Transcript

Hello, everybody.

Um, I'm gonna just do a quick sound check because I am an old person who doesn't know how YouTube works.

Hey, all right.

Looks like we're working.

All right.

So I think many of you already know how this works.

Uh, special thanks to Metal Mike today.

Vanessa is off with a family thing, and so he is covering the kinda behind the scenes stuff.

He's gonna be pulling your questions based on Super Chats, and he's already announced that he's gonna order them, um, by value.

So you can cut each other by getting into a bidding war.

Totally up to you, however you wanna do all that.

Uh, there was one question that I hadn't gotten to last week.

I'm gonna start with that and then kinda as your questions come in, uh, I will, uh, get to those.

And I'll Yeah, just kinda see where it goes.

All right.

So beginning with, uh, Young Baby Tate from Your YouTube names are fascinating to me.

I wanna do just like half an hour where you can all explain what are you What, what made you choose the names you chose?

Anyway, fair enough.

Uh, Young Baby Tate seems like you could have just gone with tater tot, but fine.

All right.

So Young Baby Tate asks, What is your view on lying?

Are you largely Thomistic or do you take a different line of thought?

I am, uh, largely Thomistic on this.

So for those who aren't familiar, the question is whether lying is always and everywhere wrong, or can it sometimes be permitted?

And I think that the Well, frankly, the biblical evidence on this, I think it can fairly be read two different ways 'cause on the one hand, Jesus seems to condemn lying in very strong terms, comparing it to the behavior of the devil.

On the other hand, you have situations where people engage in lying, and it's not, uh, treated in an obvious way as a wicked action.

So for instance, the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1, who spare the lives of, uh, the baby Israelites by, uh, lying and claiming that, you know, they weren't there when the women gave birth to sons, that sort of thing, to avoid having to kill baby boys.

So I see why people take the view that lying is sometimes permitted to avoid some greater evil.

I don't think that is a safe option.

Um, there are people who I respect who are on what I think is the wrong side of this question, but I don't think it's morally safe to make this argument that if there is a gray area here, I think we have to assume that lying is always and everywhere wrong and avoid it, uh, out of a fear of sin.

And if, if those of us who believe lying is always wrong are ourselves wrong and lying is sometimes okay, okay, fair enough.

Like, maybe we avoided doing what would have been a, an advantageous course of action.

But on the other hand, uh, if those of us who believe lying is always wrong are correct, then you've got Catholics and other Christians who are doing things that are sinful and giving, um, convoluted moral defenses for them.

And I think that's a bigger problem.

So the argument from a Catholic side isn't just on, you know, Jesus' words in which he, he seems to strongly condemn lying, but also on this long tradition.

Uh, Saint Thomas Aquinas says, as Young Baby Tate pointed out, uh, is kind of, uh, emblematic of it, of treating lying as always and everywhere wrong.

And Aquinas is going to say that when you have things like the Hebrew, um, midwives being praised, they're not praised for lying, but they are praised for their valor in trying to protect, uh, these newborn children.

And I think a lot of the lying cases are, are like that.

I think similarly, you know, I was on Lila Rose's show, uh, about a month ago.

When she first came to prominence, she did some undercover work exposing Planned Parenthood.

Uh, and I think the techniques that she used in the very beginning were ones I, I can't morally condone, but I think the zeal that she had is certainly morally, uh, condonable.

And so like the Hebrew midwives, she might be lauded by Our Lord despite the particular technique that she used.

Um, so a- again, I think it's something where we can reasonably part company, but I do think it matters.

And one of the reasons I think it matters is once you give a little room for lying, you're opening up a kind of a whole can of worms.

So there's two questions.

One, is lying always wrong?

And two, what constitutes lying?

The Catechism speaks about both of these.

So paragraph 2485 says, Lying by its very nature is to be condemned.

So that looks like a universal, uh, condemnation of lying.

So you'll have people who are not very sophisticated and they'll say, Oh, lying is okay sometimes.

And that is not church teaching.

That's actually hard to square with anything Jesus taught.

And, uh, the Catechism gets into why it's always against Uh, why it's always wrong to lie, but I'll get into that in a second 'cause the other question is, what does it mean to lie?

And this is a little more complicated of a question than it seems.

So one answer would be misleading a person.

But that's not quite right.

You can mislead a person without sinning.

You could, for example, uh, be playing a game of football and you're gonna juke left and then you're gonna run right and make them look really ridiculous when you pull it off.

Is that a lie?

No, it's not.

It is deceptive, it is misleading.

You've tricked them, but you haven't lied to them.

That lying involves an actual communicative act in a way that we associate with verbal communication or with, you know, like sign language would, would fall into this as a form of spoken communication.

It's not just that you've sort of tricked them with your body.

So wearing a disguise, for instance, if you're going undercover is not lying.It might be lying, um, when you, you know, s- get into a conversation.

But then you could still have conversational moves that, uh, are deceptive but are not false.

There's not a So the usual components Well, okay, let's look at paragraph 2483 in its old and its new form.

The old form of paragraph 2483 of the Catechism said, uh, Lying is the most direct offense against the truth.

That part stays the same in both.

And it says, To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth.

But the church changed this.

I, I would argue corrected this to avoid a confusion there, and it now reads, To lie is speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error.

So a lying ha- lying, a lie has two components.

Number one, you are saying something contrary to the truth, and number two, you're intending to mislead someone and you're to lead them into error.

So sarcasm isn't a lie.

You're saying something that's not true, but you expect they'd know that that's not true.

Um, a joke isn't a lie if the other person knows it's a lie or, or a joke, excuse me.

It's, uh, called a jocular lie if you're actually deceiving them.

Uh, it's venial.

It's, like, we can debate that.

Like, I think that's a separate category.

That's not a particular area.

Although, it actually does some, some damage.

As someone who loves jokes and has a dry sense of humor, it can make it hard when you're trying to be, uh, authentic and sincere, and your, we'll say wife for the purposes of a very, uh, accurate description, can't always tell, like, Oh, are you actually being sincere right now, or are you just messing around?

But even there, like, there's not an actual intent to deceive, so I would say in those cases it's probably still not lying, but still does some harm to the communicative act.

And we'll get into that in a second.

So you'll have people who defend the old version of 2483 that this only applies to one who has the right to know the truth, but the problem with that is, well, who has the right to know the truth?

So there are basically three arguments given for lying.

Number one, in this circumstance, I had no choice but to lie.

That's never true.

Lying, definitionally, you are choosing to say something that's not true.

You could choose otherwise.

There might be a consequence to choosing otherwise, but you always It's always an intentional act to lie.

If you are just wrong, that's not a lie.

If you say you're gonna do something and you're intending to do it and then you don't do it, you weren't lying.

You might have not known yourself very well or the circumstances might have changed, but that's not a lie.

But if you say you're gonna do something knowing full well you're not gonna do it, then it would be a lie.

So it's about your present knowledge and then speaking against that.

Um, second reason people say lying sometimes okay is it leads to a better outcome, that, you know, Oh, well, you'll get some Like, things will go better for you if you lie than if you don't.

And this could be anything from lying to get ahead, but more often it's lying to avoid some evil.

So, you know, the standard example is you're hiding Jews in the attic.

But if you say it's okay to lie because you can produce better outcomes by it, that seems to open the door for a lot of lies.

So that's not a very strong kind of objection, in my view.

Then the third and the strongest objection is you can lie if the other person doesn't deserve the truth.

Now I technically think that the nature of lying as a communicative act only involves you and the person to whom you're speaking, like, the intended audience of your speech.

And someone else without a right to eavesdrop doesn't have a right to the truth in it.

So you could speak in a coded way, uh, to someone in case there are prying ears.

For instance, a husband and wife could speak in a sort of euphemistic way about their intimate life, and if the kids overheard it, they would come away with the wrong impression of what was going on.

And that's okay.

That's different than directly lying to your kids, because in one, you're abusing your authority as a parent and you're abusing your authority as a speaker, um, to mislead.

In the other, someone who knows they don't have the right to what's being communicated comes away without an accurate sense of what's being communicated, which is a It's a different kind of thing.

So I actually think it's true that a lying proper, a lie properly speaking implies that the other person has a right to know the truth.

But in paragraph 2485, it talks about lying as a profanation of speech, whereas the purpose of speech is to communicate known truth to others.

So the recipient of that has a right to the truth.

