Transcript

Hello everybody.

Uh, thanks for joining in.

One question I've got with the way we're doing the Thursday live streams, I just wanna know that this is something you all still appreciate and get enjoyment out of.

Like this is much more open-ended whereas like the Thursday episodes as I think you've seen they're topical, so they're sort of a weird blend between like a podcast episode and a live stream.

You know?

It, it really is just I'm trying to do a live podcast with a little bit of a Q&A section.

Where this is much more open-ended.

So let me know what you think of that, if you find that to be helpful, but yeah.

There we go.

Okay.

MangoBango9, uh, has got like five questions from last time.

If you live stream Live stream.

Super chat, uh, I will get to your questions probably pretty quickly in, in this chat.

It might be a few minutes through, you know, getting through.

I'm not gonna rush.

But like I said, I've only got like five questions this time.

I Whoa, only three from last time.

Two of the five are already from this time.

So sometimes you have to wait a long time, not today.

Maybe later today.

We'll see.

MangoBango says, Thoughts on the whole SSPX controversy right now.

I'm meaning to do an episode on this, but I want to do it in a way that is actually helpful and builds up the body of Christ rather than, uh, is divisive.

And I talked with a guy that I know and like and respect who is in the Society of St. Pius X, and that was helpful for getting kind of his perspective on things.

Um, but look, schism's bad, and what they're doing is a schismatic act, and we should be very clear that that shouldn't happen.

And no amount of, He started it, or, Look at them doing similar bad things, it excuses any of that any more than it would if you were stealing from the parish coffers and you pointed out somebody else had stolen more from the parish coffers.

Either way, you're doing something gravely sinful and you're hurting the church, so don't do it.

There's no excusing bad behavior by pointing out somebody else's bad behavior.

Nevertheless, there is a lot of bad behavior on both sides, and I think that is fair to say that there are understandable grievances.

Let's parse out a few things.

One, I think we're in a very different situation now than the society was in 1988.

I think the 1988 ordinations were gravely sinful, but I understand why they happened because, uh, Lefebvre wanted to ordain bishops because he knew he was- he had cancer, he was dying, and the church seemed open to giving him a bishop or bishops, and the dispute was largely one of kind of timing and logistics and all of this.

And so from his perspective, it was l-less a flagrant act of just, You told me I couldn't do it, I'm gonna do it anyway, and more like, Well, you were okay with the idea of me doing it.

Now, I think that's actually not a great excuse, but it's an understandable one.

Um, if a couple that's engaged fornicates, they've done something seriously wrong, but you can understand it in a way you would treat it differently than, you know, someone having a one-night stand.

You would say there is a sense in which there is a failure to just be patient and wait, and a sort of despairing of trusting the church and that's actually a common theme.

I really don't think the issue here is the Latin mass, uh, because the Latin mass is freely available with the Fraternity of St. Peter, with the Institute of Christ the King, uh, with different diocesan masses and, and so on.

The Latin mass has become sort of the focal point of the conflict, and as a result, I think the Latin mass has become demonized in the eyes of many Catholics, including many Catholics in Rome, but the Latin mass is not of itself the issue.

I think the issue is a theological one, and, uh, a theological one involving the interpretation of a couple documents of Vatican II, which originally, um, Lefebvre had been in favor of and then sort of was against partly because he saw how Vatican II got sort of lived out.

Now look, I think it's very fair to say the way Vatican II got implemented at the local level was a disaster.

Just full stop.

You can see it in the numbers.

Um, they're really horrifying.

And then the whole question becomes, well, was that because of Vatican II or because of the abuse of the spirit of Vatican II? And, you know, I think we should be attentive to the Magisterium on that question, as with other questions.

And in particular, I would suggest that we be attentive to Poplio's Wednesday Audience series on the proper interpretation of the Vatican II documents, because I think it'll be helpful in distinguishing the authentic interpretation from a prevalent false interpretation.

Uh, but I would say, you know, post-conciliar chaos is not actually unique to Vatican II. The First Council of Nicaea, uh, had left some things undefined, and there were some ambiguities in Nicaea One, just like there were some ambiguities in Vatican II.And, uh, Saint Basil, let me find, if you don't mind me pulling this up right now.

Okay.

He said, To what then shall I liken our present condition?

It may be compared, I think, to some naval battle which has arisen out of time-old quarrels, and is fought by men who cherish a deadly hate against one another of long experience in naval warfare and eager for the fight.

Look, I beg you, at the picture thus raised before your eyes.

See the rival fleets rushing in dread array to the attack.

With a burst of uncontrollable fury, they emerge and fight it out.

Fancy, if you like, the ships driven to and fro by a raging tempest, while thick darkness falls from the clouds and blackens all the scenes, while swords are indistinguishable in the confusion, and all distinction between friend and foe is lost.

To fill up the details of the imaginary picture, suppose the sea swollen with billows whirled up from the deep while a vehement torrent of rain pours down from the clouds and the terrible waves rise high.

From every quarter of heaven, the winds beat upon one point where both the fleets are dashed one against the other.

This It's a beautiful way of kind of painting the picture.

But he talks about how the disorder and confusion is tremendous, and then he, he applies it explicitly to the unhappy state of the post-conciliar church in his day.

He says, Did it not at one time appear that the Arian schism, after its separation into a sect opposed to the church of God, stood itself alone in hostile array?

When the attitude of our foes against us was changed from one of long-standing and bitter strife to one of open warfare, then, as is well known, the war was split up in more ways than I can tell, into many subdivisions, so that all men were stirred into a state of inveterate hatred alike by common party spirit and individual suspicion.

Put in plain English, before we were just trying to ferret out this Arian heresy in the church, but now the Arians are acting openly, and they're just at war, and meanwhile, we Catholics are tearing each other apart.

Does this sound familiar?

I feel like one need only go and look on Catholic Twitter or go to a Catholic parish, and you'll see a lot of this play out.

But what storm was ever so fierce and wild as this tempest of the churches?

In it, every landmark of the fathers has been moved, every foundation, every bulwark of opinion has been shaken.

Everything buoyed up on the unsound is dashed about and shaken down.

We attack one another.

We are overthrown by one another.

If our enemy is not the first to strike us, we are wounded by the comrade out of our, out of, at our side.

If a foe man is stricken and falls, his fellow soldier tramples him down.

There is at least this bond of union between us.

We hate our common foes.

But no sooner have the enemy gone by than we find enemies in one another.

So it strikes me that we can take a kind of golden age look at the early church and say like, Oh, things would have been so, uh, so clear back then, so, so easy to know what to do.

But the people living then didn't have that experience, and it took a while to sort of work out the meaning of the, of First Nicaea.

And so I think it's gonna similarly continue to take a while to work out the proper meaning of Vatican II. I, I think that proper meaning is clearer now.

You see it in the numbers.

Like, the young priests coming up are much more orthodox, and they are not just rejecting Vatican II, but they have a different relationship to the council than their parents' generation did or their grandparents' generation did.

So that still leaves So okay, all that's to say, post-conciliar chaos, yep, true, not completely unprecedented, but you can understand why people would be freaked out.

What remains are these theological hurdles.

What is the proper meaning and interpretation of the church's position on, uh, questions like religious liberty and, uh, what rights, if any, do those who don't hold to the true faith have?

Um, those kinds of questions.

If you want a really good debate on that within orthodox, faithful Catholic thought, uh, Father Ronheimer, uh, what is his name?

Do I have to look this up every time?

Father Martin Ronheimer, I believe.

Yes, Father Martin Ronheimer, R-H-O-N-H-E-I-M-E-R, had a debate with the philosopher Thomas Pink on the interpretation of Dignitatis Humanae.

They did, um, a debate at Notre Dame in twenty fifteen, and they also wrote, like, academic articles back and forth debating each other.

So I, I really recommend that.

And I would say this.

Like, if, if somebody says Vatican II seems ambiguous on these points, then fine, take an orthodox interpretation.

You owe that to the church, um, to err on the side of a hermeneutic that isn't one of rupture.

So, you know, like, uh, my understanding is the SSPX side wants, like, all the ambiguities hammered out before, uh, before they're ready to, like, say yes to Vatican II. But if there's an interpretation of Vatican II that is orthodox, say yes with that understanding.

Be very clear.

This is what we think it means.

We're giving it the benefit of the doubt.

We think it means this.

We affirm this.

And then if the church says, No, we don't mean that.

We mean this thing that is not orthodox, okay, well, now cross that bridge when you get there, rightBecause then you'd have to say, Well, did God lead his church so long and then abandon it?

