Understanding Catholicism with Bishop Bryan Ouellette and Fr. Chris Yates

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:34):
And at.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
A good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whichever the case

(01:50):
may be. For all of you listening out there across
the crazy planet Earth, Welcome to Vestiges after Dark, and
I'm your host, Bishop Brian will Let, coming to you

(02:10):
lie from the deep woods of western Georgia on this
November eleventh, twenty twenty five. Well, if you haven't noticed,
Catholicism's a pretty complicated religion. We're going to try to

(02:30):
simplify that for you with the time that we have
available to us tonight. Brandon's got a lot of questions
and some of these cannot be answered quickly, so we're
going to knock these out the best that we can
tonight on Vestiges after Dark. Well, hello, everybody, Welcome again

(03:57):
to Vestiges after Dark. I am your host, Bishop Brian
will Let, with my co host Jamie Wolf.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
Hey, everybody, I am back.

Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yes, she is back from her little trip. Was it
a good one?

Speaker 3 (04:07):
It was good, had a little bit of everything. It's
always good to see family. Driving back the snow was fun.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, you went. You left during a pretty cool snap.
You know, it got pretty cold out. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I took two days to drive back and it snowed
both days, but nothing stuck really.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
So not too too bad. Yeah, it's not actually in
the northern part of the state here. It didn't get
it down this way, but.

Speaker 3 (04:29):
There was in Alabama actually, and uh, Kentucky, you saw snow,
plenty plenty of snow.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
I'm glad you made it back safely. And uh, we're
you know, the show misses you when you're not here.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
Settled to the middle and hard.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
I understand, I understand We've got a great show for
you tonight, and I don't want to take too much time.
In fact, we're not even going to do questions from
the ether tonight because the whole show is answering questions,
common questions, uh, questions that lead to a lot of
misconceptions about Catholicism. So tonight, Father Chris and I and
the rest of our panel are going to do our

(05:04):
best to try to clarify some of these misconceptions, and
we'll see where it takes us. I think it's going
to be a good show. I can already tell that
people are up for it, so I know from the
feedback I got that there's a lot of interest in
this particular episode. So looking forward to bringing that to
you tonight, But I did want to start off tonight
by mentioning something that kind of bothered me and alarmed

(05:26):
me that Tracy brought to my attention. For those of
you who might not know, I think I'll have everybody
on this show knows. But Tracy's my wife, and she's
more involved with the TikTok social media scene than I am.
That we do have a well extracist Bishop does have
a TikTok presence, but it's mostly just to promote this show.

(05:49):
We used to be able to stream to it. I
don't know what happened. We've never been able to re
establish that connection, and TikTok tech support is about as
useless as a rock. So you know, well, I mean
there is a place to go for support. But did
they answer. I'd be damned that they do. I never
got a response back as to what was wrong. There's

(06:09):
no strikes against the account, so there shouldn't be any
issues there. I don't know why it's not connecting, but
it's more trouble than it's worth to me. Although I
have to say the majority of our audience, our live audience,
was from TikTok, so maybe it isn't my best interest
to figure out how to get that fixed. I don't know,
but anyway, people do all sorts of things on TikTok

(06:30):
that are somewhat disturbing, and this was an issue that
really struck me in a way that left me with
the feeling that I had to clarify it. So in
the spirit of this episode tonight, I think it's a
good way to start us off. Essentially, what it is
is that there's this woman on TikTok that decided that

(06:50):
she's going to go and shame all the churches. You know,
she's been empowered with some self proclaimed authority I guess,
to go out there using the methods of entrapment to
call churches. I guess she records these from what I understand,
and puts them on TikTok, where she calls asking churches

(07:13):
for help to feed her baby or to you know,
she's homeless or something like this, and any church that
says they help, she promotes them as this is a
good church. And if they say that they are not
going to help, then she blacklists them and then they
get like bombed with all sorts of bad reviews and
everything else. And so I thought to myself, Look, this

(07:36):
is something that we all churches deal with, Jamie knows
are Voicemail is usually filled with people asking us to
pay their rent and all of these other requests that
people make. These are people we do not know. They're
not part of our community, they're not part of the network.
They probably don't even know who we are. They just

(07:59):
want them. And so my feeling is number one, what
in what universe do you think it's okay to contact
a church you don't even go to and ask for money.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
Well, there is a such thing, a very good fraud
thing that's been going around for several years, even before COVID,
where scammers actually will scam these churches out of money. Yeah,
blatant frauds.

Speaker 2 (08:24):
And that's the big issue is that you don't know
who you're dealing with. So a lot of churches that
are probably saying no, of which we would be one
of them, not because we don't want to help somebody
in need, but because we don't know who you are
from squat and you know, and.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
We already have a shoestring budget.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
Yeah, I mean the budget's already very very strapped. I
mean we do keep an emergency fund budget for things
like this, but we have to be able to confirm
that it's a legitimate need. And we tend to reserve
those funds for our own community because it is so
small and the in the resource that come into this
ministry are so small that we can't just throw it

(09:03):
to the wind. And but but what bothers me more
so is what why would you think that you're entitled
to the money of a church that you don't go
to Number one? Number two? What gives you the right
to go in and trap people and to to use
this as as fuel for your own personal vendetta against

(09:26):
religion Because I think she's doing it to mosques too,
if I'm not.

Speaker 3 (09:30):
Mistake obviously anti religion. Yeah, probably her feelings for something.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
I don't know, but I'll tell you it really pissed
me off. So the fact of the matter is just
because a church might tell you no, doesn't mean that
they don't want to help you. Not to mention that
a lot of churches have specializations, this is one of them.
We don't we we do. We don't have a homeless ministry.

(09:55):
We don't have a feed the Hungry ministry, our ministry.
Spiritual problem resolution so all of our limited resources go
towards that. There are other churches and other nonprofits out there,
Christian nonprofits and other other kinds that do work in
a specialized way with these particular populations. So the appropriate

(10:18):
thing is to call an organization that deals with this
and if they tell you no, well then you've got
a bigger argument for maybe the you know, what are
they doing in business?

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Then?

Speaker 2 (10:29):
But I mean to just call random churches as a
random person to places you don't go, don't intend to go,
and disingenuously calling them with a fraudulent sorry, just to
see what their response is going to be is your
I mean, you think you got the moral high ground here.
I'm sorry, lady, I don't. I'm not even gonna give
you the account or anything not that I have it.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
I'm not.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I didn't want it because I'm not going to promote
this idiot. But this is this is absolutely reprehensible behavior.
And I think, well, I mean, I think let's hear
what Father Chris all the way out there in Australia
has to say about this. Father, what do you think
about this?

Speaker 4 (11:09):
I think, first of all, the church doesn't need any
help from her to be to be shamed.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
I think we've we've been very good at.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
Shaming ourselves for a very long time anybody else's help.

Speaker 5 (11:24):
So it's an act of hubris to think you can
shame the church.

Speaker 4 (11:28):
But I think the other thing I'd say is that
it's actually the sign of the times. This is very
postmodern thinking because you cannot demand charity.

Speaker 5 (11:40):
It's an oxymoron. Demanding charity is an oxymoron.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
So for people that don't understand what an oxymoron is,
charity is something in order to put for an act
of love to be carritass.

Speaker 5 (11:54):
That's the that's the.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Latin word for love we're using in this sense that
we translated charity. It has to be freely given, freely offered.
And so by demanding something, you actually steal somebody else's
opportunity of showing charity towards you. So I mean no surprising.
It's completely unmoored from from Christian thinking. But then, to

(12:18):
be honest, a lot of Christians are unmoored from this
way of thinking as well. Why it's why you have
think things. And I don't want to get too political
about it. When people say healthcare is a human right,
it's like, no, it's not actually because because you're demanding
somebody else's labor. So that's not It can't be a
right if it depends on somebody else's labor. Now it's

(12:40):
right to say that caring about people's health is a charitable,
Christian loving thing to do, yes, But people have these
terms overlapped and the end up divorce of all meaning.
And in the end you get somebody who thinks the
best use of her life is to try and embarrass

(13:03):
organizations that are at least doing something to try and
help other people, even if it's, well, sorry, it will
always be imperfect. Imagine if she put the same effort
into offering charity towards other people instead of trying to
mock people who are maybe less perfect than she wishes
they were.

Speaker 5 (13:22):
And this is the difference between the Western Christian way
of thinking, the traditional Western Christian way of thinking, and postmodernity.
Post Modernity uses.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
The same words that come from that tradition but devalues
them of all meaning.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's not even a Christian. To
be honest, I would guess that she's not. I don't
know anything about this person, but you know, but if
you are, if you, if you are part of a
church and you have anything to do with answering the phones,
be prepared that there's somebody out there.

Speaker 5 (13:59):
Thing you know. You know when I was a parish priest.

Speaker 4 (14:05):
And look and this this is different I think for
Protestant churches that are very much stand alone, like you know,
this building in this congregation is the whole church. That's
not true of like Anglicans and Lutherans and Catholics and
Orthodox So moving beyond theology, just a structure of those churches.

Speaker 5 (14:22):
I've just named.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
It meant that if somebody came to my parish church
and said, oh, you know, I need money to do X, well,
we didn't give money out from.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Our parish church. It's a really bad idea, by the way,
especially when you live on the premises. We did give food.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
We always had a stocked pantry from which we would
give people food parcels, and in fact we did it
formerly every Monday. You know, they'd go and register another
not for profit. They'd then refer them to us and
we'd give them, you know, and we did more than that.
We gave Christmas presents for their families at Christmas because
we'd know the rough ages and sexes of their children

(14:59):
and that sort of thing. So so we give food. I
wouldn't give money, but there were other organizations that were
part of our diocees that did. And so you know,
bringing up an individual church and saying, you know, can
you give me food and clothing and money and fuel
and you know, everything that is possible and a roof

(15:19):
over my head and a fridge like you know, no,
no one church is ever going to be able, nor
should they provide all of those things that you know. Actually,
if in this dream world that she has in her
mind that if she phones up a church they can
give it everything that she needs, that would be to
be indulging somebody who's doing nothing to help themselves. So

(15:45):
it's actually it's bad Christianity anyway to give people everything
they need.

Speaker 5 (15:49):
But you know, my view is what's the minimum thing? Well,
I'm not going to let someone starve. If someone if
someone is starving, I'll give them something to eat.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Yeah, you know that's my with like homeless people I
see on the street, I'll give you food or I'll
buy you food and bring it to you, but I'm not.

Speaker 5 (16:05):
Giving your coffee.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Money. You can make them vulnerable too. Well, that's it.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's the reality of it is that the corporal works
of mercy which are being what's being applied here, say
nothing about giving money to go and get these things yourself.
It's about providing these things in their material form to
people that need them. So, you know, clothing the naked

(16:30):
is about getting them clothes, not buying them clothes. Feeding
the hungry is about getting them food, not buying them food,
or you know, giving them money to buy their own food.
It's it's that's not the corporal works of mercy. That's
not part of the gospel requirement.

Speaker 4 (16:47):
We were also we used to do like a thing
on the you know, once a month where a local
business who's been successful, they contacted means, so you want
to give back, right, So they decided they were going
to host like an evening meal at their place, and
we would go. Representatives of our church would go, and yes,
we would invite people who perhaps couldn't eat that night,

(17:09):
but also people who are lonely, you know. And the
whole idea was, and this is what makes it different
from a government check is they're coming for a meal
and we're not patronizing, and we're sitting with them, eating, talking,
asking how they are, and you start to build a community.

Speaker 5 (17:23):
And this is the essence of what the Christian Gospel
calls for.

Speaker 4 (17:26):
It's not about, you know, a one off handout to
you know, John Smith, You'll never see again, you know,
is about if somebody.

Speaker 5 (17:35):
Really is.

Speaker 4 (17:37):
Distressed, the symptom of needing food and clothing and someone
to stay. They are symptoms. There's a bigger disease, and
that is a spiritual disease. And that is where the
church comes in. I mean to a large extent, and
it's partly ruined Western culture. The government does all of
those other things now, which I think is a shame.
I think it'd be better if churches in cinema.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
Well, it should be church. I'm not you know, I'm
a strong advocate for nonprofit healthcare, but I don't feel
it should be a government thing. I think it should
be back in the hands of the church where it belongs.

Speaker 5 (18:10):
It removes the charity, it does move the act.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
It sure does absolutely. Joining us from Tennessee, we have
Brandon milem loaded with questions about Catholicism. How are you
doing tonight? How are you doing tonight? Brandon?

Speaker 6 (18:24):
I'm doing pretty good. I think. I don't think I
saw the exact post you're talking about from TikTok, but
it had been shared with me. How I think this
woman had contacted like thirty to thirty four different going viral.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
Yeah, it's going viral.

Speaker 6 (18:42):
Yeah, I think one of them was actually a Buddhist temple,
if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, but yeah, it was a
bunch of Christian churches, Protestant, couple of Catholic, Buddhist mosque
or too.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
She should get a season desist letter for harassment, because
I feel that's what that is, honestly, Yeah, exactly, you know.
I mean, we're public, so it's possible she might my Okay,
so we've got about I think if last count was
forty three questions, that would mean we'd have to do

(19:19):
about one every two minutes. I don't think you want
a two minute answer for each of these. So what
we're going to do is we'll try our best, We'll
try to be concise as much as possible, and we'll
go into detail or extended conversation about this if there
is a need for it. Not every question is going
to require full answer, but the way we're going to

(19:41):
do this. I talked with Brandon about it. We had
a few different ideas. I was originally going to do
just a timer with a buzzer and then when it's up,
it's up, and we go on to the next one.
But Brandon felt that you all would much prefer a
more detailed, complete response. So what we decided to do
is in the first hour, we're going to try to
do categories one and two, and then the second hour

(20:04):
we will do three and four, and I think there's
six categories, so five and six in the third hour,
and it will get through as many of them as
we can as time allows, and anything we don't get
to can become part of next season's Catholicism episode. We'll
just do another one, okay, So Brandon, let's go ahead
and jump right in here with your first one. I've

(20:27):
got my list, so try to keep them somewhat in
order so that I don't lose I got notes on
each one of these, so I don't forget to say, okay, good, good,
good good.

Speaker 6 (20:36):
I will do my best. So the first category is
of Saints, Saint Mary and prayer. First question is why
do Catholics pray to saints instead of to God.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Okay, So Catholics do not pray to saints. The problem
is in the vernacular. And you know how I talk
about semantics all the time. It is common for Catholics
to use an improper vernacular to say, oh, pray to
Saint Jude because you've got this hopeless case, or pray
to you know, whomever you know, Bring to Saint Michael

(21:09):
because you're afraid of the devil.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (21:12):
It's not praying to even though that's what they call it.
It is asking for their intercession. It is for Protestant ears.
Here's how you can understand it. It is absolutely no
different than when you ask one of your church brethren
to pray for you because you're going through a hard time.

(21:34):
Why don't you just go to Jesus? Why do you
need their prayers for Why do churches sit up prayerless.
Why because God commands us to pray for each other.
And that's part of the church requirement. And understand that
for Catholics, this is the part that Protestants cannot seem
to wrap their heads around, and they need to is
that those in heaven are more alive than we are.

(21:57):
They are not divorced from the church just because they're now.

Speaker 4 (22:02):
It's only different in one aspect, which is that they're
in the full presence of God.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
Yeah we're not.

Speaker 2 (22:09):
So yeah, which would give them, would give their prayers
I think a little edge because they can pray more
perfectly than we can.

Speaker 4 (22:18):
It's more it's more important to ask them than it
is your friends in church.

Speaker 5 (22:21):
But it's good to ask both.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
Yeah, but that's it. So that's that's what it is.
It's not praying to, it's asking prayers for and they
are part of the church. They are not dead. They
are alive in Christ and if you have faith in
the Gospel message, you should know this. This is what
baffles me. They're like, why do you pray to dead people?
It's like they're not dead number one, number two were

(22:44):
not praying to then were asking them to pray for us?
Quite very different, very different in their respect.

Speaker 4 (22:50):
I mean it does I won't delay it too much,
but but I guess for Protestants who believe in essentially
comatose sleep until the perusia, then for them they think, well, no, well,
they're just kind of they're not They're not alive in
the sense of being awake and conscious and able to pray.

(23:12):
If they believe that, then their question at least makes sense.
But of course what they believe is not true.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Now I can tell you as a former Protestant, that's
how we were raised that that you don't pray to Mary,
you don't pray to the saints because it's it's idolatry,
or it's it's you know, praying to dead people. Yeah,
they don't think you should pray for the dead. So
that that's pretty much across the board.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
And so yeah, that's exactly it. So hopefully that clarifies it.
And Brandon, I'm gonna just rely on you. If there's
something that you feel needs further elaboration, let me know. Otherwise,
just move on to the next question.

Speaker 6 (23:56):
We actually got that pretty quick and painless. Okay, question
is why do Catholics worship.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Married Okay, this will require a little bit more explanation theologically,
but again this is a semantics problem. Catholics do not
worship Mary, They venerate Mary. Those are two very different concepts,
and what makes it even more difficult is that there
are some translations of veneration in which worship can be

(24:26):
used or has been used in times past, which further
confuses the issue. But what you're talking about is not
so much worship or veneration. The word you really should
be using is adoration, because when you're talking about what
is do God alone, is adoration, not worship, not veneration, adoration.
The problem is America, American English semantics. But it really

(24:50):
is America. I think that's the problem here. English semantics
in the modern day is so screwed up. Like when
we were talking this season about soul and spirit and
how these are being used interchangeably. Worship adoration is used interchangeably,
and when you're trying to prove this kind of point
and say do it at I got youa kind of

(25:12):
moment against the Catholic then they get mixed with veneration too. Well.