People who will argue against this will do- basically just say wicked men or men with ill intentions don't have a right to know the truth.

So someone who comes to the door and says, I wanna know where the Jews are, they don't have a right to that information because of their wickedness or because of the wickedness of their intentions.

I think that's a strong objection.

I think a problem with that objection, and I haven't seen a good answer to this, is by that same reasoning, it seems that if someone Let's say you're, it's the Roman Empire and they're persecuting Christians and they say, Are you a Christian?

Well, it seems that you would say, Well, they don't have a right to the truth.

So therefore you can lie and say, Oh no, I'm a pagan.

That seems wrong in a pretty obvious way.

Now maybe it's wrong because there you have both lying and a sort of blasphemy, uh, but yeah.

I- it just, it doesn't seem correct.

Um, all right.

Let me move on to that, to the other Super Chats here.

Um, Petros, if I'm getting the Greek right there, it's a g- a retracted message, but thank you.

Oh.Oh, okay.

Sorry.

Mike's putting the questions at the bottom.

I was looking in the wrong place.

Boreal Opelta, hope I got that right, said, Could you do a video on why full preterism is false?

I know a lot of the verses counsel just, just by the Second Coming being later.

We now, we know about the destruction in AD 70.

Think I'm reading that correctly.

Yeah.

So when Christ gives, um In Matthew 25.

He gives a series of parables, actually, uh, it begins in 24.

So, 24 and 25.

The context in 24 matters.

Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple, but he answered them, You see all these, do you not?

Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

And this begins what's called the Mount Olivet discourse, because they ask him, Tell us, when will this be and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?

So what makes the question of interpreting Matthew 24 and 25 so tricky is the question Jesus is being asked is about the destruction of the temple and the end of the world.

But those are not, from our perspective, the same event.

The destruction of the temple, uh, maybe prefigures the end of the world.

It is a sort of apocalypse.

It's a sort of end of the world.

But it's referring to a, a concrete event we can point to in the year 70.

And then the question becomes, okay, so is everything Jesus saying for the next two chapters simply about, uh, what happens there?

W- so th- this includes things like the Lord returning and judging the sheep and the goats, and bringing one into eternal glory and one into hell.

And so, um, one view is like, okay, everything Jesus is saying, Matthew 24 and 25, refers just to the Second Coming, just to the, um, eschaton, just to the tribulation, just to something in the future, end of the world.

That view seems to me to be obviously wrong, so a lot of dispensationalism seems to take something closer to that view.

The opposite extreme would be what's called full preterism that says everything Jesus says in Matthew 24 and 25 is fulfilled in 70 with the destruction of the temple, so that is his return in glory.

He separates the sheep and the goat, so the righteous are spared the destruction of the temple.

They, they know to flee.

The Christians flee Jerusalem and their lives are spared and, and so on.

And so you have a sort of judgment that happens right there.

The middle position, which is the one that we've historically taken as Christians, is it's a both/and.

That some of what Jesus is saying refers to the destruction of the temple in 70, some refers to his coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and some refers in some way to both of these things.

And that the one kind of prefigures the other.

And so the partial preterism is the solution to that.

Um, I've thought about doing a video on that because I actually found some Back in the day, I used to write about preterism, um, fairly often.

Let's see if I can find this very easily.

Okay, I cannot.

Um, that's 'cause I misspelled preterism in my search.

Oh, whatever.

Uh.

Sorry, I did some stuff on Something that's called hyper-preterism.

And I responded to this back in like 2012 it looks like.

2012, 2013, 2014.

Kind of in that period.

And one of the things that I found really fascinating, uh, for it was that the people who advanced the kind of hyper-preterist view that the r- or full preterist view that the whole thing was fulfilled in 70 would often admit, Yeah, yeah, nobody believed this for about 2,000 years, but we still think it's right.

And they would defend this by saying, Well, look, a lot of the Protestant doctrines weren't believed in for 1,500 years.

And I loved the intellectual consistency of this to just say, like, Okay, like, cool.

Um, once you open the door and say, The church can be wrong for 1,500 years, why not say, 2,000 years?

Why not say, you know, that, Still nobody understands the gospel, and that we, we need some new teacher to come along and, and explain, uh, what, what the right answer is?

But, nevertheless, I haven't done a video on it, um, largely because it seems too niche to reach a broad audience.

Uh, but we'll see.

I mean, if, if I see somebody who seems popular enough to, you know, warrant making a video on it, I'd be happy to do it.

I think it's a fascinating topic.

We'll see.

Latin Write Poppy says, What do you say to those who say it's not about religion, it's about relationship, and they become no different from Pharisees with their traditions?

Number one, that's so clearly not Christianity.

So you find two different groups of people who use this.

One is the kind of, uh, live, laugh, love, spiritual but not religious types.

And it's totally an unstructured, vague spirituality, uh, but I So, you know, you've got that.

Then the other group that does the same, Oh, it's not religion, it's relationship, are some loose kind of vaguely Protestant, non-denominational types.

The second group is making such an obvious mistake in the sense that that's not the way the Bible talks about religion at all.

So for instance, uh, James 1:27, Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

And so very clearly, religion is treated- uh, as a good thing.

Similarly, in 1 Timothy 3:16, St. Paul refers to the mystery of our religion, and so Christianity is a religion, and that is undeniable.

Nevertheless, I think it's worth saying to, to either group that there is something accurate in there, which is that what I think they're trying to say is healthy spirituality and healthy Christianity is not simply a matter of following a moral code or, uh, doing a set of actions or anything like that.

There is, beneath all of that, a relational aspect in terms of how you're encountering God, and by extension, also how you're encountering your neighbor.

That's true, but a healthy relationship has structure.

So you kind of have to have a, I think the girls call them a DTR, a define the relationship talk, where you just say like, What are we?

And so it's not healthy to just be vaguely like, Oh, yeah, am I dating this person, or am I just spending time with them?

There's something very low-committal about that that's very attractive to the modern, um, non-committal fearful person, but it's not healthy or respectful of the other person to do that to them.

You need to actually say, Yeah, we're doing this, or, We're not doing this.

Well, likewise, in your relationship with God, either He is your Lord or not.

That is a structured relationship.

And so if you say, like, Oh, yeah, he's just my, my bud, it's like, well, no, Jesus is Lord.

By all means, He is a friendly and loving Lord, but if you don't grasp what His Lordship actually consists of, which includes He gives orders and you obey them, then it What does it mean to talk about Him as your savior and not your Lord?

So I think putting it in those terms, that healthy relationships have rules to them is a good first step.

And this is true of any relationship.

Like, in marriage, there's a bunch of spoken and unspoken rules.

That's not pharisaism.

That's just healthy interpersonal communication and dynamic.

If I just, like, don't come home tonight 'cause I wanna spend all night, like, playing games or doing theology or whatever else, I'll have done an actual disservice to my wife, and it's not because of legalism.

And so the people who speak and act that way are often really, um, afraid of healthy commitments, and so it's just Uh, there's, beneath the theological objection, a basic human failing that needs to be kind of highlighted and drawn out.

So yeah, it's not pharisaism to have a healthy structured relationship, and by the way, in biblical terms, the term for a relationship with rules is a covenant, and that's what Christianity is, uh, according to both the Old and the New Testament.

I talk about this at some length in my book, The Eucharist is Really Jesus.

So if you want that, um, I give, like, a chapter where I talk about the Eucharist as key, uh, to covenant.

Uh, Borealopelta says, Could you also do a video on the devil?

Is he still alive?

Yes, he is.

The devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Roman says, God will soon crush Satan.

Isaiah says, The serpent will be slain when the altar is made chalk stone, referring to the destruction of the temple.

Yeah, but, like, sin continues to be, uh, a real reality.

So there is a sense in which the stronghold Satan has, has been overturned, and so we can talk about that, by all means.

There is a real sense in which the defeat of Satan has begun, but this is what the church describes as the already and not yet of the Gospel.

So when Jesus is talking about the Kingdom, for instance, the Kingdom is already amongst us, and yet not yet inaugurated.

So we can st- or not yet inaugurated in its fullness, I should say.

Excuse me.

So we can still pray, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

And what is the Kingdom of God?

Well, it's The Kingdom is wherever He is king.

And so if He is your King and Lord, the Kingdom is present there.

So we can talk about His Kingdom in Heaven in the full sense.

We can talk about His Kingdom in the church, but also in the hearts of believers, and anywhere where He reigns.

