Catholic Answers Live - Weird Questions

 

• 04:23 - How as Catholics do we understand the Nephilim and Og without sacrificing history and science? 
• 16:14 - Reading different Catholic publications, I come upon saints who don’t have a date on the liturgical calendar, and who are, speaking frankly, obscure.  They are honored on All Saints Day.  Would asking for their intercession be more efficacious given that the more popular saints are very busy with the prayers directed to them? 
• 18:42 - I read a quote on Twitter attributed to St. Padre Pío, in which he told someone he prayed regularly for the good death of his Uncle, to which the other person replied confused because his uncle had passed away years ago. St. Padre Pío replied that it didn’t matter because God was not bound by time and He would make use of his prayer if that was His wish. Regardless of the veracity of this quote. Is this possible? Can we pray for the good death of someone who died years ago, and can that change something that happened in the past? 
•  Based on the theory that the transporter kills the person and then replicates them as clones, here’s a scenario: Captain Kirk goes to confession and then beams down to the wacky planet. While there, he does not get baptized and has unmarried relations with green women and then beams back up. He does something like this numerous times throughout his tour of duty aboard the Enterprise. Does that mean there would be multiple Captain Kirks in heaven, purgatory, and hell? 
• 29:15 - My girlfriend and I have been watching the show “Agents of Shield” and came across an interesting moral dilemma. Spoilers ahead, some listeners might want to skip this one. 
• In the show, an Android is created and is nearly indistinguishable from human. She gets her hands on the Darkhold, a seemingly dark magic book, that can enable the reader to do essentially anything. To escape her Android programming and have “free will”, she uses the Darkhold to create a machine that generates a human body for herself, crafted from matter taken from an alternate dimension, complete with her consciousness/memories/etc. At this point, she considers herself to be human, as she now can choose what she wants to do and is experiencing feelings, not just the simulated responses to stimulation her android self had. 
• My question is: Is she really human? I remember an episode where you spoke about the Star Trek transporters, and how it essentially destroys and creates another human body. In this case, would this human body receive a soul? Would the dark forces at play, or alternate-dimensional matter inhibit this from happening? And how does an AI consciousness play into it all? 
• 00:00 – Here’s a sci-fi question wrapped up with some theology for you… Have you ever seen the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and how do you think it treats the ideas of gnosticism, kabbalah, and other esoteric themes? 
• 00:00 – Since Jesus touched millions of items throughout his life and over thousands of years the items have broken down, yet matter is never destroyed, would this mean there are atom sized relics? 
• 45:00 - In number 2116 in the Catechism, the Church rejects all forms of divination because they all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and humans. How would time travel into the future for the purpose of seeing the future before God has revealed it not fall under the same condemnation? Isn’t time travel “power over time”? (extra info: even if God allows us to figure it out through natural technological advancement, we couldn’t conclude that he must be fine with it for the same reasons we don’t accept technological advances in contraception, cloning, and other sinful acts.) 
• 50:00 - In the Netflix show Peaky Blinders, a woman confessed to a priest that she’s going to murder someone. Obviously, this isn’t how the sacrament of confession works. However, not only does the priest NOT correct her, but he then goes to Scotland Yard and informs them that the woman intends on murdering the individual. Has the priest broken the seal of confession, or is he not bound by the secrecy because it wasn’t a valid confession since it involved a murder that was going to take place, not one that had taken place?