Or did I misunderstand?

Or is this a failure of the fallible magisterium?

You know, you can, you can figure all of that out but don't create a problem that doesn't exist yet.

And so I thought that the, the letter seemed petulant, if I can be just very blunt.

Like, I have a lot of sympathy for the people who say, like, I love tradition.

I've seen a lot of bad stuff happen in the name of Vatican II. I've seen a lot of liturgical ugliness.

I've seen a lot of theological ambiguity.

I get all of that.

The letter written, uh, to Cardinal Fernandez was disrespectful.

Like, the, Oh, I hope it doesn't offend you, but, uh, invoking the invocation of Mary, Mediatrix of All Graces, like, that's, that's childish.

And there's something that is actually kinda blasphemous about invoking saints in a way to try to bother somebody else.

Um, you know, like that's just It's Don't do that.

That's not a good attitude.

That's not a docile or Catholic attitude.

You can get a beautiful liturgy and not have a Catholic heart.

Uh, you can get theological questions right and not have a Catholic heart, but, like, we want to have the right disposition and the right relationship, uh, with Jesus Christ and his church.

And the We need to have that docility.

The, uh During the Jansenist controversy, they were rigorous.

They were, they were, to use the unhelpful modern parlance, like, they were more conservative than the church.

And they took piety very seriously.

I mean, you can read the writings of Like, I love Pascal.

He has strong Jansenist leanings.

Uh, but one of the lines famously said of the nuns of Port Royal was that they are pious as angels but proud as devils, and we have to watch out for that.

So that's my two cents on SSPX, but also I think on all of us.

We can all fall into that trap.

I might at some point try to hammer that out into episode format, although maybe I've said everything I, like, I can say.

Um, yeah, I don't know.

Somebody asked, Why didn't Joe debate Anthony Rogers?

Didn't Trent just debate Anthony Rogers?

Anthony Rogers is always wanting to debate everybody, isn't he?

I d- I don't know him super well.

Um, a lot of people want to debate me right now, and I have to be very careful about not saying yes to things and then Like, I think there are too many debates because I think that the danger is people are not giving them adequate preparation, uh, spiritually, intellectually, et cetera, and it can become very clickbaity.

And I'm at a place where I'm saying yes to too much already and I'm having to be better about saying no.

Uh, like, just this year, so it is March 9th, I was in Columbus for SEEK. I was in, uh, Bismarck for University of Mary, speaking there.

I spoke with the aspiring deacons here in Kansas City.

That was just the first 10 days of the year.

I was on Pints right after that.

That was the episode that just came out a little bit ago.

Um, let's see.

I, uh, did some whatever, like, online stuff that's easy because I didn't have to travel.

Um, went to Hays, Kansas, Fort Hays State University.

I love talking with college students, so that's really good.

Spoke to the deacons or aspiring deacons again.

Uh, went to, oh, Detroit, uh, speaking to Chesterton Society.

Was in Wamego, Kansas, uh, men's conference there.

Was, uh, at Lee's Summit, which was only, like, half an hour, so that was an easy one.

Uh, spoke at an event there.

Went down to Oxford, Mississippi, Ole Miss.

Beautiful, but it's a super long drive, so I drove down there.

Uh, then was up in San Diego, and that got me to last week.

Then I was doing stuff for aspiring, um, seminarians this weekend, and I've got more travel coming up.

And I, I give that just to say Like, I'm going to Benedictine or going to, uh, Bendina, Kansas, uh, in Atchison, uh, on Wednesday.

When people are like, Why don't you do this?

Why don't you do Like, to do a debate well takes a lot of time, and so I am purposely being choosier about who I do stuff with.

And it's not about, like I mean, I, I People are gonna interpret that however they want.

Like, I'm, I'm think I'm too good for them or I'm afraid of them or whatever, and it's I'm, I'm just too busy.

I'm too busy to do it all well, and I'm having to say no to things, and I hate saying no because I always feel like I'm letting people down.

But that's, that's what's going on.

I'm going to DC next week, and then, uh, I'm going to Oklahoma this weekend and next weekend.

So I've got four more trips coming up, uh, between now and, uh, next Sunday.

So trying to do all of that and, um, do it in a way where I can give it the time and attention that it deserves is, is one of the things I'm still learning how to do.

In a little more than two weeks, I'm gonna be debating Doug Wilson, so I do have a debate coming up.

And, uh, that one, I, I feel like I can prepare for.

It's on sola Scriptura.

It's, you know It's not gonna be, like, obscuring, obscure, oh, you gotta read these ancient tomes and, and find, you know.

So yeah, that's, that's kind of where I'm at with that.

Um, oh, this is the best time of year to go to Oklahoma.

It's beautiful right now, so I'm happy.

Okay.

Branca says, Hey, Joe.

I've grown up with Pope John Paul II. I think in my time he was the best.

Who would you regard as your favorite?

In my lifetime?

That's a good question.When I was coming up, I, I was born in '85 so John Paul II died when I was a college student.

Some of you don't even remember him or you know, maybe I'm, I'm shudder to think maybe were not alive when he was pope.

But growing up, like, he was just like the pope of my childhood.

Like in the, uh, worship missalette thing, uh, it says we pray for and then it's a red N and it says our pope and, and our bishop where you're supposed to put in the name, and I was convinced as a kid like, Oh, they hate John Paul II so much they won't even put his name in the book.

Like it just didn't occur to me as a kid that there would someday be a different pope.

Like I knew obviously there had been other popes, but like he was my pope through my entire childhood and so I have a strong, uh I've got a strong love for JP II, uh, because he also I think got the church on a less crazy direction than things had kind of been going, and he it took him tremendous effort to do that, and he was the right man for that.

He had the extroversion, vision, charisma.

He lays out the theology of Theology of the Body.

And so in terms of just like the benefits that I've directly or indirectly gotten from him, he might be, um That said, I actually prefer Benedict as a writer.

Uh, John Paul II's Meditation on Givenness is one of the finest writings I've ever read.

It's, it's really shaped the whole way I try to approach my marriage.

It's, I don't know, it's like maybe five to seven pages so I, I would encourage you to check it out.

Meditation on Givenness.

It's fantastic.

Like what does it mean for a man to, uh, see his masculinity and a woman's femininity and how does that play out in different contexts in life?

Like what does it mean for a relationship to be sexed and not sexual, for instance.

So yeah, I mean, our license plates, we used to have two cars.

We're down to one right now.

We used to have two cars and the license plates on one was JP II and the other was Waitilla so I feel like that probably gives a whole where we land, uh, right there.

Part of that also, my wife has a big devotion to JP II so it's a common, it's a common love.

Uh, whereas Oh, no, she likes, she likes Benedict as well, but she's, she's a big JP II gal.

I mean, I know there are other popes, but those two were s- you know, formative at, at this kind of particular la- uh, point in life.

All right.

Uh, random YouTuber says, What is the difference between the Epistle of Barnabas and the Gospel of Barnabas?

Well, the Gospel of Barnabas is like 1,000-plus years later, uh, and pretort- purports to be from Barnabas and isn't.

The Epistle of Barnabas, uh, is like late first century, early second century, so it really is quite ancient.

Uh, it does not to my knowledge actually claim to be from Barnabas despite the name.

So let me see if I'm wrong about that.

Oh, great.

Yeah.

No.

It doesn't claim to be from Barnabas.

Some early church fathers ascribe it to Barnabas and, um, most people think that's wrong.

Some people think that's right because it's actually old enough to where potentially it could be.

And so in technical terms, the Gospel of Barnabas is pseudoepigraphical, meaning it claims to be by somebody that it's not.

That's a big red flag.

And the Epistle of Barnabas is just anonymous, and we may or may not know who the author is and, uh, so we, we treat it with a lot more seriousness.

It's a very strange document in some ways, but the Gospel of Barnabas isn't of, to my knowledge, any real historical value.

The Epistle of Barnabas can still tell us a lot about the early church because even if, uh, even if the person doesn't have the authority of an apostle or, you know, one of the so-called Apostolic Men like, you know, Mark and the people who knew the apostles, even if it's not that Barnabas, it still gives us something of an insight into how some early Christians understood Christianity in that age, which is tremendously helpful.

All right.

Andrew Michael React says Oh, sent me, uh, £10 and says, To support your mission.

It's not much, but something.

I'm very grateful.

I'm being confirmed this year.

God bless you.

Your channel alongside others helped me take that step.

Thank you.