And so the Kingdom has an inbreaking in the world in a radical way with the death and resurrection of Christ.

But that While that victory is assured, has not completely played out in history.

There is still a sense in which the forces of evil fight against, uh, Christ and His Church and Christ and His Kingdom.

And so you see that, for instance, in the Book of Revelation.

You see that battle still ongoing.

There's a controversy about when to date the Book of Revelation.

A lot of people are gonna date it after the destruction of the temple, uh, so that gives us a, a concrete sense that, you know, Satan isn't just completely vanquished in a permanent way in the year 70.

It's, it's more complex than that.

Manny says, I'm a Catholic premillennialist, so I think the anti-Christ and tribulation came in the form of AD 70 and Nero, and I think you clarified and said postmillennialist, which makes more sense there.

Um, but I think we are waiting for the second coming and the resurrection.

Thoughts?

Well, the catechism talks, I think rightly, about a sense of tribulation at the end, and so I think it's fine to see it as sort of a prefigurement, that one of the Uh, where does it talk about that?

I'm sorry.

Uh, one of the things that the tribulation in, uh, you know, 69 and 70 prefigures is what's gonna happen at the last day.

Uh, yeah, here we go.

It's Catechism paragraph 675, Before Christ's second coming, the church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.

And this is a reference to Luke 18:8 and to Mark 24:12.

Or, excuse me, Matthew 24:12.

Excuse me.

And you'll notice that's from the Mount Olivet discourse, so it is explicitly not taking a full preterist view there.

The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on Earth will unveil the mystery of iniquity and the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth.

The supreme religious deception is out of the anti-Christ, the pseudo-Messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.So, with all this stuff, even like the mystery of iniquity, there's a sense in which this is referring partially to an event that happens before the time of Christ when the Greeks desecrate the temple, and there's a sense in which it's referring to something happening shortly after the time of Christ when the Romans desecrate the temple, and then there's a sense in which it's referring to some as yet unfulfilled event.

This is frequently how, uh, prophecies in the Bible work.

So for instance, in 2 Samuel 7, I believe it is, when, um, the temple prophecies were made, yep, God's covenant with David, he, David, uh, wants to build a house for our Lord and is told that he can't because he's a man of blood.

And God instead promises because of his kind of good intentions to make a house for David, meaning the dynasty, like the Davidic dynasty of which Christ is the ultimate fulfillment.

And he says in verse 12, When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

Of whom is God referring?

Is it David's immediate son, Solomon?

Is it Jesus?

Well, biblically the answer to that is yes, it's both.

There is one sense in which that is fulfilled in Solomon with the creation of the temple, the first temple.

There's another sense in which it's, uh, e- established in Jesus with the creation of the third temple, the ultimate temple, the temple of his body.

So th- those are the two kind of senses, and so likewise I would suggest reading the eschatological, uh, like the end times sounding stuff in the Bible in the same way, a sort of imminent and a remote fulfillment.

Uh, W24Life says, My brother attends a non-denominational church with his new wife and says it's about being a good person, not pew sitting.

How do I show him the Church's uniqueness and necessity?

I would start by just saying like, and this is what I'd say to almost anybody, is like, Look, Jesus says, 'I will build my Church.' If he didn't say that, Christians would still gather together.

Like, m- man is a social animal.

And so if Jesus had not built his own church, Protestantism would arise basically naturally, that people who love the same subject want to get together and talk about that subject.

You see this at every academic conference, you see this with sports, you see this with whatever, that people who are really motivated to think and talk about a certain thing will gather together to think and talk about that thing.

And in the case of God, they will not just think and talk, they might also pray together.

So you have the synagogue.

The synagogue is a manmade institution.

Nowhere in scripture are we told to build synagogues.

They just arise out of a religious impulse in the heart of man.

And so if Christ had done nothing, you would have modern synagogues, like little Protestant non-denominational churches.

But Christ doesn't leave us with that.

He says, I will build my Church.

So he is giving us something over and above what we would have on our own.

And so I think it's worth grappling with what does he mean by Church as opposed to what we mean by church.

And getting that forces us to confront a few things.

Number one, we tend to be radically individualistic.

Even though we are social animals by nature, we also live in a culture that really prizes individuality and individualism, even when it means radical loneliness.

And that's just unfortunately the, the water in which we swim, so to speak, and something we have to grapple with.

Um, and so we have to recognize that a me and Jesus individualized form of Christianity is not the Christianity of the Bible.

That's much more like a perversion of Christianity to reflect modern culture.

So grappling with the reality of the Church means something.

And I would look to places like Ephesians 5. In Ephesians 5, St. Paul talks about the Church and Christ becoming one flesh.

In Ephesians 1, he talks about the Church as the fullness of Christ.

So if I want the fullness of Christ, I need the Church.

That means it's incumbent to figure out what does he mean by Church.

And not to just settle for, like, whatever it means to me, but to say what did it mean to him?

Were the apostles setting up non-denominational churches everywhere?

Were they just letting people do their own thing?

Or was it much more hierarchical and sort of top-down?

By the way, tomorrow's episode is gonna answer some of those questions, uh, in greater depth.

So tune in for that, 'cause I'm, I'm looking at what did the Church look like to the earliest Christians and what does it look like in the New Testament?

'Cause this is something that Protestants don't agree with one another on, uh, and I think for a simple reason.

But we'll have to see what that is.

All right.

Big J says, I have a desire to almost always play in, pray in plural in my petitions instead of singular in lieu of my total consecration to Jesus through Mary.

Is it disordered to believe all associated to me also are?

Also are what, Big J? Also are praying in plural also are totally consecrated?

I apologize.

There's an ambiguous antecedent there.

Um, I can say generically it, it is good for you to pray for other people, and Oh, also are consecrated by decree.

Oh, gotcha.

Okay.

Got it.

Got it, got it.

Um, there is a sense in which people dedicated to holiness can kind of bring other people along with them, and so when you look at St. Paul's description of, you know, a married couple, you might save your unmarried or unsaved spouse, your non-believing spouse through your own striving for holiness.

But we don't wanna take that in such a way that we aren't evangelizing those closest to us.

That'd be a mistake.

So-I would say it's yes, both, and.

Um, it's okay to treat them as in some way brought into this, and to kind of insist upon that to God, you know.

Like you should, I don't wanna say make demands to God, but you can certainly stand in the breach for them and advocate for them as people that you love, knowing that God actually loves them more than you do, and that he's pleased by that behavior.

So remember, when Abraham enters right relationship with God, one of the first things that God does is has him ha- he calls him to intercede for, uh, Sodom and Gomorrah.

And so even though Sodom and Gomorrah are destroyed, Abraham's own family, Lot and his kids, are protected.

They are saved.

All right, t-t-t-ch, hopefully that helps.

James Carlyle says, Hey, can you help me stall on this proof of God?

I think that is Steelman.

The male principle is ba- I think that's main principle, is based on non-contingency, therefore the non-contingent exists.

I think it works as is.

Okay, I'm gonna do my best to make sense of what I think you're saying, and if I'm getting something wrong, please let me know.

But the third of Aquinas's five waves is the argument from contingency, and it goes something like this.

A contingent thing is something that needs, um, something else to exist.

So you're contingent.

If your parents had never met, you wouldn't be here.

If you didn't have oxygen and water, you wouldn't be here right now.

So you exist only under certain conditions.

We can talk about a time when you weren't, and a time when you are, and, you know, so on.

And everything else that exists in your senses, everything else that you see, hear, taste, touch, smell, is contingent similarly.

That it exists because of conditions A, B, C. Hopefully that part's clear.

Let me know if that's, if I, I might be going a little too fast with it.

But things are either contingent or they're not.

If they're not contingent, they are called necessary.

But you can't have a world in which literally everything is contingent.

You can't have a world in which everything in the world only exists under certain cond- like, conditions.

Because then you would never have those conditions and therefore the world would never exist.

Because the world does exist, we know that there has to be something necessary, something unconditional, something non-contingent, something that exists necessarily.

And that then brings us to the second half of the argument from contingency.

A lot of people didn't terminate the argument right there and say, Therefore God.

And I think that can kind of work in a casual conversation.

But it's better to say what sort of necessary, um, being must there be to ground all of the cosmos?

Because Aquinas would be fine saying there could be multiple necessary beings, but you need a necessary being which is the cause of its own existence.

And that's going to be what gets you to God.

