Pints With Aquinas - 10,000 Objections to Catholicism ANSWERED w/ Jimmy Akin

Episode Date: January 6, 2022

Today we discussed a BUNCH of objections to Catholicism ... I'll add a link or two under each topic if you want to do more research. Make sure you check out Jimmy's excellent podcast: https://sqpn.com/podcasts/jimmy-akins-mysterious-world/ 🔴 Have you joined our growing community on Locals (not a dating site ;)) yet? It's free to join: https://mattfradd.locals.com/ 🔴 Check out Exodus 90! https://exodus90.com/matt/ Check out the transcript of a recent talk Jimmy gave, Why Be Catholic: http://jimmyakin.com/why-be-catholic Here's what we discussed: - Papal authority and infallibility: https://pintswithaquinas.com/what-does-a-bad-pope-mean-for-the-church-w-joe-heschmeyer/ Jimmy's book, Teaching With Authority: https://www.amazon.com/Teaching-Authority-Doctrinal-Confusion-Understand/dp/1683570944?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=&linkCode=sl1&tag=jimmyakincom-20&linkId=7f10c5e79d142b5d53583c24334e4a7b&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl - The Assumption of Mary https://pintswithaquinas.com/4-things-catholics-believe-about-mary-w-tim-staples/ - Hell https://pintswithaquinas.com/25-does-hell-exist-is-it-eternal-with-fr-chis-pietraszko/ JPII on Hell: https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/1999/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_28071999.html Pope Benedixt XVI on Hell (especially 45-58): https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html - Masturbation C.S. Lewis on masturbation: https://youtu.be/8JstuIjSVwk Catechism on masturbation: http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/2352.htm - Contraception https://youtu.be/bIEt018Xmyk - Filioque https://www.catholic.com/tract/filioque *** Then we went into a lightning round ... - Women cant be priests https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jyctoYTY9k - Prayers to saints https://youtu.be/VXmcn9vcDug - Purgatory https://youtu.be/QtEDP9wivN8 Pope Benedixt XVI on Hell (especially 45-58): https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html - Calling priest fathers https://www.catholic.com/tract/call-no-man-father Jimmy Akin explaining this at greater length: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ0RMarygLQ - Moving the sabbath to Sunday? https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/from-sabbath-to-sunday Jimmy Akin explaining this at greater length: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joHiQsgDTs4 - The Rosary is repetitious prayer and that's condemned. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/do-catholics-pray-vain-repetitions Jimmy Akin explaining this at greater length: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlegxTFTyWY - Jesus is just a spin off of pagan deities ... new testament not reliable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gb8o1_eeFY Other vids and resources on this topic: https://youtu.be/0Gb8o1_eeFY https://youtu.be/2buCpgHUI8U  https://youtu.be/2buCpgHUI8U https://amzn.to/3mKApw5 https://amzn.to/32A794t 

Hey, Matt Fradd here, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pintswithaquinas.com.com. Or at patreon.com. Matt Fradd, any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. Yeah, good day, good day, good day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. One of the things we're gonna be doing from here on in is whenever I host an interview, be it virtually or across the table,

it's going to be released to my supporters on Locals or Patreon a week before everybody else gets to see it, just as a sort of thank you. So if you're watching this live, it's because you're a supporter. Thank you very much. If you'd like to be a supporter, feel free to click the links in the description

below to locals or Patreon. That way you can watch it a week for everybody else, watch it live and ask questions. Today, I am so honored to have my good mate, Jimmy Akin on the show. Good to have you. Hey, thank you. And it's my honor to be here. I was telling you before the show that my son and I listened to three back to back episodes of Jimmy Akin's Strange New World.