Love and prayers from the UK. Well, God bless you, and please everyone, uh, say a prayer for Andrew Michaels.

And, uh, yeah, welcome home.

Very happy to hear it.

Uh, Simeon Robin says, Pal, can we have real examples of when a wife has to submit to her husband?

Example, can I order my wife to wear a red dress?

If you say no, why not?

That's such a weird thing.

I Look, if, if you are leading and you're ordering something within reason, your wife should submit to it.

Also, why would you I, I worry about this conversation for exactly the reason you've laid out here.

Like if that's your understanding of what you're supposed to do in marriage, there's something deeply dysfunctional about that.And I understand that some people are going to hear that and be like, oh, like Joe's this like crazy woke feminist, whatever.

No.

But like effective leadership doesn't look like that.

Like start with Luke 22.

When the apostles are debating about which one of them is the greatest, Jesus tells them what greatness is supposed to look like, and greatness looks like service.

And he warns them explicitly not to be like the Gentiles who exercise-- the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them.

And those in authority over them are called benefactors.

But not so with you.

Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader is one who serves.

So look, start with that.

Like I know the JP2 like mutual submission thing gets a bad rap in some corners of the internet.

But start with Jesus' words on what it looks like to lead rather than like how much am I able to boss my wife around and she has to obey me.

If you take that approach, you're not going to have a happy marriage even if she wears the red dress.

So yes, if you're making a reasonable demand, like, you know, I, I, I guess if you're like going to a work event or something and your wife has two dresses and one of them would be inappropriate for the event, she only packed two, and you say, I, I insist you wear the red one, and it's not contrary to her dignity, you know, like it's not like immodest or something like that, then she should wear the red one.

At the same time, if you find yourself regularly doing that or wanting to do that, something more fundamental is broken.

And I, I think some people are hearing that as a dodge, and it really is just trying to help you not have a really messed up marriage.

Um, even read like the stuff the Catechism talks about like parents and how they should treat their kids, and one of the first things we're told is like you should remember that these are children of God.

Like these are not just your accessories.

You don't just boss them around.

And if that's true even of adults with their own children, how much more is that true of your equal in marriage?

So yes, I, I'm sure much more could be said, but there you go.

I hope that helps, Amelia.

Angari Italy Man says, How to respond to Theology of the Body is Jovinian slash a change in church teaching.

The fathers do seem to have a much lower view of marriage and sex.

You have an ongoing, um, shift in emphasis.

So I'd say a few things.

One, St. Augustine can sometimes read as having a, a low view of sex, partly I think because of his own background and the, you know, he had a kid out of wedlock and everything else.

So he was very sensitive to the dangers and sins of the flesh and read without the proper context can sometimes seem like exaggeratedly so.

He also has some beautiful passages on the relationship of men and women.

Um, some of the other fathers, you know, St. John Chrysostom has some beautiful stuff on how a man ought to, uh, speak to and treat his wife and all of that.

Um, let me find it here if I can.

If this takes too long, I won't worry about it, but I think I can find it.

Okay, yeah, he says, Tell her that you love her more than your own life because this present life is nothing, and that your only hope is that the two of you pass through this life in such a way that in the world to come you will be united in perfect love.

Say to her, 'Our time here is brief and fleeting, but if we are pleasing to God, we can exchange this life for the kingdom to come.

Then we will be perfectly one with Christ and each other, and our pleasure will know no bounds.' That's a very beautiful, uh, vision of marriage, and, uh, that was actually on our, uh, like wedding cards.

There's-- In the theology and like the history of the theology of St. Joseph, one of the things that you'll sometimes hear, and I think there's some truth to this, is that the theology of Joseph's role doesn't fully emerge until the theology of Mary's perpetual virginity is really deeply rooted because the danger is a culture not used to a virgin conception and birth just hears Joseph and Mary and is like, Oh, yeah, great.

This is the father of Jesus, and understands Joseph's role in such a way that it denies the virgin birth.

On the other hand, in really leaning into the theology of the virgin birth, you find depictions that make Joseph look like a bad guy in antiquity and even into the Middle Ages.

And so devotion to St. Joseph doesn't take off in earnest until the fifteenth century.

Um, it's actually quite striking and takes off immensely once it does.

I think something similar is the case with marriage, that the early church fathers are affirming like, yes, marriage is good, but virginity is better, celibacy is better, uh, consecrated life is better.

And sometimes they do this to such an extent that they do seem to denigrate marriage, even while they say like we, you know, they, they stress marriage is good.

It, it's a sacrament.

Um, so I think all of that is, is a realMovement that we see, some of that is just a shift in tone.

Occasionally, they'll say things that are just, like, over the top or over the line.

But that's one Like, I don't think it's a, a crazy deviation to say even in, like, Augustinian thought, you have the seeds of Theology of the Body planted, just put in a very different way by John Paul II. Like, the two knocks I hear on Theology of the Body are, like, what's the big deal?

All he's doing is recycling patristic thought, and this is terrible because it violates patristic thought.

And it's like obviously those two things can't both be true.

So yeah, um, I think that's a bad view, but I haven't actually seen too many people make that charge, so I may be missing some of the meat of the charge.

I wanna be fair to the people who are critical.

Um, Noah says, Meta question.

That's M-E-T-A, not like he met a qu Anyway.

I'll be going to an event tonight where lifelong friends of Pope Leo talk about their time with him.

What should I ask them in the Q&A? Other than Saint Augustine, who were some of the saints and theologians he really, uh, seemed to love or gravitate to?

Something like that.

That kinda question would be People's favorite saints, all that can be just, like, a beautiful way of personalizing them.

Depending on the answer you get, you, you could find some really eye-opening Like, Oh, okay.

I understand the man better.

Uh, that's exciting.

I, I hope to hear from you how that event goes.

You'll have to put it in the comments.

I mean, obviously this stream will be done by then, I hope.

Uh, but just leave a comment.

Simeon also says, You said Fuentes is unclear, so no one knows his beliefs.

Why not just ask him?

You've spoken with schismatics.

Why not him?

Is he worse?

Not a griper.

I don't actually have a means that I know of to I've never spoken to the man in my life.

I also don't think, though, that I said no one knows his beliefs.

I said I don't know his beliefs, which isn't the same thing.

I'm, I mean, I don't deny there might be people who understand him much better than I do.

I was just not wanting to say, Oh, he says this, and by that he means X, and, and therefore he's wrong.

I'm not regarding him as, like, untouchable to interact with or, or anything.

I'm happy to go on his show or talk to him or do anything like that.

I, I go almost anywhere.

I'm, I'm on a Mormon show tomorrow.

I, I mean, I just told you, I I had lunch with a, an SSPX guy.

I try to reach people who aren't already on the same page.

So, like, I'm not quick I mean, I, I will write people off if I think they're just acting in bad faith, but I won't write people off just for being wrong about things, and rarely do I even write people off for acting in bad faith.

Usually, it's like if somebody's being super obnoxious about something.

Um, oh, part two.

He's gone on smaller shows than yours.

You two can talk man to man.

I wanna know earnestly what you believe.

Pints.

Earnestly enough to ask him?

Yeah, sure.

Um, or if, if there's anywhere where he's un- unironically Like, the danger I don't know if you've seen Coleman Hughes did a really good analysis of sort of the two faces that Nick appears to put forward, where on his own streams he talks in one way, and in outside-of-the-bubble communication he talks in a very different way.

And there's a certain amount of tone shift that's understandable, uh, that's not even a bad thing, but that the message seems to be substantially different.

And he, uh, gives the example, uh, Coleman Hughes does, of, uh, Martyr Made.

I, I bl- I'm blanking on the guy's real name, and how he was presenting himself as a more or less, like, critical but not extreme sort of World War II historian guy.

Um, but, um, like they unearthed private stuff where he was, like, much more, like, openly pro-Hitler and was just trying to, like, whitewash it.

So I think don't be naive.

Like, if somebody says, Oh yeah, my, my real views are this thing where I'm not saying anything strikingly offensive, uh, is that their real view?

Or, like Boom, sorry.

Apparently the, the stream was not big enough for me and Sam Shamoon.

Welcome.

Uh, on the, on the Fuentes thing, like, when somebody presents themselves as two radically different ways, I think it's fair to ask which one is the real version and how do you know which one's the real version.

Like, politicians do this all the time, and it's easy to say, like, Oh, well, the one I want is the real one and the one I don't want is the fake one.

Give actual reasons why.

Like, it can't just be that you want that to be true, or somebody tells you, Oh, trust me, this is my real belief.