Now that is the second and more philosophically dense part of the argument.

But the first part, I explained it on a napkin at a bar one time, by just taking a, a train.

And you've got the train engine and you've got the train car.

The train car, uh, might be responsible for pulling the car behind it, but its own movement is conditioned upon something else.

It either has to be on a, a grade, like a slope going down, or if you're on a flat surface it has to be pulled by someone or something else.

So it's contingent.

And you might come to a railroad crossing and all you see is one train car after another after another, so all you see are contingent trains.

But you know, logically, there has to be a non-contingent train.

There has to be a train that's actually pulling itself and the others to account for all of them existing in the way that they do.

So, uh, in fact the more contingent things you have, the stronger the train car must be.

Right?

Like if you had a billion train cars, you're gonna have a pretty mighty engine.

And so people try to say, Well, maybe there's an infinite number of contingent things.

Okay, then you need an infinitely strong non-contingent thing to ground all of that.

You have not made the problem easier by adding more train cars.

So that's the argument from contingency in a nutshell, at least for the first part.

We then get into what does that train car look like, or train engine look like.

But yeah, let me know if that helps.

Um, Andrew says, Hi Joe, will you be tuning in s- and/or commenting on Liam Albrecht's canon debate today?

Truthfully, I did not know it was happening today.

I think I remembered hearing about it, but I'd, I'd forgotten.

So I don't know when that is.

Um, I saw that there is a canon video that Gavin put out with, uh, Javier Perdomo and Cleave to Antiquity, and I might reply to that for Thursday, because I've only watched part of it and already I see a lot that merits responding to.

All right, Vince says, oh sorry, Benny says, sorry, uh, My brother who's very anti-Catholic said the Council of Trent was only formed because the Church was falling apart, not because they wanted to fix anything.

Thoughts?

What's the difference?

Um, I mean, first of all, that just seems like how charitable do you want to be to say, Hey look, we saw there were problems and we thought it'd be good to fix them.

And like, if you can't give us credit even for doing that, to just be like, Well, you just didn't want things to completely fall apart, well good.

We shouldn't want things to completely fall apart.

So I, it just seems like someone committing to being uncharitable without, by the way, no- I would almost guarantee that your brother could not name two participants at the Council of Trent with a gun to his head.

I don't know your brother, but in my experience of people who make those kind of claims, they know just literally nothing about the subject that they're talking about.Um, which is unfortunate because the actual Council of Trent is incredible.

And the Reformers were invited to it, which a lot of people don't realize.

They think that's like some newfangled Vatican II thing.

Like we wanted to have a productive conversation with Protestants about things that they'd cited, as well as things we were concerned about within their own theology.

And a lot of the problems that the Reformers cited, the Council of Trent agreed with and condemned, while also condemning errors in the Reformers' own system.

It was not just a triumphalistic, We're right, you're wrong, about everything.

It was acknowledging there are real abuses that have scandalized people and have led them to leave the Church.

So I don't know.

I mean, it just seems like It's, it's such a weird, like the Council of Trent gets needlessly demonized by Protestants who, again, know very little about it, about who was involved or what its motives were, or what it said, or anything like this.

Uh, Matt says, Given the Blessed Mother's role in spiritual warfare, I get really concerned with the vitriol for her I see from Protestant friends.

How can we help share how special she is from the Protestant context?

Yeah, I've got a video on this.

It might be called Why Do Catholics Make Such a Big Deal About Mary?

I can't remember.

But the basic argument that I take is, is this one.

In Genesis 3:15, God describes a war between the woman and the serpent, as well as between her offspring and the serpent's offspring.

And it would behoove us to say, who is the woman spoken of here?

There is a clue.

On the surface, it looks like Eve.

Eve at the time is still known as a woman.

She is gonna have her name changed to Eve five verses later.

But her son is Cain.

And I don't, don't think the Devil has too much to worry about from Cain.

There are other women who are praised as blessed among women in the Old Testament.

Um, Deborah or Jael, one of the two, and Judges, and then Judith.

And both of them have this in common.

They both crushed the heads of the enemies of Israel.

Uh, one with a sword, one with a tent peg.

It's pretty brutal stuff.

And that matches, Genesis 3:15, it talks about the seed of the woman crushing the head of the serpent.

Um, and so there's something about the woman being connected with the crushing of the head, and there's a mysterious kind of passage here.

This Genesis 3 thing is, uh, part of what the early Christians called the Protoevangelium, the first Gospel.

I think one of the clues, as, as I was starting to say, is this Greek word, uh, Hebrew word, excuse me, zera, seed, means Like it's, it's translated in the Latin as seen.

Okay, let's see.

Is this No.

All right, cool.

I was afraid I was gonna have to completely restart the whole thing.

Whew, yeah.

Mention the Devil getting crushed and somebody gets ticked.

Just so you know, he controls YouTube.

But yeah, we're back.

We are so back.

Um, oh yeah, so anyway, the seed of the woman.

Seed is measured through the man.

And there's only one exception to this in the Old Testament besides right here and that's when you're looking at the seed of, um, Sarah compared to the seed of Hagar because you can't measure it through the man 'cause same, same father, different moms.

In every other instance, the seed is always measured through the man and it literally is a reference to semen.

And so to save the seed of the woman here, as opposed to the seed of Adam, is really bizarre until you know about the virgin birth and then it makes total sense.

And of course the seed of the woman is Jesus.

He is the virgin born but if that is what Genesis 3:15's about, then it makes sense that Genesis 3:15 is also about the virgin as the woman.

And so you have in Genesis 3:15 not just the first prophecy of Jesus, but also the first prophecy of Mary.

And the Devil is presented as at war with Mary.

Then you jump forward to Revelation 12 where the mother of Jesus is depicted in a spiritual combat against the Dragon and John tells us this is the same dragon that is the ancient serpent.

He is explicitly calling your attention back to Genesis 3. And it makes sense to read those two passages as Marian.

Whatever else they might be, they're also Marian.

And so one of the reasons we care about Marian spiritual warfare is because that's how the Bible presents it in both the first and the last book, as well as several points in between.

All right.

Bobby W says, Why does Rome see the importance of us in the East cleaving to our traditions and liturgies and encourage us to do so, while stripping the Latin Church of her traditions and liturgies?

I'm not sure that's the most charitable way of reading it.

There is this tricky road to kind of navigate which is how do you How do you introduce healthy liturgical reform without stomping on old things that are good?

And this is not a new problem.

Actually one of the issues that went on in the, in the period before the Council of Trent was a concern about a reform council addressing, uh, even unhelpful traditions because any time you Like small T traditions here.

Because any time you do that, you risk upsetting people's faith.

And so you can read some people from the early 1500s talking about this.

Now eventually the Protestant Reformation happens and the risk of doing nothing was greater than the risk of doing something.

But people who were aware, like, Okay, some things could change here, didn't want to immediately go and like flip over tables and, and upend everything.

And so there was a sense in Vatican II, and part of it I think was kind of the age in which it happens, of, okay, this is a time to- restore and, you know, restore in terms of going back to the original sources, and get rid of things that are no longer helpful in the face of kind of the crisis of modernity.

And how can we better interact with the modern world?

And in some ways, I think that was very good.

In some ways, at least there's a level of limitation, it didn't go very well at all.

But I think that's what's kind of motivating.

And it is an intrinsic problem.

And it's happened in the East as well as in the West, if you're familiar with the whole Old Believer controversy, about even, like, which calendar to use between the old calendarists and the new calendarists.

Do you use the Julian or Gregorian calendar?

But also, like, do you cross yourself with two fingers or three?

All of those kind of questions, there's a beautiful painting of one of the Old Believers being carted off to Siberia in Russian Orthodoxy.

And it's this old peasant woman holding up the three fingers to do the sign of the cross.

And we would look at that and say, That's a weird thing to get completely up in arms about, and to literally have violence over.

But it speaks to something about the nature of our relationship with the way that we approach God.

It's something that is it takes a great deal of care to handle well.

And so we want, on the one hand, make sure we're engaging with people in a coherent way in the modern world.

And on the other hand, honor the legitimate and authentic traditions and people's spiritual journeys.

It's tricky to do.

So, yeah, some people involved were naively kind of modernist in terms of implementation.

Other people are just trying to do a hard thing.

And sometimes they did it well, sometimes they didn't do it very well.

All right, Spencer says, I looked at OCIA classes.

I asked about a bishop.