And I'll be honest, I beg your pardon. I screwed that up. That's like when people say to me, Pints for Aquinas. I'm like, come on, get the name right. As long as people are listening. I watched, my son took me to that new Spider-Man show the other day and Yeah, how have you liked it? Yeah, it was fun. It was okay. I was kind of bored. I thought, my point is your episodes were literally way more gripping to me than those. And I'm just, I'm so grateful for them because,

you know, my son's a 13 year old boy, questions about ghosts and aliens and things like this are fascinating to him. And so to have someone like you break these things down and a few times he walked in, he's like, this guy's just so smart. And then, you know, so, and then when you talk about the faith angle, it's never heavy-handed. It doesn't feel like preaching. So you've just got this really brilliant dude discussing these very interesting things, and oh, by the way, he's Catholic, how cool is that? So as a father who's trying to raise my kids in the faith, I'm grateful. Well, thank you. And it's evangelization, by that means, is a key part of what the show does because it's sort of a come for the mysteries, stay for the faith kind of thing,

where even people who maybe are not even Christian will be intrigued by mysteries, and we'll talk about them and we'll apply the principles of reason to them to try to figure them out, and we'll also share faith perspective and show how faith and reason can work together. Indeed. Well, I heard a talk by Trent Horn recently and he mentioned you and he said something to the effect of, Jimmy Akin, who I think is a cyborg sent from the future by God to save the church. Have you heard that line? I have not heard that one.

I have heard an alien cyborg speculation, the most common speculation I've heard is that I'm a Time Lord from Doctor Who. And I've thought about letting my Patreons pick my Time Lord name, but we haven't done that yet. Well, yeah, I mean, you are very good. I'll quit praising you now because it might get awkward. But what I did today on YouTube is I asked people for their biggest objections to Catholicism. We have, I think, almost 300 here. Probably not get to all of them. But I thought what we could do is just tackle as many as we can. And then I'd invite you not to

give a sufficient answer all the time, because we could do entire podcasts, I'm sure, on some of these issues, but to kind of give a response. And then if there's some way you want to point people to Jimmy, or if you want to send me a list of links to articles you've written so people can do a deeper dive into some of these topics, we could do that. Yeah, sure. That's fine. Happy to do that. Also, if you're going to be smoking your cigar, I'm going to light my pipe. So that'll be good. It'll make me feel less, less, uh, less bad here. Okay. Let's see.

I think that the biggest objection and this one's got 141 likes and, and, and unfortunately there's like three or four things bundled up here, but why don't we just start with the top one? Papal or papal authority. And so I think what I'd like you to do in true Thomas Aquinas style is maybe to sort of sum up problems people tend to have with the papacy as best as you can. Obviously there's multiple different problems, but one problem and then help us by responding to it.

Okay, so I guess people can have a number of different possible objections here. One objection is the idea that there should be a pope at all, and then even if you don't have a problem with that, you might have a problem with the specific type of authority that the pope has, and there's more than one type. Essentially, he has both governing authority and teaching authority. And then within the teaching authority category, the common objection that people will have is what level of teaching authority does he have? Can he actually speak to an issue infallibly, and what are the limits of that, how often does it happen and so forth.

So with regard to the idea of should there be a pope at all, well basically the pope is the leader of the church in Jesus' absence and most people do not have a problem with the idea of there being a church leader, even a single church leader, even in groups that have a very different way of approaching church governance. Like let's say Baptists, for example. Well, in a typical Baptist parish or church, you're going to have a pastor or a senior pastor who's the leader of that church. And within a conference of Baptist churches,

like let's say the Southern Baptist Conference, there's going to be a president of the Southern Baptist Conference. And this is something that falls straight out of human nature. Humans are social creatures. We are more like wolves than tigers in that we naturally form groups and groups need organization and organizations need organizers, which means organizations need leaders. And in order to avoid confusion, there ultimately needs to be a single leader. There have been experiments with co-equal leaders in Rome a couple of times during the Republic. They tried to experiment with having

three co-equal leaders. This was known as the Triumvirate, the three men, and both times it fell apart into civil war quite quickly, like within a generation, because there were disagreements among the three men and that led to the rule by one person, or what was known as the monarchy, in Rome because of their history, because they had originally had kings and then kicked them out and proudly became a republic. They couldn't call their monarchs kings, so they called them emperors instead. But this is just something that comes straight out of human nature. You look around the

