January 30, 2025 • 45 mins
Dive deep into the mysteries of faith with Joe Heschmeyer, celebrated author and podcaster, in this episode recorded live at SEEK in Salt Lake City. Together, we explore the transformation of afterlife concepts from the Old Testament to the New Testament through Christ’s resurrection, and delve into the pivotal role of Peter in establishing the Church’s foundation in Rome, as detailed in Joe’s book, “Pope Peter.”
Further enriching this episode is a comparative analysis of Catholic and Protestant views on the papacy, inspired by insights from Dr. Gavin Ortlund. We reflect on the historical and ecumenical impacts of councils like the Second Council of Lyon, fostering a dialogue that bridges doctrinal divides. The conversation also ventures into the challenges of engaging respectfully online, promoting a culture of reverence and gentle discourse in digital spaces.
Check out SEEK Replay at https://seekreplay.com/welcome
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Seek 25 podcast, featuring some of
our favorite podcasters recordedlive at the Max Studios podcast
stage during Seek 25 in SaltLake City.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers Live.
I am Cy Kellett, your host, andwe'll be recording this and
we'll be broadcasting it as aradio program.
So it might not sound exactlylike the podcast sound, but
we'll be using it as a radioprogram.
Our guest, of course, is thegreat Joe Heschmeyer.
The author of the Eucharist isReally Jesus, the Early Church
(00:41):
Was the Catholic Church and manyother books, and the podcaster
behind the Shameless Potpourripodcast.
Thank you for being here, joe,my pleasure.
You've had a bit of a cold, soare you going to have any
difficulty speaking for this?
We'll find out.
We'll find out if we can getanswers to you.
We got a lot of folks lined upto ask their questions, so, if
you don't mind, I'll just letthe listener know we're at the
(01:03):
SEEK conference, which is alsocalled Catholic Coachella, I
think it's.
Thousands and thousands, andprobably about one billion
Catholics have come to it andit's in Salt Lake City this year
.
We're having a great time.
Come on up, you can ask yourfirst question.
Yes, you, you, sir, come to themicrophone and we can.
You can ask your first question.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
All right, I have a quick question for Silo, real
quick.
Yeah, when are we going to beable to ask you questions?
And I don't want to hear yousay that you're not as good as
answering questions, I just wantto hear you answer them.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So your question for me is when can you ask me
questions?
Yes, well, you can ask any time, but it doesn't matter what the
question is I think you justdid.
Yeah, you did, but I'm justprogrammed this way no matter
what you ask me, I'll go Joe,and then that'll be that.
So you can ask whatever youlike, but it'll probably be Joe.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
that answers All right.
All right, so my question wasabout the afterlife.
So what do the people of theOld Testament believe happened
after death?
I know they believed in a placegoing to Sheol, but what does
that actually mean, and how didthat change with Christ's death
and resurrection?
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Yeah, that's a really big question because we find
greater clarity as we gothroughout the Old Testament.
So the original sense of Sheoljust means something like the
grave or the underworld.
So the original sense of shalejust means something like the
grave or the underworld, and soit's used to refer to where the
dead go, whether they're therighteous or the wicked.
And so as we get into the NewTestament, you get more clarity
(02:40):
that even though all were goingto shale, they were not all
having the same kind ofexperience.
So in the Gospel of Luke, forexample, having the same kind of
experience.
So in the Gospel of Luke, forexample, when Jesus gives the
parable of Lazarus and the richman, we find they both die and
are taken to Sheol, but one ofthem is in the bosom of Abraham,
which is sometimes called thelimbo of the fathers.
It was a place of waitingbefore they could enter heaven,
because Christ is the one whoopens the doors of heaven.
(03:01):
But the wicked are actually ina place of suffering which comes
to be known as Hades.
Hades is technically it canjust be a translation of Sheol,
but it has more of a sense ofthe hell, of punishment.
And so you have this increasingsense that some of those are
actually in a place of sufferingand some of those are in a
(03:24):
place of rest.
And when Christ comes, heliberates those who are in that
place of rest, the bosom ofAbraham, and brings them into a
place of eternal glory, into thefull vision and presence of God
that we call heaven.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Eddie right.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, Eddie.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Eddie, because I didn't introduce you at the
beginning.
Sorry, eddie, thank you verymuch.
Appreciate the question.
And then the other question.
Yeah, eddie, eddie, because Ididn't introduce you at the
beginning.
Sorry, eddie, thank you verymuch.
Appreciate the question.
And then the other question.
Thanks, eddie.
All right, who we got next?
Come on up, ask whateverquestion you've got for.
Joe Heschmeyer, hang on, I'mgoing to guess your name.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
It's Josh.
Is it Josh?
It is Josh, campus minister inthe great state of Texas, san
Antonio Archdiocese.
So my question is onapologetics, how can we defend
scripturally the primacy ofPeter All the apostles had to
bind and loose that authoritybut papal primacy and along with
(04:19):
that, how can we confidentlysay that the church was based in
Rome and not any of the otherplaces in the Holy Land Great?
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Okay, well, first of all, if you want to afterwards
go by the Catholic Answers boothand tell them I said you could
have a copy of my book PopePeter, that's going to be a
fuller version of the answer I'mabout to give you, Because
that's just like a book-lengthtreatment of how do we know?
Peter is the first pope.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Everybody here is going to go by the booth and say
Joe said I could have a copy ofPope.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Peter Exactly.
Everyone just claim you're Josh.
They didn't see the show, theydon't know who he is.
It helps if you have a bluepolo, because I think that was
mentioned.
So, yeah, the short answer isthis we know that there's a
special role given to Peter.
We know that from several waysand many Protestants, if you ask
(05:05):
them about that, willacknowledge that he has some
kind of special role.
But this isn't just a specialrole he gives to himself.
This is a special role thatJesus gives to him.
We see this in big ways andsmall ways.
Small ways would be somethinglike this Every time the
apostles are mentioned, judas isat the end, peter is at the
beginning, the 10 in the middleare in different orders.
So Peter always has a primacyand Judas always is taking up
(05:27):
the last place.
When Peter's mentioned in Acts,it says Peter and the apostles,
which shows that Peter wasdistinct even from the other
apostles, or Peter and the 11 inActs 2.
So you have all of these placeswhere Peter is singled out with
a special kind of authority andprimacy.
Now we can ask what did thatauthority and primacy look like?
(05:48):
One of the clearest places togo to answer that is Luke,
chapter 22, at the Last Supper,the disciples are arguing about
which of them is the greatest,and Jesus doesn't criticize them
for that.
He rather tells them how tospot greatness.
And greatness is exemplified byChristian service, that to be a
leader in the Christianperspective is to be a servant
(06:11):
of those God has entrusted toyour care.
This is true of every priest,every bishop, every parent, and
it's true as well of the Pope.
So he tells the 12 that they'reto have this kind of role and
he talks about how they'll siton 12 tribes excuse me, 12
thrones, judging the 12 tribesof Israel.
So he shows that all of themare to be the servants of God.
(06:32):
But then, in the very nextverse, he singles out one of
them and says Simon, simon,satan has desired to sift all of
you like wheat.
But I have prayed for you andhere he switches from the you
plural to the you singular.
I've prayed for you, simon,that your faith may not fail and
(06:53):
, when you have turned back,strengthen your brethren.
What do we make from that?
Well, a few things.
Number one of all the waysJesus could have responded to
the fact that Satan was going totry all 12, he could have said
I stopped him because I'm Godways.
Jesus could have responded tothe fact that Satan was going to
try all 12,.
He could have said I stoppedhim because I'm God.
He could have said I prayed forall 12.
He chooses instead to pray forSimon Peter and then entrust the
(07:14):
care of the other apostles toPeter.
He's to be the servant of theservants of God, which is one of
the titles we use for the Popeto this day.
That's all built there inscripture.
He has an actual spiritualauthority and entrustment that
is not given to anyone else.
It's not just that he was anatural leader, it's something
much more than that.
And that doesn't even get intothe really obvious places, like
(07:37):
in Matthew 16, where Jesus tellsPeter that he's rock and upon
this rock he'll build his church.
And then he tells Peterindividually that he's rock and
upon this rock he'll build hischurch.
And then he tells Peterindividually that he's going to
give him the keys of the kingdomand that he'll have the power
to bind and loosen.
So you have all of those things, and then you still have two
questions left.
One, how do we know that thiscontinued on after Peter?
(07:58):
Two, how do we know this istied to Rome.
John 21 shows this kind ofvision of the church throughout
the age, and I don't have timeto do this justice right now,
but it's.
John describes thisresurrection appearance in which
seven of the apostles are onthe sea and they see Jesus on
the shores.
(08:18):
And one of the early Christianreadings is that this is almost
a sort of like vision orprophecy or parable of the
journey of the church throughoutthe ages.
That the point here is not justJesus rose from the dead.
John 20 already establishedthat.
John 21 is about the role ofthe church on the way to
encounter Jesus on the eternalshores.
(08:38):
And it's Peter with six otherswith him.
And then Peter is able to dragthe net ashore when no one else
can.
And all of this is rich inmeaning if you understand how
often Jesus uses the net as animage for the church, like in
Matthew 13, or uses it as animage for Peter's role in
evangelization, like in Luke,chapter five and in Matthew 17.
(09:00):
So you have like all of thesescriptures coming together.
Well, that shows that there'san ongoing role.
We might call it a Petrine role, like a Peter-ish role, from
here till we meet Christ ineternity.
And then the last thing how dowe know that is in Rome?
Well, because that's where Petergoes, and he says as much in 1
Peter, where he says that he'ssending greetings from Babylon.
(09:23):
Babylon was what the earlyChristians referred to Rome as,
because that's who they were incaptivity to.
Like the Babylonians of old, itwasn't like he'd literally gone
east to the ancient city ofBabylon.
He's clearly in Rome, and youhave plenty of other ancient
sources that attest to the factthat Peter's in Rome, and you
have ancient sources that attestto the fact that the Roman
(09:45):
church has a special authority.
So the very last point, stIrenaeus in Against Heresy's
book three talks about how it isa matter of necessity that
every church agree with thechurch of Rome.
Now he says those words in 180.
This is the same document inwhich we first hear that Matthew
, mark, luke and John are thefour gospels.
So there's a bunch of biblicalreasons and a bunch of early
(10:09):
Christian reasons to believethat Peter had a special role
and that his successors, thepopes, had those special roles
as well.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Josh, thank you very much.
Thank you, don't forget to goget your book.
I want to just say to Eddiethat's why I don't answer
questions, I can't do that.
So nice job, joe.
Nice job on that.