Speaker 4 (25:17):
If I could just use I think we'd all agree
that the sixteen sixty two Book of Common Prayer is
not a Catholic book. Yeah, okay, it's a Protestant book,
a result a result of the English Reformation, you know.

Speaker 5 (25:31):
I mean, I won't boy with the details of how
it's produced. We really should call it.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
The fifteen fifty two, but we'll call it the sixteen
sixty two in the marriage service or the service of
holy matrimony.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (25:44):
The man says, with my body I the worship.

Speaker 2 (25:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
Okay, so this is a Protestant book. He uses the
word worship between a man and a woman. Does anybody
think that they meant that the man was creating an
eyed lot of his wife or vice versa?

Speaker 2 (26:05):
Right?

Speaker 5 (26:06):
No, So the word worship is is a is a
slippery word here?

Speaker 2 (26:11):
It is? It is And this is where you get
into problems when you start translating from you know, Greek
and Latin.

Speaker 4 (26:18):
Where is where American Catholics also screw up? Oh yeah,
because what we're saying is Catholic teaching is not that
we are making an eye lot of mary. But that's
not to say that individual Catholics might not make him
an eye lot of Mary.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
So the best the best words to use here are
going to be theological terms. Okay. So if you need
to use English, then use adoration when you're talking about worship,
because it's not worship you mean, it means, it's adoration
you mean. And that word is lata. Okay. That's a
very specific type of worship that has due God alone.

(26:54):
The what is applied to Mary is called hyperdulia. Okay,
that is the very specific kind of veneration because of
her unique role as Theotokos. And then there's Dulia, which
is the veneration of the saints. In veneration in the
sense of it's honor given to those who won the battle.
They won the fight, they thought they fought the good fight,
and they beat it, so they deserve to be honored

(27:18):
for that. It's no different than to use a very
I guess you could say secular example. Then at the Olympics,
when you give someone a gold medal for being the best,
that's a type of veneration. It's almost a type of
Dulia in a way of saying, you know, we're recognizing
your great achievement.

Speaker 5 (27:38):
Or if you call a judge your honor.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Yeah, that's that's a good.

Speaker 5 (27:41):
One, you know, I mean all amazing me.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
In Australia, they got this thing where they hate titles,
you know, so they got rid of knighthoods. Oh you know,
cal you know, we have some legacy ones because it's
still like if you live in the Commonwealth, you can
be called it.

Speaker 5 (27:56):
So if you're listening, King Charles, I'll have plead be
called sir. In Australia, if you give you a knighthood,
except I can't. I'm a priest.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
So there you go. That's the father christis and for
tonight everybody.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
But you know, but politicians here are if they're a minister,
called the honorable, right, and like, does anyone think they're
actually honorable?

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (28:22):
Right, no, But this is a term that we're using,
you know, so we use terms like this all the time.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
What the Pope your holiness? I mean, it's it's it's
there's no person that could possibly be called holy. I mean,
not even the pope, maybe especially the pope.

Speaker 5 (28:39):
It's like an ironic title.

Speaker 2 (28:40):
It is an ironic title, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (28:42):
When they give them the politicians honorable senator yo?

Speaker 6 (28:45):
Yo?

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Right?

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Yeah, I mean come on, honorable.

Speaker 6 (28:49):
So there you go, Brandon, could you clarify what theotokos
means in relation to.

Speaker 2 (28:57):
S Mary god bearers Greek for God bearr okay. So basically,
because she held the incarnation, she held the very body
of Christ in her womb, then she bore God. So
theo tokos god bearer and.

Speaker 4 (29:17):
Her and her divine you know, her yes to God
is why she's highly venerated.

Speaker 5 (29:22):
Exactly, Hyperdulia, because she And this is where you know,
the Pope or rather the.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
Holy See, have issued something which is sort of just
dampening down some of the sort of stronger sort of
terms for Mary, like codemp trics mediatrix.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:43):
I don't have a massive problem with it, but but
I know it causes problems and so and because this
is placing too much on her. The reason this is
a problem is not because of you know, look, if
anyone's worried about loving the blessed Virgin Mary too much,
I think it's unlikely that Jesus Christ is going to

(30:05):
punish you for loving his mom too much, right, just
think about that. So, so don't worry too much. But
it is about devaluing two things. First of all, the
uniqueness of Jesus Christ, who is God incarnate.

Speaker 5 (30:19):
So Mary is.

Speaker 4 (30:20):
In no way comparable to God incarnate. But it also
if somehow she has this sort of mystical nature that's
different from ours, which is not true, that's not Catholic teaching,
then her yes is reduced, her yes to God, her
consent to to you know, let it be.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
I mean, when we say Hail Mary full of grace,
we're not We're not trying to indicate that she was
given something greater than anybody else had. We we're acknowledging
that her willingness to do the will of God was
so complete that that literally filled her with gray because
she was so willing to receive it. Is what that
means so kind of important to understand these concepts. They're

(31:07):
very subtle, and I think people take them for granted,
you know, particularly both Catholics and Protestants, because if you
grow up as a cradle Catholic, you definitely take it
for granted. You grew up hearing this stuff all your
life and you don't think about it anymore. It's just
second nature and you don't really take the time to
understand what it all means, so you can't really explain
it very well if someone were to ask you, which
is part of the problem here, because Protestants do ask

(31:30):
these questions and sometimes do not get good answers back. Protestants,
on the other hand, have never heard these things, and
this seems like wild stuff to them, because the Protestant
Reformation removed all of this detail and sophistication from the
theology and was contented to do.

Speaker 4 (31:46):
Was not the intention of many of those reforms, wasn't so.
Martin Luther, John Calvin not the leaders anyway, had very
strong Marian.

Speaker 5 (31:57):
Veneration.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
That's true. That's a very good point, very good point.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
So they were, you know, John Calvin would find it
astounding that a Presbyterian today would would find the term
theotokos disturbing.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, all right, what's our next one?
I see Paul's got a question there, PAULA, go ahead
and ask it. Brandon will write it down and we'll
take it at the top of the next hour. What's
our next one?

Speaker 6 (32:24):
Okay, so the next one you already basically touched on it.
If you all wanted to add anything more to it,
you can. What's the difference between veneration and worship.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, surprisingly, we kind of covered that. So Latria is
the adoration due to God alone. Dulia is the honor
given to the saints for winning the good you know,
fighting the good fight and winning it. Hyperdulia is reserved
for the blessed Virgin, for her unique role in the
history of salvation. That's what it all means.

Speaker 5 (32:52):
Adoration.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
Actually, we should we should say another thing about that,
which is that adoration is the highest form of prayer.
So an adoration is simply saying God, I love you
because you're God. You know, that's really adoration.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
But we're so bad with words so farther because I
mean people will say, oh, I adore you, I adore
that singer, I adore that that that vacation, you know,
I mean, we use that word so haphazardly. This is
the problem with with more than that.

Speaker 4 (33:26):
You know, a lot, a lot of a lot of
prayer that I hear, or people ask me for prayers,
they're all petitionary prayers. Now there's nothing wrong with it,
with nothing wrong with petitionary prayers as in asking God
for something, you.

Speaker 5 (33:38):
Know, but actually the highest form of prayers adoration.

Speaker 4 (33:41):
You know why the mass becomes the mass becomes so
discomforting to people who all their life have been nurtured
that you just go to God to ask for things
like he's a like he's a divine gumball machine to
use an American term.

Speaker 5 (33:57):
See I'm good at translating. But but actually the highest
form is adoration, and that's what that's what you see
in the mass. You know, the mass is always a
prayer of adoration. It involves petition, It involves, you know.

Speaker 4 (34:09):
But it's always a prayer of adoration, which is why
the culmination is the is the elevation of of of
the you, of the of the gifts that God gives us,
so of the Eucharist. So adoration is actually maybe not
done enough in Protestant churches.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
You know, in all my years of being a priest,
and you know people, one of the things that people do,
they are always asking you to pray for something. I
have never had anyone ever in all my years, ask
me to pray thanksgiving for something. Never they never said,
can you can you? Can you thank God? Could you
offer my thanksgiving to God at this next mass? Never?

(34:46):
No one ever asked that. It's always for something, always.

Speaker 5 (34:49):
For the healing of the healing of the ten.

Speaker 4 (34:53):
You know, when Jesus heals ten ten blokes and then
he says, you know, I think one comes back to
say thank you.

Speaker 2 (35:01):
Yeah, I know, right. It reminds you of that, it does.
That's a good one that we had that not too
long ago in the electionary. Okay, Brandon, what's our next one?

Speaker 6 (35:10):
Why do Catholics have statues and pictures of saints? Is
that not idolatry?

Speaker 2 (35:14):
So this is a good one because it kind of
leads in from where we just were. So just like
I said, as an example, that there's not really a
moral difference between asking a saint to pray for you
who can do so, as Father Chris pointed out, far
more perfectly than we can for each other. Not to
mention that the church is commanded to pray for each other.
And you know we're all required to do this. That

(35:37):
doesn't go away. It's our job, that's right. So just
like you would do that for a brethren in church,
you'd be like, you know, I'm having this tough time.
Can you pray for me? You know? And no one
would ever turn that down, Protestant or Catholic, right, same
thing goes here. Okay, When you have the pictures of saints,
whether they be icons or statues or something of that nature,

(35:59):
it is remember their exemplary lives to inspire you, the
same way that you might put a picture of your
dad on your fireplace. Maybe someone who's passed on that
you want to remember. Why would you do that? They're dead, right,
they're gone. Why you why would you waste your time
doing that? But you remember these things because it brings

(36:20):
back or invokes within you something that is meaningful there.
It is no different here. And let's not forget that.
While a lot of Protestants like to cite this as
a form of idolatry because they'll go into like you know,
Exodus and everything else. Also in Exodus, though, sacred images
are made, okay, because what does he command them to

(36:43):
do with the cheruboom on the arc of the covenant, right,
or how about the staff that Moses carries. These are images,
but they're sacred images, and that is okay. And the
most important thing to remember about this theologically speaking, is
that the point of God, you know, in the idea
that no images would be allowed, was for two reasons.

(37:07):
Number one, that God couldn't be contained by an image,
so therefore any image that you'd make of him would
would be deficient in some way and could not possibly
honor him. This was in the course Old Testament thinking.
And then the second reason was that we, being made
in his image, reflect some of that perfection, even if
we're not perfect, and therefore that also cannot be properly

(37:30):
honored in any way. It wasn't until Christ became incarnate
that then the invisible God now becomes visible to us,
and that changes this dynamic. You can't apply perfectly Old
Testament thinking to New Testament sensibilities because it's a new
Covenant for a reason, right.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
Which is the same reason that prositants feel able to
eat bacon, yes, and Catholics.

Speaker 5 (37:57):
Two, I mean, you know, food is declary clean.

Speaker 2 (38:00):
Here mone Easter. In fact, it's herem Easter.

Speaker 5 (38:06):
That's a bizarre thing that you're not doing. You have
lamb at Easter, but you know, you know you.

Speaker 4 (38:13):
But also, like the word veneration itself, we say we
venerate them because the Church literally calls them venerable. So
I mean technically we say, you know, venerable, and then
it's you know, venerable servant of God, you know, and
then saying you know, but what does venerable mean? So
we get the word generation from it. It means worthy

(38:34):
of reverence. So these are the saints who's live, like
you said, exemplize. Their lives are worthy of reverence because
they've they've finished the race.

Speaker 5 (38:44):
You know.

Speaker 4 (38:45):
And so and another thing I'd say is, actually we're
also allowed to have images of non beat of five
people around us as well.

Speaker 5 (38:53):
M You think, what do I.

Speaker 4 (38:56):
Mean by that. I mean, do you have pictures of
your parents, your children, your brothers, your sisters, your friends
around the house.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
You know, some people got a picture of Donald Trump
on their wall.

Speaker 5 (39:10):
People all time a portrait of the king on the wall.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Yeah, exactly. Well that's a little bit different though, because
I mean they do take on a different meaning I
think than the president of the US, you know, so.
But still, but the point is, people do it. People
do they put politicians on their wealth they.

Speaker 3 (39:27):
Like any houses where Obama has a place.

Speaker 2 (39:29):
Yeah, Obama too. Yeah, there always there's always somebody that
has that.

Speaker 4 (39:32):
But if you have pictures of your of your you know,
your dead grandma, arat, well, why wouldn't you, Why wouldn't you?
You know, then what's the problem with having the blessed
Virsion Mary on the wall as well?

Speaker 2 (39:44):
I mean, particularly since you're dealing with again, a person
with an exemplary life, somebody that is an a representation
of what you're striving to become. I mean, it's it's inspiration.
I mean what about people that do have for me? Right,
they put like words of encouragement all over their office
to remind themselves to stay positive. I mean, that's a

(40:06):
type of therapy. I mean, it's the same thing. So
I'm so negative. I don't do that either, but I
know that it is something that some psychologists tell people
to do when they're having depressive issues. So I've never
tried it. I don't get depressed terribly often, though, so
I mean, I'm kind of very very I'm not terribly
happy all the time, not terribly depressed all the time.

(40:28):
I don't really think about affirmations, but I know people
do it, you know, so it is a way to
stay inspired. That's the basic answer, all right.

Speaker 6 (40:39):
So the next one is why ask saints for help
when we can go directly to Jesus.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Well, again, we kind of covered that too. It's like,
why ask your your the guy sitting next to you
in the pew to pray for you and your family
because you're going to a rough time. You can go
directly to Jesus too. The point is the church is
one body first Corinthians chapter twelve. Okay, the church is
one body and the prayers are meant to glorify God

(41:09):
together as one cohesive unit. Christ empowered the church in
this way because he didn't want it to be a
one sided, lopsided type of relationship. It was a relationship
as the community. This is the big problem with this
personal relationship with Jesus nonsense that a lot of evangelicals

(41:30):
have gotten into, because what it does is it creates
Jesus as your own personal plaything. He's your little buddy,
all right, and it's only you and him that matter.
That's not the church.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
It ends it ends up being self worship.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
It is exactly right.

Speaker 5 (41:46):
It really, it really is idolatry. You know, you actually
reduced God to you.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yep, yep, that's exactly right.

Speaker 4 (41:54):
So you know, just like God can't be contained in
the pages of a Bible, contained in the mind of
one man either exactly.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
And to reiterate what we said before, the saints being
in the perfection of God having won the race, as
Saint Paul would have put it, they are finished the race,
I should say, they can pray more perfectly. They're not
inhibited by the imperfections of the fallen nature. They've been restored.

(42:25):
They are the Church triumphant. They exist in the beatific vision.
I mean, you can't pray more perfectly than that. So
why would you not want somebody that is in that
particular position to be able to offer whatever intercessions you
might have on your behalf in that particular way that
you can't possibly do. So that's the whole point of it.

(42:46):
But let's you don't even have to get that ethereal
with it. It's no more than the church is commanded
to serve each other, right, We're here to help each other.
Prayers are a big part of that. This is no
different than that. It is to pray, that's what the
church does.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
Connected connected to it, though, is actually something really important.
In order to, you know, ask for the intercession of
a particular saint, you need to know of their existence.

Speaker 5 (43:16):
So it's a sign that you've actually been catechized. You know.
You're not born with the knowledge of the life of St. Anthony.
You're not born with you know. So this is this
is a.

Speaker 4 (43:27):
Sign of of of a much deeper, less superficial approach
to religion in general, that in order to in order
to ask for the intercession of particular saints, you need
to know who they were. So even the fact that
that Catholics know who these people are, even if it's
really really low resolution, like I've lost my car keys,
I'll praise this Anthony, which by the way. If you're

(43:49):
doing that, you're a bit of a knob, quite frank,
you know. But but even.

Speaker 5 (43:55):
If it's really literally you.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Know, I did do that once and and the keys
fell on my head. I killed I kid you not.
They literally fell right spot.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
Though you really needed those, I didn't need.

Speaker 5 (44:04):
Those, so, you know.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
But even the awareness that there is someone calls St.
Anthony is at least, you know, more than a minimum
knowledge of or it might even be aspirational to know
that there are these saints whose lives I really should
know more about.

Speaker 5 (44:21):
And here's the thing. If you know more about Taylor
Swift than you know about Saint Anthony, your priorities are wrong.

Speaker 2 (44:27):
I agree with that. I can't. I can't deny it,
all right, Brandon, what's our next one?

Speaker 6 (44:34):
Those next one? We covered half of it earlier, but
not the other half. But why does Mary have so
many titles like Queen of Heaven or Mother of God?