If they're articulate and you see them talking out both sides of their mouth, I, I think it's fair to call that out and say, I don't know what to make of that.

I don't know which thing I can trust.

Again, like, politicians do this pretty regularly, and there's a lot of wish casting that happens with it, where you've got your favorite politician and you're like, Well, I know in my heart they really agree with me.

Do you, or do you just really want that to be true?

That's a much bigger issue than Nick.

That Just a, a broad thing.

So yeah, I'd be happy to go on his show or, you know, talk to him whatever way.

But I'm not confident that I can just trust whatever I'm getting as, like, the real unvarnished truth of his, you know, privately held views.

Um-All right.

Alex Dre says, What would you say to non-Catholics and Catholics who struggle with religious relics of saints, particularly body parts and incorrupt bodies?

Yeah one this is an area where on the particulars you aren't required to believe very much meaning if you see a body, and it's regarded as incorrupt, and you say, I don't think it is incorrupt, I think it just had, like, the right, uh, climatic conditions where it was preserved naturally, that's fine.

You're not required to believe that, like, Saint Paula is an incorruptible.

Um, I think there's a good case for, for many of these being incorrupt saints but there's also a process where the church tries to be very cautious about both what she says herself and also of, uh, what she requires of anybody else, and what she requires of us is basically nothing.

We affirm that relics are real, uh, and that God can work supernaturally through that.

That's very easily proved from scripture, I think.

You've got Saint Peter's shadow as he's walking by.

People are, uh, lining up so that his shadow falls on them, and they can be healed.

You've got the handkerchiefs that were touched to Saint Paul and brought to the sick.

I want you to think about that.

That's every bit as superstitious looking as anything with relics.

You're touching something to Paul, taking it to somebody Paul doesn't even know, touching it to them, and they're healed.

That's in Acts.

So if that's real, then that's at least a baseline of, like, okay, well, I can't say that can't happen because it did happen.

And then the third would be, uh, the bones of Elisha.

When they throw a body into his grave, and then that dead person touches his bones, and then the person comes back to life.

So can the shadow of a saint, can the bones of a saint, can things touched to a saint, uh, be conduits of tremendous spiritual power?

Absolutely, and we see that repeatedly in scripture, and we see it throughout the early church.

Saint Augustine has some really, uh, incredible stuff about miracles that happened involving relics in his day.

So I know Augustine is somebody that a lot of Protestants and Catholics alike share a respect for.

He's very clear on that.

Um, so I don't actually know of, uh, any good arguments against relics.

Like, the only arguments I hear are, like, what could become superstitious.

A lot of things could become superstitious.

People could start worshiping their Bible or think that the only way God can speak to them is through the Bible.

Does that mean we don't use Bibles anymore?

That's a bad take.

So abuse doesn't invalidate use is a good principle.

Um, so yeah.

There you go.

Let me know if you've got any other, like, follow-up questions on that.

Uh, Mori Ocho says, How do we cultivate a relationship with a saint?

Saint Catherine of Siena has been praying for me.

What do I do with that?

Ah, it sounds like you've already got step one.

Step one is figure out who's the saint who's chosen you because when you want a relationship with the saints, what you often will find is there's a particular saint who's already there waiting, and, uh, you should take that seriously.

Take that as an invitation and a prompt, and it may not be Uh, I'll say this at the outset.

That may change over the course of your life, like with any friendship.

Like, I'm not someone who thinks you have to stay friends with your friends from high school.

I don't think it's disloyal to just acknowledge, like, Okay, we've kind of gone in different directions.

You know, we're in different cities.

We have very different lifestyles.

Our beliefs don't line up anymore.

We don't have very much in common, and we have a lot of shared memories, and that's wonderful, and, you know, if we see each other, we can be cordial, but you don't have to put in the effort to, like, force a relationship like that to work.

I'm not saying, like, cut them off and, and, you know, alienate them, whatever.

I'm just saying, like, it's okay to recognize who are the people God has put in my life right now.

I, I spoke earlier about just busyness, and this is true across the board.

Like, there's too many people to have the rich, meaningful relationships that you might want with all of them, uh, and there's too many saints to have that here on Earth.

That's one of the glories of the everlasting nature of Heaven is you get to have that to the level that you want it.

You cultivate that, that love to say, like, I wish I had more time to know more saints and to read more spiritual writings and to ask more of them for help.

So how do you grow?

First, recognize that some saints are given to you for a season, but recognize when saints are given to you, and so when you say, like, Saint Catherine of Siena is praying for me, it sounds like you've already done step one.

Second, read whatever spiritual writings they have.

This is one of the greatest ways to unambiguously know what it is that they're wanting to share because they've gotten a chance to share this.

Uh, third, ask for their prayers and ask for their guidance and ask God to make you more like them in whatever way you're meant to become more like them.

So yeah.

So yeah, today is, uh, Saint Francesca of Rome, and, uh, my sister-in-law's named Francesca, and I remember long before I was married to her sister, I, I knew her, and I, I prayed for her at, at the Church of Saint Francesca of Rome and, and felt very much like she'd kinda pulled through in the thing that I'd asked for.

And so yeah, like But it was, it was very much like I'm-- I was drawn into a relationship there I thought for a brief period of time for the sake of someone else.

That's another thing that can happen with the saints.But in, in, in similar where in a, in a, in a similar way, like in spiritual writing in general or the work of any theologians or YouTube channels like you may say This period of my life I, I need this channel, and maybe later on you'll, you'll find yourself more drawn somewhere else, and that's I don't think that's bad.

I mean continue giving every month forever.

That's a requirement.

But I don't think it's bad.

I'm just kidding.

Um, yeah.

So I don't know if that helps, but there you go.

Esteen Ohenion says, uh, I apologize if I butchered your name, Hi, Joe.

Do you have a favorite verse/book in the Bible?

What makes it especially meaningful to you?

Thank you for everything you do.

God bless you.

Yeah, I do.

Um, First John is my favorite book.

Jonah is my favorite book of the Old Testament because I really relate.

My favorite passage in First John is in First John 3. See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

Beautiful.

It's the whole vision of the Christian life and this is a vision that so many Christians miss out on.

The point of Christianity is not just, Don't go to hell.

The point of Christianity is not just go to heaven.

That's just the beginning.

You get to become a child of God, and then you get to become something better than a child of God.

You get to be made godlike and so that when you see Jesus you'll be like him, for you'll see him as he is.

That's what we mean when we say, Eye has not seen, ear has not heard what God has ready for those who love him.

Not just like, It's gonna be so beautiful up there, but like no, no, what's happening to you, uh, is, is a transformative thing.

My wife, one of her good friends is a, a Protestant who's kind of investigating the Catholic Church, and so they've been sort of learning more about one another's, uh, conception of grace and, and how we might use the same word but we often have a different idea of that.

But the transformational nature that God doesn't just wanna declare you holy, but he wants to make you like him, that's what First John 3 is all about, and it's so beautiful.

All right.

Winston Vontos says, Have you and James White agreed on when, where, and the format of your discussion that you both seem to agree to on X? Uh, not since then.

I've actually not been on Twitter since this morning so or X since this morning.

Um, and so he may have said something.

I've missed it.

But yeah, I mean it sounds like it could be a, a good time.

I, I think I understand, I think I understand his position, but I wanna understand it better.

All right.

JFergo8 says, What do you think are the best Catholic undergrad universities for theology?

I got into and am thinking about Villanova, CUA, and U Dallas.

I have not gone to any of those three.

I can speak generally to good Catholic schools.

I'm not really qualified to speak to good theology departments.

Like the culture at schools like Benedictine is really good.

Thomas Aquinas College doesn't really have a theology department.

It's just great books.

Um, the, uh, Christendom, Franciscan, you know, these ones are kinda like perennial.

They, they have like a good Catholic culture.

All of them have their strengths.

All of them have their weaknesses.

I w- didn't go to any of them.

I went to, uh, Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas, for undergrad.

So I'm a bit of an outsider to the whole world of solid Catholic schools 'cause I went to a, uh, secular school for undergrad, and then when I did my theology it was at the Angelicum in Rome, so very different.

But I have heard good things, um, about U Dallas and CUA. Villanova, I j- well, a- and so okay, the other thing is I'm trying to keep straight where have I heard good things about the philosophy department, where have I heard good things about the theology department.

You know what?

I don't want to give you bad counsel here, so I'm gonna do this.

Anybody here who has been to any of those three schools or who did the theology program at another school that you would recommend, comment in the chat and give your recommendations that are gonna be much better informed, uh, than mine.

