Why do Catholics call priests “father”, when Jesus says in Mt. 23:9: “call no man your father on earth”?
This is not a prohibition for the word father, since Stephen calls the high priests and the Sanhedrin members “brethren and fathers” in Acts 7:2. St. Paul does the same in Acts 22:2, calling the Jews listening “brethren and fathers”. He also describes Abraham as “father of all who believe” in Romans 4:11. This obviously means that Jesus’s words are not an absolute prohibition on calling anyone “father” or “spiritual father”, but not to call them “Father” in the same way God is, who is the ultimate Father.
Did Jesus have brothers or sisters?
Mark 6:3 says “[i]s this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Some people conclude that Jesus had brothers. However, these were close relatives, not brothers. The first clue is that Jesus entrusts His mother to the care of John, not one of His brothers, in John 19:26-27. (This also means that Joseph had already died at that point.) If He would have had living brothers, he would have offended them. In John 19:26, it says that His mother was “standing near” the cross. However, Matthew 27:55-56 tells us that “Mary the mother of James and Joseph” (in other translations, Joses) was “looking on from afar”. So, another Mary was the mother of James and Joses.
Where is Confirmation found in the Bible?
Firstly, one can receive the Holy Spirit more than once in one’s life. One receives Him both at Baptism and Confirmation, in different senses. Confirmation is called in the Bible the laying on of hands. In Acts 8, Philip, the deacon, baptized people in Samaria. When the Apostles learned this, Peter and John went there and “laid their hands on them”. The Apostles were bishops and Philip was just a deacon, so he couldn’t do the laying on of hands. We can see here already that baptism and “laying on of hands” are two separate things. At the start of Hebrews 6, the sacred author writes: “Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, with instruction about ablutions, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment”. Here He gives a list of the “foundation”, about the basic things, 6 of them. Ablution or washing (baptism) and laying on of hands is different. The author creates here a short story of the Christian life: repentance, faith, baptism, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and judgment. “Laying on of hands” is another name for Confirmation used in the Bible.