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Okay, all of Mary for ages, Well, that's true, but
all of Mary's titles are reflective of pointing back to
a very specific aspect of Christ's life, So like in
the sense of They Will Tell or Mother of God.
That's pointing back to his incarnation. Queen of Heaven, because

(45:06):
she represents in that sense that her son is the
King of kings. Therefore she takes on that role, points
back to his his kingdom, Our Lady, Queen of sorrows,
the the the, the horrific sorrow of the of his passion.
So all of her titles are a way of reflecting

(45:27):
back at her role in the life of Christ and
how she points the direction. She points the way towards
our finding him. And that's again because of her perfect
ability to say yes, and where we don't have that,
we say no to Christ more often than we'd like
to admit we do. Anytime you sin, you said no.

(45:48):
Anytime you sin, you say no.

Speaker 4 (45:50):
One of my favorite names is the moon. Oh, because
the moon reflects the light of the sun. It is
emanate lias. Yes, and I think that's a really good
image of our lady, you know. And she's of course
closest to the sun, and so of all humanity, she's
closest to the Sun, and therefore in both s O

(46:13):
N and as the s u N she reflects that light.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
Yes, yeah, I think that's a perfect analogy right there.
There you go.

Speaker 6 (46:23):
So the next one was actually a Paulo's question, but
it was already in here.

Speaker 2 (46:27):
Oh good, Okay, do Catholics.

Speaker 6 (46:29):
Believe Mary was sinless or divine?

Speaker 2 (46:33):
Sinless? Not divine? The sinlessness is This gets into the
theology of the immaculate conception much too many people. Yes, yes,
much to many people's misunderstanding, immaculate conception is not referring
to Jesus. It's referring to Mary's conception. Okay, she was
conceived immaculately. And the reason that this is a part

(46:59):
of theology is because of the necessity of the vessel
in which God would incarnate, this existence would have to
be at least as pure as He is. And ultimately
this is the reason why now I know that this
can be a challenge to Protestants because there is no

(47:23):
clear scriptural foundation here. You got Luke chapter. But full
of grace is the implication, right, yeah, but you know
that might be a little too vague for some Protestants.
But this is again where there's scriptural authority, but a
Catholics and Orthodox have traditional authorities as well. Tradition is

(47:48):
also authoritative, and that's because look, even scripture says that
there's so many other things that Jesus said and did
that cannot be contained in any book. Well, the trade
is there to kind of fill in some of those
gaps for you. And that's why Apostolic tradition was so necessary, okay,
and so important to us even to this day. You know,

(48:11):
you anybody that doesn't understand this, you you do well
to go and try to find out, you know, what
it's all about, because it does it definitely enrich you're understanding.
To learn the things that people understood back to Apostolic
times that weren't written down in scripture. This is what
the Fathers of the Church give us. So read the
Fathers of the Church. You don't need to convert to

(48:31):
do that. You can be a Protestant. Read the Fathers
of the Church. I know many Protestants that do.

Speaker 4 (48:36):
Some of some of the best patristic theologians of Protestants.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Oh yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's truely.

Speaker 5 (48:42):
Yeah, So, I mean this isn't really a Protestant Catholic device.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
It's not really this is this is this is people.

Speaker 5 (48:48):
Who know anything about church history and people who don't.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (48:52):
And because where did the creeds come from? Go find
me the creed in the Bible, you know, like like
the titles for our Lady, like like like the development
of prevenient grace. Which I'll make this really simple. What
we believe is that the blessed Virgin Mary was conceived
with the grace of baptism.

Speaker 5 (49:12):
That's what we believe, yep.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
So it doesn't make her extraordinary to us who have
been baptized. Okay, so we've been baptized and we can
still say no to God. So she's born without the
stain of original sin, which means and that's removed at baptism.

Speaker 5 (49:27):
It's called prevenient grace.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
It's like before the revel you know, it's like saying, well,
because God is eternal, Jesus is both God and Man,
eternal and temporal.

Speaker 5 (49:37):
That the the.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
Effect of the Cross was applied to Mary before she
was as she was conceived.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
And what what's so hard to understand about that when
you consider that God himself is a timeless reality. So
I mean, past, president, future don't have any meaning to God.
So the omega, yeah, exactly. And so that's so.

Speaker 5 (49:59):
All these are.

Speaker 4 (50:00):
They are cognizant with scripture, but they come from Christians. Well,
let's be honest, from the first four hundred years hiding
from well and being not just hiding.

Speaker 5 (50:12):
Some came out and were martyred.

Speaker 4 (50:14):
But after after four hundred years, when when you know,
the boots taken off the throat of the church, the
church has to figure out what is it that we believe,
and from that we get all many of these teachings,
including from the including the creeds of the church. So
we believe that Mary was conceived without the stain of

(50:35):
original sin. That does not mean she was incapable of
committing mortal and venial sin the same way anyone else's.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
She just chose natio. She chose she didn't.

Speaker 5 (50:48):
She showed it was possible not to.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
She shows that any any one of us, yes exactly,
could could live that life if we decided to say
yes instead of saying no.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
And it's why we believe that she was as sheum
body in soulent heaven two reasons. First of all, she
managed actually to be without sin, and therefore she didn't
rotten the grave. But also she was the mother of
God and therefore Jesus wouldn't have a decaying the grave.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Yeah, that's that's the answer.

Speaker 6 (51:20):
And so our final question about Mary, why is Mary
said to have remained a virgin.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
That's a good one, because perpetual virginity is one of
those things that is definitely tradition in the sense now
the way that theologians, Catholic theologians, and really the fathers
of the Church get around this because in Mark chapter
six it talks of Jesus's brothers, right, and so if

(51:50):
you take that literally, you might say, well, that must
be you know, children that Mary and Joseph had, and
maybe after Jesus, so maybe she was virgin at the time,
but then she you know, had a normal sexual relationship
with Joseph after that. Church doesn't teach that. Although I
don't think it's necessarily important whether or not you believe

(52:10):
it or not. I mean, I'm just teaching what the
Church teaches. I don't think it changes Mary in any
way if she were to go on and have a
normal life.

Speaker 4 (52:18):
But I agree that's that's why I believe it, because
there's no reason to make it up.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
To make it up, that's true.

Speaker 4 (52:25):
It doesn't change Catholic theology one bit if if she
hasn't as a sexual relationship with Saint Joseph, so there's
no reason to make it up. I think that, you know,
holy tradition also teaches as in fact, if you read
the Gospels, it kind of makes sense that Saint Joseph
was probably very old when.

Speaker 5 (52:45):
He married Mester virgin Mary.

Speaker 4 (52:47):
You know, it really is this. You know, the Angel
is directing this. God is directing this through his messengers.
And so I just think because it doesn't matter theologically speaking,
it's not as though her remaining a virgin makes her
more perfect. It wouldn't make it less perfect if she
wasn't a virgin and she's having sex with her husband,

(53:07):
that's not a sin. So for those reasons, are I
believe it. It's in the creed, so we are. It's dogma.
We are, in fact commanded to believe it, not to
be Catholics, to be Christians. Okay, well, commanded to believe
it in order to be Christians. And I believe it

(53:27):
because there's no reason for them to have made it.

Speaker 2 (53:31):
The other thing for people that might say, well, that's
a stretch to say that brothers were referring to close
caner relatives. If you look at Genesis chapter thirteen, you
find that Semitic usage commonly referred to extended family as brothers.
It was a common way to use it in this
way as far as I'm concerned, you know, I don't

(53:54):
think it diminishes anything. But the idea here again is
to emphasize the purity and the the other, the the
lack of worldliness I guess of the of of of marrying,
the sense that her, her lofty pursuit was was central
to her way of life, and that this is something

(54:17):
that that would have would have permeated every aspect of
her being, so that cardinal desires would not have been
something that was necessary for her. So, I mean, that's
that's what it is. Okay. So you know people will
argue that point. I don't understand what pray for us.
I mean, it comes up so often, this question, and

(54:39):
I'm not quite sure why this is an issue, because
it changes nothing. The fact is, you know, people don't
want to we are. Yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 5 (54:47):
I think that's one of those people people think people
can't be human if not. I'm in sex.

Speaker 4 (54:51):
It's like, you know, and I know, I know we
are obsessed with people between you know, the ages of
eighteen and seventy. But you know, a lot of people
for a lot of their lives are not sexually active
is actually perfectly normal. We hope and pray that people
under eighteen are not sexually active because that's abuse, right,

(55:16):
And a lot of people are single by choice or otherwise,
and a lot of people are widows and widowers.

Speaker 5 (55:23):
By you know.

Speaker 4 (55:23):
So it's part of our media age that we're obsessed
with sex and people led to some very unhealthy attitudes towards
sex and towards human relationships.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
I agree, all right, what's our next one?

Speaker 6 (55:40):
All right, next one? We get two more and four
minutes left.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
We can do it, I think.

Speaker 6 (55:44):
So why do Catholics pray in the Rosary? Is it biblical?

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Yeah? Actually it is because the entire the entire prayers
of the Rosary are directly from the Bible. You're talking
Luke chapter one here, So the it has it starts
out with the Our Father, that's Matthew chapter six. Then
the Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with you,
that's from the Angel's words directly in Luke. And then
it concludes what the Trinitarian doxology of glory be to

(56:11):
the Father. So the entire thing is biblical.

Speaker 5 (56:15):
They do you meditate on passages of the gospel.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
While you do it right exactly, you have the different mysteries,
the powerful mysteries, the joyful mysteries. Right. So these are
things that are done in a way to raise one's
focus because, let's face it, you're easily distracted. I can
guarantee you if you're paying attention at all, which that's

(56:39):
the stretch. But most of you probably don't even realize that.
When you're praying, you're probably losing your thoughts. You're probably
thinking about something else while you're praying all the time.
It's just like meditation in the East. Buddhists are always
having to help people to overcome this because the monkey
brain they call it, or is always active. So this
is just a way of trying to feel that in

(57:00):
and get the brain to focus by giving it something
to do other than to just say words or to
just ask for something. And what's beautiful about the about
the the Rosary is it doesn't ask for anything. It
simply is a a perfect prayer of communion. And so

(57:22):
the the the Our Father is of course the most
perfect prayer. Jesus himself gives it to us and then
the hail marys are again asking Mary to to pray
more perfectly than we can. And the glory b is
to remember that this is a prayer of thanksgiving.

Speaker 3 (57:38):
Repetition keeps you.

Speaker 2 (57:41):
Can, I can?

Speaker 4 (57:42):
I just add all, yeah, it should really say what
why do some Catholics and some other Christians pray the Rosary?

Speaker 5 (57:47):
Because there's nothing in the Calthol Church that commands you
to praise that's not required, So it is a pose,
by the way, why it's not done at Mass. In fact,
the Hail Mary should not be.

Speaker 4 (57:57):
Said at Mass if you strict we follow the surgical
documents of the Church. It's it's custom and tradition in
England to end the prayers of intercession at Mass with
the Hail Mary. Actually it's incorrect. It shouldn't, by the way,
even the Church of England do it. It's just something that's.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
It should be at the after the Mass is concluded,
because it is.

Speaker 4 (58:19):
A personal devotion and it's not it's not something that
is a requirement of of the faithful. So so the
Rosary is a prayer option I think is a very
very good and venerable one. What I would say is
if for whatever reason, you know, even if you kind
of intellectually conquer your issues with praying the Hail Mary,

(58:42):
but it's still a bit of a block for you
for adoration. Don't pray it, you know, get a prayer
rope if you want to do something very similar to
or use a rosary. But say that Jesus prayer, which
comes from the Orthodox tradition, or Jesus Christ, Living God,
have mercy on me a sinner. I don't think anyone
could find any anything actionable about that.

Speaker 5 (59:00):
So so some Catholics pray the Rosary, I would say
most don't. I don't think they're devote It's a bit
of an effort, right, it takes a bit.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Of particularly if you do the whole thing. Most people
just have the five, right, I mean, if you do
all fifteen, I mean it's it's quite the it's or
twenty now, I guess twenty minutes, because you get all
the you get the new mysteries, right, the luminous mysteries
were added a few few years back. So there you go.
That's our next one, last one. All right, we'll do

(59:32):
this one, then we'll go to break.

Speaker 6 (59:33):
All right, what what are relics and why are they
kept in churches?

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Okay, so relics come from are the idea of maintaining
a connection to something that is holy in a sense.
So when you have the lives of the saints, they
lived holy lives. This connects us to those holy lives,
all right. So the relics can be first class, which
would be the actual body of the same ain't him

(01:00:01):
or herself. It could be it could be skin, it
could be bone, it can be hair, any of that
would be an example of a first class relic. Or
it can be something that's been touched to those things,
or it could be an article of clothing. This would
be second and third class, of course, but it could

(01:00:21):
be an article of clothing that the saint war in life.
That you know, most churches have at least one example
of each.

Speaker 5 (01:00:30):
Of these, Hippo. I'll bring it out for the next segment.

Speaker 2 (01:00:36):
Yeah, Yeah, And we've got a relic of the True Cross.
I can bring that up for the next segment too,
because that's here in the private chapel. The early Church
practiced this, and it even goes back to the bodies
of the martyrs that's talked about in Acts nineteen. So
in a sense it's also a connection to you. Do
you remember when Jesus was walking through the crowd, and

(01:01:00):
and somebody was wanting to just reach out to him.
He couldn't get to him, so he was only able
to thank you. He was able to touch his cloak,
and then she was healed just by virtue of touching
the cloak. That's the mindset of how a relic might work. Okay,
So again these are not these are not not required,

(01:01:23):
not required things. The Church does, though, take them very seriously,
does protect them and distribute.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
We have one in the altar where we celebrate that.
I mean, it's no longer a requirement should be pretty
much all altars will have a relic. The Orthodox tradition
they put the relic inside the antimension, which is a
bit like you know, it's the cloth you put under it,
which essentially it replaces the altarstone for the Orthodox, and
it's got a relic of the saints stitched into it.

(01:01:51):
So and again this ancient practice of the Christians would
celebrate the Eucharist. A lot of a lot of the
early Christians were martyr and their bodies burned. The Christians
would gather up the ashes and they would celebrate the
Echrist on top of those ashes.

Speaker 5 (01:02:07):
So this is This goes right the way.

Speaker 4 (01:02:09):
Back to the you know, as early as the persecution
of the first Christians.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
And honestly, it's also a remnants of understanding the resurrection,
because the Christian should know that those body parts that
are relics that are in the altar and things that
you might have and reliquaries in your home will one
day be reconstituted into the people that they were at
the resurrection of the dead, even the saints. All right,

(01:02:34):
everyone will rise.

Speaker 5 (01:02:35):
From the dead, and in a sense they already are.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Well, that's because God is timeless. Go figure, all right,
we're going to take our next break here, our first break,
I should say, and then come back and get to
more of these questions. Don't go away the.

Speaker 7 (01:03:35):
Past a suspects fast as fast as fast.

Speaker 1 (01:04:22):
Green two social fas and.

Speaker 7 (01:04:51):
So sass sass, sas sam sua sat and suasusua sat

(01:05:19):
suta sat status as part of sera susser sub type
of the count s sas senter, sas sass.

Speaker 5 (01:06:52):
Not coming you never, kid, I'm a pink having disp
shouting him. I'm a spear charting the start to speak.

Speaker 8 (01:07:03):
Pray for you catching me, Oh you cheest, my fees,
Mama home me.

Speaker 5 (01:07:11):
So now chas not.

Speaker 7 (01:07:13):
Missed, but used to love with you to the great
big please laughing you were you laugh at me?

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Awful?

Speaker 5 (01:07:20):
Ask me because I believe then I thought you were
the one from me. That's why if you've ever read
things your husbands song he sees or you make the
world to me, you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:44):
Make the world.

Speaker 9 (01:08:03):
That's not a not a.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
Welcome back, everyone to the second hour of Vestiges after Dark.
Our episode tonight is understanding Catholicism, and we are going
through a journey of many questions that lead to numerous
misconceptions about the Catholic faith. Hopefully we're straightening some of
that out tonight. I think we are. I think we're
doing a pretty good job. And we're going to continue

(01:10:25):
here in the next hour as we go through more
of these questions. So sit tight, relax, pour yourself a drink,
and keep your ears and eyes open because there's so
much more to learn. Don't go away, Okay, everybody, This

(01:11:46):
is the first relic that we have for you to see.
This is this has been on Ghost Adventures. Actually, this
is the piece of the scalp of John the Baptist.
So this is a first class relic. And and that's
actually a piece of the scalp from the severed head
of John the Baptist.

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
And yes, it was fun trying to explain to TSA
what it was when I was going through security.

Speaker 2 (01:12:07):
Yeah, and welcome through TSA with body parts. It's not
maybe the easiest thing to do. This next one is
a relic of the true Cross. Now, this reliquary was
dated by my pastor many years ago to the early
eighteenth eighteenth century, so seventeen hundreds here, and let me

(01:12:29):
let me see if I can get that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
It's in there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
You can see it's just a little it's a little
sliver in the center of the you can kind of
see it right there. That's a piece of the wood
from the cross. And now people say, well, how do
you know that this is really what it says it is. Well,
it is authorized by the Church's got the bishop's seal

(01:12:51):
and everything. But it's an article of faith for one thing.
And what can be reasonably surmised is that this is
very much likely a piece of the wood from whatever Constantine.
Constantine's mother found when she went looking Helena went looking
for the cross, and they said, well, we think you know,
we know it happened over there and she found the wood,

(01:13:13):
so it's probably a piece of that wood. It's up
to your faith to decide whether or not it goes
any further than that. Relics are just about faith or
not about history. Okay, there's history there now, you know,
same with John the Baptist from the severed head. I mean,
these are larger than life type of personalities, and this
is a way of connecting us to that. But I

(01:13:35):
mean there are modern day saints, and you know, Saint Nicholas,
for example, we have the whole body of Saint Nicholas,
Santa Claus. We have his whole body, and we know
it's him. I mean, that's that's a definitive thing. It's
not something that's that's questionable. It wasn't something that would
have been lost in time. Church had already been preserving
relics by this point, Father Chris, you've got one over there, yes.

