Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers Live. I'm Sy Kelly at your host. Thanks so much for being here with us on this Wednesday afternoon where we are. Maybe it's a Wednesday evening or even a Thursday morning where you are wherever you are. We're glad you're here.

And we're glad Joe Heshmeyer is here and we're going to do something that I don't know if it was a year ago or two years ago we started doing around this time of year, which is opening up the phones for people who are going through the RCIA process and aspiring to the sacraments at Easter in the Catholic Church.

The usual way nowadays that it's done is that people either come into the church completely or by baptism, confirmation and Eucharist or they complete their sacraments of initiation.

If maybe they were baptized as a child but never had any more sacraments than that, they will receive confession and communion and confirmation all on the same night.

So the Christmas, excuse me, Easter Eve there, the Eve of Easter Sunday is a big day now in many, many parishes. So that means that right now at this moment, during Lent, there's lots of people preparing to come into the church and maybe they got a question. Maybe they're coming near to their time of preparation and thinking, I still don't know this or I'd like a better understanding of that. Can you explain this or that to me?

So if you are among those currently in the RCIA, this hour is for you, 888-318-7884. I know it's not RCIA everywhere, but let's just say if you're preparing to come into the church in any way, 888-318-7884, our guest is Joe Heshmeyer,

is the author of a whole lot of books, including the early church, was the Catholic Church, and he's the proprietor of a wonderful new podcast called Shameless Popory. Joe Heshmeyer, thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me, it's good to be here.

And I can see you, Joe, we had a little camera trouble, but now I can see you.

We're using the laptop camera, so anyone who's watching the show may say, that looks worse than usual, and I'm only partly to blame for that.

We're not interested in blame, we're just glad you're here.

I just felt like my personal appearance.

Oh yeah, okay.

I don't mean the technical side.

Yeah, we will assign blame after the show, however, and I'm sure we'll find some way to blame Zach.

The number here is 888-318-7884, triple-831-truth. Joe, I don't know what the word is.

Teach the RCA or lead the RCA, but you're involved in the RCA process in your parish.

Yeah, I talk to people in a room, you know, a few times a semester basically, about issues related to the faith.

Usually I will cover Mary Eucharist, Papacy, and then like a Q&A, like ask me anything, whatever you got.

Kind of like the show.

Yeah.

So I'll do two to four of those every six months, say, or every, like it's four months.

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