Sep 2, 2026 · 13 min · 7 segments
Ralph expresses his great dismay and concern regarding the omission of portions of the daily Mass readings. He believes these sections, although occasionally seen as potentially upsetting, are vital…
Ralph MartinHost
So when it came time for my morning prayer and I had a chance to look at it and I said, oh no, they've done it again.
Now, periodically I've expressed concern about how sometimes it seems like the shorter form that is offered to us in the lectionary leaves out the challenging parts of that reading, the parts that talk about the eternal consequences for not paying attention to Jesus, the parts that talk about the reality of judgment, the seriousness of sin.
Now, for a long time now, since Vatican II, there's been a strong allergy in certain parts of the church to those parts of the gospel that are challenging, those parts of the gospel that actually tell us that this is not a game, that this is serious, that what's at stake is heaven or hell.
Right after Vatican II, various scholars appealed to Pope Paul VI, saying there's just a whole bunch of verses in the Psalms that are too disturbing for modern man's psychology.
But ever since, there's been this spirit of sparing people from disturbing text.
And I don't know what the explanation could be for why the heart of 2 Thessalonians 2 was left out in today's reading.
One time they said, well, maybe it's because the church doesn't feel like priests can really handle explaining these things.
All a priest has to do, if four to eight years of seminary education hasn't equipped them to handle the readings in the lectionary, something's wrong.
Even without four to eight years of seminary training, all a priest has to do is look in the footnotes to Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, New Testament, and there's great explanations of this text.
Not only that, but the Catechists of the Catholic Church in section 675, 676, 677 explain in detail what they leave out of the readings today.
So when it came time for my morning prayer and I had a chance to look at it and I said, oh no, they've done it again.
Now, periodically I've expressed concern about how sometimes it seems like the shorter form that is offered to us in the lectionary leaves out the challenging parts of that reading, the parts that talk about the eternal consequences for not paying attention to Jesus, the parts that talk about the reality of judgment, the seriousness of sin.
Now, for a long time now, since Vatican II, there's been a strong allergy in certain parts of the church to those parts of the gospel that are challenging, those parts of the gospel that actually tell us that this is not a game, that this is serious, that what's at stake is heaven or hell.
Right after Vatican II, various scholars appealed to Pope Paul VI, saying there's just a whole bunch of verses in the Psalms that are too disturbing for modern man's psychology.
But ever since, there's been this spirit of sparing people from disturbing text.
And I don't know what the explanation could be for why the heart of 2 Thessalonians 2 was left out in today's reading.
One time they said, well, maybe it's because the church doesn't feel like priests can really handle explaining these things.
All a priest has to do, if four to eight years of seminary education hasn't equipped them to handle the readings in the lectionary, something's wrong.
Even without four to eight years of seminary training, all a priest has to do is look in the footnotes to Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, New Testament, and there's great explanations of this text.
Not only that, but the Catechists of the Catholic Church in section 675, 676, 677 explain in detail what they leave out of the readings today.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.