I'll tell you all, at booth1448, that's our booth way over
there in the corner, joe's goingto be signing books after this.
So if you'd like to get one ofJoe's books and have him sign it
(10:36):
, just go all the way over tothe corner there to booth 1448.
Jordan, I got the name right,right.
Speaker 8 (10:48):
All right, nice to see you.
Welcome.
Go ahead with your question forJoe.
Yes, sir.
Hello Joe, I love watching yourcontent.
By the way, you did a great job.
Thank you very much.
So my name is Jordan.
I'm actually a Protestant.
I'm discerning right nowbetween Protestantism and
Orthodoxy and I'm convinced ofapostolic succession and the
Eucharist.
So that's kind of like theEucharist kind of what hit the
nail for me.
But my question right now, onething I'm struggling with, my
paradigm, is so I believebaptism saves, but I struggle
with infant baptism.
And so, to give you anunderstanding, my paradigm right
(11:11):
now comes from a Church ofChrist background, so I believe
that baptism does save, but Ijust struggle.
So my belief is also and I wantyou to help me understand the
infant baptism paradigm but inthat and I've heard of people
talk about infant faith and howJohn the Baptist, you know he
(11:33):
had the Holy Spirit, and so whatmy question is I want help in
understanding and getting areasonable understanding of how
infant baptism works, even if achild, baby, does not have faith
.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So yeah, can I ask you a couple of questions?
Actually, absolutely.
Just to get a better sense ofwhere you're coming from.
So do you believe in originalsin?
Speaker 8 (11:52):
In what sense?
Like in a.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Okay, that's a good question, that there is some
kind of lack, there's a sort ofdistortion, that, based on our
parents sinning and you know, wethen add to that with our own
individual sins, but that we areborn not in the union with God
that we want to be in.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
Yeah, kind of like how Father Michael Schmitz
talked about it.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yeah, I didn't actually get to see it because I
was at the booth.
Way to rub that in.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
I'm sorry, but yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Okay.
So the short answer is this Inbaptism, it's not just the
forgiveness of sins, it's notjust the salvation of our souls,
it's also the entry into thepeople of God.
In Acts, chapter 2, it saysthat 3,000 were added to the
church when they were baptized.
Like, right there, this is likethe doorway into the church,
right.
And that's just talking aboutPentecost, right?
(12:42):
So we want little children tocome to Christ, and Jesus does
too.
He says as much.
He says let the little childrencome to me.
And so in the old covenant, theway a young boy would come to
enter into the covenant on theeighth day was circumcision.
St Paul compares baptism tocircumcision as, like the new
(13:03):
circumcision.
And so it's the doorway intothe church.
Because otherwise you have thisproblem of, like, what happens
if a baby dies?
Because you can say, well, theydon't have faith, but they also
have never committed any sins.
So then you're in this strangekind of place.
Well, the solution to that thatChrist gives us is to let the
little children come to him.
You don't want to be left in asituation where you're
(13:25):
questioning what happens tounborn children or children
who've just been born, ratherthat kind of question I know
many Protestants will debatelike can we say our children who
die in infancy are saved?
Those kind of questions go awayif you baptize your kid.
So what's the biblical basisfor it?
(13:46):
One biblical basis is, as yousay, baptism now saves you.
1 Peter 3.21.
If you believe baptism savesyou and you believe that Christ
wants to save everyone,including small children, and
he's very clear about that thenthis is the means by which he
gives us access to salvation.
Now he can save people otherways.
I don't mean to deny that hecould do things differently, but
(14:08):
the way he tells us is withbaptism.
So another thing I'd add to thatis the notion of the so-called
household passages in Acts.
So you know, you've got thingslike Acts 17, lydia and her
whole household are baptized.
Stephanus in 1 Corinthians, hisold household gets baptized.
We are not told in all of theseverses like what are the ages
(14:33):
of every member of the house.
But we know enough about thedemography of the first century
that people tended to have largefamilies with older and younger
kids.
So it'd be very strange if inall of these household baptism
cases not one of them had anysmall children.
Like it's not impossible, butit's improbable to read all the
(14:53):
household passages.
So we know that salvation wasbeing promised to you and your
household in the preaching ofthe gospel and we know also in 1
Corinthians 7, st Paul sayseven this.
He says 1 Corinthians 7, verse14.
Paul says even this.
He says 1 Corinthians 7, verse14, the unbelieving husband is
consecrated through his wife andthe unbelieving wife is
consecrated through her husband.
(15:14):
Otherwise your children wouldbe unclean.
But as it is, they are holy.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
Could you actually I mean my friend, me and my friend
were talking about that.
I don't, I'm sorry, everybodybehind me.
Could you go just a little bitmore into that, Because that's
one thing I haven't understoodyet.
But that did kind of pointtowards that a household could
be saved through the either heador the woman or the man of the
household.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yeah, so there's something mysterious about it
and Paul gives us exactly likeone to two verses where he
explains this big theologicalbomb.
But we know this.
Go back to the Old Testament.
As for me and my house, weshall serve the Lord.
You have an actual spiritualauthority that you can exercise
as a parent, and we come fromthis very Western, very
(15:59):
individualistic culture whereit's every man for himself and
that is just fundamentally notChristian.
That is not the worldview ofthe Bible, old or New Testament.
We can do things to bring otherpeople to Christ.
We do it in any number of ways.
Remember the paralytic man.
Speaker 8 (16:19):
He's brought to Jesus by his friends, do you?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
remember what it says .
Jesus looked at their faith andhealed the man.
Didn't just heal him, saved him.
So you should bring everyoneyou can to Christ.
Let him sort out the detailsMaybe.
Oh well, they had to do itthemselves.
Fine, he can sort that out.
You do everything you can tobring your family and your
(16:46):
friends before God, and one ofthe ways we do that is by
bringing our children to thefont of baptism.
Speaker 8 (16:51):
That definitely makes sense and definitely in
accordance to the Old Testamentparadigm of honoring your father
and mother as well.
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Absolutely Thank you.
Thank you for you know, as aProtestant person coming up and
asking your question, that'svery, it's very gracious of you
to let us have the opportunityto do that and everyone
listening please offer a prayerfor him.
David's going to give you abook one of Joe's books before
you go, because we're trying toget you.
We're trying to get you in theCatholic Church.
Come on up, matthew, Catholicor Protestant no, we're only
(17:20):
taking Protestants.
Now that we got him, okay, goahead.
You can go now that we got them.
Speaker 9 (17:24):
Okay, go ahead, you can go.
Howdy, I'm a student at KansasState University.
Hey, go Wildcats.
Yeah, cradle Catholic at StMichael's.
So I had a hypothetical broughtup by a friend that he used to
sort of justify why he believeshell shouldn't exist with a
loving God.
And the hypothetical was if Ihave a wife and I tell my wife,
(17:48):
if you don't love me, I'm goingto set you on fire, does she
have a choice?
And am I loving husband?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
It's a good way of capturing how atheists
misunderstand hell.
So let's reframe it.
Let's say you're deeply in lovewith your wife and she's the
only person who could satisfythe longing of your heart.
And then one day, in a peak ofanger, you divorce her, cut off
all contact with her, delete hernumber from your phone, move to
(18:19):
the other part of the world andcut off all contact forever.
Your heart is aching in a waythat cannot be healed because
the only one who could ever healit you've cut off contact with
her completely.
Does that make her unloving?
Absolutely not.
It's precisely because of howlovable she is that you would
feel that tremendous ache in herabsence.
(18:42):
So love always includesvulnerability.
First thing, vulnerability isthe ability to be wounded.
Second, we are made with ourhearts with an infinite longing,
so that there is, frankly, noone on earth and nothing on
earth that can fill the longingsof your heart or my heart.
(19:02):
God alone can fill that longingand if you've ever tried to
fill that longing with anyone oranything else, you know like
it'll lead to the worstcodependent relationship.
When you're trying to fill theGod-shaped hole with another
person, it'll lead to the worstexcesses and food and drugs and
sex and you name it, if you'retrying to fill it with something
(19:23):
other than God.
God alone can fill the chasmand the ache in our hearts.
And so if we cut off contactwith him forever and we say I
don't want you, he can't give ussome other God that'll fill
that infinite longing.
There isn't one and therecouldn't be one.
If God created something else,it wouldn't be the infinite,
(19:45):
uncreated God.
So we will always have thatunfulfilled, unsatiated longing
and that is truly hellacious,like imagine eating and never
being full.
There's in Eastern mythologythe notion of the hungry ghost.
You know the ghost thatcontinues to eat, but the more
you eat, the larger your stomachgets and the hungrier you get.
(20:07):
And it's just this notion ofunfulfilled longing and it is
hellacious, genuinely,definitionally hellacious.
That's what it is to have thisunfulfilled longing in our
hearts.
That's not God, just being likeI'm upset, you didn't choose me
.
That's God being the only oneand only thing that is
(20:27):
infinitely worthy of love.
So it's just a matter of, likeatheists, getting the basic
metaphysics right.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
And so don't set your wife on fire, I just want to my
wife's already smoking.
Okay, oh, joe, nicely done.
Thank you, matthew, julianCorrect.
Speaker 10 (20:46):
All right, julian, come on up.
Hi Joe, my name is Julian.
I'm from SoCal.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Nice, oh, never mind, that's a conversation for
one-on-one.
Speaker 10 (20:54):
Yeah, I love your content.
Shameless Potpourri.
I listen like I'm caught up,Love it.
I also really enjoy Dr GavinOrtlund's work, and something
that he mentions in one of hisvideos is that the Protestant
church is more Catholic than theCatholic church.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Yeah, I mean, follow that logically, you'd have to
say the most Catholic people arethe people who believe in
nothing, because then there'snothing you have to believe in.
So I think when you just thinkabout the argument logically for
a second, it's like well, thatdoesn't make any sense.
Sense, because what this is andyou'll find this many times in
(21:28):
Protestantism is this idea thatto be one, we have to find the
merest version of mereChristianity.
How much stuff can we get ridof Christianity and just have
like that we can all agree onand that is a zero?
Like that tendency towardsminimalism is ultimately going
to bankrupt us, andsignificantly.
That's not how early Christiansapproached the faith.
They didn't say what is theleast we can believe in.
(21:50):
They wanted to know the mostthey could about God, because
they wanted to understand Godbetter.
And so with the creed you cansay well, did they need every
line in that?
Well, not if you're approachingit from a minimalist
perspective, but if you'reapproaching it from trying to
understand God better, then it'sappropriate.
(22:11):
So Catholic means we are of thewhole, which means we have the
whole faith, not just a meresliver of it.
And so the way the wordCatholic is used from the very
beginning is not the way Gavinuses it.