Speaker 5 (01:13:55):
And importance, say, what is contained in is called a reliquy.
This is quite an ornate when I'm in the process
of restoring this, as you can see, it's missing the lunette,
which is the little slide thing that you put the
relic on and inside here is a relic of center Augustin.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
There you go the.

Speaker 6 (01:14:14):
Change your camera.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, that's right. I'm sorry. We're
on the wrong one here. Yeah, let's do that again.

Speaker 5 (01:14:23):
Okay, so I'll hold it here, okay. Yeah. So this
is a piece of Senta Augustin of Hippo. I think
this is a piece of his hip bone.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
Actually, that's a beautiful relicquory. Actually, that's a that's a
gorgeous one.

Speaker 5 (01:14:37):
It's really nice.

Speaker 4 (01:14:37):
It's been neglected this, I mean, I shouldn't sell horror stories,
but this was with the relic inside. It was face
down inside a bag inside a cupboard of a presbytery
for well probably since about nineteen seventy one, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:14:53):
And it was given to me because they knew I'd
lovingly venerate such thing.

Speaker 4 (01:15:00):
And so now if you just look at the actual relic,
which is a very similar to what the bishop showed
you John the Baptist School, the same sort of containers.
It has a little piece and then under it it
has in Latin the name of the saint, so.

Speaker 5 (01:15:15):
In this case San Agustini.

Speaker 4 (01:15:19):
And then if you actually opened it up inside there
is actually a there's a seal that authenticates it. So
normally one of the cardinals from the Vatican has signed it,
and that's how you know that it's come from the Vatican,
which is a pretty reliable source. There are other sources,
of course, if you're in the Orthodox world.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
So yeah, but it's.

Speaker 5 (01:15:44):
One. I have him in my study because of course St.

Speaker 4 (01:15:48):
Augustine was a great intellect, and so I'm not a
great intellect, so I kind of ask him to pray
for inspiration for me to our Lord and God and
save Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (01:16:03):
Beautiful. I mean, really, that's that's that reliqu is a
nice fine, that's a really nice fine.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
Man.

Speaker 5 (01:16:09):
Yeah, I'm going to get it. I'm going to get it. Regal,
I don't know something.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
You know, sometimes the the the the patina really gives
it character. I'm not sure you should change it.

Speaker 5 (01:16:20):
I know what you mean.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
I don't know what you mean.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
And this one, you know, it was presented in the
name of a you know, a late monsignor. And so
I won't say who because I don't want to. I
don't want to any wants to perhaps be thought less
of for having left it in a cupboard for.

Speaker 5 (01:16:41):
But you know these these things.

Speaker 4 (01:16:44):
Like I said, no one thinks that we're saved through
the relatives sent Augustine. If you do, then you've not
been listening. But but you know, the life of Senta
Augustine is truly heroic and for someone like me, because
you know, like me, he was a bit of a
waste drule really until God did something with him. I

(01:17:05):
think that's for somebody in my character. That's that's a
saint that I can very much associate with. I also
do with Ambrose. But I don't have a Relicus and Ambrose.
I'd love to have one.

Speaker 5 (01:17:15):
If anyone's got one out there, let me know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Actually I do, I think I do. I think I
think we have Ambrose. I'm going to go back and
check on the next break. I think I haven't. I
think I have a first class. I think I have
a first first class of Ambrose. Yes I do. I'm
not sure I do, pouch, I will check on the
next break. Don't let me forget all right, let's.

Speaker 4 (01:17:37):
Give it have a first class of Sir Vincent de
Paul and I have Well, no one has the first
class of centuries of Avala because she's she's incorrupted.

Speaker 5 (01:17:48):
But I do have a I do have a you know,
a piece of cloth that touched her.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
You could get her here. Maybe I'm not sure. They
think there might be some strands of her here. Yeah,
I do think there are some strands of her here. Okay,
let's go to our next one, all.

Speaker 6 (01:18:02):
Right, So this next segment is about the Bible and
the authority within the Catholic Church. First question, why do
Catholics have extra books in their Bible?

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Not extra books?

Speaker 3 (01:18:15):
Book?

Speaker 2 (01:18:16):
They were not extra books, okay? So that what what's
being referred to here as the Duduo canonical books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom,
Sarak Baruk, and the first and second Makabies, parts of
Daniel and Esther as well as I think might be

(01:18:36):
considered to be one. These were recognized by the substugen
all right, and affirmed by the early Church. So you know,
this is this is something that was indisputable. It was
in the the Protestant Bibles, okay, omit These based upon
later Jewish and Reformation error decisions that were made. So

(01:18:58):
the question should not be why do Catholics have extra books?
The questions should be why did the Protestants remove books
from the Bible. That's the question. Because the Catholic Canon
reflects the scriptures that were used by the apostles in
the Early Church. The Protestant Bible does not, which includes
the glorious King James. I'm sorry to say.

Speaker 5 (01:19:17):
Well, interestingly, of.

Speaker 4 (01:19:21):
Course, in England we call it the Authorized version rather
than the King James version. Always amuses people call it
the Saint James version. I didn't know James spoke English.
But the Authorized Version does have the apocryphal so called
apocryphal texts translated in it.

Speaker 5 (01:19:40):
It's just that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
But they put him on the back and they call
it apocrypher, don't they.

Speaker 5 (01:19:43):
Well, the thing I would say, I think they put
it in the middle.

Speaker 4 (01:19:46):
Actually, But then what I would say is that the
English Reformation is quite different from the European reformations, which
seem to have dominated American thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
Oh definitely, Oh, there's no question about that.

Speaker 5 (01:19:59):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
It's it's it's again.

Speaker 4 (01:20:03):
I mean, you know in Saint Jerome, so s Jerome
is that is the man that compiles the first what
we would call Bible, you know, the Vulgate. The Latin
Bible translates, translates the Old and New Testaments. I'm using
terribly incorrect theological language here, but I'm trying to keep this.

Speaker 2 (01:20:20):
It's late, I mean, I don't think I mean any
I'm trying to fight a little bit of a headache.
I haven't gotten any sleep, so I don't even know
if I'm talking well tonight. But well, you know we're
doing about but in St.

Speaker 4 (01:20:33):
Jerome's Vulgate, which is that which is the first compilation
of the Bible in Latin from the from the Greek
text what what what people call the apocryphal text or
the deutero economical texts in Sint Jerome's Latin translations, he
makes it very clear that these are from the Greek

(01:20:54):
texts and not from the Hebrew text. So in a
sense there's always been a distinction within the Church between,
which is probably where you know, at the time of
the Reformation the Protestants sort of latched onto that to say, well,
let's get rid of these old together, because you know
they're not as old, which is which is actually not true.
So we should also say that in Coptic Bibles and

(01:21:18):
in Orthodox Bibles, there are more books than there are
in a Catholic Bible.

Speaker 5 (01:21:23):
So we might ask ourselves.

Speaker 4 (01:21:24):
Why have the Catholics remove those books from from from
our Bible, including three and four mccabees, Ezdra's.

Speaker 5 (01:21:32):
You know, Belle and the Dragon I think is in it,
isn't it?

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:21:38):
So, and there's many others. So the short answer is
to say, none of these texts are a mystery to
the history of the Church. Everyone knows they exist. Just
like we've spoken in the past about the.

Speaker 4 (01:21:55):
The non canonical gospels, so called Gospel of Thomas and
Mary my and all these sorts of things. Everyone's always
known that they've existed. They're not secret, but for at
different points in history, different decisions have been made about
what should be and what shouldn't be in the canon
of the scriptures. So, but the most eccentric is, in

(01:22:19):
fact the Protestant Bible. I really don't The only reason
I can see that they wanted rid of the books
of Maccabee's, for example, is because it gives a scriptural
defense of prayers for the dead, which they didn't like.

Speaker 2 (01:22:33):
Yeah, I'm surprised I didn't dumb James for that.

Speaker 5 (01:22:35):
You know. For the.

Speaker 4 (01:22:38):
Martin Luther called it the Epistle of Straw. He did
make an argument to try and remove the Book of James,
because again that.

Speaker 5 (01:22:46):
Goes against the idea that works, that works to have
absolutely no bearing at all on your salvation. So my
cheeky cathoccounts would be to say no, Protestants have removed
books that from the Bible that didn't suit their eccentric
and invented theology.

Speaker 2 (01:23:06):
I like that. And you know, just to explain and
reiterate to everybody here, you know, if we're not at
our best, it's because it's really late for me and
really early for Father Chris. I'm getting ready to wind
down usually at this time at night, and Father Chris
is getting ready to get himself, you know, coffeed up.

Speaker 5 (01:23:26):
Wish I wish I had that excuse. I mean, now
it's between.

Speaker 2 (01:23:30):
Twelve noon and oh really, okay, well I've got all
I thought you get up late. I thought you get
up late on on what is it? Well, it's Wednesday
for you, right, all right, let's uh, let's go to
the next one.

Speaker 6 (01:23:45):
So this next one is your favorite question. Bishop. All right, boy,
why don't Catholics believe in solo scriptura, which is the
Bible alone?

Speaker 2 (01:23:55):
Because the scriptures themselves don't even teach that and they
teach the opposite of that. Second Thessalonians, Chapter two, verse fifteen,
it says very clearly, so then, brothers and sisters, stand
firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on
to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.
That is, you know the basis for scripture as authority

(01:24:20):
and tradition as authority. So I hate to break it
to you, but again, as Father Chris was saying, you know,
people that argue these points picked and choose the parts
that fit their agenda. It's not the fast.

Speaker 4 (01:24:30):
I think there's an added problem here, which is that
many Protestants that use the term solar scripturer don't.

Speaker 5 (01:24:38):
Know what it means.

Speaker 4 (01:24:41):
That's a fact, even though I'm not a solar scripturer person.
But let me give a very very easy defense of this.
We have the Hebrews. We have the Hebrew text, right,
the Tora. Well, Jews have the Torah, and they have
the Talmud and the Mishna, so they have they have
the script ural authority.

Speaker 5 (01:25:01):
And then there's the oral tradition, which is in fact
written down.

Speaker 4 (01:25:04):
Well, this continues in the life of the Church because
we have the scriptures which are written the way they're written.
But we also have the teachings of the church fathers,
the letters of the popes up to the very day
of you know, epistle, what's of the words sorry the Bishop,
the pope, rites, encyclicals. You know, we still have this

(01:25:29):
oral tradition which is also written down. So it's this
is completely consistent with everything we've ever known about the scriptures. Furthermore,
Jesus does not leave us with a book. Jesus leaves
us with his disciples, who he ordains, and we call
him the apostles.

Speaker 5 (01:25:48):
So John chapter.

Speaker 4 (01:25:49):
Twenty, you know, received the Holy Spirit and they go
and make disciples. So the idea, the idea that the
soul scripturer is compatible with that isn't true. But let's
give the devil his due. Many Protestants use the term

(01:26:09):
solar scripturer to say, if it's not in the Bible,
you can't believe it at all.

Speaker 5 (01:26:14):
That is not what sol scripturer means, you know, to
be genuine.

Speaker 4 (01:26:19):
Somebody that would support this idea, this philosophy would say
they would quote, I can't remember the verse, but you know.

Speaker 5 (01:26:27):
The scripture, interpret scripture. So in other words, what they'd.

Speaker 4 (01:26:30):
Say is they'd actually have no problem with looking at
holy tradition, no problem with looking at the encyclicals of
the pope.

Speaker 5 (01:26:38):
But what they would say is those things cannot be
contrary to what's.

Speaker 4 (01:26:42):
In the scriptures. So that is what sol scripture really means.
It means that, you know, whatever the inputs are the
lens must be scripture.

Speaker 5 (01:26:55):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:26:56):
So if only Protestants understood solo scripturer properly, then they'd
see that. Actually, it's not a very big difference between
what Catholics are doing and what they're doing. It's just that,
obviously Catholics are place more trust in the oral tradition
that's been passed on to us through the what's what

(01:27:16):
have become the writings of the church fathers and of
the popes and of the bishops that have lived throughout
the ages. And you know, contemporary Protestants do the very same.

Speaker 5 (01:27:26):
Thing when they when they appeal to John Stott and
that they've got their heroes right. It's just that their
their post printing press heroes. And we have the pre
printing press heroes as well.

Speaker 2 (01:27:36):
We have only one record of Jesus writing anything down,
and that was in the sand to protect the woman
that was about to be stoned and we don't even
know what it was now. There is a tradition, though
to speak about tradition now how it fills in the gaps.
There is a tradition. It's not authoritative. I don't think
the church has never really said this is definitive. But
there is a tradition going back to before anyone remembers

(01:27:59):
that says that he was actually writing down where all
of their sins, so that when they looked at it,
they knew that he knew what they've done. And that
was enough to be like, Okay, we're getting out of here.

Speaker 3 (01:28:11):
The high kich.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
It sounds like something Jesus would do. So yeah, yeah, okay,
what's our next one? Yeah? What's our next one?

Speaker 6 (01:28:21):
Why does the poete have authority? Is in Jesus our
only head?

Speaker 1 (01:28:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
Jesus is our only head. But I mean there are
institutions that must be led. Why does your pastor have
authority over his parish or his church? It's no different
than that. It's a there's there's temporal authority, and there's
divine authority, and and God empowers his church with different

(01:28:50):
levels of temporal authority so that you have the hierarchy
of bishops and priests and deacons that all serve in
different capacities to make the church run efficiently, not different
than a company. Really, you know, people need structure. You
can't just do whatever the hell you want. It's not
going to hold together. The only reason you have a

(01:29:10):
church two thousand years later like this is because it's
efficient and it works. The papacy holds it together. Look,
I'm not I'm not a papist, all right. I mean,
the Nicolean Church is an independent Catholic church. We're not
under the authority of Rome. And I still see the
value in having the pope. You know, Protestants should should
should see that same value. They really should. Orthodoxy should

(01:29:34):
see that same value, although they've got patriarchs you know
what we do too. But I mean it's in my sense,
in the in the way that I look at this,
that's that is to hold structure, to maintain integrity. You know,
try to run Apple Corporation or IBM, or the present

(01:29:54):
or the United States of America without hierarchical structure. It's
all going to collapse if you don't have that.

Speaker 5 (01:30:00):
Well, I mean, look, I am a papist.

Speaker 4 (01:30:04):
But to make this much more relevant to the source
of American Protestants you're talking about, And I'm going to
say something I admire about them now, right, so hold
your breath. I think American Protestants are much better at
forming healthy family relationships than other groups of people. And

(01:30:26):
part of that healthy group, and I mean this, I
don't mean the abusive, I don't mean people that you
know don't do this. Part of that healthy thing that
they would absolutely agree with is that the father is
the head of the household. So they've got no problem
with is the head of his wife is the head
of the household.

Speaker 5 (01:30:44):
Obviously not in some.

Speaker 4 (01:30:47):
Dominating, awful, abusive way if they read Ephesians properly, you know,
the man is the head of woman inasmuch as he
submits to Christ's will and loves her the way that
God would love her, which means he's not there to
dominate or boss her around. I'm not talking about that.
But they've got a very healthy image that the man
is that. You know, the father is ahead of the household.
Don't they think the church needs a head of the household.

(01:31:10):
It's no more than that. The pope is not holier
than anybody else.

Speaker 5 (01:31:14):
We said it before. His title is his holiness. But
that's not because he's holy, it's because of the position
that God has.

Speaker 4 (01:31:20):
Put him in, and so and it always points to
something else, and all heads bow before the maker of.

Speaker 5 (01:31:28):
Heaven and earth, God himself. So you know, actually Protestants
can be really, really good at headship, but they stop
it too soon.

Speaker 2 (01:31:40):
What's our next one?

Speaker 6 (01:31:43):
A right, father, Chris. This one's directly for you. Why
do Catholics call priests father when the Bible says call
no man father.

Speaker 4 (01:31:53):
Yeah, yeah, I mean the same verse says, and don't
call any man a teacher either, But we seem to
be okay with calling people professor and teacher, and no
one bats and ilid about this. I think this is
just a mass confusion. Also, by the way, partly because
of mass abuse as well.

Speaker 5 (01:32:10):
But the.

Speaker 4 (01:32:12):
Truth is that priests are only called father in the
English speaking world anyway. In Latin it's Don, so in
Italian it's Don. Well that translates into English as sir,
so it'd be sir, Brian, sir Chris. The problem is
in the English speaking world we call knights of the
realm sir, and so.

Speaker 5 (01:32:35):
It couldn't translate.