The church didn't have a bishop.

They had one from the Twin Cities.

Can it be a Catholic church without a bishop?

Uh, yeah.

So a diocese is headed by a bishop.

Uh, a local parish will be headed by a pastor who is delegated by the bishop.

So, you know, uh, for instance, I'm in Kansas City St. Joseph, and so all of Northwest Missouri is under one bishop, and then there's different pastors of the different Catholic churches within that.

In the old days, you might have a church small enough where the entire city was one bishop heading one church.

But very quickly, even in places like Rome, you'd have multiple congregations because cities were big enough.

And so you'd you don't need to split the church into multiple dioceses in that case.

You just have one bishop over, uh, multiple churches, and they all meet with the consent of the bishop and his approval.

Uh, Spencer's other question was, Also allowing NFP is uncomfy for me.

Well, the basic idea of NFP is, is it's first knowing your or your wife's, uh, biological kind of rhythm.

And that by itself is really good.

So the first part of natural family planning is just like the charting part, and I think everyone can say it's good to understand the rhythm of your wife's fertility and femininity.

That this is really a it's a beautiful thing.

It helps you understand your own body or your wife's body better, and it can help you grow as a couple.

And women are way more complicated than men in this.

And I, I don't say that in a diminutive sort of way.

I, I mean, like, the number of hormone levels and things that are going on is way more complicated than, than one might realize.

Um, but the other part of it, and this is where the rubber hits the road, is using that knowledge to maximize or minimize the likelihood of pregnancy.

And that by itself can't be sinful, unless your intention is in some other way sinful.

Meaning, like, if you know my wife is very fertile right now, we would love to have a kid, so we're gonna try to procreate today, that's not sinful.

And if you're not trying to have a kid, and you know your wife is very fertile, not going to try to procreate doesn't seem sinful either.

There's no requirement under natural law or anything in religion, where you have to maximize the possible number of children you have.

And, and this is something the Church has never taught, that you have to have the most kids you possibly can.

So you can be wise about that, even if it means, okay, we're just not going to engage in the marital act right now, because, you know, for instance, uh, your wife has some medical condition that could kill her to get pregnant.

Or she's physically recovering, and it's very painful right now, and so you're not going to sleep together.

I mean, under the Mosaic Law, you were not permitted to sleep with your wife after she'd given birth.

She was ritually impure, which was, I think, a dignity for her, because it gave her the period of purification to recover physically, that men couldn't just impose themselves.

You're required to be sexually responsible in terms of being responsible for your own sexuality.

Um, so there is a way of being sort of selfish, maybe in how you use NFP, but I think there the NFP isn't the problem.

It's the selfishness that's the problem, and maybe a sort of, uh, fear and reticence about what God might have in store for you.

So I, I think NFP is maybe the target of something that is really a it's a deeper issue rather than NFP itself.

I think NFP itself is, is good information to have.

How one uses it depends on the kind of what your orientation is in your faith, but also in terms of a lot of complicated factors.

Uh, so there are legitimate times where it might not be prudent to try to have a kid.

And underlying all of that, one of the reasons it's not contraception, is it is always rooted in this openness to whatever God has in store.

That not my will, but yours be done, anytime you're engaging in the marital act, you're, you're consenting to the natural consequences of the marital act.

Um, oh, James says, Sorry, I'm bad at explaining the thought process.

I'm aware of the argument.

The atheist just says that there is no start.

My point is that the non-contingent principles manifested in the masculine.

Um- that you can't just So this would be the argument that you can't just have, uh, an infinite series of non-contingent things by themselves.

Even if you had an infinite number of train cars, they have to be pulled by an engine.

You can't get rid of that problem by saying, Well, there's an infinite number of them, they just always have been moving, does not explain why any of them are moving.

You still need something pulling them.

Uh, so y- if you just s- like if you said, Oh, those trains are moving, that engine must be really pulling it.

And someone else said, Well, I just think there's a lot of train cars.

You would say, What?

That doesn't, that doesn't answer what I said at all.

That's just a non sequitur.

If they said, Well, I think there's actually an infinite number.

There's a limitless number of train cars.

Okay, well they still need to be pulled by something.

And so you haven't gotten out of that logical problem at all.

I would do something simple like that, 'cause you're making a very fundamental, like rudimentary mistake.

If everything exists only under certain conditions, why do those conditions exist?

And if you say because they exist under certain conditions, why do those conditions exist?

You can't get out of it by just dodging.

It can't be turtles all the way down.

Warrior Petey says, Apologetics maybe negatively impact my actual spiritual life, studying the faith to win arguments instead of to know and love God better.

Advice?

Yes.

Number one, try to put it away then.

Like if it's not helping you, this is not for you right now.

You maybe need to be like Peacenik Petey, not Warrior Petey for a little bit.

Uh, number two, when that stuff comes up, you can ask God in prayer to show you what you need to receive, rather than what you think your neighbor needs to receive.

And what I will do is, if I'm like praying and I see something that I'm like, Oh man, this would be great content, or, This would be a great answer to this argument, or, This would be a great objection, I will often write it down so that I'm not nagged by it and can just move forward in prayer.

Um, and I would encourage kind of the same thing.

The, uh, it's true, that can be a, a real danger is everything becomes content or becomes an argument, and you gotta watch out for that.

Brian Jones Hey, you're alive uh, said, Is Archangel Raphael referenced anywhere else beside Tobit?

I've also seen some Catholics pray to Uriel.

I understand he's not explicitly in our canon, however.

I would I don't like doing the names for the angels that aren't given to us in scripture.

There are traditional names attached.

So Raphael is one of the seven angels who stands in the presence of God.

These seven angels are referred to in the Book of Revelation, but, um, you know And, and in fact that is, as far as I'm aware, the first time the seven angels and the presence of God are mentioned.

So it's an interesting kind of argument in favor of, uh, their, uh, like the authenticity of Tobit.

But we only know the names of three of them, uh, Raphael, Michael and Gabriel, and the others we don't know the names of.

So yeah, that's the only place Raphael is explicitly mentioned in inspired scripture.

There are other kind of folk stories that talk about the seven angels and give names to the other four, including Uriel, but those don't have any great authority next to them.

Um, WB no, let me try that again.

NBWP says, Bull Le Tenor Shelley defines the name of the Trinity, that people with original sin only go to hell.

Why then is there hope for the hea- uh, for unbaptized kids?

Because in context it's talking about those who have the chance to be baptized and are refusing to be.

When Jesus or the church says, You need to do X, it's taking for granted that you know you need to do X and are refusing to do it, or have the ability to do it.

So like when Jesus says, You have to believe to be saved, that's taking for granted that you have the ability to believe.

So someone who is, say an unborn child who dies in the womb, this does not tell us what's happening to them.

Like you wouldn't say, Aha, they didn't have faith, they didn't believe.

Well, similarly they didn't have baptism but in neither case was that possible to them.

And so you have like the Holy Innocents who we've believed always went to heaven.

They have a liturgical feast even though they didn't have faith or baptism.

Now, it's more complicated 'cause they're under the old covenant, but still they needed faith under the old covenant and they don't have that in the normal sense of that term, but they're martyrs and through the grace of God they're saved.

And so similarly, since we know God wasn't bound by the old covenant and is not bound by the new covenant as a limitation upon his own mercy, the catechism can say, We are bound by the sacraments and God is not.

So someone who like willfully rejects the means of entering into salvation is cutting themselves off from salvation.

Someone who is not willfully rejecting the means of salvation might be saved in ways known only to God.

W.S. Gilbert says, Hello.

Do you have any good sources and books that comprehensively cover the life of Joseph Smith, LDS theology, temple rituals and all the problems therein, all preferably from a Catholic perspective?

I don't have good books on the subject.

I've done a few YouTube videos on it.

If you look Shemmas Potpourri Mormonism or LDS, you should find a series that I've done on that.

Um, I've thought in the past of writing a book myself to cover some of this stuff, but unfortunately it's like, it's midway down a very long to-do list and I may never get to it.

Uh, I would ho- I would like to.

We'll see.

It's pretty research heavy also 'cause I'm, I didn't come from an LDS background and a lot of people say things that aren't true about Mormons, uh, and I want to approach this matter like with charity because I know it's, it's not fun to be, uh, disparaged.

It's not fun to be told like, Oh, you believe X, when you don't.

All right.

Uh, Vince 77 says, Is it true the church teaches that no one can do works without the power of the Holy Spirit?