Catholic was used todistinguish Christians who had
the fullness of the faith frompeople who called themselves
Christian but believed in heresy.
Now if we just said we're notgoing to get into the details on
(22:33):
heresy and orthodoxy, we couldhave been Catholic, in quotation
marks in the way Gavin uses it,of like let's all just get
along, but that's not what theword means historically.
So we want to understand whatdid the early Christians mean by
one holy Catholic and apostolicchurch?
And you can trace the usage ofCatholic all the way back to
Ignatius of Antioch and it veryclearly is one visible body with
(22:55):
common doctrines and a commonEucharist, one bishop per church
.
You can see all of that inIgnatius' writing and he's even
clear you don't have a church ifyou don't have the bishop,
presbyter, deacon, structure.
So all of that is right there.
It's only by redefining what wemean by Catholic and by
switching from the earlyChristian approach of let's
understand Christianity as bestwe can to what's the least we
(23:17):
can understand in common.
So there's no disputes.
Final thing on this, thepivotal thing is if you believe
that the church is infallible,then you want more definition
because you can trust moredefinition.
If you think the church isn'tinfallible, then you want less
definition, because every timeyou make a claim about God,
(23:40):
you're doing your best, but youcould get something wrong.
So you'd want fewer and fewerclaims about God, whereas if you
believe in infallibility, youwant more and more.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
That makes sense, yeah, so there you go, all right
, thank you.
Thank you, julian.
Thanks very much, cale.
I got that right.
Yeah, all right, cale, welcome,go ahead with your question.
Speaker 11 (23:59):
First of all, I want to the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
So my question as a young mandiscerning between Eastern
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism,I'm aware that reading the
early church fathers isessential in order to find the
one true church, but is that allI need to do?
It seems like a never-endingintellectual battle that much
(24:22):
smarter people than I havelanded both sides on.
That being said, if you were inmy position, how do you go
about discovering the one truechurch?
Speaker 4 (24:29):
That's a really good question and in the book Pope
Peter I call it the church'smost distinctive doctrine.
Here's what I mean.
Like if you were at the cardealership and you said I don't
know if I should get a car or atruck, and the person said what
do you want to do?
And you said I want to haullumber, they would say you need
(24:49):
a truck for that, because thedistinctive feature about a
truck is that it has a truck bed.
That is not the most importantfeature of a truck the engine is
more important than the truckbed but it is the most
distinctive.
It is the identifying.
How do I know which one to do?
Okay, well, if I know I needone with a truck bed, I'm
obviously going with a truck.
So when you're talking aboutCatholicism compared to
(25:12):
Orthodoxy or Coptic Christianityor Protestantism, the
distinctive doctrine is thepapacy.
So if the papacy is true,everyone should be Catholic.
If the papacy isn't true, noone should be Catholic.
Is the papacy true?
I would ask that question.
Notice how your workload hasalready been narrowed quite a
(25:34):
bit.
One of the ways we find out ifthe papacy is true is from
scripture.
I talked about that earlier.
Another way we talk.
We understand it is looking athow the early Christians
approached it.
In both the East and the West,there's agreement that the
Bishop of Rome has some kind ofspecial role.
We might debate what the exactnature of that is, but it is
(25:56):
more than just honorary.
There's actual authority thatthe bishop of Rome carries.
Now, where do we find thatauthority today In the Catholic
church?
These Orthodox don't even claimto have the bishop of Rome.
And so if the bishop of Rome isthis part of Christianity from
the first century and is thereby the will of God and for this
(26:19):
special role, one of the easternfathers refers to the role of
the pope as Cori Phaeus.
Now, in ancient Greek, liketheater, this would be the
person who would lead the songand dance, so he would keep the
tune.
He would lead the song anddance, so he would keep the tune
, he would lead the dance, etcetera, like kind of the band
leader that keeps everybody elsein rhythm.
(26:40):
That's the Pope's role.
He keeps every other bishop onthe same page in rhythm.
That role is still being playedby the Pope today.
So then, the last thing I wouldsay is twice in the history of
the church Second Council ofLyon and then the Council of
Florence.
There were these reunioncouncils and the Council of
(27:01):
Florence was actually successfulfor a while, where the Eastern
Orthodox came back into unionwith the church and confessed,
at an ecumenical council, theauthority of the Pope they
repudiated it later.
The authority of the Pope theyrepudiated it later.
But if ecumenical councils meananything, florence has all the
(27:21):
appearances of being anecumenical council.
It's agreed to by not only theCatholic delegates but the
Eastern Orthodox and the Copticdelegates, the Byzantine emperor
, the patriarch ofConstantinople, like all of that
happens.
And so the very last thing, I'dsay so if you look at
ecumenical councils, they shouldmake you Catholic.
If you look at what?
The early Christians thing?
I'd say so.
If you look at a communitycouncils, they should make you
Catholic.
If you look at what the earlyChristians said about Rome, that
should make you Catholic.
If you look at what scripturesays about Peter, that should
(27:42):
make you Catholic.
But also if you just askyourself logically well, christ
prays that we're all going to beone, where and how is that
going to happen?
It's not going to happen in anyone Protestant denomination.
It's not going to happen inRussian Orthodoxy or Greek
Orthodoxy or any of the othervarious Orthodox churches.
If it's going to happen, it'sgoing to happen under the
earthly authority of the Pope.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I would like to recommend.
We have a book called AnsweringOrthodoxy and we don't have it
here, but you can order it.
Or, if you want to call us andremind us that we had this
conversation, we can just sendyou a copy.
We'd be happy to send it to you, cale.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Yeah, Michael Lofton and Eric Ibarra have done a lot
of good work on these kind ofquestions.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, Michael Lofton wrote that.
He wrote that book for usAnswering Orthodoxy.
I do want to let folks knowthat if you don't know about us,
you can find us at catholiccom.
Catholiccom is the second mostused Catholic website in the
world after the Vatican's ownwebsite.
It's now in English and inSpanish, so if some of you are
(28:42):
on mission or working with folkswho would like to use the
materials in Spanish, that'savailable.
We have 40 years worth ofquestions and answers about the
Catholic faith there and we aremore or less I mean, I guess our
rule is to answer questions asbest we can, the way the church
(29:02):
answers those using thedocuments of the church,
particularly the catechism ofthe Catholic church and the
Bible, of course.
So check it out at catholiccom,if you would, Cale.
Thank you very much.
Thanks again, guys.
Thank you and Zach, you arenext.
All right, Zach, we're gladyou're here.
Go ahead with your question.
Speaker 7 (29:18):
Hello, I'm Zach, love you guys, Love what you guys do
, listen to you guys all thetime, thank you.
Yeah, I'm from Nebraska.
Just say shout out, go Big Red.
But yeah, my question is Um.
So if sacred scripture, uh, canwe consider Jesus as sacred
scripture If John, the gospel ofJohn and many other parts of
(29:47):
the Bibles?
Bible refers um, refers John or, excuse me, refers Jesus as the
word and as the word of God?
So good, question.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
So we wouldn't call Jesus scripture, we wouldn't
call scripture Jesus.
But there is a relationshipbetween the two.
That word of God refers to therevelation that comes forth from
God, the way the father revealshimself.
He reveals himself in many andvarious ways.
Hebrews 1 says the written formof that.
(30:14):
So the word scripture justmeans writings.
So the written form of God'sself-revelation is what we call
scripture.
So it's something that's calledthe small w word of God.
But the fullness of revelationisn't scripture it's actually
not scripture in traditiontogether.
No, the fullness of revelationis Jesus Christ himself.
He says if you have seen me,you've seen the father.
(30:35):
So the Bible is revelation andJesus is revelation.
But Jesus is the fullness ofrevelation, and so we call them
both the word of God.
We don't call Jesus scripturebecause he's not written, he's
alive, but he's the word of Godthat's living and active,
sharper than any two-edged swordLike that's who?
Jesus is the one who will judgeus.
(30:57):
But yeah, so when you'rereading verses in the Bible
talking about word of God,sometimes we hear that and
immediately think that meansBible, that means revelation,
which could mean the Bible incontext, but other times means
other things, like a part of theBible, or the oral preaching of
the apostles, or Jesus himself.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
All right, thank you, trenton.
Oh no, trenton's next.
Wait, what's that?
Melissa Welcome.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
I wonder why he sent Melissa to the front of the line
.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I think look at that collection of dudes right there.
I think I know why they sentyou to the front of the line.
I think look at that collectionof dudes right there.
I think I know why they sentyou to the front of the line.
Oh, they're all gentlemen, andthey all agreed.
Some of them look bitter.
Melissa, I'd be careful, Walkaway that way.
Don't go back that way.
All right, where are you from?
Speaker 12 (31:47):
I'm from Minnesota originally but I go to North
Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, Nice, at North
Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, Nice.
Warm weather area.
Go ahead with your question,Melissa.
So mine kind of has a bit of apremise.
On my campus there is a fewpeople, but one person
specifically, who just like kindof constantly spams like our
(32:07):
internet pages and like some ofthem are like public servers for
NDSU with like biblical content, and him in specific is a
Baptist, but there's a couplelike evangelical and he likes to
talk about like how theCatholic church is the blank of
Babylon and you know that sortof stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You can even say the word.
It's in the Bible.
So you're okay to say if youwant to.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
I like that you had the prudence not to find out.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah right.
Speaker 12 (32:35):
EWT had to be hitting the dumb button on us,
but basically the rest of campusfinds him super annoying and
really obnoxious and it actuallykind of gives us a bad rep
because people give it a quickglance and see a Bible verse and
think, oh my gosh, it's thoseBison Catholics over there.
Basically, my question is howdo we encounter the world and
(32:56):
take criticism and spread thegospel without being seen as
irritating or annoying or likethat guy?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Joe does not know the answer to that.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
I can tell you yeah, I'm generally irritating about
everything.
Talk football with me afterthis.
I'm from Kansas city, I'll beinsufferable, but now I would
say this in second Timothy,chapter two insufferable, but
now I would say this in 2Timothy, chapter 2, st Paul
gives this counsel.
It begins in verse 23.
He says have nothing to do withstupid, senseless controversies
(33:22):
.
You know that they breedquarrels and the Lord's servant
must not be quarrelsome, butkindly to everyone, an apt
teacher, forbearing, correctinghis opponents with gentleness.
God may perhaps grant that theywill repent and come to know
the truth and they may escapefrom the snare of the devil
(33:43):
after being captured by him todo his will.
Now some people listening needto be reminded.
You actually have to correctpeople who are in error
sometimes, and the reason youhave to correct them is because
you love them and you don't wantthem to go to hell.