world at all the different nations. There's, I don't know, 150 nations in the world, depending on how you count them. They all have a single head, you know. Now that head may have different rules about how you get into office or how long you stay in office or what kind of power you have while you're in office, but there's always a single leader. So this is just something that God has built into human nature. And if that's the case for the human race in general, you would expect that principle to apply in God's church. So Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell are not going to prevail against it,

so it's never going to pass out of existence. And in what context does He do that? It's naming Peter as the rock on which He's going to build His church. And we could debate the exegesis of that passage, but you know, even many Protestant scholars will acknowledge, yeah, Jesus is saying, Peter, you're the leader of this group. And then it's a question of, well, what implications does it have from there? And so, if Jesus deemed that His church needed a leader in its first generation when it was just a few dozen and then later a few hundred or a few thousand people, how much more is it going to need a leader when it's billions of people?

Because you know, the Catholic Church today has a billion, more than a billion members, there's more than two billion Christians in the world today. If the church needed a single leader even as a small group, it's certainly going to need one as a large group. And so it's natural for there to be a pope, and we see this reflected in various passages in Scripture. If people would like a more detailed look at some of the biblical exegesis, the biblical reasons for that, they could check out a paper that's at my website, jimmyakyn.com. It's called, Why Be Catholic? An Exercise exercise for evangelicals. And so they can check out at jimmyakim.com

why be Catholic and exercise for evangelicals. It'll cover some of the exegetical reasons why there would be a pope. Now if we then take- Can I- Yeah, go ahead. Real quick, because I think this might be where you're going. Jacob Hobby says, as someone who's flirted with Catholicism before, my biggest hang-up is I really can't find a full proof for papal infallibility. If that's proven, then everything else is dominoes at that point. I'd have to become Catholic.

Yeah, I was definitely going to go here. So the teaching authority is one that particularly a lot of people have difficulty with. So we've kind of established there should be a pope, he would need some kind of authority, at least governing authority. So then, well, what kind of teaching authority would he have? Well, Jesus didn't just appoint the apostles to be managers. He didn't just give them governing authority. He gave them teaching authority.

And we would expect this also to be part of, it's a fundamental part of Christ's Church, teaching authority, and you would expect that to be manifest through its leadership, including through its head leader, the Pope. So the question then becomes, how extensive is this? And there's not a single text in Scripture that proves by itself papal infallibility. In order to appreciate that, I mean, there are texts that resonate with it. I think one of the most interesting texts is found in John 11, where you have the Jewish high priest, who's the Old Testament equivalent of the pope. And in John 11, after the resurrection of Lazarus, the Sanhedrin,

the Jewish ruling council, is having a meeting because they're very concerned. Jesus has raised Lazarus and they say, look, if he's doing all these, Jesus is doing all these signs, if we let him go on like this, everyone's going to believe in him. And it's going to start a war because people think of him as this military messiah. It's going to start a war because people think of him as this military messiah. It's going to start a war. The Romans are going to come in and destroy our city, meaning Jerusalem, and they're going to destroy our holy place, meaning the temple. And of course, that's exactly what happened, although not because Jesus started a war, because other Jews did.

Well, the high priest at that point, as they're debating this, says, you guys don't know anything at all. Don't you realize it's better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish? And so he wants to kill Jesus, but what he said is, it's better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish. And John, the inspired author of the gospel, steps in with a comment at that point and says, he did not say this on his own, but because he was high priest that year, he prophesied about Jesus' death, that Jesus' death is indeed what what saves us, and it's better that this happened for our sake than that it not happened. And so

John regards this as a divinely inspired prophecy. Even though the high priest was not a prophet in the full normal sense of the term, he didn't regularly issue oracles from the Lord, nevertheless we see that there was a kind of prophetic guidance, a prophetic charism that was associated with the office of high priest that in limited circumstances allowed him to speak things that were true on behalf of God. And we also see that in the Old Testament. That's the essence of what the Urim and Thummim were that the high priest would use to

inquire of the Lord. So there's always been a kind of teaching charism that involves guidance from the Lord associated with the office of high priest. And if you're able to speak for the Lord, whether it's through Urim and Thummim, whether it's through prophecy, or whether it's through some other mechanism, if God's talking, God's right. And that means what He says is infallible. It's guaranteed to be true.

