[Name withheld] in Turkey. In Turkey! How wonderful. Well, let me make sure
I'm pushing the right button, are you there with us? Yes, I'm here. And
you're calling from Turkey. Yes, I'm calling from Turkey. Is
it the middle of the night there? I want to ask you a question? Okay, sure, go ahead.
Yeah. I'm raised as a strict Sunni Muslim, however now I want to become a
Catholic, and I want to ask you: are there any Catholic doctrines which are related
to the crypto-Christianity? I mean, is it possible for me to practice my faith
secretly? For example, I don't want to share my faith publicly, and attending the mass
secretly--by the way, I am living with my family... And are they
practicing the Muslim faith as well?
Yes. Your family's Muslim? I'm living with my family, and as it is with the majority of
people, five-times Salat is important for Muslims. So even if I pretend Salat,
can I pray to the Christ secretly? It's because they believe in the same God
according to the Catechism, right? I'll tell you what, I'm gonna
just clarify that, make sure Karlo and I both have the same question, that we both
heard the same thing and that the listeners are able to hear it, but: he
is calling from Turkey, he comes from a Muslim area, his family is Muslim, he is
called to the Catholic faith, feels that he's ready to be a Catholic, but can he
practice his faith secretly? And can he also still participate in the five-times-
a-day prayer of the of Muslims in order, is that correct, in order
to keep the appearance? Is that correct?
Yes, that's right. Okay. Yeah, this is a very difficult situation. And I
can speak to the idea of practicing your faith secretly, in that
sometimes we are physically impeded from entering into the visible
boundaries of the Church and becoming a member of the Catholic Church. And that
can have a variety of different shapes and forms that can take on
different shapes and forms of what the reason might be for an individual not
being able to be a member of the Catholic Church. You know, initially
when I think about it, it would seem as if, in your case, this would be one
of those cases to where visible membership in the Church just might not
be practical, it might not be possible for you to do so in your situation. And
so given that case, this is an extraordinary case where visible
membership with the Catholic Church is not possible for you, so the only way
that you can do so is to practice the faith secretly. Even though you might not
be able to get to the sacraments of, say, Baptism and the Mass and Eucharist, you
can still unite your heart to the risen Christ spiritually, and praying to him,
and asking him to guide and to lead you. With regard to the latter question of
continuing to participate in the Muslim prayers, I'm gonna have to say
right now that I would have to think about that one a little
bit more. I think that one might be a little bit more nuanced than what I can
address here on the air, but I would highly encourage you to continue uniting
your heart to our Blessed Lord in the secret way that you're working
on doing. It's a very, very difficult situation which goes a little bit beyond what I
can articulate here. Could I ask you a quick question: is there any way for you
to be baptized? Not to go to Mass, but to be baptized; is that
available to you? Yes, I can be baptized if I go to the
church secretly. Okay, fair enough. Listen, your question is very very
important to us, so we have called the entire staff, and Jimmy Akin is here. Praise
God! Jimmy, you have anything that you can add? Yeah. First thing is, I just
want to praise God for how He's been working in your heart. It's really
wonderful to hear this, and it's understandable, given the fact you're in
Turkey, the difficult situation you face, and it's to your credit that you're
willing to follow God in spite of that difficult circumstance and He'll
certainly reward you for your willingness to follow Him. In terms of
the practical situations, obviously you want to be baptized, and you want to live
the Christian life to the extent that you can,
and so if you can, for example, go to Mass, that's a good thing; but you
don't have to in put yourself in danger to go to Mass. Similarly, if you can tell
people about your Christian faith, you want to do that; but you don't have to
put yourself in danger to do that. This is something that Christians worked out
in the very early centuries, when they were persecuted all over the Roman
Empire, was: "We don't have to go looking for trouble. We can, if the situation
forces us to, simply live quiet Christian lives and not announce the fact, although
when we can safely announce the fact that we're Christians, then we want to do
that." In terms of the ability to say the five daily prayers: it's true, the Church
recognizes that Muslims worship the same God that Christians do; they don't
understand Him completely, but they are directing their prayers to the
creator of the universe. And so if you're praying to the true God, and you happen
to be doing it at the same time as other people, that is in principle okay. If
there are elements of the prayer that contradict the Christian faith, like
saying Muhammad is His prophet, you wouldn't want to say that part of
the prayer; but if you're just testifying that there's one God and things like
that, that's perfectly fine, especially in a difficult situation like this. You can
authentically express worship, and it can be in in common with other people who
are worshiping God truly, even if their understanding of God is incomplete. This
is something that Pope Benedict talked about a few years ago, about how in
special circumstances it is possible to have inter-religious prayer to the true
God, even if we don't understand the true God in quite the same way, and that would
certainly apply in your case given the special circumstances. Has this
been helpful to you? Do you feel your questions have been addressed?
Yeah, thank you so much. I'm so happy right now. You are the only person that I
I can ask these kind of questions around this place. Blessed be God! You are a gift to
us today, really. Amen. I want to give you another phone number, because if we're
off the air and you ever have a question that you want to ask, we have an
apologist line you can dial: it's (619) 387-7200.
Any of the apologists here would be happy to help you, or our chaplain would
be happy to help you. (619) 387-7200.
And you're also welcome to call in any time here on the show. Sure.
We're gonna keep you in our prayers, will you pray for us as well? Yeah. God bless
you, brother. God bless you. I don't even know what to say to that, Karlo. What
a privilege to take a call like that, what an extraordinary privilege. Amen. And that's
just a classic example of what we do here at Catholic Answers. Thank God for
Jimmy coming in to help me out, to give a wonderful answer to him there. You both did, really.
Which expresses, you know, the way Jimmy
articulated that is something that the Church is commonly teaching: that we want
to rejoice in that which is true, and wherever there is truth found, we can
rejoice in that, and that's a source of unity. So wherever that truth is present,
we can be united and rejoice in that, and as Jimmy, said we don't want to
deny the truth and participate in things that would deny it, but where there is
truth we can rejoice. And so for our listeners out there, I mean, this is what
we're doing here at Catholic Answers, and in particular Catholic Answers Live. As
our caller said: there was no one that he could go to to ask these questions
and get an answer, but he was able to call here at Catholic Answers and get
an answer that, as you've heard, Cy brought joy to him. Yeah. So that he can
truly live his Christian life in the best way that he can. So if our listeners
want more of this, because I'm sure there's more of him out there, right? Oh
man we get messages from people in Saudi Arabia listening: "Nobody knows that I
listen, but I just want you to know I appreciate what you do," that kind of thing.
And we need listeners out there, listen, we need your donations so that we can keep doing this
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