Like if you're standing in thestreet and a car is coming.
I'm not going to be like.
(34:03):
I don't want to be rude, Idon't even really know Melissa.
I'll be like a car is coming,get out of the road because I
love you enough to not want youto die, even though I don't
really know you.
On the other hand, some of usneed to be reminded to avoid
stupid controversies andquarrelsomeness and all of that
stuff, because we just likefighting and being right.
(34:25):
And then some of us need to bereminded if you're going to
fight, it's okay to haveopponents, it's okay to correct
errors, but you have to do itgently.
So make sure it's not pointless, make sure it's motivated out
of love for their soul and makesure that it's being done gently
(34:46):
.
Those are the ground rules thatSt Paul gives us.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Now there's a lot of St Peter too.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Oh yeah, St Peter 2, in allgentleness.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
That's right.
In 1 Peter 3, 15, this is, youknow where the word apologetics
comes from is this word defense,apologia?
Always be prepared to give adefense for the hope that is
within you.
But then he goes on.
For the part, nobody likeswhere he tells us how to do it,
and it's to do it, and it's todo it gently and reverently.
(35:15):
We're to act with humility, andso if you are acting in that
way where you're not just likerubbing people's faces in the
truth, but are actually gently,lovingly sharing these things
with people, that's much morewinsome and inviting.
Now, look, know this at theoutset no matter how good of a
job you do and you're going tomake mistakes no matter how good
of a job you're going to do,some people will be annoyed
because you are confronting thefact that they're sinning.
(35:37):
They prefer the deeds ofdarkness to the deeds of light.
They had this reaction to Jesus.
Some people will find itattractive and God will reach
them through your ministry.
So the more you can just bringpeople in with what you love, I
think, the more you can attractthem.
So that's the last thing I'dsay.
We are sometimes called tocorrect, and that's the
(36:00):
uncomfortable work, the muchmore comfortable work is just
the sharing of what God has donein your life, and people are
much less put off by thatBecause that's just like an
amazing witness to why you havejoy and hope.
Does that help?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
That works.
Speaker 12 (36:18):
Yeah, thank you so much, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Well, thank you very much Thanks for bringing the
question.
I do.
I mean it's harder and harderbecause of the social media
environment.
I mean one of the things weneed a community of people to
help us to be loving.
It's easier to be loving whenyou're in a community of people.
If it's the middle of the nightand you're responding to
someone else's post, it'sactually very easy to be
(36:39):
negative and not to be reverentand gentle.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
It turns out when you are underslept and you should
be in bed and are instead onyour phone.
You make a lot of mistakes, andone of those can be being a
jerk to a random stranger onlinefor no reason.
Yeah, and so a good mentalpractice would be imagine if
someone rang your doorbell orwhatever and then said hey, did
(37:03):
you just say this to me?
And then if you would be like,yes, I did.
Or would you be like I am sosorry Because we can forget that
it's a human being on the otherend I mean, it's like you in
traffic.
You see all those cars youforget there's people in there
who are just scared for theirlife.
Being behind you, it's you knowwe can lose sight of the common
(37:23):
humanity.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, that is my primary problem too, traffic
Trenton we made you wait, butthank you for waiting.
Oh, you're good.
Speaker 13 (37:31):
So I'm a Catholic, I go to Nebraska.
Can you just get a little?
Speaker 2 (37:34):
closer to the microphone.
Another Nebraska Catholic.
Is there any other kind ofperson in Nebraska, like it's
all Catholics, I guess.
Speaker 13 (37:41):
Actually, the question does come from my
friend.
He's Protestant, oh okay, sohis question was about we were
talking about mother of God,believe it or not.
That always gets brought upbetween Protestants and
Catholics.
So his question was that ifMary is the mother of God and
not the source of the divinityof Jesus, that if Mary is the
mother of God and not the sourceof the divinity of Jesus.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Why does she need to be sinless?
I don't know that needs is theright frame for that, because
God could do things a whole lotof ways.
I'm going to give you a coupleanswers to that.
The first is, if you take outyour Bible and sit down with
your Protestant friends, you gotto put a ribbon in 1 Samuel,
chapter 6 and then Luke 1.
(38:24):
In 1 Samuel, chapter 6, kingDavid arose and went into the
hill country of Judah and he'strying to take the ark into
Jerusalem.
But he can't take the ark.
He didn't do it the right way,he didn't bring the Levites, he
just tries to do it himself.
And the ark is so holy, notbecause it's special apart from
God, but because it has theovershadowing of God.
The ark is so holy that Uzzah,one of the guys with him,
(38:47):
touches the ark and is struckdead.
And so he's stuck there in thehill country of Judah for three
months and he says how can theark of the Lord come to me?
And then he dances before theark when he finally is able to
bring the ark into Jerusalem.
Then read Luke 1.
It says Mary arose and wentwith haste into the hill country
of Judah and she's there forthree months and John the
(39:08):
Baptist dances for joy beforewe're told the mother of my Lord
.
And Elizabeth says why is thisthat the mother of my Lord
should come to me?
And Elizabeth says why is thisthat the mother of my Lord
should come to me?
So she has this much more likeawe-inspired reaction where
David is just kind of impatient.
But you see the clear parallelsand very clearly Mary is being
(39:30):
presented as the Ark of the NewCovenant.
And that's not enough.
Right before that, in Luke 1,when Mary asks how this will be
because she's a virgin, gabrieltells her it'll happen because
the Holy Spirit will overshadowher.
Now that word doesn't mean awhole lot to us, but the Greek
word being used there is theword used in the Septuagint, the
(39:50):
Greek version of the OldTestament, to describe the
overshadowing glory of God abovethe Ark of the Covenant in
places like Exodus 40.
So it's all of this Ark,language and imagery.
And so then you could say well,why couldn't the Ark of God just
have been an ordinary box?
Because it wouldn't have beenappropriate, like the whole
reason the temple is built isbecause David has a good sense
(40:13):
to realize it's not appropriatethat the glory of God should
just be in a tent.
So the ark is placed in aglorious temple.
Well, likewise, when God comesinto the world, he could have
done it through like the worst,most sinful woman who'd ever
lived.
But that wouldn't have beenfitting, it wouldn't have been
appropriate for the grandeur ofGod.
You wouldn't put the ark in alavatory right, you put the ark
(40:39):
in a temple, and likewise youput the glory of God in an ark.
So hopefully that makes sense.
Yeah, that was perfect.
Well, I've got one more reasonas well.
If Mary's a sinner, it wouldseem now this is more
speculative.
So do with this what you will.
It would seem that Jesus wouldbe owed original sin, and so
(41:02):
then he would have to savehimself, and that is absolutely
inappropriate.
He is the sinless one, he's theperfect one by his very nature,
his human and divine nature.
So I would say those two thingswould be where I'd go.
Thank you guys.
Thank you Chetan.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I think we.
Are you going to give awaymerchandise to people?
What are you doing over there?
You got merchandise to giveaway.
I think they're going to throwit out to you.
In the meantime, why don't youcome on up and ask your question
?
Speaker 6 (41:28):
Hello, my name is McGivney Swanson.
I'm another Nebraskan Catholic,really Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Boy Boy.
Catholic Radio must be powerfulup there.
It's very good.
You guys do a great job.
I love listening to you.
It's on us Spirit CatholicRadio.
They're great.
Speaker 6 (41:41):
But go ahead with your question.
Okay, my question for you is Iknow that the Orthodox Church
has the real presence of theEucharist.
I'm not quite sure about theAnglican Church, but I went and
toured one today and I wasn'tquite sure if I was supposed to
kneel or how I was supposed toact in the church because of the
real presence, Like what is theappropriate way to act?
(42:04):
Good, question.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
So the Orthodox have valid sacraments and, as a
result, they have the Eucharist,and so, yeah, you should
approach.
I mean, the Eucharist is theEucharist.
It isn't like Orthodox Jesus isover there, it's just Jesus and
so reverence him as you wouldJesus.
The Anglicans do not have validholy orders.
(42:26):
Pope Leo was very clear thattheir orders are absolutely null
and utterly void.
Now to be clear originally theAnglicans did have holy orders.
Like when Henry VIII broke awayfrom the church, they still had
valid holy orders.
You can have a priesthood evenif you're in schism, like when
Henry VIII broke away from thechurch, they still had valid
holy orders.
You can have a priesthood evenif you're in schism, like when
the northern and southern tribesin Israel break.
There are still priests in bothplaces.
(42:48):
The problem is the rite ofordination was changed after the
Reformation to make it nolonger a priesthood but
something closer to like aProtestant pastor.
And the church said we don'tfind that to be valid and so we
don't recognize their sacraments, and so because of that, most
Anglicans don't even think thatthey have transubstantiation.
(43:10):
The 39 articles that theAnglican use kind of loosely as
a confession of faith calltransubstantiation a blasphemous
fable or blasphemoussuperstition Maybe this is the
language, but they explicitlyreject that.
They have a valid Eucharist,basically.
But you will find someAnglo-Catholics who still think
(43:32):
they do, but they don't haveholy orders any more than you or
I do, like if I went home anddecided to say the words of
institution.
That isn't how that works.
I can't just make the Eucharistby saying the right words.
I don't have the spiritualauthority to do that and,
unfortunately, neither do theAnglicans.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
That got you what you wanted to get to.
Yeah, great answer.
Very good, thank you very, verymuch.
Thank you, I think we're aboutto come to the end here.
I want to thank our guest, joeHeschmeyer.
I hope you will check out Joe'swork at shamelessjoecom.
Shameless Potpourri is thepodcast and it's growing in
popularity because of this,because Joe does this with great
(44:11):
good humor and also with depthof insight.
I want to thank the guys fromMax Studios for the wonderful
audio and video that they wereable to provide us.
Thank you very much and thankyou all for helping us to make a
radio program.
We really are grateful.
You can check us out everyafternoon.
We're on 6 to 8 pm Eastern time, 3 to 5 pm Pacific.
(44:31):
You figure out where we're onwhere you are, and please check
us out at catholiccom.
Like I said, I'm Cy Kellett,the host, and I'm super grateful
.
Thanks very, very much forcoming.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Thanks for listening to this episode recorded live at
SEEK.
Miss the conference or want torelive your favorite moments?
Seek Replay has you coveredAccess, powerful keynotes,
inspiring talks and exclusivecontent to take your faith
deeper, anytime, anywhere.
Head to seekfocusorg backslashreplay to download now.
(45:08):
And don't forget to join us forSeek 26.
Check out seekfocusorg for moreinformation and to register.