How about that?

All right.

Rafael Sh- uh, Schneeweis, Schneeweis says, My favorite quote on love, 'Everyone chooses his love after his own fashion from among those who are beautiful and then treats the boy like his very own god, building him up and adorning him as an image to honor and worship.' From the Phaedrus.

The, uh, kind of ladder of loves in Socrates' dialogues, once you get past the amount that it's like male-male, there's something tremendously beautiful about that that is, uh, speaking to the nature of how love works that I think is really good.

Um, that yeah, y- like the experience of being in love with someone opens your heart to love in such a way that is hopefully not just something they're the beneficiaries of, but also makes you more loving towards everyone else, and you can have kind of this rising capacity for love, which is, which is really wonderful.All right.

Esteen says, who is your favorite saint and or theologian?

The first one that comes to mind is St. Francis de Sales.

He's incredible.

He's a great apologist.

He's a great theologian.

He's a great spiritual writer.

Not a lot of people check all three of those boxes.

If you watch my episode on John Paul I, the saints he really likes seem to be the saints I really like, like Jose Maria, Francis de Sales, Gregory the Great.

Those guys are all fantastic.

And I find myself quoting from all three of them quite a bit.

So, but of the three, if I had to choose one, Introduction to the Devout Life has been a huge influence on me spiritually.

And I really recommend it.

I will give this warning.

Introduction to the Devout Life in part one has these daily meditations that you're to pray over the series of like several days.

I would just say like, skip that part.

Here's why.

I know this sounds bad.

Don't just like skip it entirely, but like save it for later.

The reason is if you're like me, you get to something like that and you're like, okay, I was reading along.

This was all really wonderful.

And now I'm supposed to just stop and just do one page.

And then I'm supposed to come back tomorrow and do like one more page.

And that's where like a lot of people stop because they forget to do it.

And it just doesn't go anywhere.

Ah, Gospel Simplicity is in the house.

Austin, have you read Introduction to the Devout Life?

And if so, what do you think of it?

So yeah, anyway, I think the book is fantastic.

And he is such a gentlemanly saint and has such a great heart for people.

So you just see like, this is someone who completely practiced what he preached.

And it's incredibly, incredibly helpful, I think.

And as John Paul I points out, he's one of the first people to take lay spirituality as a distinct thing very seriously.

That like, if you're a priest or a monk or a nun, and you're giving counsel to somebody with like eight kids, they're probably going to need a different rule of life than you have.

And you can't be like, well, holiness isn't for you because you're married and have kids.

So to really take the challenge of what does it look like to live the life of a saint in the world is a really good thing.

Because I think even today, we can sometimes think of certain things as just off limits for holiness.

Like, you know, I'll give the example of Kevin James.

He's a Hollywood actor.

And I know from talking to multiple people, I've never met him, but I've talked to multiple people who have, that he's like a daily mass goer.

He's a voracious reader of spiritual books.

Somebody I was talking to said between him and another Catholic celebrity, the difference is they'll both like read.

Like if you give them a good Catholic book, they'll both accept it.

But like Kevin James, like the next time you see him, he'll have read it and he'll want to talk about it.

And like that's, he's doing something that looks like someone who's really hungry for sanctity.

And I think we can do one of two things.

One, we can put him up on a pedestal because he's a celebrity.

Or two, we can sort of treat it like silly to think that he would be a saint because he's a celebrity.

And I think one of the takeaways from Francis de Sales is like everyone, whether you're called to be a Hollywood celebrity or whether you're called to be a lawyer or a doctor or a housewife or a nun or a priest, whatever you're calling, you're called to be holy.

You're called to be a saint.

But also, those are not all going to look the same.

Those are going to be radically different ways of living out the life of holiness.

Tyson says, here's a super chat I promise.

Let me know when you have a review of the article I sent you.

Tyson, I apologize.

Okay.

Tyson can attest to how bad I am at follow through because I have tried, I don't know, for months now.

He has an interesting argument for papal authority and I've read it and I've been meaning to reply to it.

And I haven't really done that yet.

I will try to soon, Tyson.

I have no idea what soon looks like.

Winston Vontos says, what do you think of Ed Feser's piece that the war with Iran is manifestly unjust according to Catholic just war teaching?

I've not seen his piece on that.

He's a formidable intellectual authority.

I would say to anyone, don't lightly disregard Ed Feser.

I think he's a pretty brilliant mind.

There's some stuff where I part company with him.

I mean, that's going to be true kind of across the board.

But even there, I always have to be like, well, maybe I'm wrong because he's very sharp.

And I'm inclined to think that he is right.

But I mean, in terms of the conclusion, I haven't read the article.

But it is hard to see how the war with Iran meets just war criteria.

And part of what makes it difficult is I don't know that I understand what our war aims are.

If you just say these people are bad and we felt threatened and so we killed them, you can kind of do that to almost every country on earth.

I mean, without exaggeration.

Like maybe you think Iran is obviously worse than the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia.

I don't know that that's correct.But at least let's understand that if, like if A few things.

One, it comes dangerously close to being just might makes right.

Like we needed to send a message to China and to Russia to back off and so we flexed our muscle.

I get that from a real politics standpoint.

That's not how just war theory works.

And if in the future the US is not the global hegemon and not the most powerful country, you want to have enough moral integrity that if another country does that, they, you know, they bomb Jerusalem, say, because they don't like Israel, and they say Israel is a threat in the region so therefore we bombed them.

They, they have nuclear weapons.

I mean they actually do.

Okay.

Like, do we have a moral principle that says why one of these is bad and the other one isn't?

Or is it just your subjective analysis of who you like and don't like?

The whole point of just war theory is so that y- we don't Like, this is an area.

Let's, let's start with this.

Start with.

It's good to be patriotic, but we should also recognize that our patriotism can color our neutrality, um, and can make it harder for us to understand how non-Americans in our case, my case, maybe yours, uh, would see things.

And we've been wrong on some of these things before.

Like, a lot of American Catholics supported the war in Iraq, and I think most of them today would say that was a mistake.

That was bad.

Um, so yeah.

I, I think one of the things that informs my thinking about it is this: when you read church history over and over and over again, you find like in the Middle Ages, some country, we'll call it the Holy Roman Empire, um, will get really powerful and then will like invade Italy and want to make a big empire, and then everyone has to be like, Stop doing that, and then peace is restored, and then they do it again.

Or sometimes the French gonna do this.

And over and over and over again, you find these times where someone is called to choose between their loyalty to their country and their loyalty to their church.

And over and over and over again, people make the wrong decision, and they choose a misguided excessive patriotism, uh, when it contradicts their Catholic loyalties.

And we can look at that and be kind of shocked.

Like, there's some truly scandalous examples of this.

Cardinal Richelieu in France supporting, uh, the Protestant reformers, not because he believed in Protestantism, but because he knew it would destabilize Germany, the Holy Roman Empire.

Uh, that kind of thing is, is really gross.

And I think if you look at fifteen hundred years of examples of that, then you start to say, Okay.

Where might I be called to do something where I'm having to choose between my American loyalties and my Catholic loyalties, and which one do I choose when they're in tension?

Because they are in tension sometimes.

And, um, and if we're not aware of that, I think we're, we're not ready to, to do that.

That happens in both domestic politics, things like abortion obviously.

Happens in foreign politics as well.

So yeah, I think we should be very careful of letting our loyalty to country or party be greater than our loyalty to Christ and his church.

But having said that, I've not read Feaver's piece, so I am in no position to comment on the particulars of it.

And also, I, I should add to this belatedly, I've followed some on the Iranian situation.

There is a lot that I haven't followed, so I'm not gonna put myself out there as like some, you know, unique expert on Iranian politics or anything like this.

But I don't understand what the end goal is, and if we don't have a, an end goal that we're clearly working towards, then almost by definition you don't have a just war.

All right.

Mr. KingSky.

So the Protestant told me venerating Mary is false simply because there's no evidence churches when the apostles were still alive did.

If he only takes scripture or church fathers only when apostles were still alive, how do I answer this?

Well, I think you could do it a few ways.

Um, one is ask what he means by venerating, because Mary does say, All generations will call me blessed.

So there's clearly some amount of veneration that is literally in scripture.

It's right there in Luke one, uh, I believe verse forty-eight.

And it's forward-looking.

It's not just saying, you know, People right now are gonna call me blessed.

Like, she is prophesying, seemingly under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, about future Christians having some kind of Marian devotion.