Speaker 4 (01:32:36):
Now, whilst we were using Latin, it didn't really matter
as soon as we start to use English. I'll tell
you where the word father came from in English etymologically speaking,
the abbots of monastery of monasteries. So we think in
this very post Reformation world, England before the Reformation was
deeply monastic, and so most parish churches were actually run

(01:32:59):
by mom who were connected to abby's and many of
the cathedrals of today were abbey's. I mean, we still
call Westminster Abbey abbey, even though it's not it doesn't
really function as an abbe. But certainly Chester Cathedral, which
is my home cathedral, was Saint Werburger's abbey. It was,
it was a monastery, and of course the head of

(01:33:20):
a monastery is called an abbots, which.

Speaker 5 (01:33:22):
Is a reflection of abba father. And so this is
why where in English we got this kind of colloquialism
of calling priest's father. But I want to I want
to go deeper than.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
That and say, well, can I also add before you
get to that, because it's right with what you just said.
It's also very specific to First Corinthians chapter four, where
Paul says, even if you had ten thousand guardians in
Christ you do not have many fathers. For in Christ,
Jesus I became your father through the Gospel. That is father. Yeah,

(01:33:57):
that's the foundation to this. Why the church carried it
on because it's a it's it's in reflection of that epistle.
But go ahead, father, sorry.

Speaker 5 (01:34:06):
Yeah, yeah, So it's not like not like the word
voldemort is in the Harry Pottery.

Speaker 4 (01:34:13):
Which is which is how you know, is how we've
all like I'm sure you've experienced it to how many
people see it? Like if I say that I'm gonna,
you know, the ground will swallow me up and I'll
go straight to hell. Yeah, it's like no, so uh
now it's true to say that we shouldn't be treating
men as though they're God. So everything about this confusion

(01:34:34):
and some some of the genuine concerns of the reformers,
because let's be honest, the church, I can only speak
from the English perspective, but the Catholic Church in England
was doing some very dubious practices, right, there were things
that needed reforming.

Speaker 5 (01:34:49):
The Council of Trent acknowledged this. Okay, so abuses of
this are not right. You know, if the clergy are
overly clerical and walk around as though they have impunity
and just order people to do whatever they want and
if you don't, you're going to go to hell. Clearly
that's an error, and so a lot of the reformers

(01:35:09):
sort of.

Speaker 4 (01:35:11):
Bristling at things like this, were to correct that, okay,
but there is such a thing as over correction as well.

Speaker 5 (01:35:18):
But I want to actually come to how the word
father became to be used again in the Church of England,
because this is an interesting story and much more at
the heart of why I think calling priest's father is
quite appropriate obviously after the Reformation, I mean formally in
the Church of England, although you're ordained to the priesthood
and it's called the priesthood in the book Book and Prayer.

(01:35:40):
The official title in Crockford's which is the guy. You know,
English people we love to have titles for everything, right.

Speaker 4 (01:35:47):
And so were the best at it, you know Americans
less so you know, BRIT's are really good at this stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:35:55):
But actually priests are called the reverend Nista okay.

Speaker 4 (01:35:58):
And if you if you read Victorian novels or even
you know Pride and Prejudice, you know pre Victorian, the
vicar is always called mister.

Speaker 5 (01:36:09):
Such and such right. So father had fallen into disuse
in the Church of England.

Speaker 4 (01:36:16):
Well it came back in the nineteenth century, and it
came back because of my heroes actually, and the reason
I became a Church of England priest, you know, I
was very much in this tradition.

Speaker 5 (01:36:25):
They were the slum priests, and these were Victorian gentlemen who.

Speaker 4 (01:36:30):
Were part of what became the Anglo Catholic Revival, the
tractarian movement, who really wanted to reclaim the Catholicism of
the Church of England, you know, to move it back
in that direction. But they didn't do I mean, you know,
some did it through argument, through rhetoric and through writings.
But the slum priests were in the East End of London,

(01:36:52):
the poorest part of England at that time, and people
were dying of cholera, and they would go and administer
the last rights to them and they die. They catch
color and they die as well. And they were laughed at,
they were mocked. They were not considered good priests.

Speaker 9 (01:37:09):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:37:10):
It shows you how how wronger culture can be. Just
to let people think about this culture, but.

Speaker 4 (01:37:17):
Actually spontaneously one of them father Louder. You should look
him up, Charles Louder. The parishioners called him father because
he because they saw him as having that paternal role
over them, as a genuine one where you.

Speaker 5 (01:37:36):
Know, he was living and laughing and crying with them,
you know. And so the word father came back into
use in the Church of England in the way that
I think it is intended to be used in the
life of the Church, which used to say.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
It's the name of the titles that we have with Mary.
It's everything is to point back to Christ. Every operation
is to point back to Christ. So these things exist
for that purpose.

Speaker 4 (01:38:02):
I'm really the term father is is actually and it's
almost an ironic reflection that in order to be worthy
of the title father, you must be the servant of
the servants.

Speaker 2 (01:38:13):
Yeah, so there it is, there it is. Yeah, well said.

Speaker 6 (01:38:18):
So the next question we touched on it. So if
you want to add any extra that you can, why
is tradition considered equal scripture?

Speaker 2 (01:38:27):
Well, in addition to the verse that I gave, tradition
is the it is not just about human customs. I
know people like to when they criticizing this, they use
that as an example as the refutation. It's the living
transmission of Apostolic teaching, which is a referenced very specifically

(01:38:49):
for those that need everything to go back to the
Bible in John chapter fourteen, verse of twenty six, where
it is written, but the advocate the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name, will teach you
all things, and will remind you of everything I have
said to you, you know, teach you all things. Clearly,

(01:39:11):
that's not everything that's just written in scripture. It means
that the apostles were empowered with a deeper understanding as well,
so that it wasn't just what was written down, but
what it all really means and how it all comes
together within context to what was taught to them. And
so when you divorce us the church from the Apostolic tradition,

(01:39:33):
you're cutting us off from the lifeline of understanding. And
then now you've got modern eyes looking at something very
ancient and inferring at best, and that's not usually enough.

Speaker 5 (01:39:44):
Well, and the truth is it's actually impossible.

Speaker 4 (01:39:47):
So you know, I don't really I don't know what
Protestants who think scot Soul scripture remans.

Speaker 5 (01:39:53):
I've got my King James version of the Bible. And
that's all. I don't know how they have a conversation
every day with anybody. Right, you cannot be divorced from
the tradition. That tradition is from the Latin word traditio,
which means to hand on. So tradition always looks backwards
today and forwards. It's everything simultaneously traditio to hand on.

(01:40:16):
So you've been had even people in that.

Speaker 4 (01:40:19):
Tradition which I don't of which I don't, you know,
concur they have received a tradition, you know, it's just
that I think that their tradition is divorced from the
tradition or is.

Speaker 5 (01:40:32):
Impoverished by a lack of the richness of the tradition
of the entire church. And so.

Speaker 4 (01:40:39):
The idea that you can so here's why they should
venerate holy tradition. Where do the scriptures come from? Holy tradition?

Speaker 5 (01:40:51):
The scriptures are written by even if we just look
at the New Testament, the scriptures are written.

Speaker 4 (01:40:57):
The Gospels are written by those people who had first
hand knowledge of christ ministry. We have the epistles of
Saint Paul, which they which they hold in very high esteem.

Speaker 5 (01:41:10):
As they ought to. But Saint Paul is a man. St.
Paul is a man. And St.

Speaker 4 (01:41:15):
Paul himself uses this this concept in Corinthians when he's
talking about the Eucharist. For I, if I have told
you what was handed on to me, that on the
night he was betrayed, he took brad, he took right.

Speaker 5 (01:41:30):
So you have, even in that epistle of Saint Paul,
a description of traditio literally explicitly saying, I'm telling you
what's been handed on to me.

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:41:43):
So the scriptures themselves are a product of that tradition.

Speaker 4 (01:41:48):
So and you know, okay, even within the Catholic Church,
within the Orthodox Churches, within the within Anglican churches, people
place the kind of pivot point between scripture and tradition
in different places. But the idea that the scriptures are
divorced from holy tradition is, but you wouldn't have the scriptures.

Speaker 2 (01:42:07):
We wouldn't. So it's really that simple, and it's that
that elementary. I mean, it's just what it is. Okay, Okay, Yeah,
what's our next one?

Speaker 6 (01:42:17):
So the next one is a question I've not heard
too often. Did the Catholic Church change the Ten Commandments
for the Sabbath?

Speaker 2 (01:42:26):
No, they changed the look. They didn't change anything. They
follow a more traditional enumeration of the decalogue that's outlined
by Saint Augustine, and that those are not consistent things.
They are numbered differently in different sources, and they just
chose one that that worked through what Saint Augustine followed. Okay.
As far as as far as the Sabbath, the observance

(01:42:48):
of Sunday is considered the Lord's Day because it commemorates
Christ's resurrection. We're no longer celebrating the Sabbath in the
Jewish sense. Now we have the resurrection the day after Saturday, okay,
and so therefore Sunday becomes the great Day of the
of the of Revelation, I'm sorry, the resurrection, and that

(01:43:13):
fulfills the moral principle of the Sabbath Sabbath for Christians
under the New Covenant. Again, this is the weird, strange
mixing that some non Catholic Orthodox groups tend to do
with mix. That's mix and match of the Old Testament
with the New. Let's let's get it straight. We are

(01:43:34):
all under a new Covenant. The old Covenant isn't invalidated,
it's been fulfilled. We don't really need to worry about
it anymore. The only part of the Old Covenant that
still applies is moral law, that's it. And moral law
is already in the New Testament. So essentially you only
need the Old Testament to kind of show you how
you got to where you are now. But the New

(01:43:55):
Testament is what we follow, and otherwise we be Jews.
Just become Jewish. If you don't really want to respect
the New Covenant, then just become become Jewish because well.

Speaker 5 (01:44:07):
And actually you've introduced something which does is actually I
only I only watched a little clip about this yesterday,
about the focus on the Tank commandments, and so yeah,
we worshiped the Lord on on Sunday because he rose
from the dead on the Sunday, just to finish that
one off. And actually this was an instant. You know,

(01:44:30):
we know that there was a period in.

Speaker 4 (01:44:32):
The Apostolic Church where the apostles were still going to
to the temple on Saturday, right, So for the first.

Speaker 5 (01:44:39):
Two hundred years, the idea of a difference in a
sense between Judaism and Christianity is a bit of a nonsense.
You know, that distinction does grow because as the Church
enters the Greek world. We have this separation.

Speaker 4 (01:44:53):
But you know, the first followers of Christ, his apostles
were Jews, and so so this thing again, it develops
out of the tradition.

Speaker 5 (01:45:02):
So yes, holy tradition steers us onto a Sunday celebration
of you, Chris.

Speaker 4 (01:45:07):
But notwithstanding all the other things Seventh day Adventists are
mad and crazy about.

Speaker 5 (01:45:11):
And I'm sorry it happened. It happened actually in Australia.
This nonsense.

Speaker 2 (01:45:15):
Yes, you get you give us all these problems. You
gave us that the guy with the what was his name, Darby,
with the with the rapture, you know, and then you're
giving us this in Australia. Come on, you get your
hat together out there. I know what he's out there now.

Speaker 4 (01:45:34):
It's true, and it did come from the Central Coast
of New South Wales. If no one believes in purgatory,
you need to go to the central Coast and.

Speaker 5 (01:45:42):
You'll you'll realize there is list.

Speaker 4 (01:45:45):
But she wasn't an American, I'll point out. Albeit she
happened to be in Australia at the time. But so said,
the evidence is a wrong about many things. But look,
would it would it would I abandon the church if
the pope said tomorrow, actually, let's celebrating Mass on Saturdays.
I couldn't care less. It wouldn't bother me in a scientist.
That is missing the point. I mean, we celebrated on

(01:46:06):
the Sunday because Jesus wrote from there on the Sunday.
But actually, as you know, we can celebrate Saturday night's
part of the visual.

Speaker 2 (01:46:11):
But but under the Jewish love, that's the sundown the
next day. Yeah, yeah, it is.

Speaker 5 (01:46:17):
I agree.

Speaker 4 (01:46:18):
So but here's here, going back to the ten commandments, right,
there's actually not ten commandments. If you're a Hebrew and
you're eating your Hebrew Bible, the first commandment is ignored
by Christians because because and they don't call them the commandments.
They call them the words or the sayings. And by
the way, that's what we called them too in Latin.

Speaker 5 (01:46:42):
The urban logos or something like that.

Speaker 4 (01:46:44):
It's the it's the sayings, because the first one is
I'm the Lord, your God, who brought you out of
the land of Egypt out of slavery.

Speaker 5 (01:46:51):
That's actually the first saying.

Speaker 4 (01:46:53):
Whereas we go to you shall have known all the
gods before me, as the first commandment they're sayings because actually,
if you read through them, they're not all commandments anyway.
So again, if what you do is you actually reproduce
them according to the King James version of the Bible
on tablets and put them at the back of your
churches for.

Speaker 5 (01:47:14):
Three hundred years, then you think that that's the way
it's always been.

Speaker 2 (01:47:19):
But it's not.

Speaker 5 (01:47:20):
So we get We get that. So I'm now calling
them the ten Sayings, the ten the ten you know words.
So it's kind of an eccentric thing to to suggest that,
like Catholics have changed the Ten Commandments.

Speaker 2 (01:47:40):
It's so ridiculous.

Speaker 5 (01:47:41):
It read the Book of Exodus. That's what we believe.

Speaker 2 (01:47:44):
Yeah, there you go, all right, I'll go next onlle.

Speaker 6 (01:47:48):
Next one. Why can't Catholics interpret the Bible for.

Speaker 2 (01:47:52):
Themselves because the Bible tells us not to. I mean,
it's tewod Peter Chapter one, verse twenty above. You must
understand that no prophecy of scripture came about by the
prophet's own interpretation of things. In other words, it has
to come through the promptings of the Holy Spirit, which
was given to the church at Pentecost, not to an individual. Yeah,

(01:48:16):
individuals had different charisms of the Spirit, but through the church.
It was always through the Church, and so that evolved
into the magisterium. And so therefore you need to have
a foundational principle operating under the promptings of the Holy
Spirit to guide and guard the church and safeguard those

(01:48:38):
authentic interpretations to preserve unity of faith. Otherwise what you
what You end up both without the magisterium thirty three
thousand denominations of Christianity and growing like we have. Now
that's the that's the consequence.

Speaker 5 (01:48:53):
But you've got even more denominations than that because church
each individual.

Speaker 2 (01:48:58):
That's bad.

Speaker 4 (01:48:59):
Let's really drilled down into this question, what were you
born able to interpret for yourself?

Speaker 2 (01:49:07):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:49:09):
Nothing? Nothing?

Speaker 4 (01:49:12):
So we are not born in a vacuum. This is
a very Russoian question. So I know, I know, I
am attacked Russo last week, but that's okay. He's burning
in hell.

Speaker 5 (01:49:24):
The idea that we were born like I mean, in
the in this bizarre.

Speaker 4 (01:49:31):
Simultaneous mode of being completely like fresh new tabula rasa,
but also knowing all things in order to interpret, of
all things, the most complicated writings of humanity. Because that's
why they've survived by the way. The reason that people,
I mean, Jordan Peterson has been really good at doing this.

(01:49:52):
He's pointing out that actually, the reason that you're still
obsessed with this book, even if you're an avowed atheist,
is because it's that they are the most profound things
that we've ever thought. That's why it still exists. Because
although you know, if someone wrote a novel, you know,
in the seventh century, no one's reading it, no one cares.

Speaker 5 (01:50:11):
It's like, you know, it just comes and goes. These
things are.

Speaker 4 (01:50:14):
Stuck around because they are, in a sense, the entire
human condition, you know. So in other words, why would
a Protestant listen to a sermon if they didn't think
that they should listen to somebody else's interpretation. And if
you add on to that, I go, well, why would
I listen.

Speaker 5 (01:50:33):
To this person's sermon over this person's The what Holy
tradition says is here's what everyone's thought about that, well,
everyone whose thoughts were worthy of surviving to the next generation.

Speaker 2 (01:50:48):
Yeah, And the real dangerous when is when pastors go
off on their own personal tangents. They shouldn't. A sermon
should always be in the mind of the church not
the personal pastor's opinion of what this might mean.

Speaker 3 (01:51:01):
That's what it's.

Speaker 4 (01:51:04):
By the way, because I don't want to create a
straw man. Actual Protestant theologians agree with what I just said.

Speaker 2 (01:51:12):
Yeah, we were hard on Protestantism, but really we're really
hard and more on the followers, not so much the
institutions themselves at this point. Yeah, it don't create straw man.

Speaker 4 (01:51:22):
There are great Biblical scholars who are Protestants, and they
do not ignore.

Speaker 2 (01:51:27):
The real problem or the laity. It's the laity that
go and they get all high and mighty out in
the street and think that they've got something to prove
to you that that's really the people that we're calling
out here. I mean, most Protestant churches are not like this,
you know, in terms of the institution themselves. Ecumenism is
is is growing well, I think outside of the fact

(01:51:49):
that the people just don't want it, you know, just
is what it is. Okay, well, it's our next one.