Welcome to the Seek 25 podcast, featuring some of
our favorite podcasters recordedlive at the Max Studios podcast
stage during Seek 25 in SaltLake City.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello and welcome to Catholic Answers Live.
I am Cy Kellett, your host, andwe'll be recording this and
we'll be broadcasting it as aradio program.
So it might not sound exactlylike the podcast sound, but
we'll be using it as a radioprogram.
Our guest, of course, is thegreat Joe Heschmeyer.
The author of the Eucharist isReally Jesus, the Early Church
(00:41):
Was the Catholic Church and manyother books, and the podcaster
behind the Shameless Potpourripodcast.
Thank you for being here, joe,my pleasure.
You've had a bit of a cold, soare you going to have any
difficulty speaking for this?
We'll find out.
We'll find out if we can getanswers to you.
We got a lot of folks lined upto ask their questions, so, if
you don't mind, I'll just letthe listener know we're at the
(01:03):
SEEK conference, which is alsocalled Catholic Coachella, I
think it's.
Thousands and thousands, andprobably about one billion
Catholics have come to it andit's in Salt Lake City this year
.
We're having a great time.
Come on up, you can ask yourfirst question.
Yes, you, you, sir, come to themicrophone and we can.
You can ask your first question.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
All right, I have a quick question for Silo, real
quick.
Yeah, when are we going to beable to ask you questions?
And I don't want to hear yousay that you're not as good as
answering questions, I just wantto hear you answer them.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
So your question for me is when can you ask me
questions?
Yes, well, you can ask any time, but it doesn't matter what the
question is I think you justdid.
Yeah, you did, but I'm justprogrammed this way no matter
what you ask me, I'll go Joe,and then that'll be that.
So you can ask whatever youlike, but it'll probably be Joe.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
that answers All right.
All right, so my question wasabout the afterlife.
So what do the people of theOld Testament believe happened
after death?
I know they believed in a placegoing to Sheol, but what does
that actually mean, and how didthat change with Christ's death
and resurrection?
Speaker 4 (02:14):
Yeah, that's a really big question because we find
greater clarity as we gothroughout the Old Testament.
So the original sense of Sheoljust means something like the
grave or the underworld.
So the original sense of shalejust means something like the
grave or the underworld, and soit's used to refer to where the
dead go, whether they're therighteous or the wicked.
And so as we get into the NewTestament, you get more clarity
(02:40):
that even though all were goingto shale, they were not all
having the same kind ofexperience.
So in the Gospel of Luke, forexample, having the same kind of
experience.
So in the Gospel of Luke, forexample, when Jesus gives the
parable of Lazarus and the richman, we find they both die and
are taken to Sheol, but one ofthem is in the bosom of Abraham,
which is sometimes called thelimbo of the fathers.
It was a place of waitingbefore they could enter heaven,
because Christ is the one whoopens the doors of heaven.
(03:01):
But the wicked are actually ina place of suffering which comes
to be known as Hades.
Hades is technically it canjust be a translation of Sheol,
but it has more of a sense ofthe hell, of punishment.
And so you have this increasingsense that some of those are
actually in a place of sufferingand some of those are in a
(03:24):
place of rest.
And when Christ comes, heliberates those who are in that
place of rest, the bosom ofAbraham, and brings them into a
place of eternal glory, into thefull vision and presence of God
that we call heaven.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Eddie right.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, Eddie.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Eddie, because I didn't introduce you at the
beginning.
Sorry, eddie, thank you verymuch.
Appreciate the question.
And then the other question.
Yeah, eddie, eddie, because Ididn't introduce you at the
beginning.
Sorry, eddie, thank you verymuch.
Appreciate the question.
And then the other question.
Thanks, eddie.
All right, who we got next?
Come on up, ask whateverquestion you've got for.
Joe Heschmeyer, hang on, I'mgoing to guess your name.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
It's Josh.
Is it Josh?
It is Josh, campus minister inthe great state of Texas, san
Antonio Archdiocese.
So my question is onapologetics, how can we defend
scripturally the primacy ofPeter All the apostles had to
bind and loose that authoritybut papal primacy and along with
(04:19):
that, how can we confidentlysay that the church was based in
Rome and not any of the otherplaces in the Holy Land Great?
Speaker 4 (04:27):
Okay, well, first of all, if you want to afterwards
go by the Catholic Answers boothand tell them I said you could
have a copy of my book PopePeter, that's going to be a
fuller version of the answer I'mabout to give you, Because
that's just like a book-lengthtreatment of how do we know?
Peter is the first pope.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Everybody here is going to go by the booth and say
Joe said I could have a copy ofPope.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
Peter Exactly.
Everyone just claim you're Josh.
They didn't see the show, theydon't know who he is.
It helps if you have a bluepolo, because I think that was
mentioned.
So, yeah, the short answer isthis we know that there's a
special role given to Peter.
We know that from several waysand many Protestants, if you ask
(05:05):
them about that, willacknowledge that he has some
kind of special role.
But this isn't just a specialrole he gives to himself.
This is a special role thatJesus gives to him.
We see this in big ways andsmall ways.
Small ways would be somethinglike this Every time the
apostles are mentioned, judas isat the end, peter is at the
beginning, the 10 in the middleare in different orders.
So Peter always has a primacyand Judas always is taking up
(05:27):
the last place.
When Peter's mentioned in Acts,it says Peter and the apostles,
which shows that Peter wasdistinct even from the other
apostles, or Peter and the 11 inActs 2.
So you have all of these placeswhere Peter is singled out with
a special kind of authority andprimacy.
Now we can ask what did thatauthority and primacy look like?
(05:48):
One of the clearest places togo to answer that is Luke,
chapter 22, at the Last Supper,the disciples are arguing about
which of them is the greatest,and Jesus doesn't criticize them
for that.
He rather tells them how tospot greatness.
And greatness is exemplified byChristian service, that to be a
leader in the Christianperspective is to be a servant
(06:11):
of those God has entrusted toyour care.
This is true of every priest,every bishop, every parent, and
it's true as well of the Pope.
So he tells the 12 that they'reto have this kind of role and
he talks about how they'll siton 12 tribes excuse me, 12
thrones, judging the 12 tribesof Israel.
So he shows that all of themare to be the servants of God.
(06:32):
But then, in the very nextverse, he singles out one of
them and says Simon, simon,satan has desired to sift all of
you like wheat.
But I have prayed for you andhere he switches from the you
plural to the you singular.
I've prayed for you, simon,that your faith may not fail and
(06:53):
, when you have turned back,strengthen your brethren.
What do we make from that?
Well, a few things.
Number one of all the waysJesus could have responded to
the fact that Satan was going totry all 12, he could have said
I stopped him because I'm Godways.
Jesus could have responded tothe fact that Satan was going to
try all 12,.
He could have said I stoppedhim because I'm God.
He could have said I prayed forall 12.
He chooses instead to pray forSimon Peter and then entrust the
(07:14):
care of the other apostles toPeter.
He's to be the servant of theservants of God, which is one of
the titles we use for the Popeto this day.
That's all built there inscripture.
He has an actual spiritualauthority and entrustment that
is not given to anyone else.
It's not just that he was anatural leader, it's something
much more than that.
And that doesn't even get intothe really obvious places, like
(07:37):
in Matthew 16, where Jesus tellsPeter that he's rock and upon
this rock he'll build his church.
And then he tells Peterindividually that he's rock and
upon this rock he'll build hischurch.
And then he tells Peterindividually that he's going to
give him the keys of the kingdomand that he'll have the power
to bind and loosen.
So you have all of those things, and then you still have two
questions left.
One, how do we know that thiscontinued on after Peter?
(07:58):
Two, how do we know this istied to Rome.
John 21 shows this kind ofvision of the church throughout
the age, and I don't have timeto do this justice right now,
but it's.
John describes thisresurrection appearance in which
seven of the apostles are onthe sea and they see Jesus on
the shores.
(08:18):
And one of the early Christianreadings is that this is almost
a sort of like vision orprophecy or parable of the
journey of the church throughoutthe ages.
That the point here is not justJesus rose from the dead.
John 20 already establishedthat.
John 21 is about the role ofthe church on the way to
encounter Jesus on the eternalshores.
(08:38):
And it's Peter with six otherswith him.
And then Peter is able to dragthe net ashore when no one else
can.
And all of this is rich inmeaning if you understand how
often Jesus uses the net as animage for the church, like in
Matthew 13, or uses it as animage for Peter's role in
evangelization, like in Luke,chapter five and in Matthew 17.
(09:00):
So you have like all of thesescriptures coming together.
Well, that shows that there'san ongoing role.
We might call it a Petrine role, like a Peter-ish role, from
here till we meet Christ ineternity.
And then the last thing how dowe know that is in Rome?
Well, because that's where Petergoes, and he says as much in 1
Peter, where he says that he'ssending greetings from Babylon.
(09:23):
Babylon was what the earlyChristians referred to Rome as,
because that's who they were incaptivity to.
Like the Babylonians of old, itwasn't like he'd literally gone
east to the ancient city ofBabylon.
He's clearly in Rome, and youhave plenty of other ancient
sources that attest to the factthat Peter's in Rome, and you
have ancient sources that attestto the fact that the Roman
(09:45):
church has a special authority.
So the very last point, stIrenaeus in Against Heresy's
book three talks about how it isa matter of necessity that
every church agree with thechurch of Rome.
Now he says those words in 180.
This is the same document inwhich we first hear that Matthew
, mark, luke and John are thefour gospels.
So there's a bunch of biblicalreasons and a bunch of early
(10:09):
Christian reasons to believethat Peter had a special role
and that his successors, thepopes, had those special roles
as well.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Josh, thank you very much.
Thank you, don't forget to goget your book.
I want to just say to Eddiethat's why I don't answer
questions, I can't do that.
So nice job, joe.
Nice job on that.
I'll tell you all, at booth1448, that's our booth way over
there in the corner, joe's goingto be signing books after this.
So if you'd like to get one ofJoe's books and have him sign it
(10:36):
, just go all the way over tothe corner there to booth 1448.
Jordan, I got the name right,right.
Speaker 8 (10:48):
All right, nice to see you.
Welcome.
Go ahead with your question forJoe.
Yes, sir.
Hello Joe, I love watching yourcontent.
By the way, you did a great job.
Thank you very much.
So my name is Jordan.
I'm actually a Protestant.
I'm discerning right nowbetween Protestantism and
Orthodoxy and I'm convinced ofapostolic succession and the
Eucharist.
So that's kind of like theEucharist kind of what hit the
nail for me.
But my question right now, onething I'm struggling with, my
paradigm, is so I believebaptism saves, but I struggle
with infant baptism.