Now, obviously the contours of it are not spelled out.

But it's worth considering that if Marian veneration was an evil, it was something we were not to do, like it's not just unnecessary, but it's actually an impediment to holiness, it's something that, you know, it's idolatrous or it's dangerous or whatever, as many Protestants believe, God knew that this thing was going to happen.

The only words recorded in scripture foretelling it seem to speak of it in a positive light.

All generations will call me blessed.

Now, it's ob- again, not like a full, here are all of the contours of it, et cetera, but it's, there's no warning.

It seems to be speaking positively.

And there's plenty of things like this.

You know, I, I point out this all the time, but in John seventeen, when Jesus is praying for future disciples, he prays that we'll all be one.If Protestants are right and the church is going to be so wrong that it's actually optional or even obligatory to not be part of the church, we have to like come out of the church.

We have to go into schism because you can't in good conscience remain in the church.

Then it seems weird that the only thing he would tell us to do is remain one when he should have been telling us to do the opposite of that.

I'm not saying that's like a completely unrebuttable argument, but that's at least how I would read those things.

Second, I'm just randomly giving numbers.

I don't know if this is second or not.

Second, it's probably worth pressing this insistence.

Everything is false and wrong if we can't prove that the Christians in the 100s did it or in the first century, excuse me, did it.

What would pass that test?

What are our clear instances of first century churches praying to the Holy Spirit?

We have one instance that I know of people praying directly to Jesus in the New Testament, which is St. Stephen when he's being martyred.

No instances of people praying directly to the Holy Spirit.

Is that bad to do?

Okay, second example.

Sola Scriptura itself.

Did any of them believe in that?

I mean, was Sola Scriptura true during the time of the apostles?

No.

Like the apostles are still saying things orally and expecting people to believe them and follow them.

They're still giving new revelation seemingly.

So it seems like by this standard that anything not taught or like not practiced by the churches in the first century is false, would falsify Sola Scriptura itself.

So I think you can press on both the standard and then also try to meet it, but the standard itself is not a good one.

All right.

King Recores says, how would you respond to young earth creationists based on the belief of a literal reading of the KJV Bible?

They watch a lot of pseudoscience videos.

I have a brief-ish response on Noah's Ark tomorrow.

And I'll spoiler, Noah's Ark, I think, is historical, but I think there is good reason to question whether it's global or not.

And a lot of the arguments for how it has to be read as global don't really work.

Like erets, the term that is translated as earth, means land.

And so saying like all the land, kolerets, is covered in water could mean the entire face of planet earth, but it does not have to mean that.

And it frequently doesn't mean that in context in other places in the Bible.

Like when Abraham and Lot are dividing up who's going to get what land, they're looking at kolerets.

They're looking at the whole land.

They're not looking at like planet earth.

So in terms of the literal reading, yeah, I find this very strange.

We got a really crazy Brandon Manderson.

Isn't he the author?

Said, is it a sin to kiss a homie's good night?

If it's in a gay way, it is.

All right.

But back to the actual question about young earth creationists.

The desire to read things literally is only good if things are meant to be read literally.

And now one thing you should recognize is there's two different meanings of literal.

Literal can mean just like according to the letter, but literal can also mean like the dictionary definition.

So we should take scripture literally in the sense of what does the author mean to say, but the author does not always mean to say something in the other, in the way people popularly use the word literal.

So I'm going to just from now on, as I'm answering this question, when I say literal, I mean the way people ordinarily use that term.

And I have to specify that because you will find stuff on the literal sense of scripture and it doesn't mean the same thing.

Like if it's raining cats and dogs, a literalist reading, if you want to say that, would be like, oh, literal cats and dogs are coming out of the sky.

And no, that's not what the author means by that.

There's actually in morning prayer today, I believe it was, Exodus 9 verse 4. God says to the Israelites at Mount Sinai, you've seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself.

Now, did he do that literally?

No, he did not.

The problem with the literalistic reading isn't just that it gets something like creation wrong.

It's actually that it gets really big issues of theology wrong.

Like that's actually much bigger.

I'm not, I don't have a strong dog in the fight on a lot of the young earth creationist stuff.

I don't like it when people take their reading and insist everybody else has to agree with it.

But I've known smart people on both sides of it.

People I respect a lot on both sides of it.

And I'm not super deep on it.

So I would point out areas where I'm like, I don't think this argument is as good as you think it is.

But I don't think that disproves.

Like you can admit a lot of the arguments young earth creationists make are bad and still believe in young earth creationism.

You can believe a lot of the arguments for a global flood are bad and still believe in a global flood.

I'm not arguing you can't.

I'm not arguing you have to believe it was just regional.I'm just arguing against one thing that I see as really dangerous, which is people imposing their own read as, like, the only way to read scripture So that's one thing.

The deeper problem, as I see it is that people who take a very literalistic read, number one, don't actually, because they get to something like John six where Jesus says to eat his flesh and drink his blood, and they think that's just a metaphor.

Uh, Roy Zuck in his book on biblical interpretation gives that as an example of something we obviously wouldn't take literally even though when you read the early Christians, they do take that stuff literally, and they don't take the hundred and forty-four thousand literally.

So it's like, okay, the things that you're assuming are literal, and the things you're assuming aren't literal don't line up at all with the early readers of scripture.

Isn't that a problem?

Like, the people who share this-- the common language and culture and all of that, isn't that a bigger problem if Like, ugh.

If I'm listening to something in another language, there are going to be times where an expression is idiomatic and it's confusing, and that's, like, today.

Just, like, you hear something in Spanish, and you're like, What does that mean?

I, um, gave this example.

I actually did another live stream right before this just for Patreon members, shamelessjoe.com, and, uh, one of the things that came up is what does it mean to say that Jesus is the firstborn of all creation or the firstborn of the dead?

That's a very confusing expression, and I-- if I'm understanding it correctly, it means, like, premier.

It, like, it's a l- an expression of leadership, not a literal firstborn, and I, I gave the example of one time when I was in Italy, I was, uh, in a restaurant, and at the table next to me, there was a Brazilian couple.

I believe they were Brazilian.

They were speaking Portuguese.

They wanted to know about the beaches around Rome 'cause they wanted to go swimming, and the waiter says to them in English, Oh, you have to check out Santa Marinella.

It's the first beach in the world.

And it was, like, a very confusing thing to say, and I was very confused by it, and they were confused by it.

And then I was sort of like, uh, they had the Like, what would this be in Italian?

What is he trying to say?

It was like, oh, premier.

Like, it's the premier beach.

It's, it's the best, not, like, this is where beaches were invented.

Like, this was the first place the water and the land touched.

That would be a ridiculous thing to believe.

Uh, so that's right now between two not entirely dissimilar languages in the same culture, in the same time, et cetera.

Now, imagine all the stuff that you can be prone to misunderstanding when you're trying to read an interpretation and a translation of first century or earlier documents written in Greek or Hebrew in different cultures and, and so on.

And so one of the ways we check against all of the ways we can screw up reading scripture is by saying, Well, how did the people who shared that language and culture understand what those words meant?

It doesn't mean it's gonna automatically be the right way, but that's often a good indication.

And so then you, you read them, and you're like, oh, wow, very different than modern people and often way less literally, which I think is very surprising for many people.

And I think it's worth recognizing where we have a cultural wound and a blinder, and that wound is this.

We understand true and literal as being the same thing, and so poetry R-remember, there's an entire book in the Bible called Psalm, which is all holy poetry.

Is it true?

Yes.

Is it literal?

No.

Jesus speaks in parables.

Are they true?

Yes.

Are they literal?

No.

But we have this idea that true things are literal, and they read like a science textbook, or they read like a law code.

And again, one of the, one of the easiest ways to test this is to listen to how people fake scripture.

Like, when they're impersonating scripture, like, as a joke, et cetera, they'll say things like, For thus saith the Lord.

And like, yeah, that's Deuteronomy.

That's not the whole Bible, and if your idea is that the whole Bible should read like a law code, you're actually not understanding most of the library that is the Bible because so much of it does not read in that way and is not meant to be read in that way.

So that's just a hermeneutical issue.

Like, you need to have a sensitivity to the genre that you're reading and read it accordingly.

This often comes up, by the way, with stuff on Mary.

Uh, s- I love St. John Henry Newman's description that you don't wanna treat a love poem like a police report, right?

Like, when people have this really over-the-top beautiful, flowery language in what's essentially religious poetry, don't expect all that stuff to read literally.

It's okay if it wouldn't make sense at a literal level.