How would we make sense of non-believers doing good?

Uh, no one can do like meritorious works.

You can still have the cardinal virtues, you can still have prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice.

You can't have faith, hope and charity without- the grace of God.

And so you can't do charitable works in the sense of divine love, but you can have basic human compassion without grace, because that's one of the gifts God's already given us.

And so even someone who's an unbeliever can, you know, take good care of their kids, for instance, in other ways.

They can pay their check even if they're, like, on vacation and they could totally dine and dash and get away with it.

They can put the shopping cart back when they're done.

Those things aren't what we mean when we talk about good works being possible only with divine grace.

So yeah, that's just a difference between the what are called the cardinal virtues and the theological virtues.

Cruz, who I think was, uh, waiting to have his question for a while, says, What are your thoughts on the tension being caused by 'Do Muslims worship the same God?' question?

Internet has been exploding over this one recently.

It has been.

I did a video on this.

I think, uh, uh, listening to arguments on both sides, I think a lot of people are hearing the question, Do Muslims worship the same God?

as if it's saying, Is Islam good enough?

Is it enough to just be a Muslim instead of a Christian?

And the answer to that question is no.

A Muslim, being a Muslim is not good enough.

You are, you were called to be a Catholic.

Being a Protestant isn't good enough, so being a Muslim certainly isn't.

Uh, now, I wanna caveat that by saying people There's a difference, an- and I, I said this earlier with the question of those who aren't baptized, there's a difference between willful disobedience and ignorance.

And God can have mercy on those who are ignorant, but he's not indifferent to what we do with our lives.

He tells us to do this and not that, and so just taking a, well, good enough approach is totally contrary to Christianity.

The whole idea of sufficiency and the sufficiency of scripture, or Protestantism is enough, or is Islam enough, that whole way of understanding a relationship with God is bad.

It's like asking, What is the least I can serve God without being damned?

And if you're asking that question, you're not in a good relationship with God.

So I think the more I've listened to people who answer the question, Do Muslims worship the same God differently than I do?

the more I realize that they are worried, and I think reasonably worried, that people are going to interpret that as saying Muslims are good enough, or Islam is good enough, or Muslim worship is as good as Christian worship, or at least adequate.

And none of those are what is being said by people who say Muslims worship the same God.

It is not a statement about quality, it is a statement about the directionality.

Here's the example I would give.

When an atheist says, The God of Abraham does not exist, and I say, The God of Abraham does exist, we are actually disagreeing.

We're both talking about the same God, and one is saying he exists and one is saying he doesn't exist.

Now, technically, that atheist is denying an essential nature, be- an essential aspect of God's nature, excuse me, because necessary existence is the nature of God.

He is who is.

And so they're getting not just God's existence wrong, but God's nature wrong.

And yet we would still say they're talking about the same God we are, because if they're not, then we don't disagree.

When they say God doesn't exist, if they mean a different god, I agree, a different god besides the real God doesn't exist.

So unless you wanna say atheists and Christians agree that God doesn't exist, which would be insane, then I think you have to say atheists, even though they get the nature of God wrong, are still referring to the same God we are, even though they're wrong about him.

They think he's bad rather than good, they think he doesn't exist rather than exists, and yet despite our profound differences about God, we're both still talking about God.

Well, likewise, if a Muslim says, I think the God of Abraham is, you know, uh, exists but doesn't have a son, well, you're closer than the atheist was who thinks he doesn't exist at all, but you're still wrong about important aspects of his nature.

So I don't see a logical way one would say the atheist is talking about God when they deny the God of Abraham, but the Muslim is not talking about God when they affirm a misunderstanding of the God of Abraham, or even a falsehood about the God of Abraham.

So if you take that route that Muslims don't worship the same God, you're going to quickly end up in a situation where no two people worship the same God, because I think God wants me to do X and you think he doesn't, well, then we must have different gods.

Or, you know, certainly you seemingly have to say Orthodox Catholics and the various forms of Protestants don't all worship the same God because we have theological disagreements.

And that becomes such an individualized version where your god is different than my God that it, it seems to lead to an ad absurdum, uh, very quickly.

All right, um, let's cut off any new questions.

I will get through the questions that have already been asked, but I wanna make sure that nobody, uh, who asked a question fe- or, you know, maybe I'll, I don't know.

Yeah, like if you, okay, if you ask questions from here on, I'll get to them next time.

How about that?

So they, you can tee up ones for next time, and, uh, 'cause I usually like to have a couple questions so that when I start off before people, uh, answer, like, before people ask new questions.

So from here on if you wanna ask new questions, that will be for two weeks from today, assuming two weeks from today is not a holiday and I'm forgetting about something, but I don't think it is.

All right, the Sentinel says, Joe, has anyone written about the unconscious retelling of Biblical stories in movies by secular authors?

I wanna glorify God by evangelizing to prove we're reflections of God even when we deny it.

Yeah, there's I don't know so much about Biblical stories, but that basic principle is one that I've seen described before, uh, and I, I think there's often a kind of conscious retelling of Biblical narratives that even the director might admit to.

Um-Trying to think if there's Oh, I'm not coming up with any of the concrete examples right now.

I'm gonna abandon it before I just go completely on an internal rabbit trail that's not helpful.

But yeah, there's, in The World, The Flesh and Father Smith from like the 1940s, it's a detective novel with, uh, one of these priest detectives, who grew at a great job, by the way.

Uh, the titular Father Smith says, The man knocking at the door of the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.

And there's a really important point here.

I would even connect this to the thing about Islam and the same God, that we want to be able to find where is the authentic yearning for the good, where is the authentic yearning for God, even in falsehood.

And it's built on a metaphysical foundation that God alone is true, good and beautiful in the infinite full sense, and we are made for union with him.

And no movement we ever take of the will is ordered anything other than the good.

And that includes the movements of sin.

It doesn't mean sin is not sin.

It means that every time you choose something that isn't good, it's under the aspect of the good in Thomistic language, meaning you can delude yourself on some level, intellectually or sensibly, into believing something will make you happy that won't make you happy.

But you're always looking for your own happiness in the full sense of that, like your own joy, your own satisfaction, uh, eudaimonia.

And so, uh, every movie is in some way a telling of this search for God, because every human story is about the search for God, even ones that don't seem like it, and it's often just a matter of probing more deeply to figure out like, Oh, why did I commit the sin that I committed?

And so, you know, Augustine in The Confessions talks about this with the stealing of the pear, that every sin is a kind of mimicry of a divine attribute.

And he talks about this in terms of it being a divine affront.

The other way to look at it, without denying what Augustine said there, is to say but it's also a kind of crying out for God, that I want to play God because I miss God, because I desire God and I long for him, and that makes me want more of him.

All right.

Eusebius Benedictum says, How to debunk the Scotus position on the absolute primacy of Christ, that is, that the Incarnation would have happened regardless of the fall?

Also, why is charity the queen of the virtues?

Yeah.

So the Scotus position, I'm partial to, um, Bonaventure.

This is Or I- I view it not principally as the Scotus position, but as the Franciscan position, but fair enough.

So the question is this.

If Adam and Eve had not sinned, would Christ have come into the world anyway?

Saint Augustine says no, because Christ comes into the world to save us from our sins.

But the alternative view is Christ would have still come into the world because he desires the total union with us that happens through theosis, through divinization, that God becomes man so man can become God, and that that would still have happened, uh, even had we not sinned.

It might have just looked totally different.

The reality is, we don't know the answer to that question.

We don't have middle knowledge.

We don't have, uh, a knowledge of the conditionals that didn't happen.

Um, so I don't know.

It's a, it's a very good question.

So I- I don't know.

I see good arguments on- on both sides.

So, yeah, Duns Scotus, uh, does give some arguments for it.

I- I find both of them convincing in their own ways, and I- I don't know how we would possibly measure that.

Why is charity the queen of the virtues?

Because God is love, and when we are engaged in charity, we are loving with the love of God.

And, uh, this forms all the other virtues.

And whereas faith and hope will pass away amongst the theological virtues, and- and Jesus, for instance, does not have faith because faith is belief in things unseen, and he sees everything.

And similarly, hope is- has an object that's not yet acquired.

With love, it's infinite and eternal, that it- it will endure forever.

Uh, so it is the highest.

The greatest of these is love.

Uh, Angela Tzibua says, Thanks for your apologetics.