Speaker 6 (01:51:55):
Let's say one thing I did want to add. It's
a problem when people try to interpret things for themselves
without any understanding or any context. Because I can give
one verse and five different people who have five to
different interpretations of that one verse, and then they will

(01:52:16):
say my interpretation is right, yours is wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:52:19):
Or ask them under what authority can they make that determination?
I mean, are they based upon either either the what
justification is there for that? Because you know, when you
give an instruction from scripture, it has to be in
the mind of the church. Are these people operating within
the mind of the church, And if so, how is

(01:52:40):
it being traced back to something of the Apostolic fathers?
Can they justify it within the context of the whole
body of Scripture, not just that one verse in isolation.
These are questions that they must be able to answer,
otherwise their arguments hold no merit.

Speaker 4 (01:52:56):
But that's absolutely correct. But there's actually even more fundamental problem.

Speaker 5 (01:53:02):
I was listening.

Speaker 4 (01:53:03):
I was speaking with Natalie Wexler. She's an American I
think journalist. She's concerned that, you know, yes, in terms
of young people children learning how to read, that actually
needs some knowledge, because in order to be able to
interpret what you're reading, you need to have some knowledge
behind it. She gives the example, well, when she did

(01:53:25):
it with us, she gave an extract of a baseball report. Okay,
because nobody in Australia knows anything about baseball, and therefore,
even though we understood the words, no one knew anything
about what it meant.

Speaker 5 (01:53:36):
When she does this in America, she uses cricket. She says,
I'd normally use cricket, but I'm in Australia. So if
I use cricket, you're all going to know what it means.

Speaker 4 (01:53:45):
So even if you just again remove religion from it altogether,
without the necessary prior knowledge of things, you can't read anything.
And so and this is this is why we all
ultimately say, you risk isogesis that when you read the

(01:54:07):
scriptures you're just reading yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:54:11):
Instead of which is a form of idolatry.

Speaker 5 (01:54:16):
And self worship, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:54:19):
And so the only way out of that is and
I'm not saying we should all, you know, read every
piece of scripture with an academics lens on it, No,
because you know there's a personal interaction as well.

Speaker 5 (01:54:29):
But you have to at least have some knowledge by
the way.

Speaker 4 (01:54:34):
That's the job of the parish priest or is to
is to preach these things to you so you've got
that knowledge, so that so that you are catechized. So
when you're reading it, you're actually reading it and understanding
what these concepts mean and how they fit into the
revelation of God's salvation for us.

Speaker 5 (01:54:49):
That's that's the entire purpose of it.

Speaker 4 (01:54:51):
And you know, if you just drop a Bible in
the native language of somebody that lives in the middle
of a forest, they're not going to be able to
do that.

Speaker 2 (01:55:00):
Nope, they won't. Okay, important, Let's good to the next one.

Speaker 6 (01:55:06):
As one was also an interesting question, why are indulgences
still a thing?

Speaker 2 (01:55:13):
Okay? Well, I mean okay, So in order to understand indulgence,
you have to understand how the Church understands the forgiveness
of sins. Okay, because you can when one receives forgiveness
in the context of the sacrament of reconciliation, that sin

(01:55:35):
is not merely forgiven in the sense I forgive you
for doing wrong. It is blotted out as though it
never occurred. It is eliminated. But what is not eliminated
is the consequence of it. For example, you can kill someone,
all right, you can murder them, and you can seek
forgiveness for that, assuming you have a sincere intention to

(01:55:57):
reform your life so that you don't kill again. And
that can be done, and you can sincerely go to
confession and receive reconciliation for it, and God blots it
out as though it never was. However, that person is
still dead. The consequences of that action are are still
present because you still committed an action in time that

(01:56:20):
has ramification. So even though the guilt of it can
be removed, the consequence of it endures. And what is
the consequence of sin, Well, that's suffering. So what what
indulgences do is they they are a particular grace that
can be done through the sacrament of reconciliation and usually

(01:56:45):
associated with some kind of action or prayer, in which
case not not to pray, purchase. Okay, it's not for
purchasing like they did in the Middle Ages. Okay, this
is this is indulgent. Indulgences give correctly, which are freely,
but there is a task to be done in order
to receive them, and there's certain special dates where one
can obtain these particular graces and whatnot. But what they

(01:57:07):
do is they remove the temporal suffering in various degrees
all the way to the point of what the Church
refers to as purgatory, which is the final cleansing, you
could say, which is also an experience of suffering. You know,
I'm not going to make any any any I'm not

(01:57:29):
going to give you any illusions about purgatory. It is
a painful, uncomfortable process as it's described, and indulgence has
helped to mitigate how painful and uncomfortable that will be.

Speaker 4 (01:57:45):
So it's like a voluntary penance, Yes, it is. It's
like an extended and voluntary penance.

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (01:57:51):
Now, where and again where the sale of indulgence is
was truly evil. I mean there's no other way around it.

Speaker 4 (01:58:00):
On a roller and people that were promoting that you
could buy your way out of purgatory, we're committing a
grave sin. And the Reformers were right to bulk at that.
Martin Luther was one hundred percent right about that.

Speaker 1 (01:58:12):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (01:58:12):
So, because it's in order for an indulgence to be
ratified by the church, if we're going to if we're
talking about indulgences as the Catholic Church practices it since
Trent and to today, then if the precondition is forgiveness
of sins, it requires true contrition.

Speaker 5 (01:58:34):
Well, if you're truly contrite, you're already in a state
of grace right, So so in other words, to focus
on the indulgences, though it's the work that's that's leading
to your being forgiven, is actually to completely reverse the
meaning of indulgences. Indulgences are basically you continuing on a

(01:58:58):
penitential act when actually you're already in a state of grace.

Speaker 4 (01:59:02):
So it makes it truly voluntary. And it's the equivalent
of going to the gym to make your muscles big.
You you, you engage in these prayers at that strengthen
your spiritual muscles, which make your chance of recidivism of

(01:59:23):
going back into repeated.

Speaker 5 (01:59:25):
Sin less likely. That's the whole point of it. It's
like life coaching, and.

Speaker 2 (01:59:30):
That's why we still have it all right when we
come back here more questions after.

Speaker 1 (01:59:34):
This mannering.

Speaker 10 (02:01:30):
Something something.

Speaker 1 (02:01:57):
Something name sho.

Speaker 7 (02:02:28):
Names she sat amos, let to the taste, to stay.

Speaker 9 (02:03:52):
To be toast, to stay, to.

Speaker 8 (02:04:04):
Follows, just slide the straight obviously like a fine am.

Speaker 9 (02:05:05):
Afraid this and we got this fund on no.

Speaker 7 (02:05:17):
Wills, We don't any.

Speaker 1 (02:05:29):
Not any.

Speaker 2 (02:05:32):
Wait, welcome back everyone to the third and final hour

(02:06:23):
of Vestiges after dark and when we come back here
we'll be going through I think the third section. We're
probably only going to get through half of these questions tonight.
I think I don't think there's any way we can
get through them all, So we'll have to have another
episode next season then we cover the rest of them. Okay,
but we'll get through as many as we can tonight

(02:06:44):
when we come back here in just a few moments.
Just don't go anywhere, Okay, Brandon, take us to our

(02:07:52):
next question.

Speaker 6 (02:07:54):
All right, So salvation and sacraments questions. Do Catholics believe
you're saved by works instead of faith?

Speaker 2 (02:08:05):
No, Catholics believe salvation is given to us through grace alone,
through faith that works in love. Okay. The reference for
this would be Galatians chapter five, verse six, where Paul says,

(02:08:26):
for in Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value.
The only thing that counts as faith expressing itself through love.
So the works that are being referred to here are
the works of love, which are perfectly represented in the
works of charity, or the corporal works of mercy, or

(02:08:47):
the commands of Jesus of how a Christian is to
live their lives. That that is what James means when
he says faith with that works is dead. If it
doesn't have the love to back up the faith, there
is no faith there. You have to have them both.
So it's not an either or thing. It's either you

(02:09:07):
have that or you don't.

Speaker 5 (02:09:09):
They mutually dependent.

Speaker 2 (02:09:11):
Absolutely, absolutely, So when somebody says that, you know, Catholics
believe you're saved by Works, that's that's the most ridiculous.
It shows the question itself. You know, sometimes as a teacher,
you get questions and they say, you know, people will say, well,
there's no such thing as a stupid question. Yes there is, Yes,
there is, Yeah, absolutely yes, And this is a stupid

(02:09:33):
question because this shows a profound ignorance that you are
asking something that shows that you know so little about
it that you have to ask a question that really
shouldn't even need to be asked. That's the issue here
that I have with this one, because obviously, you know,
if you understood what Paul was saying in Galatians, you

(02:09:55):
wouldn't need to ask that question. You'd already understand what
it means, you know what I mean. Look, I'm not
trying to call anybody stupid, and certainly smart people can
ask stupid questions. I mean, that's possible.

Speaker 4 (02:10:08):
And again, let's be fair and get back to the
roots of this argument. If you like that, Protestants may
if what if what they were trying to say was
rattling off loads of rosaries won't lead to salvation, we
could agree with them.

Speaker 2 (02:10:26):
Yeah we agree. Yeah, absolutely, that's a good way to
put it.

Speaker 4 (02:10:30):
But probably if someone's rattling off a load of rosaries,
then they well have the faith.

Speaker 2 (02:10:36):
I would hope, So one would hope.

Speaker 4 (02:10:38):
But then again, if the if the argument is just
saying that Hail Mary will save you, I agree it won't.

Speaker 5 (02:10:45):
You have to believe in God. I believe in in
the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2 (02:10:52):
I like it. All right, Well that's our next one.

Speaker 6 (02:10:55):
So I think, greg, there is the basic issue that
we need to understand. Whether you're a grenand Catholic. What
do we mean by works?

Speaker 2 (02:11:04):
Everything is semantics. Everything Brandon is semantics. Most of these
problems and most of these these things that trip people
up or dissension between Protestants and Catholics. Even if you
want to get political protest I mean, you know, Republicans
and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. The things that trip people
up are the semantics behind them. It's the way that

(02:11:26):
words are distorted to create personal meaning. Oh what does
that sound like? Sounds like personal interpretation to me, doesn't it.
So you know, this is the danger here. This is
what the Church has tried for centuries to avert. Unfortunately
people don't cooperate.

Speaker 4 (02:11:40):
That great quote, and I think tonight's shows reflecting this,
that great quote from fult Machine. I know I thought
about Fulton Machine a lot because he's one of my
absolute heroes and a genuine genius by the way, so
Americans should be proud of him.

Speaker 10 (02:11:57):
You know.

Speaker 5 (02:11:58):
He said, there's not there's not a single man on earth.

Speaker 4 (02:12:03):
That objects to the teachings of the Catholic Church. But
there are many men who object to what they think
are the teachings of the Catholic Church. And that's basically
what you're saying. You know, again, I always think it's
best when I'm having these conversations with somebody is normally

(02:12:24):
this is an arrogant statement. I probably know a lot
more about Protestant theology than they do, and so but
I'm not saying that to be arrogant. What I mean
is When I approach this, I always say, what do
you meet? What's the origin of that? Like, why do
you say that you know? Because I want to in
order to answer their question better. It's better that I

(02:12:46):
know where they're coming from. And more often than not,
whether either they don't know, which is fine, then I
just tell them what the origin of it is in
terms of the history of Protestantism, or it's something that's
completely divorced from where that issue came out from.

Speaker 5 (02:13:04):
So so it's always helpful to kind of ask the question,
what's the question behind the question?

Speaker 9 (02:13:11):
You know?

Speaker 8 (02:13:12):
Why?

Speaker 2 (02:13:14):
What is it?

Speaker 4 (02:13:15):
The why is it you think that Protestants have this
issue of the separation of faith and works, and see.

Speaker 5 (02:13:21):
If they know where it comes from. And if they don't,
I'll tell them.

Speaker 2 (02:13:25):
You're going to have to because they're not going to
be help to figure it out. I mean they're not.
They're not going to figure it out on their own.

Speaker 4 (02:13:32):
It's not Please don't hear me saying, oh, I'm the
guru and everyone else is stupid. That's not what I'm
saying at all. I'm just saying that often we don't
really realize that we are receivers of a tradition that
we don't really understand, and so it's always best to,
from my point of view, to figure out the tradition
they're coming from what they actually know about that, because

(02:13:54):
that actually helps to lead towards agreement.

Speaker 2 (02:13:58):
I mean, I agree, I agree, I think, I think
though sometimes obstinence is such that people want to stay
in the dark, They want that ignorance, they want to
hold on to that shred of stupidity because well because
if they yeah, if exactly if they find out that

(02:14:21):
maybe they're wrong, then they're going to have to make
a whole lot of changes and it's going to require
a lot of them, and that's going to be effort
and work that they don't want to commit to.

Speaker 5 (02:14:30):
So exactly why Jesus says to people that want healing,
what do you want me to do for you?

Speaker 2 (02:14:35):
Yeah, that's why he.

Speaker 5 (02:14:37):
Asked that question.

Speaker 4 (02:14:38):
Is why why he says to the rich young man,
you know, what he says is like, are you ready
for the answer to this question?

Speaker 5 (02:14:48):
You know, yea, this is going to be hard.

Speaker 2 (02:14:51):
You know, it's true, it's true. Okay, is that you
go with that or you want to go on? I mean,
are you ready to go on or what do you think?

Speaker 5 (02:14:58):
Ye?

Speaker 6 (02:14:59):
Yes, A very common question why do Catholics baptize baby
is when they cannot choose faith?

Speaker 2 (02:15:09):
Okay, so are you telling me are you are you
trying to argue that works are gonna save you, because
that's exactly the kind of thing you're saying, if this
is what you think we're doing, Because the fact of
the matter is you're telling me that your choice, your
personal choice, has power over God to save you. That's

(02:15:31):
works by faith, my friend. I mean anybody that teaches
that that's faith, that's faith by works. That's the complete
opposite of the so called people that are trying to
say that we're doing it.

Speaker 5 (02:15:41):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:15:41):
We baptize babies because we believe in faith over works.
And the fact of the matter is that baptism imparts
what's known as sanctifying grace. It removes original sin by
the grace of God freely. Now you can't choose that.
You can't make that happen of your own merit. It's
only something that can be given to you by God.

(02:16:01):
So infant baptism reflects that that that that initiative by
God to give salvation freely, not through human decision, and
If you have questions about that, you can go to acts.
No not, I'm sorry, John chapter three, verse five, where
Jesus answers, very verily, very truly, I tell you, no

(02:16:24):
one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are
born of order and the spirit. So what this is
essentially saying here is that this action is required in
order to progress.

Speaker 6 (02:16:37):
Just declare themselves saved?

Speaker 2 (02:16:38):
What's that?

Speaker 6 (02:16:39):
So no one can just declare themselves saved.

Speaker 2 (02:16:41):
Not according to Jesus.

Speaker 5 (02:16:44):
But that would be that would be a dreadful arrogance.

Speaker 2 (02:16:47):
Of course, yeah, not according to Jesus.

Speaker 5 (02:16:50):
A faithful Christian should neither despair that they cannot be saved,
nor satisfy themselves that they're already saved.

Speaker 4 (02:16:59):
I mean, both of those things are acts of pride
and completely incompassible with the Christian faith.

Speaker 2 (02:17:06):
Absolutely so.

Speaker 4 (02:17:07):
But but I mean, by the way, I object to
the question because you spelt baptized with the Z, which
is a terrible American habit.

Speaker 8 (02:17:14):
But you.

Speaker 5 (02:17:17):
Put sense in everything because so many Germans went there,
you love, But.

Speaker 2 (02:17:23):
The Protestant, the Protestants, they've infiltrated us. Well, those German Protestants, by.

Speaker 3 (02:17:32):
The way, Catholics aren't the only ones that baptized babies.
I was baptized baby, and I was raised Protestant.

Speaker 2 (02:17:38):
Well, and let's let's forget, let's not forget, okay.

Speaker 5 (02:17:40):
Presbyterians, will Anglicans.

Speaker 2 (02:17:42):
Do and why do they? And why do they? Because
in Acts, chapter sixteen, verse fifteen, it says all household
was baptized, okay, and in that in Jewish times you
didn't you did not not have children. Every household had children.
I mean they were probic. Okay. It wasn't like today
where you might not have kids. Well, kids back.

Speaker 5 (02:18:05):
Faith or still are prolific.

Speaker 2 (02:18:06):
Yes in America exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:18:08):
Yeah, yeah, but I think let's let's I do want
to put a caveats on it, which I think would
satisfy our our Protestant brethren that I think do have
baptism the wrong way around. But notwithstanding that, the the
context of infant baptism is the household of faith. That's
absolutely definitely true. So that's why parents have to make

(02:18:35):
promises and why they have sponsors. And now the fact
that parents just want to wet the baby's head and
have a party and don't take it seriously.

Speaker 5 (02:18:44):
That's not the fault of the church.

Speaker 4 (02:18:46):
You know, when I used to baptize most of the
town where I was, where I was in active ministry,
didn't really matter what their religious background was. They'd come
to me for a baptism and so, and you know,
it's not hard to tell the ones that really just think, oh,
it's what grandma expects, or it's or it's you know,
we've got the what the baby's head and have a

(02:19:08):
nderly said a would have a party. And the reason
it's not hard to tell who they are is because
I never see them the rest of the year at church.

Speaker 2 (02:19:18):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:19:18):
So, but that's not my fault and that's not and
it's not God's fault.

