Hello and welcome to Cava Gantz's live. I'm Sy Kelly, your host, thanks so much for being here with us on this Wednesday afternoon, at least this Wednesday afternoon where we are. Maybe it's a Wednesday evening or even a Thursday morning where you are.

And we're just happy you're here with us, really happy you're here with us. We got a very, very good show. Second hour team staples will be here and we'll do open forum. First hour, our chaplain for the Sam Keys is with us and that will be ask a priest, which is like an open forum, but plus, it's like open forum plus, like Disney plus or Hulu plus or all these other pluses they have. When we have a priest here with us, we do... When I went up, why was that? Because the Pope was just on Disney plus.

I heard about the Sam Keys, by the way, in the chaplain. Did you watch it? I don't have Disney so I didn't. I did not and I've heard things about it. Are they good or bad things? I've heard mixed things. Really? I saw at least one person saying something to the effect of the Pope, he seemed relaxed and so that's positive. He didn't seem rattled by combative questions or things like that. Oh, he got combative.

But then I also saw people saying the answers weren't very deep or interesting. I say that about us. It's not that easy to answer these questions. I don't know if he was recovering at that moment from some sort of illness or something, but I think that may have been the case as well. What I think he should have done, and I don't like to tell the Pope what to do, he should have won that. I do like to tell the Pope what to do. He should have won that Balenciaga jacket that was... Do you guys know the one about the Pope? I think that meme

came out after the recording happened. If he just came out. But if the strip came out, it was recorded probably a while back. The numbers 88-318-788-4, triple-8-318-788-4. Are the lights strangely bright in here today because I look extremely white or have I just lost all my blood? I don't know. Is it me? Oh no, I got to get out of the sun. Holy smokes, a winter of rain. That is a horror show.

If you want to talk to a Catholic priest, now is your chance. You don't have to be Catholic. You might have a question. As a matter of fact, I've heard this from Catholic priest that often, they'll be in an airport wearing their Roman collar. People will ask him questions. If you've always thought, I see a Catholic priest I want to ask him. You can call and ask whatever you like. It's ask a priest this hour on Catholic answers live, 88-318-788-4, triple-8-318-788-4. I can't look at the monitor. I look like Casper the Ghost.

It's a matter of me. I got to get out and get some sun. There's also a bit of a delay. Does that bother you when your voice does not match with your lips? Anyway, happy Easter. Thank you, happy Easter to you too. I hope it is a happy Easter because I have been criticized online before and as a matter of fact, almost every day at some point. It's not always pleasant to get criticized online. I saw that you have received some criticism online. We had a bit of a, yeah, I kind of wanted to talk about that.

We have this thing in combination with Carlos podcast, a little shout out for that. What's it called? The Sunday Word? Yeah, this podcast. He goes to the election area. My homilies typically go out as well. Last week, of course, was the Holy Week and we had the Sacred Trigewam and so I had homilies up for Thursday Friday and for Easter.

And the one for Thursday, unfortunately, I think this is multiple, I don't know who to blame. I'm partly to blame too for having a bit of a misleading title because it said something about the literal body and blood and people were getting all upset because it's the title said something about how it's not the literal body and blood and people thought, oh, here's this guy saying, you know,

the Eucharist isn't real and not a real Catholic, et cetera, et cetera. And I don't think, I don't know if many of them actually read the thing, but because I think the thing itself was, was pretty clear in its discussion about the Eucharist, although maybe not right. I'm not always, I'm not always clear. I'm a theologian. So sometimes,

sometimes those of us who are used to spending a lot of time in academia were very good at saying a whole lot and not really saying anything. I read the article, I didn't feel that way.

But anyway, it was an interesting thing in a way that the fact that it generated the criticism actually kind of proved part of the point I was making, which is just that I think sometimes,

when Catholics talk about this, they kind of are maybe over defensive or over zealous in presenting something and they end, they end up saying really not something that the church says. So, you know, the thing in question, whether or not it's appropriate to say the literal body and blood, that particular phrase.

I think sometimes when people hear that, they think, oh, that well, if the alternative is between the literal body and blood or the symbolic body and blood, well, pretty much any Catholic is going to be like, well, obviously, it's the literal body and blood over the symbolic body and blood.

And in fact, I've seen, you know, internet surveys where they're like, but figure out what your religious perspective is and so many questions. And you know, if that's the alternative you're given, you know, fine.

But actually, neither of those alternatives is actually what the Catholic Church says about.

That's the thing that's not our language, right?

That's not the language of the church. That's not language you would find in the catechism or really pretty much anywhere in the tradition.

And again, I understand the kind of popular way of talking about it where maybe you want to just emphasize it's real and not just symbolic or something like that.

But I think there are good reasons to avoid that language and one is simply that in the tradition of the church, that term literal has more of an association with biblical interpretation.

And so, you know, when we're thinking about the classic fourfold way of reading scripture, you've got the literal, you've got the allegorical, you've got the anagogical and the moral interpretations of scripture.

And the literal is the first, the most kind of surface meaning, the kind of sensible historical meaning of it, all of those connotations with it.

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