Well, thank you, Angela.

That's very kind of you.

12 Gauge says, What's up?

And then has a funny emoji that looks like a Groucho Marx mask.

What's up to you too?

Uh, Spencer says, Some more money for Joe.

Thank you.

Very kind of you.

The church thing is still confusing then.

I don't think I know what a Catholic church is.

Is it one church split over an area?

How big could this area be?

The whole USA? I mean, technically.

Uh, it's what's called a diocese or an eparchy.

So it's In older English, it would be called a bishopric.

So with all of these, you have some, uh, boundaries.

So if you live in a certain area, you're part of one church and not the other.

And you get glimpses of this in the New Testament.

You've got a church in Corinth, you've got the Macedonian churches.

Uh, but then when you talk about the Romans, it already looks like there's multiple congregations that are meeting in different places.

And so when Paul is greeting the Roman churches, he greets different houses, uh, because Rome was very big.

And Rome was somewhat unique in ancient Judaism for having multiple synagogues in the same city, which was not the norm.

Usually you had one synagogue in the city that everybody would- went to.

But in You know, Rome already had a population of a million in the ancient world.

It's massive.

Uh, there are a lot of cities today that aren't that big right now.

And so this isn't just like a modern problem.

The problem of just the size is something Christians have to deal with right away.

So you can't have one church building for everyone in the city if it's Rome or Chicago today or Kansas City or whatever, because you're just not gonna make a big enough building for everyone to go into.

And so the normal model of having, uh, a city with one church and the bishop is the head of that quickly becomes the bishop is the head of multiple churches in the city, and then also in the kind of surrounding areas.

Uh, funny fact, the- word Pagan means like a redneck, uh, Paganus, like a person from the rural areas, although it probably means more in the sense of civilian rather than the enemy of Christ.

Nevertheless, uh, the people in rural areas were the ones who were slowest to become Christians.

Christianity spread quicker in cities, and then you have the problem of like setting up churches in, in smaller towns.

So there was a model in the early church of having very small diocese.

So in the early 200s for instance, there are hundreds of diocese across North Africa, each one with its own bishop.

And you also just have smaller cities with smaller Christian populations there.

And I think that's, I think that's a fine model.

I wouldn't mind if we went back to that.

You look at Italy for instance, and it has a ton of these really small dioceses, and that's how a lot of older areas are.

But when you're in like a frontier area, when you don't have like a strong Catholic base built up, those dioceses are often quite large.

So whether we're talking about like Alaska or Iran or somewhere like that, you're gonna have very large dioceses.

Uh, similarly Similarly, eastern Catholics in the US will have these, uh, very large, uh, eparchies because there aren't a ton of Eastern Catholics in the US. So it's based on kind of the size of the community.

There's no strict rule about it, um, but it's, it's usually smaller, like the more Catholic population you have Like geographically smaller.

Hope that made sense.

All right.

Hammer of the Church says, As a convert would you agree that many Protestants and poorly catechized Catholics lack the historical and linguistic and cultural literacy needed to truly understand the faith?

In one sense, yes.

Like there's aspects of it.

But I don't wanna knock the kind of widow's mite.

You know, like the person who maybe doesn't have a lot but has a trust in Jesus might well be ahead of me, uh, in the order of salvation, and I want to respect that.

But nevertheless, I think it is completely fair to say, particularly when it comes to the errors that you see both Protestants and poorly engaged Catholics committing, frequently this is just a, a shallowness because many Catholics grew up with very little knowledge of the faith, and many Protestants don't have communities that teach a very deep knowledge of the faith.

It's the local pastor's understanding of scripture or, you know, sometimes in the case of lukewarm Catholics not even that, and no real sense of what Christians have believed for more than a generation.

Vagandas says, Joe, you're the GOAT. Thank you very much.

I'm grateful.

Uh, Starting OCIA in the fall.

Wonderful, glory to God.

I'm trying to work in the Catholic aspects of the faith, like praying to saints.

It seems very foreign to me as a Protestant.

Any suggestions on getting started?

Yeah, I mean you can start by just telling God what you want to do.

And I've known many people who say like, Look, Lord, you seem to have called me in this direction, and I don't want to offend your majesty.

And in my experience, prayer has always been tied up with worship and given of divine honor, and I understand logically that it doesn't have to be.

That prayer is to ask, and I wanna ask my friends and fellow members of the body of Christ to pray for me just as I would ask those here on Earth.

And I want to do this as an act of love towards you, not as a way of getting around your sovereignty and majesty.

And then say, you know, Saints of God, please help me.

Help my heart to grow in love for God.

Help me to be imitators of you as you are of God.

And then see if that doesn't help.

But putting it explicitly in those terms might help you not feel like you're somehow betraying God.

Um, you know, like if you were Let's say you had gotten married, uh, to someone who already had kids.

You would hopefully not think that spending time with her kids was somehow an affront to her and her dignity.

She would be jealous if you went after some other woman.

She would not be jealous if you spent time playing with the kids.

If she, she, she did get jealous, watch out, that's a huge red flag.

Uh, well likewise, God is jealous if you go after some other God, but he is not jealous if you spend time with his kids.

He wants you to.

He tells you to.

And that doesn't just include the kids that you see but also the kids who are in his presence in heaven.

Christopher Tucker says, What's a fair perspective on Protestant versus Catholic missionary work?

Protestants seem to locate their whole family to dangerous areas, no?

It depends.

That's way too broad, um, because I, I've known many Protestants who will go to already converted Catholic areas and then try to pick off lukewarm Catholics.

Like they'll go to Mexico or Latin America, and, uh, that sort of model where you're just sheep stealing from I mean fine in, in one way.

Those Catholics should have been better catechized, but I don't have a tremendous amount of respect for that.

Uh, but then other Protestants as you say are in places where they're spreading the gospel in places it hasn't been before.

Historically, a lot of the spread of Christianity into new areas was by Catholics.

Like there's a reason Latin America is Protestant and not Catholic.

Ex- uh, excuse me, Catholic and not Protestant.

Like the early reformers did very little to evangelize Africa or North America or South America.

And when they came to North America, it wasn't like, Let's go evangelize all the Indians.

It was, Let's kill the Indians and set up a, a little enclave for ourselves.

Um, I'm oversimplifying history there, almost necessarily.

But there was that, but I don't want to deny there's some really brave Protestants who put themselves and even their families in harm's way .

whereas it tends to be more of an individual endeavor often, because of, like, clergy and religious orders, where there are celibates who are kind of on the front lines as missionaries, uh, on the Catholic side.

There are some examples I could point to of Catholic families being involved in missions.

Uh, I know, for instance, the, uh, I guess the Legionaries of Christ, and so I'm not totally mistaken on that, have a movement where they'll send entire families to various places.

I, I met with one of those families in Estonia once.

And, you know, often places that don't have deep Christian roots, but really wherever they decide to send them, uh, and it's a family level evangelization.

It's different models.

I don't, I don't have a strong I actually think having somebody who can be full-time a missionary, there's something really advantageous about that.

And so that's what we often do.

Whether it's, you know, celibates or NET Missionaries or FOCUS or whatever, having people who are, can be full-time missionaries can give more than what a family can give, but there are times where, uh, families have something unique to offer.

dreyavemind says, I watch your videos at two times speed.

Oh, good.

I won't feel the need to talk fast.

Uh, Jason says, How do we know that Protestantism is not to Catholicism as Catholicism is to ancient Judaism?

Jesus did away with the old covenant priests and practices in pursuit of deeper revelation and union updated faith.

How do we know the Reformation isn't also?

Because that would make it a newer covenant.

And so you would have Martin Luther or somebody replacing Jesus as the minister of a new and better covenant.

And so Protestantism wisely has never claimed this.

You have restorationist religions, like Joseph Smith in Mormonism, where they do make a claim kind of like that, and it's totally fair to read certain things, uh, where You know, so for instance, sometimes when Ma- Martin Luther is talking about the veil over the hearts of Catholics, he is presenting himself as if he is the one who removes the veil, the way Jesus does in the New Testament.

And that does seem like you're talking as if you're creating a new religion and you're the heart of it without whether you're intending to do that or not.

That's the way it sounds.

Um, but yeah, that's a thing to watch out, because, you, Christianity says that the religion is delivered once for all to the saints, Jude 1:3.

So we don't have a situation where we're expecting some new revelation, a newer covenant, or a restorationist movement of that type.