Speaker 4 (02:19:24):
So I didn't feel that I could refuse baptism of
an infant if parents said, but you know, they wish that,
But of course I would explain to them what they
had to say. You reject the devil, you know the things,
and essentially they have to affirm the creed. So my
obligation is to tell them what the creed means and

(02:19:44):
that you know very succinctly, and say, so, what you're
promising is that you're going to bring up your child
to understand these things. That's why we baptize babies. So
I can agree with Protestants that bat is not a
magic spell and the actually coming to faith is what

(02:20:08):
saves you. We can agree on that. That's why pedo baptism.
The context of that should be the family of faith.
And actually, if a couple are deliberately choosing to live
a life that's opposed to the faith, that could be
a reason not to baptize their child.

Speaker 5 (02:20:29):
Yeah, could be a reason.

Speaker 2 (02:20:31):
Well, and see that's the whole point of again, things
that have been lost to some of these well just
just demystifying Christianity and simplifying it down. Is that, first
of all, one of the issues here is that Protestants
abandoned an essential, well an important sacrament, I mean that essential,
but an important one, which is confirmation. That's where you

(02:20:51):
take a more active participation in choosing and that that's
what that one's for, you know. And then of course
god parents. You know, people think that this is like, oh,
I'm going to honor my best buddy by being making
him the godfather of my child. That's not what it's about.
You chose. Yeah, even though it's a pagan atheist, you're
supposed to choose someone that you know is establish a

(02:21:15):
mature in the faith and is going to guide that
child in their in their spiritual journey. And that's what
a gud parent does is advocate on behalf of the child,
and then when the child grows up, you know, around
the age of maybe about thirteen fourteen, they then go
and receive confirmation. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:21:38):
I enjoying that time. And this is what I say
to these parents. I say, so, oh, do you have
to come to church if the baby about size? I said, well,
you know, so you're saying you're going to bring them
up in this faith? Can you do that without the church?

Speaker 5 (02:21:50):
Can you? Can you do that without our help?

Speaker 2 (02:21:53):
You know?

Speaker 5 (02:21:54):
It's a stupid question.

Speaker 2 (02:21:55):
Yeah, of course you can't.

Speaker 4 (02:21:56):
The father you're going to be lazy and you're gonna
you're gonna do sport instead of to jditional Sunday morning.

Speaker 5 (02:22:01):
That's your own sin you're wrestling with. But don't put
that on me, you know. And so I do. There's
a question in the group chat from a car that
I do want to get I think we shouldn't ignore, which.

Speaker 4 (02:22:11):
Is if people are hearing, if you if you don't
get your children baptized and they die, they can't go
to heaven. We don't know the answer to that question.
We know that God wills that all people will be saved.
God has laid out his plan of salvation, which includes
the church, the revelation of the gift of baptism that

(02:22:32):
he gives to us. That's how we should see it.
These are gifts that God gives. God gives us the
gift of life. He gives us the gift of the
revelation of himself in the world, the revelation of himself
through the scriptures, to the Church, to holy tradition. So
these are gifts. So we can reject gifts or we
can graciously receive gifts. So it's very important that people

(02:22:54):
are about sight because God has revealed that is a
way to salvation.

Speaker 2 (02:22:59):
Christ is not made that. I mean, he could not
have made anything more clear. I mean sometimes he speaks
in parables, maybe you need a little interpretation there. There's
no parable here. He makes it abundantly clear what is required.
So why would you not do it? I mean, why
would you not do it? If you if you if

(02:23:20):
you believe his words are true, then why would you
not do it? That's problematic from the church's point of view,
it means you're not taking it seriously because it's a
very easy thing to get done.

Speaker 4 (02:23:36):
But we must, but we must say, I mean, obviously
there are babies that die before they can be baptized.

Speaker 5 (02:23:41):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:23:42):
We Yeah, but that's where baptism by desire would fall
into a lot of those categories.

Speaker 4 (02:23:47):
I agree, but I do I want to make it
clear that there are means of salvation known only to God.
We can only talk about the ones that in the
church authority over correct.

Speaker 2 (02:23:59):
Yeah. I like that, Yeah, because it is a mystery.

Speaker 4 (02:24:01):
But so so that's why I mean we are cautioned
actually in the church not to say to parents if
you don't get your child baptized, or go to help,
because actually that's not a definitive.

Speaker 2 (02:24:15):
We don't know that. I mean, in fact, even the
church is more traditional teaching here never said that. It
just said limbo. But limbo is really I think the
Church's way. So we really don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:24:28):
Yeah, God, God is utterly beyond us. We don't know
what God has in store for the unbaptized. What we
what we do know that God has a plan for
the baptized. There you go, what we talk about.

Speaker 2 (02:24:44):
Okay, is that good? It goes back to the apostolic age. Okay,
seeing Ernais, he he wrote all about this against heresies. Okay,
so go look it up.

Speaker 6 (02:24:57):
The next question i'd actually personally been, why confess sins
to a priest instead of directly to God?

Speaker 2 (02:25:05):
Because again Christ commands us to do it this way,
and this is again very clearly outlined in the Gospel
of John, chapter twenty, verse twenty two. And when He
had said this, he breathed on them, meaning the apostles,
and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. Who sins

(02:25:27):
you forgive are forgiven them, and who sins you retain
are retained. He gives the very authority in plain language
of the forgiveness of sins to the apostolic authority that
he is creating in his church at that moment. Okay,
it's very clear that this is how Christ designed it.

(02:25:48):
And why is that? Because ultimately, while a lot of
Protestants and non Catholics, even Catholics, want to think that
when you sin, you're sinning against God. Oh no, you
can't sin against God because God is perfect. You can't
harm him, you can't hurt him, you can't make him
feel sad. You can't bother him, but you know what
you can do. Your sins can harm other people. Your

(02:26:11):
sins are against humanity the church, and therefore it is
the church's job to reconcile this with you. I mean,
Jesus is smarter than you are. Stop trying to dumb
him down for your sake. Okay, he outlined this in
a perfect, perfect way, and we should be very content

(02:26:32):
with it as he explains it. And again, this is
not a parable. You know, we should really pay attention
when Jesus is not talking. Well, we should be paying
attention everything Jesus says, but when he's not talking in parables,
it means I need you to really get this. I
don't want any chance of this. Yeah, this is not
going to be an allegory here being read. Yeah, yeah,

(02:26:53):
this is something you need to know. And so he
said it up this way. So if you have a
problem with it, it's it's up to Jesus. Let not
talking to you, Brandon, by the way, I'm talking to
just the general audience that would have a problem with us.

Speaker 4 (02:27:06):
But let's also look at why Jesus laid out. I mean,
you're right, Jesus said, this is the way it is.
That's good enough for me. But let's look at let's
look at again. Let me steal man it a bit.
Is it true to say that if we are truly sorry,
and we confess to God directly, we can be forgiven? Yes,

(02:27:28):
it is true. True contrition, though, is a really hard
thing to achieve. And anyone who takes who takes these
things seriously, who even glimpses the fringe of the coat
of the enormity of who God is, would agree that
that's a very difficult thing to achieve, because our ego.

Speaker 5 (02:27:46):
Gets in the way. We make excuses for ourselves.

Speaker 4 (02:27:51):
So although yet, well, Jesus has actually taking it beyond semantics,
beyond what we think, and said actually objectively, if one
of these apostles or their descendants says your sins have
been put away, it's just it's been put away. It's
no longer a matter of opinion. That's a very useful
thing psychologically to know, right, But the whole purpose of

(02:28:16):
confession is to is yes, that is the chief thing
is to say, now we're putting this beyond opinion.

Speaker 5 (02:28:22):
It's been buried blotted out. Actually. But the but also
it helps you become more holy, because I mean, I
can't tell you who or who's confessed to me or
what they've confessed to me, but I can tell you
that people will often come and come in with fairly
superficial things to confess, things to confess that are not sins,

(02:28:44):
even you know, they're just you know, unpleasant things. But
they forget the really basic ones, like.

Speaker 4 (02:28:54):
I've put myself first before God every day that you
know that I've not been to mass, that i've you know,
the things that actually, oh, that's not so important.

Speaker 5 (02:29:03):
What's more important is that I've had a row with
my daughter.

Speaker 4 (02:29:05):
It's like, no, no, you're more emotionally connected to that
row you've had with your daughter, and that's what you
want to talk about. But actually you've committed far grater
since than that that you've.

Speaker 5 (02:29:15):
Not even considered, you know, And so don't think that
going See this is the thing that makes me laugh
when people who've never been to confession say are going
to confession as a cop out.

Speaker 4 (02:29:28):
Try to go into confession now, don't. And I don't
want anyone who's timid to misunderstand me. If you're if
you're really the opposite you're terrified of going to confession
because you think, oh my god, the priests, I think
I'm the worst person in the whole world.

Speaker 5 (02:29:43):
That's not true either.

Speaker 4 (02:29:45):
So you know, the confessional is a place of is
a salve for people who are actually already feeling terrible
about themselves. Right, So go there and you'll be encouraged
and God's love will be revealed to you through a priest.
But actually, if you're so confident that you could just die,
just confessedly to God my sins, like, how do you know?

Speaker 5 (02:30:07):
How do you know that you're not missing son? You know?

Speaker 4 (02:30:11):
So, I just think it's the height of arrogance to think, yes,
you can be if I'm dying in my bed, if
I have a heart attack and I'm about to die,
I'll be offering some true contrition to God. I can't
absolve myself as a priest, right, yes, but you know so, yes,
I think that's probably true contrition.

Speaker 2 (02:30:29):
But for me to rely on that on a day
on a well, it's for the same reason that you
talked about baptism. It's like, we don't know necessarily what
happens to these unbaptized babies. We do know, though, that
this is a way to salvation, so we're told, instructed
to use it. The same thing goes here. I mean,
there's obviously mysterious. There's sacramental mysteries that go beyond what

(02:30:53):
has been revealed. That's evident, I think in the Father
and the Desert Fathers, because I mean, clearly these are
people that lived in isolation, largely did not have regular
weekly access to all the sacraments, and still managed to
live exemplary lives. I don't question whether or not any
of them are saints, or at least you know, the
Church has recognized numerous numbers of them as saints. So

(02:31:15):
clearly they didn't have the sacraments every day or every
week and were able to make it to sainthood. So
there's there are secret sacraments, I guess in these moments,
But the fact of the matter is we don't know
that process. We do know this one. This is the
one Christ gives us as the means to accomplish it.
So I think it's best to follow his instruction than

(02:31:38):
try to kind of forge your own way and hope
for the best, is what I think Father Chris is
saying there.

Speaker 5 (02:31:43):
Yeah, and I actually, you know, This is reflected in
the group shop.

Speaker 4 (02:31:46):
You know, you know, Marina Paula is saying, you know,
like confessions with life changing, I'm more aware of my
sins now than it was before.

Speaker 5 (02:31:55):
That's the entire point.

Speaker 4 (02:31:57):
Yeah, because actually the whole point of getting closer to
God is to get closer to holiness. And as we
get closer to holiness and the source of light, we
become more aware of our blemishes. So actually, the more
you go to confession, the more you'll go to confession,
and the more you the more you rely on yourself,
because that's basically what you know when people are you know,
I confessed to God alone, it's not about God, it's

(02:32:18):
about you, and you're placing far too much confidence in yourself.

Speaker 2 (02:32:24):
And which is another idolatry, by the way.

Speaker 10 (02:32:28):
It is.

Speaker 4 (02:32:30):
Because because actually one there's two ways. There's two ways
to not feel bad about your sin. There's two ways, Okay,
One is to confess them to God, is to learn
what sin is and realize you're committing more sins than
you ever realized. But actually to then confess them to
a priest, to be coached to be to voluntarily take

(02:32:53):
on penitence, which is what indulgences are about to embrace that,
and actually, in a way, you become more aware of
how simple you are, but you're actually orientated towards holiness.

Speaker 5 (02:33:03):
So you feel a bit worse about yourself, but you're
actually getting better. Right. Yeah, The second way is to
lower your own personal standards.

Speaker 2 (02:33:14):
It's true.

Speaker 4 (02:33:15):
Do you think that's the Do you think that's the
path of salvation? I've got a bridge to sell you
in Brooklyn?

Speaker 2 (02:33:22):
All right, Brandon, what's our next one?

Speaker 6 (02:33:25):
I say, I did want to play a little bit
of the devil's advocate for this question, because it's one
that I've heard quite often. Is I guess if you
said the law of attention? Because many people look to
Mark or Protestant non Catholics in general work here to
Mark to verse seven, when the Pharisees are talking to

(02:33:45):
Jesus and saying who can forgive sins? But God alone?
They often pointed that verse and only gravitate towards it
as some sort of proof or context that, hey, you
don't need to go to a priest, because in this
verse right here it says.

Speaker 4 (02:34:03):
This, it's still God forgiving you in the sacrament of
reconciliation and that's the thing, right. We call it confession
for shorthand because and you know what, the what the
punter is doing, what the you know what the what
what the person is doing is confessing. But it's the
sacrament of reconciliation. This is about reconciliation between you and God.

(02:34:24):
So you are in fact talking to God. The priest
is just kind of there a facilitator really, but at
the end, more than a facilitator to given the power
of the.

Speaker 2 (02:34:35):
Keys to.

Speaker 4 (02:34:38):
Instantiate that reconciliation that now you are reconciled to God,
regardless of your opinion. You know, Marina said she's found
it better than going to a therapist. Now I'm all
for going to both, by the way, But the reason
that Rena Marina found that better is because when you
see a therapist, and I value therapy very highly, talking

(02:34:58):
cure you talk around and how you feel about something.
You know, a therapist could make you feel better by
making you feel like, giving you licentiousness to say, oh,
don't worry about that, that's not that's not something you
should feel bad about.

Speaker 5 (02:35:12):
But ultimately the end of it is just the end.

Speaker 4 (02:35:17):
You just carry on with your life. When you've confessed sins,
and there's a narrative around that before you leave. This
is where the priest switches from facilitator to actor. I mean,
I don't mean a screen actor, I mean taking action.
Is it ends with reconciliation with God, the forgiveness of

(02:35:37):
your sins and reconciliation with God. So in other words,
now there's no longer a matter of opinion, and that
we've we've stuck a pin in it. Now you'll come
back and you'll have to confess maybe the same sins
that you've committed again, but that doesn't change the thing.

Speaker 5 (02:35:51):
There isn't There is an end to it.

Speaker 9 (02:35:53):
Now.

Speaker 5 (02:35:54):
This is why we use the word ritual in the church.
Rituals from the word river. It means to flow.

Speaker 4 (02:36:00):
So in all of our rituals, you don't you don't
end where you started, You move forward. And so that's
that's that's the difference between therapy and the sacrament of reconciliation.

Speaker 2 (02:36:13):
And I think Brandon, you know again, taking that verse
outside of the context of the entire body of the
Gospel is where that's becoming a problem because again you're
taking this individual is taking one verse and at the
exclusion of the one that I used where Christ empowers
the the the apostles with this authority, So you can't

(02:36:37):
take one that you're I mean, they're basically putting the
two verses in contradiction with each other. And again it's
like Father Chris said, it is ultimately God that is
doing the forgiving, because the priest is acting in person
of Christy. And this is again another theological thing that
Protestants don't understand very well, and without the knowledge of
the entire body of the Church, I don't I wouldn't

(02:37:00):
expect them to.

Speaker 4 (02:37:01):
So, yeah, it's true that ultimately a priest will say,
and I absolve you.

Speaker 5 (02:37:09):
The priest will say that, yeah, but the priest says
that in the same way in persona Christian, the same
way when he takes the bread at the Eucharist and says,
this is my body.

Speaker 2 (02:37:20):
Yeah, it's Christ speaking, not the priest. It's not the priest,
not supposed to be the priest. You're not going to
the priest, You're going to Christ. The priest is just
an instrument at that point.

Speaker 6 (02:37:33):
So would you be able very quickly just to explain
what in persona Christie means.

Speaker 2 (02:37:37):
It means in the personhood of Christ. In other words,
the priest acts as though, no, not as though Christ.
The priest acts sacramentally as Christ, and Christ is working
through the priest. The priest is no longer working as
his own under his own volition. He's working under the

(02:37:58):
will of God in sacramental sense, you know, and that
this is not the priest's will that is doing this.
It's it's God's will working with the priest. Because you know,
God is is a higher reality, and you know, it
would be unrealistic to think that God's going to manifest

(02:38:19):
some miracle every single time someone needs to confess something.
You know, it has to be done through the paths
of Leith's resistance so that life maintains some sense of normalcy.
I mean, if God was throwing miracles down left and right,
which he actually does, by the way, but if he
was doing it in some dramatic way, I mean, we
wouldn't be able to live our lives. We wouldn't have
any free will of our own.

Speaker 3 (02:38:39):
At that point, death all the time.

Speaker 2 (02:38:41):
I mean, it wouldn't we we couldn't function. We have
to have normalcy, and so therefore the Church becomes the
instrument of normalcy.

Speaker 5 (02:38:49):
I mean to think.

Speaker 4 (02:38:50):
And this isn't a perm its analogy because in person
of Christie I mean literally at the Eucharist, Christ uses
our hands and our vocal cords.