And so, to give you anunderstanding, my paradigm right
(11:11):
now comes from a Church ofChrist background, so I believe
that baptism does save, but Ijust struggle.
So my belief is also and I wantyou to help me understand the
infant baptism paradigm but inthat and I've heard of people
talk about infant faith and howJohn the Baptist, you know he
(11:33):
had the Holy Spirit, and so whatmy question is I want help in
understanding and getting areasonable understanding of how
infant baptism works, even if achild, baby, does not have faith
.
Speaker 4 (11:45):
So yeah, can I ask you a couple of questions?
Actually, absolutely.
Just to get a better sense ofwhere you're coming from.
So do you believe in originalsin?
Speaker 8 (11:52):
In what sense?
Like in a.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
Okay, that's a good question, that there is some
kind of lack, there's a sort ofdistortion, that, based on our
parents sinning and you know, wethen add to that with our own
individual sins, but that we areborn not in the union with God
that we want to be in.
Speaker 8 (12:10):
Yeah, kind of like how Father Michael Schmitz
talked about it.
Speaker 4 (12:12):
Yeah, I didn't actually get to see it because I
was at the booth.
Way to rub that in.
Speaker 8 (12:16):
I'm sorry, but yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Okay.
So the short answer is this Inbaptism, it's not just the
forgiveness of sins, it's notjust the salvation of our souls,
it's also the entry into thepeople of God.
In Acts, chapter 2, it saysthat 3,000 were added to the
church when they were baptized.
Like, right there, this is likethe doorway into the church,
right.
And that's just talking aboutPentecost, right?
(12:42):
So we want little children tocome to Christ, and Jesus does
too.
He says as much.
He says let the little childrencome to me.
And so in the old covenant, theway a young boy would come to
enter into the covenant on theeighth day was circumcision.
St Paul compares baptism tocircumcision as, like the new
(13:03):
circumcision.
And so it's the doorway intothe church.
Because otherwise you have thisproblem of, like, what happens
if a baby dies?
Because you can say, well, theydon't have faith, but they also
have never committed any sins.
So then you're in this strangekind of place.
Well, the solution to that thatChrist gives us is to let the
little children come to him.
You don't want to be left in asituation where you're
(13:25):
questioning what happens tounborn children or children
who've just been born, ratherthat kind of question I know
many Protestants will debatelike can we say our children who
die in infancy are saved?
Those kind of questions go awayif you baptize your kid.
So what's the biblical basisfor it?
(13:46):
One biblical basis is, as yousay, baptism now saves you.
1 Peter 3.21.
If you believe baptism savesyou and you believe that Christ
wants to save everyone,including small children, and
he's very clear about that thenthis is the means by which he
gives us access to salvation.
Now he can save people otherways.
I don't mean to deny that hecould do things differently, but
(14:08):
the way he tells us is withbaptism.
So another thing I'd add to thatis the notion of the so-called
household passages in Acts.
So you know, you've got thingslike Acts 17, lydia and her
whole household are baptized.
Stephanus in 1 Corinthians, hisold household gets baptized.
We are not told in all of theseverses like what are the ages
(14:33):
of every member of the house.
But we know enough about thedemography of the first century
that people tended to have largefamilies with older and younger
kids.
So it'd be very strange if inall of these household baptism
cases not one of them had anysmall children.
Like it's not impossible, butit's improbable to read all the
(14:53):
household passages.
So we know that salvation wasbeing promised to you and your
household in the preaching ofthe gospel and we know also in 1
Corinthians 7, st Paul sayseven this.
He says 1 Corinthians 7, verse14.
Paul says even this.
He says 1 Corinthians 7, verse14, the unbelieving husband is
consecrated through his wife andthe unbelieving wife is
consecrated through her husband.
(15:14):
Otherwise your children wouldbe unclean.
But as it is, they are holy.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
Could you actually I mean my friend, me and my friend
were talking about that.
I don't, I'm sorry, everybodybehind me.
Could you go just a little bitmore into that, Because that's
one thing I haven't understoodyet.
But that did kind of pointtowards that a household could
be saved through the either heador the woman or the man of the
household.
Speaker 4 (15:37):
Yeah, so there's something mysterious about it
and Paul gives us exactly likeone to two verses where he
explains this big theologicalbomb.
But we know this.
Go back to the Old Testament.
As for me and my house, weshall serve the Lord.
You have an actual spiritualauthority that you can exercise
as a parent, and we come fromthis very Western, very
(15:59):
individualistic culture whereit's every man for himself and
that is just fundamentally notChristian.
That is not the worldview ofthe Bible, old or New Testament.
We can do things to bring otherpeople to Christ.
We do it in any number of ways.
Remember the paralytic man.
Speaker 8 (16:19):
He's brought to Jesus by his friends, do you?
Speaker 4 (16:21):
remember what it says .
Jesus looked at their faith andhealed the man.
Didn't just heal him, saved him.
So you should bring everyoneyou can to Christ.
Let him sort out the detailsMaybe.
Oh well, they had to do itthemselves.
Fine, he can sort that out.
You do everything you can tobring your family and your
(16:46):
friends before God, and one ofthe ways we do that is by
bringing our children to thefont of baptism.
Speaker 8 (16:51):
That definitely makes sense and definitely in
accordance to the Old Testamentparadigm of honoring your father
and mother as well.
So thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
Absolutely Thank you.
Thank you for you know, as aProtestant person coming up and
asking your question, that'svery, it's very gracious of you
to let us have the opportunityto do that and everyone
listening please offer a prayerfor him.
David's going to give you abook one of Joe's books before
you go, because we're trying toget you.
We're trying to get you in theCatholic Church.
Come on up, matthew, Catholicor Protestant no, we're only
(17:20):
taking Protestants.
Now that we got him, okay, goahead.
You can go now that we got them.
Speaker 9 (17:24):
Okay, go ahead, you can go.
Howdy, I'm a student at KansasState University.
Hey, go Wildcats.
Yeah, cradle Catholic at StMichael's.
So I had a hypothetical broughtup by a friend that he used to
sort of justify why he believeshell shouldn't exist with a
loving God.
And the hypothetical was if Ihave a wife and I tell my wife,
(17:48):
if you don't love me, I'm goingto set you on fire, does she
have a choice?
And am I loving husband?
Speaker 4 (17:56):
It's a good way of capturing how atheists
misunderstand hell.
So let's reframe it.
Let's say you're deeply in lovewith your wife and she's the
only person who could satisfythe longing of your heart.
And then one day, in a peak ofanger, you divorce her, cut off
all contact with her, delete hernumber from your phone, move to
(18:19):
the other part of the world andcut off all contact forever.
Your heart is aching in a waythat cannot be healed because
the only one who could ever healit you've cut off contact with
her completely.
Does that make her unloving?
Absolutely not.
It's precisely because of howlovable she is that you would
feel that tremendous ache in herabsence.
(18:42):
So love always includesvulnerability.
First thing, vulnerability isthe ability to be wounded.
Second, we are made with ourhearts with an infinite longing,
so that there is, frankly, noone on earth and nothing on
earth that can fill the longingsof your heart or my heart.
(19:02):
God alone can fill that longingand if you've ever tried to
fill that longing with anyone oranything else, you know like
it'll lead to the worstcodependent relationship.
When you're trying to fill theGod-shaped hole with another
person, it'll lead to the worstexcesses and food and drugs and
sex and you name it, if you'retrying to fill it with something
(19:23):
other than God.
God alone can fill the chasmand the ache in our hearts.
And so if we cut off contactwith him forever and we say I
don't want you, he can't give ussome other God that'll fill
that infinite longing.
There isn't one and therecouldn't be one.
If God created something else,it wouldn't be the infinite,
(19:45):
uncreated God.
So we will always have thatunfulfilled, unsatiated longing
and that is truly hellacious,like imagine eating and never
being full.
There's in Eastern mythologythe notion of the hungry ghost.
You know the ghost thatcontinues to eat, but the more
you eat, the larger your stomachgets and the hungrier you get.
(20:07):
And it's just this notion ofunfulfilled longing and it is
hellacious, genuinely,definitionally hellacious.
That's what it is to have thisunfulfilled longing in our
hearts.
That's not God, just being likeI'm upset, you didn't choose me
.
That's God being the only oneand only thing that is
(20:27):
infinitely worthy of love.
So it's just a matter of, likeatheists, getting the basic
metaphysics right.
Speaker 2 (20:34):
And so don't set your wife on fire, I just want to my
wife's already smoking.
Okay, oh, joe, nicely done.
Thank you, matthew, julianCorrect.
Speaker 10 (20:46):
All right, julian, come on up.
Hi Joe, my name is Julian.
I'm from SoCal.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
Nice, oh, never mind, that's a conversation for
one-on-one.
Speaker 10 (20:54):
Yeah, I love your content.
Shameless Potpourri.
I listen like I'm caught up,Love it.
I also really enjoy Dr GavinOrtlund's work, and something
that he mentions in one of hisvideos is that the Protestant
church is more Catholic than theCatholic church.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Yeah, I mean, follow that logically, you'd have to
say the most Catholic people arethe people who believe in
nothing, because then there'snothing you have to believe in.
So I think when you just thinkabout the argument logically for
a second, it's like well, thatdoesn't make any sense.
Sense, because what this is andyou'll find this many times in
(21:28):
Protestantism is this idea thatto be one, we have to find the
merest version of mereChristianity.
How much stuff can we get ridof Christianity and just have
like that we can all agree onand that is a zero?
Like that tendency towardsminimalism is ultimately going
to bankrupt us, andsignificantly.
That's not how early Christiansapproached the faith.
They didn't say what is theleast we can believe in.
(21:50):
They wanted to know the mostthey could about God, because
they wanted to understand Godbetter.
And so with the creed you cansay well, did they need every
line in that?
Well, not if you're approachingit from a minimalist
perspective, but if you'reapproaching it from trying to
understand God better, then it'sappropriate.
(22:11):
So Catholic means we are of thewhole, which means we have the
whole faith, not just a meresliver of it.
And so the way the wordCatholic is used from the very
beginning is not the way Gavinuses it.
Catholic was used todistinguish Christians who had
the fullness of the faith frompeople who called themselves
Christian but believed in heresy.
Now if we just said we're notgoing to get into the details on
(22:33):
heresy and orthodoxy, we couldhave been Catholic, in quotation
marks in the way Gavin uses it,of like let's all just get
along, but that's not what theword means historically.
So we want to understand whatdid the early Christians mean by
one holy Catholic and apostolicchurch?
And you can trace the usage ofCatholic all the way back to
Ignatius of Antioch and it veryclearly is one visible body with
(22:55):
common doctrines and a commonEucharist, one bishop per church
.