That's, that's true whether we're like, Mary, you're my lifeline, the sweetness of my hope.

Okay, yeah, don't take that literally.

But also if you talk about, like, the hand of God, don't take that literally either.

So that's what I mean to say.

Like, this is I think it's a much bigger issue that just we don't know how to read scripture, and we imagine that this means we're supposed to take everything as police reports, as law, as science, and those are all very straightforward, non-colorful, um, we would say denotative forms of language, that they're not very connotative.

And a lot of Jesus' stuff is connotative.

Like, it-- there's a layer.

You know, a man has two sons, but the whole meaning is in the connotation.

Like, what is, what is the underlying message that isn't said but is implied?

Much more, much more could be said on that.

Um, just that we Yeah, we don't, we don't read scripture well when we do that.

Okay, I'm gonna give one last example of that.

I know I'm harping on this a lot because I just think knowing how to read the Bible is so important.In John chapter two, Jesus says, Destroy this temple and in three days I'll rebuild it.

And people misunderstand him.

How do they misunderstand him?

They think he literally means the temple.

And he does mean a temple, literally, in a certain way, but he means the temple of his body.

In John three, he talks about being born again or born from above, and Nicodemus takes him literally, and he's wrong.

See, Jesus is talking about a spiritual rebirth.

In John four, when he talks to, to the Samaritan woman about the living waters, um, she, she takes him literally, and she's wrong to do so.

Like, how many times do you have to see someone err by taking non-literal things literally before you say, like, Maybe we should be a little more choosy about just insisting we're gonna read the whole Bible literally, because it's-- the Bible tells you not to do that by showing you all these examples of people doing that to their error.

Uh, by the way, I think I'm supposed to do this.

If you haven't liked this stream and you do like this stream, push that thumbs up button.

I think it helps.

I don't really understand how it helps, but yeah, try that if you want to.

Um, okay.

Hinsey.

By the way, it's two fifteen now.

Let's go another fifteen minutes or so.

So I will get to several questions.

I don't know how many questions I'll get.

And anyone else, I will get to you two weeks from now.

Okay?

So if you, if you leave the super chat, and I don't get to you today, I promise I will get to you, unless I completely miss it or something.

Um, Hinsey, Hinsey says, With regard to baptismal form, how do you refute in the name of Jesus baptisms, specifically with regard to Acts four, verse two, considering baptism saves?

Yes.

So when-- One thing to notice is the in the name of Jesus is only in Luke's account.

This is a Lucan expression.

There are certain expressions where evangelists write with certain, um, language.

So for instance, Matthew says kingdom of heaven rather than kingdom of God, which is a, a Jewish way of avoiding trivializing the name of God by, by using His name too loosely.

And so he, you know, when, when we see that, we understand, yeah, Jesus might have originally said kingdom of God, but out of a sense of piety, Matthew is saying kingdom of heaven.

And you can actually compare parallel passages where it says kingdom of God in Mark and kingdom of heaven in Matthew, that sort of thing.

Well, similarly, in the name of Jesus is a Lucan expression, an expression Saint Luke uses to mean in the authority, the power of Jesus.

And this is a common use of what name means, um, that name doesn't just mean personal name and, and it doesn't have the same range of meaning that it does in English.

And one of the ways you can see that, actually, in the Old Testament is in Isaiah when it says that they'll call his name Immanuel.

But obviously, they don't.

They call his name Jesus in the way we would use the word name.

But that doesn't mean the scripture was wrong.

It just means name means something different in that context.

Uh, so similarly, when in Acts four, verse twelve, it says, There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved, that is not giving a baptismal formula.

That is saying no one besides Jesus saves us, that the name of Jesus means the power of Jesus.

And so, you know, um, another, another good way to see this is in, what is that?

Ephesians two.

Uh, at the name of Jesus.

Yeah.

Is that Ephesians two or is it Philippians?

Sorry, Philippians two.

Philippians two.

Therefore, God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every other name.

So notice something's happening there, that this is after his death and resurrection.

God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name which is above every other name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow.

Well, wait.

He already had the name Jesus at his birth.

Joseph names him Jesus.

We're told that.

That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

But then if you know your Old Testament, um, this is a, a reference.

Hang on.

Let me find it here.

Isaiah forty-five, I believe.

Yes.

Isaiah forty-five, verse twenty-three.

By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return to me: Every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.

So it's about divine power and authority and lordship over everything.

There's no mention of name there, but it's clearly about the power of, of God with the, the unspeakable name.

And that's being applied here to Jesus to show that he has, like, the fullness of divine power and authority.

It's not about Jesus literally getting, like, a new name or something like that at, at, at his glorification when he, you know, sends him to heaven.

Um, another place to see this.

So part of that's just understanding what's happening because I think this is an area where people just don't know what to make of that passage.

Uh, I like to go to Acts nineteen.

In Acts nineteen-Paul is in Ephesus, um, and sees some disciples there.

He says, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

They said, No, we've never even heard there is a Holy Spirit.

And he said, Into what then were you baptized?

They said, Into John's baptism.

And Paul said, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who has come after him, that is Jesus.

On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

So again, if you take that to be a baptismal form, then the passage is actually nonsensical, because Paul expects that they'll have heard about the Holy Spirit in their baptism.

Into what then were you baptized?

is his response to the fact they don't know about the Holy Spirit.

So that very clearly indicates that their baptism was a baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, even though it's then referred to as a baptism into Jesus or a baptism in Jesus.

So yeah, just understand this is a kind of idiomatic expression Luke uses and, and only Luke uses, and then contrast that with something like Matthew twenty-eight, where Jesus says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And lo, I am with you always to the close of the age.

There it looks like a baptismal form.

Then you pair that as well with things like the Didache.

The Didache, you know, probably first century, um, gives instructions and tells how to baptize.

And concerning baptism, baptize this way.

Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit in living water.

That means running water.

But if you have not living water, baptize into other water.

But if you have not, in cold, in warm.

But if you have not either, pour out water thrice upon the head in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But before the baptism, let the baptizer fast and the baptized, and whenever others can, you shall order the baptized to fast one or two days before.

So we know, not just from reading it two thousand years later, but again from reading how people understood these things at the time, that Christian baptism in the first century was Trinitarian.

It was in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit with this threefold, uh, outpouring of water and if you did the baptism by pouring.

So the modern, like oneness Pentecostal interpretation, it j- it just, it goes against the history there, and all of what they're doing is just not understanding an idiomatic expression.

All right, Hinzy also says, Also, you and Trent Horn were a few- huge force in my conversion, and now I'm getting baptized in less than a month.

Super excited.

God bless you.

That's wonderful.

Very happy to hear that.

Um, NK Ingo says, Is declaration needed to depose a heretical pope?

Uh, I would say deposing a heretical pope is impossible, uh, because a pope being heretical in the sense in which deposition would be necessary is impossible.

Uh, there's a much bigger conversation we had about the error of conciliarism, the idea that a council can depose a pope, uh, but basically this was all kinda hammered out in the fifteenth century for the most part.

You will find theologians speculating about very particular cases, and I think that their speculation is not helpful, even among theologians that I even saintly theologians, uh, risk confusing people.

The-- I don't know how, how much depth I should go on this, but basically one of the points of papal infallibility is a pope will never impose some heretical, uh, teaching upon the church and will never force us as Catholics to, uh, follow this heretical view upon pain of schism, and the reason for that is very simple.

It is a sin to go into schism, and it is a sin to endorse heresy, and God will never make you sin, and these are damnable sins according to scripture.

God will never force you to choose damnation, and you could never repent of that sin either if you found yourself in that situation, because you'd say, Well, this thing is damnable.

It is a sin.

I did it.

I knew.

I was told not to do it, and yet I'm not sorry for it because I had no other choice.

You see, you couldn't even repent of this damnable sin.

That'd be a horrible situation.

So how does God prevent us from falling into this?

I talk about all this in my book, Pope Peter.

By, um, giving the pope the spiritual tools such, not that he'll be personally holy or anything like that, that's not a guarantee, but that his own shortcomings will not put us as, as individual Catholic believers in, in that sort of impossible position.

Um, I hope that helps.

Belenius says, Hi, Joe.

Are C.S. Lewis's books useful for Catholics, seeing as he was an Anglican?

Yeah.

I mean, with many authors you have to say they get ninety-five percent of things right.