And if we see some kind of infallibility charism, even if it's manifested differently, but if we see some kind of infallibility charism associated with the Old Testament equivalent of the pope, then we would expect to see the same kind of thing associated with the New Testament pope. And this is something that I realized more than 30 years ago now when I was in the process of becoming Catholic. It's an argument that I've popularized in apologetic circles. It has to be done with care. It's not an identical charism, but it does show that it's reasonable for there to be such a charism. And then you approach the question of, well, what else can we say about would the Pope in limited circumstances, because that's all the Church is claiming, in limited circumstances

be infallible? Well, if he wasn't, and this was a theological reason that Christian authors explored down the centuries, if he wasn't infallible in at least some circumstances, then it would be possible for the Pope to definitively bind the consciences of the faithful to believe something false. And that seems contrary to the will of God, that he would allow the leader of his earthly people to bind his faithful to believe something that's false. And so the church reasoned from that and from various traditions, which are outside the Bible but are connected with the role of the pope, it reasoned that at least in some limited

circumstances God must protect the pope from teaching error to the faithful. And then at the First Vatican Council in 1870, they defined exactly what those conditions were and to allow people to distinguish between infallible and non-infallible statements. Infallible statements by the Pope are by far the minority. The great majority of things the pope says are not taught under the charism of infallibility. But occasionally when the pope uses the fullness of his teaching authority, God does provide a guarantee that what he says is true. And if people would like to read more about that, I would recommend a book I wrote on the subject called Teaching with Authority. It covers all aspects of the Church's magisterium or teaching authority, not just papal infallibility,

but the whole range of ways the Church teaches and the different authority levels that those teachings have. That's great. One final kind of follow-up on this issue of the papacy and, you know, going along what you said there, like, it would seem against, you know, God's will that His representative on earth should bind the church to error. But what do you say to those who say, well, it also seems contrary to God's will that the representative of Christ on earth should believe false things, teach false things not infallibly, and cause scandal. In the history of the church, we've had scandals and continue to, you know, all popes are sinners.

How do you kind of respond to that issue of sinful popes? It's certainly contrary to God's will that any person sin or believes something false, whether that person is the Pope or not, but we know that God allows those things, and God allows those things in the case of Popes, too. The question is not does God always protect a Pope from believing or teaching something that's wrong or sinning, but are there circumstances in which we can be sure that he is protecting the Pope in these ways? And not just the Pope, but the bishops of the Church as a whole, when they act as a whole, have the same charism of infallibility.

So it is something that's happened and the claim of the Church is not that it should always, that the Pope is always going to be right or that he's always going to be, you know, morally pure in what he does, but that there are at least limited circumstances in which God will protect the faithful from error by protecting the Pope from teaching error. Okay, and just a reminder to those who are watching, I'm going to do my best to give a thorough list of links to every topic We're touching upon so that if if you're piquing someone's interest if you know, you're like, okay, that's beginning to make sense

I want to dive deeper. There'll be books and links and podcasts. Oh, great I always I always hate it when I'm watching a video on YouTube and and the person presenting it says and if you want more Information check the information in the description and then I do and there's no link there. Come on you promised me a link. Well this that's exactly right and I'll be honest I've been guilty of that before but the nice thing about doing these week early for supported live streams is I've got some time so that'll be good. Maybe you can help me sending me some links to some of these things we've talked about. You see, there you go. How bad is that? I'm giving you the job. All right, so I think a lot of people have problems with Marian dogmas and we could have an entire podcast, not just an episode, but an entire podcast devoted to these.