You can see all of that inIgnatius' writing and he's even
clear you don't have a church ifyou don't have the bishop,
presbyter, deacon, structure.
So all of that is right there.
It's only by redefining what wemean by Catholic and by
switching from the earlyChristian approach of let's
understand Christianity as bestwe can to what's the least we
(23:17):
can understand in common.
So there's no disputes.
Final thing on this, thepivotal thing is if you believe
that the church is infallible,then you want more definition
because you can trust moredefinition.
If you think the church isn'tinfallible, then you want less
definition, because every timeyou make a claim about God,
(23:40):
you're doing your best, but youcould get something wrong.
So you'd want fewer and fewerclaims about God, whereas if you
believe in infallibility, youwant more and more.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
That makes sense, yeah, so there you go, all right
, thank you.
Thank you, julian.
Thanks very much, cale.
I got that right.
Yeah, all right, cale, welcome,go ahead with your question.
Speaker 11 (23:59):
First of all, I want to the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln.
So my question as a young mandiscerning between Eastern
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism,I'm aware that reading the
early church fathers isessential in order to find the
one true church, but is that allI need to do?
It seems like a never-endingintellectual battle that much
(24:22):
smarter people than I havelanded both sides on.
That being said, if you were inmy position, how do you go
about discovering the one truechurch?
Speaker 4 (24:29):
That's a really good question and in the book Pope
Peter I call it the church'smost distinctive doctrine.
Here's what I mean.
Like if you were at the cardealership and you said I don't
know if I should get a car or atruck, and the person said what
do you want to do?
And you said I want to haullumber, they would say you need
(24:49):
a truck for that, because thedistinctive feature about a
truck is that it has a truck bed.
That is not the most importantfeature of a truck the engine is
more important than the truckbed but it is the most
distinctive.
It is the identifying.
How do I know which one to do?
Okay, well, if I know I needone with a truck bed, I'm
obviously going with a truck.
So when you're talking aboutCatholicism compared to
(25:12):
Orthodoxy or Coptic Christianityor Protestantism, the
distinctive doctrine is thepapacy.
So if the papacy is true,everyone should be Catholic.
If the papacy isn't true, noone should be Catholic.
Is the papacy true?
I would ask that question.
Notice how your workload hasalready been narrowed quite a
(25:34):
bit.
One of the ways we find out ifthe papacy is true is from
scripture.
I talked about that earlier.
Another way we talk.
We understand it is looking athow the early Christians
approached it.
In both the East and the West,there's agreement that the
Bishop of Rome has some kind ofspecial role.
We might debate what the exactnature of that is, but it is
(25:56):
more than just honorary.
There's actual authority thatthe bishop of Rome carries.
Now, where do we find thatauthority today In the Catholic
church?
These Orthodox don't even claimto have the bishop of Rome.
And so if the bishop of Rome isthis part of Christianity from
the first century and is thereby the will of God and for this
(26:19):
special role, one of the easternfathers refers to the role of
the pope as Cori Phaeus.
Now, in ancient Greek, liketheater, this would be the
person who would lead the songand dance, so he would keep the
tune.
He would lead the song anddance, so he would keep the tune
, he would lead the dance, etcetera, like kind of the band
leader that keeps everybody elsein rhythm.
(26:40):
That's the Pope's role.
He keeps every other bishop onthe same page in rhythm.
That role is still being playedby the Pope today.
So then, the last thing I wouldsay is twice in the history of
the church Second Council ofLyon and then the Council of
Florence.
There were these reunioncouncils and the Council of
(27:01):
Florence was actually successfulfor a while, where the Eastern
Orthodox came back into unionwith the church and confessed,
at an ecumenical council, theauthority of the Pope they
repudiated it later.
The authority of the Pope theyrepudiated it later.
But if ecumenical councils meananything, florence has all the
(27:21):
appearances of being anecumenical council.
It's agreed to by not only theCatholic delegates but the
Eastern Orthodox and the Copticdelegates, the Byzantine emperor
, the patriarch ofConstantinople, like all of that
happens.
And so the very last thing, I'dsay so if you look at
ecumenical councils, they shouldmake you Catholic.
If you look at what?
The early Christians thing?
I'd say so.
If you look at a communitycouncils, they should make you
Catholic.
If you look at what the earlyChristians said about Rome, that
should make you Catholic.
If you look at what scripturesays about Peter, that should
(27:42):
make you Catholic.
But also if you just askyourself logically well, christ
prays that we're all going to beone, where and how is that
going to happen?
It's not going to happen in anyone Protestant denomination.
It's not going to happen inRussian Orthodoxy or Greek
Orthodoxy or any of the othervarious Orthodox churches.
If it's going to happen, it'sgoing to happen under the
earthly authority of the Pope.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I would like to recommend.
We have a book called AnsweringOrthodoxy and we don't have it
here, but you can order it.
Or, if you want to call us andremind us that we had this
conversation, we can just sendyou a copy.
We'd be happy to send it to you, cale.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
Yeah, Michael Lofton and Eric Ibarra have done a lot
of good work on these kind ofquestions.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, Michael Lofton wrote that.
He wrote that book for usAnswering Orthodoxy.
I do want to let folks knowthat if you don't know about us,
you can find us at catholiccom.
Catholiccom is the second mostused Catholic website in the
world after the Vatican's ownwebsite.
It's now in English and inSpanish, so if some of you are
(28:42):
on mission or working with folkswho would like to use the
materials in Spanish, that'savailable.
We have 40 years worth ofquestions and answers about the
Catholic faith there and we aremore or less I mean, I guess our
rule is to answer questions asbest we can, the way the church
(29:02):
answers those using thedocuments of the church,
particularly the catechism ofthe Catholic church and the
Bible, of course.
So check it out at catholiccom,if you would, Cale.
Thank you very much.
Thanks again, guys.
Thank you and Zach, you arenext.
All right, Zach, we're gladyou're here.
Go ahead with your question.
Speaker 7 (29:18):
Hello, I'm Zach, love you guys, Love what you guys do
, listen to you guys all thetime, thank you.
Yeah, I'm from Nebraska.
Just say shout out, go Big Red.
But yeah, my question is Um.
So if sacred scripture, uh, canwe consider Jesus as sacred
scripture If John, the gospel ofJohn and many other parts of
(29:47):
the Bibles?
Bible refers um, refers John or, excuse me, refers Jesus as the
word and as the word of God?
So good, question.
Speaker 4 (29:54):
So we wouldn't call Jesus scripture, we wouldn't
call scripture Jesus.
But there is a relationshipbetween the two.
That word of God refers to therevelation that comes forth from
God, the way the father revealshimself.
He reveals himself in many andvarious ways.
Hebrews 1 says the written formof that.
(30:14):
So the word scripture justmeans writings.
So the written form of God'sself-revelation is what we call
scripture.
So it's something that's calledthe small w word of God.
But the fullness of revelationisn't scripture it's actually
not scripture in traditiontogether.
No, the fullness of revelationis Jesus Christ himself.
He says if you have seen me,you've seen the father.
(30:35):
So the Bible is revelation andJesus is revelation.
But Jesus is the fullness ofrevelation, and so we call them
both the word of God.
We don't call Jesus scripturebecause he's not written, he's
alive, but he's the word of Godthat's living and active,
sharper than any two-edged swordLike that's who?
Jesus is the one who will judgeus.
(30:57):
But yeah, so when you'rereading verses in the Bible
talking about word of God,sometimes we hear that and
immediately think that meansBible, that means revelation,
which could mean the Bible incontext, but other times means
other things, like a part of theBible, or the oral preaching of
the apostles, or Jesus himself.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
All right, thank you, trenton.
Oh no, trenton's next.
Wait, what's that?
Melissa Welcome.
Speaker 4 (31:29):
I wonder why he sent Melissa to the front of the line
.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I think look at that collection of dudes right there.
I think I know why they sentyou to the front of the line.
I think look at that collectionof dudes right there.
I think I know why they sentyou to the front of the line.
Oh, they're all gentlemen, andthey all agreed.
Some of them look bitter.
Melissa, I'd be careful, Walkaway that way.
Don't go back that way.
All right, where are you from?
Speaker 12 (31:47):
I'm from Minnesota originally but I go to North
Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, Nice, at North
Dakota State University in Fargo, North Dakota, Nice.
Warm weather area.
Go ahead with your question,Melissa.
So mine kind of has a bit of apremise.
On my campus there is a fewpeople, but one person
specifically, who just like kindof constantly spams like our
(32:07):
internet pages and like some ofthem are like public servers for
NDSU with like biblical content, and him in specific is a
Baptist, but there's a couplelike evangelical and he likes to
talk about like how theCatholic church is the blank of
Babylon and you know that sortof stuff.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
You can even say the word.
It's in the Bible.
So you're okay to say if youwant to.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
I like that you had the prudence not to find out.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
Yeah right.
Speaker 12 (32:35):
EWT had to be hitting the dumb button on us,
but basically the rest of campusfinds him super annoying and
really obnoxious and it actuallykind of gives us a bad rep
because people give it a quickglance and see a Bible verse and
think, oh my gosh, it's thoseBison Catholics over there.
Basically, my question is howdo we encounter the world and
(32:56):
take criticism and spread thegospel without being seen as
irritating or annoying or likethat guy?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Joe does not know the answer to that.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
I can tell you yeah, I'm generally irritating about
everything.
Talk football with me afterthis.
I'm from Kansas city, I'll beinsufferable, but now I would
say this in second Timothy,chapter two insufferable, but
now I would say this in 2Timothy, chapter 2, st Paul
gives this counsel.
It begins in verse 23.
He says have nothing to do withstupid, senseless controversies
(33:22):
.
You know that they breedquarrels and the Lord's servant
must not be quarrelsome, butkindly to everyone, an apt
teacher, forbearing, correctinghis opponents with gentleness.
God may perhaps grant that theywill repent and come to know
the truth and they may escapefrom the snare of the devil
(33:43):
after being captured by him todo his will.
Now some people listening needto be reminded.
You actually have to correctpeople who are in error
sometimes, and the reason youhave to correct them is because
you love them and you don't wantthem to go to hell.
Like if you're standing in thestreet and a car is coming.
I'm not going to be like.
(34:03):
I don't want to be rude, Idon't even really know Melissa.
I'll be like a car is coming,get out of the road because I
love you enough to not want youto die, even though I don't
really know you.
On the other hand, some of usneed to be reminded to avoid
stupid controversies andquarrelsomeness and all of that
stuff, because we just likefighting and being right.
(34:25):
And then some of us need to bereminded if you're going to
fight, it's okay to haveopponents, it's okay to correct
errors, but you have to do itgently.