There's some things to watch out for, and that's part of just mature readership, and it's actually even okay sometimes if you aren't as a te-- like sometimes y- later on in life you'll look back and you'll, you'll be like, Oh, there were some problems in that writing that I used to like, and maybe you didn't know them, and as long as that's not the part that you're liking, it's, it's not a huge deal.

I love Lewis.

I think he's tremendously helpful.

Uh, not only his books, but also things like The Weight of, Weight of Glory, which was like a sermon.

Tremendous.

Is he perfect?

No.

But even a lot of canonized saints, you're gonna get to things where you're like, Oh, well, you know, St. Thomas Aquinas got this one wrong.

That's okay.

You can do that.

You can have kind of a it takes the rose and not the thorns approach.

I hope that helps.Noah Combs says, I'm only 27.

I have a painful disease that left me temporarily unable to walk.

How do I keep from despair and thrive spiritually in this season?

First of all, guys, let's pray for Noah because that is I'm sure just horrible.

I've had times where, like I've thrown my back out and just had a few days of not being able to walk, and it's, it is terrible.

I cannot imagine having a, an extended period of time.

Um, let me give you a bit of spiritual reading that you can do.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a young man who was Catholic, but not maybe the best Catholic.

He was hit by a cannonball when he was, uh, like fighting in a war and then he got laid up and was unable to walk and while he was there, he did a ton of spiritual reading and ended up becoming the great saint that we know him as today.

So I would recommend, uh Where is that?

It's, it's in Office of Readings for his feast day.

Yeah, if you look up Hmm.

You can find biographies and I think an autobiography of Ignatius that Oh, I didn't put that right.

No wonder I wasn't finding it.

If you look up Office of Readings, Ignatius of Loyola, the top result is the readings for the memorial of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, and, uh, Luis Gonzalez has a life of Saint Ignatius from his own words, and it, it uses that.

So you can find like a little four paragraph thing on him, and it tells a little bit of his story, but you can find other works by, um, Jesuits and others who, who write about him and I would, I would encourage you to read both writings about and by Saint Ignatius and then maybe live that as a model of taking this as an opportunity, because look, here's the thing.

On the one hand, not being able to walk, I know it's terrible.

On the other hand, we are in such a busy, busy world and there are times where one of the greatest graces you can have is to be forced to be still and to have time for prayer and study, spiritual reading.

That I would recommend as like view this not just as a burden, but as an opportunity to say, Okay, there's nothing else I can do.

Like when I'm like on a plane or, you know, uh, in a subway or something like this where I'm on a journey where I'm not the one driving, it's easy to just get restless and be like, Ugh, I wanna be there already.

I'm exhausted.

I'm, you know, like cramped.

But taking this as an opportunity to be like, I have time to pray.

I've got time to, uh, be with our Lord and have a little foretaste of heaven.

I think the more you do that, rather than focusing on your own limitations, but to view it as an opportunity and in, in a certain way as a gift, that Yeah.

That's, that's what I would recommend.

And yeah, let me know how that goes and anyone else who has advice, feel free to add it.

I'm sure Noah wouldn't, uh, mind getting extra, extra counsel.

All right.

Last one for today.

Again, everything else, you're still gonna get it answered, but it'll be answered in like two weeks I assume.

I haven't actually looked at my calendar.

I guess I can look at my calendar.

Um, I'll be in Shawnee, Oklahoma, but I actually think as long as you don't mind us maybe a slightly worse internet connection, we'll see.

It might be a weirder looking background.

I won't be at home.

But I will have free time to, to do this.

So hopefully, hopefully everything will go well there.

If it doesn't, like if I try it out and it's just like a terrible connection, I might wait one more week and do it at the, uh, on the 30th.

We'll figure it out.

Um, okay.

But your point is, your question's gonna get answered.

Don't worry.

Mike says, I just wanna know your thoughts on the Virgin Mary apparitions and the prophecies about the end times.

Thanks.

God bless.

Yeah.

There are different apparitions you could mean by that.

I am not a person who is looking for apparitions that are not church approved.

Um, oh, Veil on the Vines, coming to KC. Glory.

Check out I don't know where you're gonna live.

Check out Our Lady of Good Counsel and, uh, St. Peter's.

Those are the two parishes I go to.

They're g- they're both great.

I- maybe I shouldn't announce the parish that I'm I'm gonna get Someone's gonna murder me.

Oh, dang it.

Well, this might Maybe your question won't be answered next time.

Maybe I'm gonna get murdered.

I'm sorry.

Uh, all right.

Mary apparitions.

I hope YouTube doesn't demonetize it for me saying that word.

Uh, the Mary apparitions are good and beautiful, and here's one of the things I would say.

With Mary apparitions, with Eucharistic miracles, et cetera, those things, if even one of them is true, it seems like the Catholic case is more or less proved.

There, you can quibble about some.

I mean, some of them maybe you could be like, All right, I'm a Protestant, but I think Mary appeared at, at this spot.

But a lot of them are so Catholic in, you know, like the content and the fact that Mary's appearing and all of that, that if any Like you kind of have to say they're demonic, they're hoaxes, or Catholicism's true, because this is the real deal.And even if you think a lot of them are hoaxes or the person was delusional or whatever, if any of them are getting through, and it seems like the ones the church has approved are, ah, worth, like they're worthy of our belief, I think they're a great support for the faith.

I-I never know kind of what to do with them.

This is something where Kevin Bertuzzi has done a lot of stuff on this, and, um, he's encouraged me to do the same.

And I think he's, he's onto something.

I've just tried to figure out kind of what to do.

'Cause I, I never wanna force someone to be like, You have to believe in this Marian apparition, 'cause the church doesn't say that.

You're free not to.

Like, you are free to believe or not believe in Fatima and Lourdes and so on.

There are other ones where the church is like, Watch out for these, like, Don't These are no-gos.

And, um, I would say don't mess with those.

Like, I would leave-- I would say, well, I know some people are gonna disagree with me on this, I would say leave Medjugorje alone.

I don't know what's going on there.

But until the church gives a green light, leave it alone.

Just wait and see what happens.

You aren't gonna miss out on something you need by waiting for the church.

That'd be what I'd say.

Um, I know other people are gonna take a different view on that, but that's, you know, this isn't their stream.

So giving my just purely private views here, I wait for the church's guidance on which apparitions to go with, and I like the ones that the church has approved.

I'd say something similar for Eucharistic miracles as well.

Uh.

So yeah, and then prophecies about the end times.

Yeah, La Salette is a, is a strange one I don't know exactly what to do with.

I would say this.

Never interpret private revelation in such a way that contradicts public revelation.

So I've seen some people take some of the more dire-sounding things as, like, a proof that, oh, the gates of hell are gonna prevail against the church.

Nope.

Nope.

That's not gonna happen.

Um, could be the private revelation's wrong.

Way more likely you're just misunderstanding it.

I see this a lot, even with, like, the Jimmy Akin did something on the three days of darkness.

I know it's something I'd heard a lot about, but I actually hadn't done a lot of, like, reading on it.

So twenty twenty-three, will there be three days of darkness?

And one of the things he points out is that there's no reference to that anywhere in anything the church has ever said.

And the origins of the prophecy are unclear.

The, the bunch of different saints have allegedly said things about three days of darkness.

But it's like, you know, a lot of apocryphal quotes where it's-- if it gets attributed to everybody and Mark Twain, then it probably is not from them.

It's like somebody's just passing this off to make it sound smarter.

So the quotes that get attributed to these saints, when you actually go back and say, Where do we find this quote in their writings?

It's like, Oh, we don't.

At least nowhere that we can find it.

So some of the stuff-- So this is a-- Your, your question's a little short, so I don't know exactly which thing you're thinking about.

But some of the end time stuff that's more controversial is not really from an apparition as far as we can tell or from, like, a, a, a mystic or anything like this.

It's just, like, kinda legendary stuff.

And I, I give that no weight.

Like, show me that in a trustworthy writing, in a trustworthy source, and ideally show me what the church has said on it, and then I'll take it more seriously.

But if it's just, you know, Fleetwood Mac, heard it from a friend, heard it from a friend, heard it from a friend.

Like, okay, I, I don't think that we need to take that too seriously.

All right.

Well, I know I risked alienating everybody there at the end and getting demonetized, but, uh, it's, it's wonderful to be with you guys and look forward to, uh, doing this again, God willing, in a couple of weeks.

All right.

Hey, do me a favor, by the way.

Uh, pray for my upcoming debate if you would.

And I'll know some more details, uh, soon about publishing that and all that.

And then, yeah, drop a comment below if you would.

God bless you all, and I'll see you all soon.