So again, we're not going to be able to really do a lot here, but maybe we'll do some. Barry Ansberg says, I'm a Protestant and I describe myself as one who wants, capital letters, to be Catholic. But I find the Marian dogmas to be a huge roadblock, especially since Pope Pius XII infallibly declared the bodily assumption. Of all the things to declare ex cathedra, why that? Oh, well, I think for a few reasons. One is that there had been a growing awareness in the consciousness of the Church of the role of Mary in God's plan and the fact that it would be appropriate for Him to assume her into heaven. Basically, Mary is the prototypical Christian. She's the first person to say yes to the message of

Jesus when she agrees to become his mother, and she is, according to the Church Fathers, the new Eve that corresponds to him as the new Adam. And so she has a very special role in God's plan that goes beyond just simply being his mom. And the church grew an awareness, and this is based on traditions we find in the early church, the church grew an awareness that she has a unique holiness and a unique association with Christ. And this is related to her role as the prototypical Christian, the prototype for the followers of Christ. So she ends up receiving the blessings of the Christian life early as a model for the rest of us. And so this relates both to the beginning of

her earthly existence, her conception, and the end of her earthly existence. At the beginning of her earthly existence, it was fitting for God to give her a unique holiness to make her the mother of Christ. And we find this actually mentioned in documents from the first century. This is extremely early talking about Mary. They even use the word immaculate. It didn't have the full theological meaning it would later have, but you see this very early that there's an awareness on the part of the Church that Mary has a unique form of holiness connected with her role as the Mother of Christ. And then within the first few centuries, you also find traditions preserved that speak

of the end of her life, of her being assumed to be with Jesus. And both of these reflect what will happen ultimately to all of us. Ultimately, if you die as a follower of Christ, if you die in God's friendship, you're going to be made immaculate. You're not going to be carrying the stain of sin with you into heaven. Nothing in heaven is imperfect, and so you will be made perfect. You will be made immaculate by God's grace. And the Catholic claim is simply that that happened for Mary early. By God's grace, because of her son's death on the cross, God gave her that grace early. And similarly, we're not going to be

separated from Christ for all eternity. St. Paul talks in 1 Thessalonians 4 about how we will all be caught up to be with Christ forever, and so we will be assumed to be with Christ, and we'll live with Him on the new heaven and the new earth. And similarly, as the prototypical Christian, God gave Mary that grace early. And you find both of these traditions about the beginning and the end of her life in the very early centuries of the Christian church and even in the first century in the case of her being uniquely holy. And after centuries of theological reflection the popes decided to infallibly define this. So Pope Pius the 9th infallibly defined the Immaculate Conception in 1854 and Pope

Pius the 12th defined the Assumption of Mary in 1950. Now 1950, now so those that's kind of a general sketch of why on a theological level, but there also can be additional factors associated with the timing of these things. And it's been suggested that one reason for the timing of the definition of the assumption of Mary is the fact that World War II had just happened. World War II had finished in 1945, just five years before the pope made that definition and Europe had been smashed and it was in a devastated state, regardless of what side of the conflict we're on, European nations were direly hurting. And the church was under assault, a lot of people had lost faith, we'd just gone through

the Jewish Holocaust, things were bad, both on the material level in Europe and on the spiritual level in Europe. And so it's been proposed that the reason Pius XII chose to define the assumption just after World War II was to give a sign of hope and a spiritual rallying point for Catholics and other Christians, but primarily Catholics in Europe as a way of showing God's mercy and hope and what's possible for us if we are faithful to God in the wake of such a horrendous disaster.

But what do you say to those who... thank you for that. I don't mean to quickly move on as if that wasn't a good answer, but there are some who say, listen, I want to be Catholic, but if only the assumption or the immaculate conception was a theological speculation or something that the church, you know, encouraged us to hold. But the fact that you've made it binding is what I think people find difficult. So is there wisdom in maybe just sort of not defining these sorts of things infallibly so that the bar's lower, as it were? Well it does involve a judgment call.