So make sure it's not pointless, make sure it's motivated out
of love for their soul and makesure that it's being done gently
(34:46):
.
Those are the ground rules thatSt Paul gives us.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Now there's a lot of St Peter too.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
Oh yeah, St Peter 2, in allgentleness.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
That's right.
In 1 Peter 3, 15, this is, youknow where the word apologetics
comes from is this word defense,apologia?
Always be prepared to give adefense for the hope that is
within you.
But then he goes on.
For the part, nobody likeswhere he tells us how to do it,
and it's to do it, and it's todo it gently and reverently.
(35:15):
We're to act with humility, andso if you are acting in that
way where you're not just likerubbing people's faces in the
truth, but are actually gently,lovingly sharing these things
with people, that's much morewinsome and inviting.
Now, look, know this at theoutset no matter how good of a
job you do and you're going tomake mistakes no matter how good
of a job you're going to do,some people will be annoyed
because you are confronting thefact that they're sinning.
(35:37):
They prefer the deeds ofdarkness to the deeds of light.
They had this reaction to Jesus.
Some people will find itattractive and God will reach
them through your ministry.
So the more you can just bringpeople in with what you love, I
think, the more you can attractthem.
So that's the last thing I'dsay.
We are sometimes called tocorrect, and that's the
(36:00):
uncomfortable work, the muchmore comfortable work is just
the sharing of what God has donein your life, and people are
much less put off by thatBecause that's just like an
amazing witness to why you havejoy and hope.
Does that help?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (36:17):
That works.
Speaker 12 (36:18):
Yeah, thank you so much, thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:19):
Well, thank you very much Thanks for bringing the
question.
I do.
I mean it's harder and harderbecause of the social media
environment.
I mean one of the things weneed a community of people to
help us to be loving.
It's easier to be loving whenyou're in a community of people.
If it's the middle of the nightand you're responding to
someone else's post, it'sactually very easy to be
(36:39):
negative and not to be reverentand gentle.
Speaker 4 (36:42):
It turns out when you are underslept and you should
be in bed and are instead onyour phone.
You make a lot of mistakes, andone of those can be being a
jerk to a random stranger onlinefor no reason.
Yeah, and so a good mentalpractice would be imagine if
someone rang your doorbell orwhatever and then said hey, did
(37:03):
you just say this to me?
And then if you would be like,yes, I did.
Or would you be like I am sosorry Because we can forget that
it's a human being on the otherend I mean, it's like you in
traffic.
You see all those cars youforget there's people in there
who are just scared for theirlife.
Being behind you, it's you knowwe can lose sight of the common
(37:23):
humanity.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Yeah, that is my primary problem too, traffic
Trenton we made you wait, butthank you for waiting.
Oh, you're good.
Speaker 13 (37:31):
So I'm a Catholic, I go to Nebraska.
Can you just get a little?
Speaker 2 (37:34):
closer to the microphone.
Another Nebraska Catholic.
Is there any other kind ofperson in Nebraska, like it's
all Catholics, I guess.
Speaker 13 (37:41):
Actually, the question does come from my
friend.
He's Protestant, oh okay, sohis question was about we were
talking about mother of God,believe it or not.
That always gets brought upbetween Protestants and
Catholics.
So his question was that ifMary is the mother of God and
not the source of the divinityof Jesus, that if Mary is the
mother of God and not the sourceof the divinity of Jesus.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Why does she need to be sinless?
I don't know that needs is theright frame for that, because
God could do things a whole lotof ways.
I'm going to give you a coupleanswers to that.
The first is, if you take outyour Bible and sit down with
your Protestant friends, you gotto put a ribbon in 1 Samuel,
chapter 6 and then Luke 1.
(38:24):
In 1 Samuel, chapter 6, kingDavid arose and went into the
hill country of Judah and he'strying to take the ark into
Jerusalem.
But he can't take the ark.
He didn't do it the right way,he didn't bring the Levites, he
just tries to do it himself.
And the ark is so holy, notbecause it's special apart from
God, but because it has theovershadowing of God.
The ark is so holy that Uzzah,one of the guys with him,
(38:47):
touches the ark and is struckdead.
And so he's stuck there in thehill country of Judah for three
months and he says how can theark of the Lord come to me?
And then he dances before theark when he finally is able to
bring the ark into Jerusalem.
Then read Luke 1.
It says Mary arose and wentwith haste into the hill country
of Judah and she's there forthree months and John the
(39:08):
Baptist dances for joy beforewe're told the mother of my Lord
.
And Elizabeth says why is thisthat the mother of my Lord
should come to me?
And Elizabeth says why is thisthat the mother of my Lord
should come to me?
So she has this much more likeawe-inspired reaction where
David is just kind of impatient.
But you see the clear parallelsand very clearly Mary is being
(39:30):
presented as the Ark of the NewCovenant.
And that's not enough.
Right before that, in Luke 1,when Mary asks how this will be
because she's a virgin, gabrieltells her it'll happen because
the Holy Spirit will overshadowher.
Now that word doesn't mean awhole lot to us, but the Greek
word being used there is theword used in the Septuagint, the
(39:50):
Greek version of the OldTestament, to describe the
overshadowing glory of God abovethe Ark of the Covenant in
places like Exodus 40.
So it's all of this Ark,language and imagery.
And so then you could say well,why couldn't the Ark of God just
have been an ordinary box?
Because it wouldn't have beenappropriate, like the whole
reason the temple is built isbecause David has a good sense
(40:13):
to realize it's not appropriatethat the glory of God should
just be in a tent.
So the ark is placed in aglorious temple.
Well, likewise, when God comesinto the world, he could have
done it through like the worst,most sinful woman who'd ever
lived.
But that wouldn't have beenfitting, it wouldn't have been
appropriate for the grandeur ofGod.
You wouldn't put the ark in alavatory right, you put the ark
(40:39):
in a temple, and likewise youput the glory of God in an ark.
So hopefully that makes sense.
Yeah, that was perfect.
Well, I've got one more reasonas well.
If Mary's a sinner, it wouldseem now this is more
speculative.
So do with this what you will.
It would seem that Jesus wouldbe owed original sin, and so
(41:02):
then he would have to savehimself, and that is absolutely
inappropriate.
He is the sinless one, he's theperfect one by his very nature,
his human and divine nature.
So I would say those two thingswould be where I'd go.
Thank you guys.
Thank you Chetan.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
I think we.
Are you going to give awaymerchandise to people?
What are you doing over there?
You got merchandise to giveaway.
I think they're going to throwit out to you.
In the meantime, why don't youcome on up and ask your question
?
Speaker 6 (41:28):
Hello, my name is McGivney Swanson.
I'm another Nebraskan Catholic,really Uh-huh.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
Boy Boy.
Catholic Radio must be powerfulup there.
It's very good.
You guys do a great job.
I love listening to you.
It's on us Spirit CatholicRadio.
They're great.
Speaker 6 (41:41):
But go ahead with your question.
Okay, my question for you is Iknow that the Orthodox Church
has the real presence of theEucharist.
I'm not quite sure about theAnglican Church, but I went and
toured one today and I wasn'tquite sure if I was supposed to
kneel or how I was supposed toact in the church because of the
real presence, Like what is theappropriate way to act?
(42:04):
Good, question.
Speaker 4 (42:05):
So the Orthodox have valid sacraments and, as a
result, they have the Eucharist,and so, yeah, you should
approach.
I mean, the Eucharist is theEucharist.
It isn't like Orthodox Jesus isover there, it's just Jesus and
so reverence him as you wouldJesus.
The Anglicans do not have validholy orders.
(42:26):
Pope Leo was very clear thattheir orders are absolutely null
and utterly void.
Now to be clear originally theAnglicans did have holy orders.
Like when Henry VIII broke awayfrom the church, they still had
valid holy orders.
You can have a priesthood evenif you're in schism, like when
Henry VIII broke away from thechurch, they still had valid
holy orders.
You can have a priesthood evenif you're in schism, like when
the northern and southern tribesin Israel break.
There are still priests in bothplaces.
(42:48):
The problem is the rite ofordination was changed after the
Reformation to make it nolonger a priesthood but
something closer to like aProtestant pastor.
And the church said we don'tfind that to be valid and so we
don't recognize their sacraments, and so because of that, most
Anglicans don't even think thatthey have transubstantiation.
(43:10):
The 39 articles that theAnglican use kind of loosely as
a confession of faith calltransubstantiation a blasphemous
fable or blasphemoussuperstition Maybe this is the
language, but they explicitlyreject that.
They have a valid Eucharist,basically.
But you will find someAnglo-Catholics who still think
(43:32):
they do, but they don't haveholy orders any more than you or
I do, like if I went home anddecided to say the words of
institution.
That isn't how that works.
I can't just make the Eucharistby saying the right words.
I don't have the spiritualauthority to do that and,
unfortunately, neither do theAnglicans.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
That got you what you wanted to get to.
Yeah, great answer.
Very good, thank you very, verymuch.
Thank you, I think we're aboutto come to the end here.
I want to thank our guest, joeHeschmeyer.
I hope you will check out Joe'swork at shamelessjoecom.
Shameless Potpourri is thepodcast and it's growing in
popularity because of this,because Joe does this with great
(44:11):
good humor and also with depthof insight.
I want to thank the guys fromMax Studios for the wonderful
audio and video that they wereable to provide us.
Thank you very much and thankyou all for helping us to make a
radio program.
We really are grateful.
You can check us out everyafternoon.
We're on 6 to 8 pm Eastern time, 3 to 5 pm Pacific.
(44:31):
You figure out where we're onwhere you are, and please check
us out at catholiccom.
Like I said, I'm Cy Kellett,the host, and I'm super grateful
.
Thanks very, very much forcoming.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Thanks for listening to this episode recorded live at
SEEK.
Miss the conference or want torelive your favorite moments?
Seek Replay has you coveredAccess, powerful keynotes,
inspiring talks and exclusivecontent to take your faith
deeper, anytime, anywhere.
Head to seekfocusorg backslashreplay to download now.
(45:08):
And don't forget to join us forSeek 26.
Check out seekfocusorg for moreinformation and to register.
Popular Podcasts
Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club
Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese’s Book Club — the podcast where great stories, bold women, and irresistible conversations collide! Hosted by award-winning journalist Danielle Robay, each week new episodes balance thoughtful literary insight with the fervor of buzzy book trends, pop culture and more. Bookmarked brings together celebrities, tastemakers, influencers and authors from Reese's Book Club and beyond to share stories that transcend the page. Pull up a chair. You’re not just listening — you’re part of the conversation.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com