as in person of Christ. So what we mean by the power to forgive sins again, it's that act of granting absolution for sins. And when we talk about absolution, when sins are absolved, it's again washed away, our soul is cleansed. Again, I go back, use that image of the washing machine or the dishwasher. They're washed away, it's clean. Forgiveness basically says the stain is still there, but I don't hold it against you. So Jesus gave his divine power to forgive sins to the priests of the church. Again, the first ones, of course, being the apostles. And that's been passed on from one generation to the next through what we call apostolic secession. And so over the centuries, we see the church has developed the sacramental to fulfill Jesus' command to forgive sins. We remember that the priest, he not only represents Christ himself in the sacrament of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, but he also the priest represents Christ Himself in the confessional. So when we're in the confessional, we're actually confessing directly to Jesus, as opposed to we're in our room and we're looking at the crucifix. It's a representation of Christ. And so the genius of this sacrament is that Jesus and the church knows that we can become better and holier people when we verbalize our sins, our failures to another human being. Because if we just go directly to God, it's like you know, look at the crucifix on the wall, um, you know, it's like we can even fool ourselves. You know, oh, we're not that bad. Uh, but when we have to confess to a priest, uh, we're looking someone in the eye, or if it's even behind the screen, we know that someone physically there listening to us, reverencing Jesus, and that priest could even maybe confront us a little bit about being honest and maybe not letting something slide. Oh, this sin's not so bad, you know. But but the priest may say, wait a minute, let's let's talk about that. And so the priest is that offer counsel to help us and encourage us to overcome our sins and faults. And what I like to impare the sacrifice too is like when we go to the doctor. Uh, we may go to the doctor for some illness or ache or pain that is causing us harm. Um, if we have a broken leg, we're gonna go to the doctor. Uh probably not so good to set it ourselves. Uh some issues that we shouldn't probably take care of ourselves, we need to see a doctor for, because we cannot treat or probably should not treat ourselves for everything. And so going to confession to a priest who represents Christ gives us the opportunity to be honest with another person who represents Christ and thus receive not only forgiveness but absolution of our sins. And so the church has taught for many centuries that it is essential that through a priest who represents Christ and his church, that we are forgiven and absolved for our sins. But again, please, you know, ask for forgiveness, you know, throughout the day when you do something wrong, because that's also a very good act that then prepares us also then for the sacrification.
SPEAKER_02At the recent diocese and men's conference in the Mars, yes, uh Father Caniglia, Father Ross Caniglia did a a small session on confession. And I think it really resonated with me because basically he said, versus doing your act of contrition at home with a priest gives you a mental state of cleanliness that is not there when you do it at home. Right. I I think that that's a huge distinction between doing one at home and doing one with a priest.
SPEAKER_00That's what I was saying. He said it's another way, so there's a wonderful way to put it. Yep. Clear distinction. So I think we're running here towards the end of our show. So again, the next episode, let's plan to talk about maybe what it means to keep holy the Sabbath, you know, why priests are called father, and about choosing to go to heaven due to fear or to love. Again, we'll explain that a little bit later, but next week. So again, we really appreciate you tuning in to Soon and Catholic Radio as we offer both national and local programs, including Faith and Action, Draw Near, Life Plan, Catholic Ministry Professionals, Divine Mercy Chaplaid, and Sunday Morning Mass. Please check out our Facebook pages on Sooth Line Catholic Radio and Father Knows Best for more information about this show, including more information about questions and answers I've addressed, and more information I've not addressed on this show. As we wrap up today's question and answer session, we extend our heartfelt thanks to all our listeners for tuning in and sharing a thought, provoking questions. Your curiosity, your engagement makes the show possible, and we're always inspired by the incredible range of topics to bring to the table. We hope you have found the answers both informative and enlightening, that you'll carry some new insights as you go about your week. And if your question wasn't answered today, you may hear your answer to your question next week. If you missed this episode or would like to re-listen to this or other episodes, please visit our website, SudanCatholic Radio.com, and visit the programs drop menu and click on local programs to find this episode, other episodes of Father Knows Best and other local programs. Again, if you have any questions, please send your questions to me at Father Knows Best Show at Yahoo.com or mail them to Father Knows Best, Sudan Land Catholic Radio, 701 West Fifth Street, Sioux City, Iowa, 51103. And thank you to our sponsor, St. Augusta Indian Mission, Winnebago. Please join us again next Wednesday at 9 p.m. for another round of questions and answers. Until then, stay curious, stay faithful, keep your light shining, and keep those questions coming. For now, I'm Father Mark Stowe, your host signing off. Wishing a great week ahead. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.