Christ creates a Church once for all, uh, that will not be overcome by the gates of hell, and w- it's oriented towards the ultimate union of Christ and the Church in the wedding feast of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation.

That's from here until the end of time.

There is no room for a new revelation or a newer covenant.

Eucharist enjoyer says, Digital collection basket comes around.

Thanks, Eucharist enjoyer.

I also enjoy the Eucharist.

Hastein, is that a nod to the ancient European house?

I've played a little bit of, um, Crusader Kings III and recognize that surname.

It says, Do you have any words on the Eucharist just being given in the form of bread from the Middle Ages?

It's common here in Sweden and feels lacking.

So the Eucharist is fully Jesus, whether it's under the species of bread or wine.

From a sacramental perspective, um, you want the pr- the, the priest actually has to receive both, but the individual laity do not.

Because Christ is wholly present, and the do this is to the priest specifically, not to all the laity.

Like, we're not all commanded to, uh, celebrate the Eucharist in the way the priest is.

So at a symbolic level, it is a more complete sign to receive both species.

You wanna balance that out with all the other reasons that, that can be distracting.

If you're in a church where it's gonna be chaotic to offer both the chalice and the host, uh, I can understand why some people refuse or, or decline to do so.

Personally, I really like the Eastern approach of, um, presenting the chalice and dipping the host in the chalice and then communing you that way, where the, the same priest can do both.

That is not the normal practice in the West.

I wouldn't mind seeing that become, uh, regularized much more to give a greater sign value while still having, uh, the reverence.

'Cause the other thing that's associated with this is if you have both species given, then you need more extraordinary ministers, and there is something beautiful about the priest as minister, as the minister of communion as well.

It's why he's the ordinary minister of holy communion, uh, that it shows something of the connection between the Eucharist and the priestly offering that can be lacking when an extraordinary minister communes.

Still valid, but something of the sign value is lost there as well.

So it's just a matter of balancing how do we express this most beautifully.

Uh, John Davis says, Do you think Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses worship the same God?

If Leo invites the Jehovah's Witnesses to Assisi 3.0, would you support it?

What about the Bahá'í?

So the Assisi thing, I am deeply uncomfortable with.

I think Ratzinger made some good changes to it, but I think that the symbol it can express is bad, 'cause you, you don't want people coming in and worshiping demons and being like, Oh, yeah, this is just as good.

And some of what happens with pagan religions is the worship of demons.

Saint Paul says, you know, what they sacrifice, they sacrifice not to God but to demons.

But then there are other times where, like with the worship of the unknown God in Acts 17, they're actually worshiping the real God.

So paganism, in general, is complicated.

And so we want to assume, when someone says they're talking about the God of Abraham, we assume they're talking about the God of Abraham.

When they talk about God, the creator, in the singular sense, we take them to mean God, the creator in a singular sense.

My knowledge of Jehovah's Witnesses a- is inadequate to give a good answer to that.

My understanding is they're basically Arians, but the Arians worshiped God.

They just had a very flawed and ultimately non-Christian theology.

But they weren't completely rejecting everything in scripture, everything in Christianity.

It would not be fair to Arianism to, to say that they were.

Uh, one of the reasons people could easily slip into Arianism is you could believe the Biblical data and misunderstand it and end up in that system quite easily.

But if that's your line between worshiping God at all or not, uh, then everyone seems like they're in a very precarious situation, where it's that easy to not only not be an Orthodox Christian, but to not have a relationship with God whatsoever.

Uh, I think that that's saying quite a lot, and quite a lot more than scripture says.

As Peter D. Williams points out, St. Paul can talk about the Jews who rejected Jesus as still having a zeal for God, which means that not only those who are ignorant of the Trinity, but by Paul's day, some of those who had rejected the revelation of Christ as the Messiah and as God could still be talked about in the sense of having a zeal for God.

A misguided zeal, an incomplete zeal, right?

But a zeal nonetheless.

That's how scripture speaks about it, and so I think we should kind of approach it in the same way.

Um, so it's, like, when the Baha'i claim that, like, all the paths are just different paths to God, that's not true in the strict sense.

Like, they're not, they're certainly not all equally valid.

But as far as the natural virtue of religion goes, every man reaching out to God is reaching out to God, even if he's doing it badly, even if there's an admixture of error.

And that is the historic Christian view, uh, kind of across the board.

Like, read what Aquinas says about the natural virtue of religion, and, or what St. Paul says, like in Romans 1. There is a natural desire not only to know God, but to give due honor to him in the virtue of justice.

And people will try to do that, and God can be pleased with that effort, even though it's mixed in with error.

Uh, three more questions.

Uh, Petro says, Why does Catholic Answers not engage with Robert Sungenis?

I think it's, uh, I don't know a ton about Robert Sungenis.

I've known people who, who have liked his stuff and people who've kind of objected to it.

I just don't see much of his stuff at all.

It just doesn't seem super relevant.

Uh, I think it's kind of a niche within a niche within a niche at this point.

Um, if there were a ton of people who were flocking to his ideas, then I think that would make it more likely that somebody would, would feel the need to respond to them.

But otherwise, it looks like a tremendous amount of work to go figure out, like, what is somebody saying and what are, uh, kind of the arguments and all that, for not a lot of payoff.

It, I don't know.

I'm not a huge fan of like, Oh, I really love this, this really niche guy.

Why doesn't everybody kind of fight him?

Are you guys all afraid?

It's like, usually not.

Usually it's like they're super niche and 99% of people have never heard of them, and so it feels like a waste of time to, to engage them, particularly if the last 1% are, like, super bought in, in a way where they don't want to hear any criticisms.

Uh, Mason Smith says, Can Catholic hold to the idea that the fall was instantaneous with creation, a la Maximus the Confessor?

I didn't realize that Maximus the Confessor taught that, Bulgakov, et cetera.

Um, that's a good question.

It doesn't seem like that's the way the Biblical evidence is presented, unless you mean the fall of angels.

But if you mean the fall of Adam and Eve, there's too much happening to, to account for that.

If you mean the fall of the rebel angels, well, the whole way time works for angelic beings means that question might be, uh, trying to ask the wrong thing.

Because there is a measure of before and after with respect to angelic beings, but they don't experience time the way we do.

Uh, they're in aveternity, the, the mean between, or simpeternity, the mean between time and eternity, which is very confusing and complicated, but it just means this.

There is before and after.

There is some change.

They can go from being, uh, angels in heaven to demons in hell.

There's, that's a change.

So they're not unchanging in the way God is, and they are created, and seemingly created in something like time, but that's, even that's a little murky.

But nevertheless, you could, you could talk about all of that happening from what we would view on our timeline as, as literally instantaneous, uh, because for us, time is mediated through the senses and through matter.

Uh, Signquist says, What is your argument for those who say the new teaching on the death penalty is a reversal of doctrine and not a legitimate development?

It depends how it's formulated.

I think if you said the death penalty is and always has been per se evil, that is very hard to square with Catholic teaching.

If you say, as John Paul II and others said, uh, death penalty's no longer needed given the kind of factors behind, like, how we punish criminals, you can adequately achieve all the legitimate, uh, interests, including retribution, with life in prison, uh, I think that is a completely defensible position to take, a la development.

Like, one of the obvious things that's developed is our ability to incarcerate more effectively.

And so I think you could easily make the, the case that maybe you would have the death penalty on a desert island with nowhere to kind of keep a, a dangerous criminal, but you wouldn't have it in a modern supermax prison context where you can easily lock somebody up.

So that then leaves open a question of retribution, but again, I think retribution can be expressed without, uh, requiring the blood of the other.

So yeah, it's a good question.

The other thing is, uh, whether the doctrines related to death penalty are reformable or not, is another important question.

And I don't think there's anything involved here where it's literally irreformable.

So you could have a situation where you say, yes, there has been a, a change in some of the magisterial teaching on this, on an issue that is reformable.

That doesn't happen often, but occasionally you'll have things that are like that.

So yeah, there you go.

I think that's everything.

I hope this was helpful for you all.

I would ask for your prayers for, um, yeah, for this channel and apostolate, and for Catholic Answers more broadly.

All right, um, oh, by the way, I'm on the show tonight, 5:00 to 7:00 Central, 3:00 to 5:00 on the West Coast, if you wanna watch Catholic Answers live.

You'll hear me answering questions for, uh, two more hours.

All right.

God bless you.

Peace.