Speaker 2 (02:38:56):
Yes, I mean, but but.

Speaker 4 (02:39:00):
Decent analogy is to say, you know, Brandon, when you're
talking to if you come to Australia and you're talking
to down the pub and and you say something to
me about America, it's just your opinion, right.

Speaker 5 (02:39:13):
But if you're the if you're the United States ambassador
to Australia and you you speak something about US government
policy towards Australia, well, now you're not just speaking as Brandon.
You're speaking in the person of the President of the
United States of America. See, so you have a different authority, right,

(02:39:34):
It's not no longer your personal authority of Brandon's opinion.
You're an ambassador of your nation. And so.

Speaker 4 (02:39:43):
Yeah, sometimes, I mean this is true of all Christians.
But all Christians are ambassadors of Christ. That's the baptismal.

Speaker 5 (02:39:53):
What's the word mandate, you know, is to be ambassadors
of Christ and to a certain extent, to be or
the Christ to be in persona Christie. But the priest
in a particular role in a sacramental role, is is
is in persona Christie in a particular way to Uh,
for absolving sins, of for making present the body of

(02:40:14):
love of Christ.

Speaker 2 (02:40:15):
To a scal's question, when someone goes to confession, do
they literally have to confess every action or can they
confess their sins in general or in their mind to God?
You cannot do it in your mind. You must do
it with your mouth, and as far as the details
you can remember. The Church is is this. These are

(02:40:37):
basically the rules. Okay, you confess everything to the best
of your memory since your last confession, or if if
you haven't done your first confession yet because you are
recently baptized, since your since your baptism, okay, to the
best of your memory. If you honestly forget something after
the fact, it is it is. You can either save

(02:40:58):
it for next time, But generally speaking, you can consider
it absolved if it was honestly forgotten, not intentionally forgotten
or left out. As far as the details go, the
Church instructs that one must confess the details of a
mortal sin. Venial sins can be given in a general sense.

(02:41:19):
That's the general, But.

Speaker 5 (02:41:21):
Listen, I mean the priest will help you. Yeah, there
are guidelines on us as well.

Speaker 4 (02:41:25):
For example, Yeah, like you know, people are confessing some
sexual sin, we may ask questions, but only to only
to help reveal the nature of the sin to you.
In other words, like we're not supposed to ask questions
out of morbid curiosity, you know, or out of perverse
pleasure like you know, And sometimes I've said, don't need

(02:41:48):
to know the details.

Speaker 5 (02:41:51):
So it is about confessing. Well, you're confessing.

Speaker 4 (02:41:56):
You can only confess the things your conscience is are
wokening you well, And like Bishop Bryan said, you know,
it's only if you're deliberately withholding something that you know
is pressing on your conscience that that's a problem. By
the way people do that, it's a normal part of
human existence. And as you get into making you confession

(02:42:17):
more regularly, it's not unusual to then well, I've certainly.

Speaker 5 (02:42:22):
Heard them from people that have come back and gone,
actually this.

Speaker 2 (02:42:26):
If you were to say, if you were to say
in confession that I've been having sexual thoughts or I've
been having you know, violent thoughts, but haven't really actually
carried any of that out, it would be largely venal
to just simply say that these are your thoughts that

(02:42:48):
you're having. However, now if you raped someone or murdered someone,
and then you go into the confessional and say, I've
been having some violent tendencies or you know, inclinations and
I've been having some sexual inappropriate thoughts, that would be
intentionally misleading because you're not going into the actual sin.
You're you're trying to sugarcoat it so it doesn't sound

(02:43:09):
so bad. And that's not really confession, is it.

Speaker 4 (02:43:13):
So you got to use that's that's really useful, bishy Brian,
because I hadn't actually thought of it from that way around.
But yeah, that's absolutely true. But also again we don't
invent these prayers that the cons from holy tradition. At
the end of you know, the sort of free the

(02:43:35):
free talk, and the priest will ask you questions and
help you out right, that's our job. But at the
end of the free talk there's the catch all for
these and all of the sins. I can no longer remember,
you know, as long as that's genuine when you say that,
if afterwards you remember one, like bis Brian said, it's
not it's fine, it's covered. If however, you realize as

(02:43:56):
well as a real stinker that you didn't mention that
know was innocently done. But actually you know that it's
of a nature that would need a separate conversation.

Speaker 5 (02:44:06):
You're gonna the Holy Spirit will lead you back. But
and here here's the punchline on examining your conscience.

Speaker 4 (02:44:13):
The devil doesn't want you to think badly about terrible
things you've done or things that are sorry. Doesn't want
you to think terribly about yourself for having offended God,
because that's what confession is about what separated you from God,
not what you've necessarily.

Speaker 5 (02:44:28):
Done with other people.

Speaker 4 (02:44:28):
Although it interacts, the Holy Spirit is the one that
is that is making you feel bad. That's an act
of love because God wills that you come to him,
and so it's it is actually like it's good. We
call it our good conscience. Is your good conscience that
pricks you, that's a good thing that's from God. If

(02:44:51):
you have a bad conscience, a poorly formed one, you're
going to be in mortal sin till the day you die.
So if you're feeling bad about things to sign, you're
actually turning towards God. And the best thing you can
do is speak to a priest who hears confessions on
a fairly regular basis, because they're going to be able.

Speaker 2 (02:45:10):
To help you the most to get it removed. Okay,
we're good, Brandon, So real quick.

Speaker 6 (02:45:15):
For those that might not be familiar with it, would
you be able to explain the two different.

Speaker 2 (02:45:18):
Types of sin, mortal and venial. Okay, So, venial is
sort of the general things. They do not separate us
from God, but they they offend the moral nature of
our relationship. And therefore, you know, white lies for example,
or maybe you know, giving someone the finger while you're

(02:45:40):
on the highway because they cut you off. These are
minor offenses. They're sinful behaviors, but they're not necessarily things
that are going to damage or completely sever your relationship
to God. Mortal sin severs our relationship to God and
must be restored through the sacramental action of confession. And
I did.

Speaker 4 (02:46:00):
Actually, just because you don't feel that bad about it
doesn't mean it's not a moral sin. So you might
think flipping someone off on the motorway is worse than
not going to Mass on Sunday.

Speaker 5 (02:46:10):
God does not agree with you.

Speaker 2 (02:46:12):
I mean, yeah, that's right. I mean there and but
mortal sin also has criteria. I mean, it has to
be the full volition of the will. I'm not sure
we really ever have full control of our will, so
that's always an interesting philosophical debate that priests have. You know,
it has to also be a grave action for it

(02:46:33):
to be a mortal sin. But yes, missing mass intentionally
is actually a mortal sin without dispensation. I did see
Ace's follow up question I have. Is it suffice to
tell the Father I have sinned? So simple might sound dumb. No,
it's not sufficient. Everyone knows you sin. You're in there
because of it. That's not a confession. Confession is going

(02:46:55):
through the the the the the expressions in which the
behavior through which you have conducted these these behaviors and
and and and and and and there's no way to
be able to rationalize them in a sense that's going
to be useful for the sacraments purpose of grace. If

(02:47:16):
you're not able to face them, sounds like you're trying
to avoid the realities of your sin. If that's if
that's you know, a strategy that you're hoping to deploy.
You can't. You have to face the sin's head on.
That's the whole point of confession. Otherwise, what you retain
you die with, and what you die with kills you.

(02:47:36):
Simple as that. I mean, I don't want to be
too harsh, but that's the harsh reality of sin. The
penalty for all of it is death, from the most
simple one to the greatest one. All right.

Speaker 5 (02:47:46):
By the way, those of us who know it better
have the higher bar.

Speaker 2 (02:47:51):
That's true.

Speaker 5 (02:47:51):
So I mean, and you think, well, why would you
want to know? Don't tell me more? Then I don't
want the.

Speaker 2 (02:47:56):
High about doesn't work. Little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
We can probably do maybe one more detailed question or
two or three short ones. So let's go. Let's see
what we can do.

Speaker 6 (02:48:12):
Yes, So this would not be an official Catholic Q
and A episode without mentioning this. Okay, what is purgatory
and why and where is it in the Bible?

Speaker 2 (02:48:23):
Okay? So biblically speaking, it is an inference from parts
of the Bible as well as the philosophical reality that
most people are going to die in a state of grace,
but yet will be devoid of the perfection necessary for
entering into the Kingdom of heaven. Therefore, how is that reconciled, okay,

(02:48:44):
because they're going to be to have too much grace
to go to hell, but not perfect enough to go
to heaven. Therefore, there has to be inferred a third
condition to take care of that lack of perfection, something
that that that cleanses one of whatever remains with the
grace that they cultivated in life. And so scripturally we

(02:49:07):
get some of this from three particular verses. The first
one is First Corinthians, chapter three, verses thirteen through fifteen,
which talks about the purification through fire, Matthew Chapter twelve,
verse thirty two, which talks about the forgiveness in the
age to come, and second Maccabee's twelve forty five for
those that take Maccabee seriously, where there are offerings of

(02:49:29):
the prayers for the dead. So why would you pray
for the dead if they're in hell because your prayers
are not going to help anybody that's in hell. And
why would you pray for the dead if they're in
heaven because they don't need your prayers. So there has
to be a third condition, and it's inferred. That's what
purgatory is, and that's where it comes from. Purgatory is
not a second chance. It isn't a place you go

(02:49:52):
to hopefully get saved because you screwed up the first time.
It is we're the saved go to be prepared for
the Kingdom of Heaven. And it's not even a place
you go. It's a condition that remains. And I describe
it as whatever material or ego attachments that you are
unwilling or unable to resolve in life that is dealt

(02:50:15):
with in death before you can enter into the kingdom.
But rest assured, everybody that enters purgatory is saved. There
is no salvation there. It's you don't get saved there,
You're already saved if you're there. Okay, that went quick.
That went quick. I think that went.

Speaker 6 (02:50:35):
So Hold on the Father, Christie, you want to add into.

Speaker 5 (02:50:38):
That, not really, I mean, you know when we have
the episode.

Speaker 2 (02:50:44):
On Annihilation beat it to Death, an't we?

Speaker 4 (02:50:50):
But I do think that you know this image we
get from the from the Patricia, from the Church Fathers
of it's not a place we go to be the
presence of God. And for those who love God, that's
eternal light and truth.

Speaker 5 (02:51:04):
This heaven.

Speaker 4 (02:51:05):
For those that hate God, that is fire and damnation
because his light burns you. For I think the majority
of Christians on the path of salvation, we greet him
with some of the trash still.

Speaker 5 (02:51:25):
Glued to us, and that has to be burned away.
That is painful, but that is purgation, that's purification, that's
pain for the purpose of living in eternal light and truth.
I think that's the best way to think about purgatory.

Speaker 2 (02:51:37):
Well said, all right, we can probably do another one.

Speaker 6 (02:51:42):
Why do Catholics believe in the Eucharist being the actual
body and blood of Christ?

Speaker 2 (02:51:48):
Okay, So this is a good question. Did this is
because we always did, and it was only in again
the Reformation era where this became amplified and then eventually
eliminated because even Luther believed in the real presence of Christ.
So let's not forget that, okay. But the reality is

(02:52:09):
here is you might ask, well, weird, does this come from?
What's the scriptural foundation to this? Why would we believe this? Well,
you know, this is one of the problems that comes
with the translation of the Bible out of its original Greek.
And there's a place in the Gospels where Jesus is
being questioned and he tells the Pharisees that unless or

(02:52:30):
he tells a large group and the Pharisees overhear this,
unless you eat my unless you eat my flesh and
drink my blood, there will be there can be no
life in you. And the words, by the way, is
not the word to gnaw. That's the whole point to gnaw.
The Greek word is not eat, it's gnaw. And the

(02:52:53):
reason this is significant is because if you're speaking allegorically
like to consume knowledge, you know how we would say, oh,
I want to I want to consume Christ's knowledge. You
would never say I want to know on Christ's knowledge.
Gnaws like for gnawing on a bone. It's a very barbaric,
very visceral word in Greek. Yeah, and the fact that

(02:53:15):
Christ uses that word means that he's being specifically literal,
which is why, which is why the Jews react so
violently to this and say, I mean, this is disgusting
because remember, blood is an unclean thing. The idea of
drinking blood, let alone human blood, was just unthinkable. The

(02:53:36):
fact that Jesus is saying that this is next may
less this teaching was too hot exactly if it was
just him being allegorical, they would not have taken that
is seriously, So you have to understand it from that person. Again,
this is taking things out of context, having a very
elementary understanding of some of these things, not knowing where

(02:53:58):
the original Greek actually what it teaches, and you know,
not really taking much study into it.

Speaker 5 (02:54:04):
This is the problem and not a very biblical reading
of the Last Supper exact because Jesus, Jesus does not
take bread and say this will represent my.

Speaker 2 (02:54:14):
This is my body, this is my blood.

Speaker 4 (02:54:17):
Even though even though I have read so called translations
of the Bible use that actually does say that.

Speaker 5 (02:54:23):
That's not what it says in the scriptures. It says
this is my body, this is my blood.

Speaker 4 (02:54:28):
And and if I say to them I simply believe
the straight word of scripture, how can they argue with me?
M Yeah, on what basis are they arguing with me?
If that, if they hold the soul scripturer?

Speaker 2 (02:54:44):
So there you go.

Speaker 5 (02:54:45):
What Catholics believe is is is what I mean.

Speaker 4 (02:54:49):
I have to be said, as you said, Martin Luther,
what what they objected to was was that was and
we don't need to get into it now, was transubstantiation.

Speaker 5 (02:54:57):
We've talked about it before. This is an aristot.

Speaker 4 (02:55:00):
Alien attempt to describe the science of how the body
of blood of Christ becomes president in the Eucharist, which
actually is not necessary now as it happens. I don't
have that big a problem with it. I think it's
it's not bad, but so Luther has consubstantiation.

Speaker 2 (02:55:16):
What's bad is the fact that it tripped people up.
That's what's bad. Yeah, the fact that it's kind of
like this co redemptrics thing. I kind of agree with
the Pope. Let's drop stuff that makes it more complicated
than it needs to be. Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.

Speaker 4 (02:55:31):
And also this is me being very cynical. We're less
sophisticated how we think. So actually some of these things
about to be dropped because we're just not smart enough anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:55:43):
Christianity is a very is a very intellectual study. It's
a very intellectual pursuit. It's not something for people to
just get by, you know, as a casual thing, and
is something that really requires intellect. And I'm not saying
you have to have like a genie i Q to
to be a Christian, but you have to be willing

(02:56:05):
to extend yourself outside of your every day. You know,
pursuits it's going to make you uncomfortable.

Speaker 4 (02:56:15):
It is, you know, you can't be just like you
can live your life. You can live your life on
bread and milk. Okay, you can live your life on
bread and milk. Most people don't know they branch out.
And so that's what you're supposed to do with your
brain as well. And so I mean, it's always amazes
me that you know, one of the one of the
cristicians of your here of Catholics is our blind obedience

(02:56:36):
to the pope.

Speaker 6 (02:56:36):
Is like.

Speaker 4 (02:56:38):
Do you know how like the same and as simple
thing as you say, Oh, it's so complicated. It's like
you can't Bothah, you know we have sufficient that milk
for the weak and meat for the strong.

Speaker 5 (02:56:52):
You know, it's but you're supposed to want to be strong.
You're not supposed to want to be a baby.

Speaker 2 (02:56:57):
Well, if you have a problem with it, you've got
to take it up with Jesus, because that's where it
comes from. Okay, we didn't, it's not we made this.

Speaker 5 (02:57:05):
Frankly, not up and get better. Like seriously, you know
you just if you're capable of doing these things, you
should do them and just say, oh, my life's difficult.
Everyone lives is difficult. Yes, you know, there's no excuse.
You got to be better.

Speaker 2 (02:57:21):
Agreed, that's it, And we only got through I don't
even have to I'll think. I don't even think it
was half So Brandon, keep keep where we left off. Okay,
which is I think on why can't non Catholics receive communion? Yeah,
so we'll start up next season with that, probably episode

(02:57:41):
one or two of the next season, and we'll cover it. Okay,
we'll get through the rest of them, but I think
it was better to do it this way so that
we could give more complete answers than try to like
shoot these out in two minutes. That would be hard.
All right, Well, next week we've got a new guest
that will talk to us about out healing, actual energetic healing,

(02:58:03):
and she will go through how this is done and
how it's performed and what her work is like. This
should be a very interesting one for those of you
who are interested in that kind of thing. I know
that I would like to learn more about energetic healing.
I don't really outside of reiki, I don't really know
too much about it. So it should be interesting to
see that's next week, Tuesday at eight pm Eastern time.

(02:58:27):
Thank you Brandon for all your great questions. Thank you
Father Chris for all your great answers. And Jamie tonight
it was a great show. Great all right everybody. Until
next week. I'll see you out there in the ether.
God bless everyone.

Speaker 3 (02:58:41):
Take care.

Speaker 9 (02:59:49):
Conditions to.

Speaker 7 (02:59:57):
The is the nest inlist thesis is the elist Indus is.

Speaker 9 (03:00:06):
The west of Usa is the Wstus.

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Understanding Catholicism with Bishop Bryan Ouellette and Fr. Chris Yates

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