And one of the things about papal infallibility is God does not guarantee, all he guarantees in infallibility is that when the pope teaches, or the bishops, teach infallibly, what is said is not factually wrong. It does not guarantee that this was phrased in the best way, or that it was done at the right time. When ecumenical councils are looking at infallibly defining something, they are, the way the question is phrased, do we want to define this, is does it please that we define this right now and they vote either placet, which means it pleases or non-placet means meaning it doesn't please to define this right now. And so you can have

people say, yeah, I don't think this was the right time to do this. That's, that's, that's a legitimate opinion. You could say I would think it'd be better to leave some of these things undefined. Having said that, given that they are defined, one has the question of what to do with it. Well, I sympathize with, you know, folks who struggle with these. I did before I was Catholic because of all the different teachings of the Catholic Church, you know, coming from a Protestant background that focused on Sola Scriptura, I recognize that these two Marian dogmas in particular have less of a foundation

in Scripture than virtually any of the rest of the Church's teachings. These rely primarily on tradition. Wow. And so... It sounds like quite the admission, given how Catholic apologists often tend to say, look, it's unambiguous. Look at this verse. How could you not see that she was immaculately conceived? Yeah, well, I am aware of apologists who are, you know, doing their best and they're trying to show as much scriptural basis for this to help out Protestants as they can, and that's great. I think, you know, we should point out where there is traction, and there is some for these.

I think we need to resist the danger of exaggerating the amount of scriptural attraction. One of the things that Thomas Aquinas pointed out is that, and this is right at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae, so it's perfect for pints with Aquinas, but Aquinas points out that in approaching scripture we only want to use the literal sense of the text for theological proofs. We can find other things in the spiritual sense of the text that goes beyond the literal, but we don't use that for proof in matters of doctrine. Would that refer to typology as well? Yes, because typology is found within the spiritual sense of the text, not the literal sense. So when somebody says the the the antitype must be superior to the type, you know where I'm going, Mary is the antitype of Eve, if Mary had a blemish that wouldn't make sense, that sort of thing, you're not

impressed by that by that kind of argumentation. Well, I think that there is value there because we see Jesus is the anti-type of many things and He is superior to all of those things. So simply on inductive grounds, you've got some traction for that argument and it can lend color to this question, but it's not proof. It's not undeniable. And so, as a result, I would follow Aquinas's principle and say, look, we don't have scriptural demonstrations or proofs that are undeniable of these Marian dogmas. What we have are passages, including based on the typology that's found in the spiritual sense of the text, that lend a color that's supportive

to these. But really, where you find the proof is in tradition. It's not in scripture. And so I think it's fine to point out typological arguments, but they don't have, in legal terms, they don't have probative value, they don't prove it, but they do lend supporting evidence to it. So the key, coming from a Protestant position, the key is to look at Sola Scriptura and realize that it's shot through with problems. Sola Scriptura is not God's plan for how Christians are to form their doctrine. And once you realize that, and once you realize that the New Testament assigns an authoritative role to tradition, you then have to become open to the tradition supporting the Marian

dogmas. And psychologically, you can recognize that principle and still feel difficulty with the Marian dogmas. I did when I was in the process of becoming Catholic. And what I found was I needed to see the church proved right about enough other things that I gained confidence to say, okay, I can accept these as well. And so I had a stage where I fairly quickly realized Sola Scriptura was false, and that I needed to be using a different paradigm for obtaining Christian doctrine.

But I needed to see that paradigm work on enough other issues that it gave me the confidence to accept things where there wasn't proof available from scripture. If you think through it from a Protestant position, suppose you were a Jewish believer in the first century and here come these Christians and they're saying well okay there's this guy Jesus of Nazareth and there's a whole bunch of teachings that we have that are associated with Jesus of Nazareth. Well you might recognize okay in principle you guys have a model for how to derive doctrine that's reasonable you know we want to listen to prophets and Jesus was

a prophet and things like that but I need to see you proved right on enough things that it will give me confidence to accept everything you say because you can't give me a direct proof from the Old Testament of every point of Christian doctrine. So I can recognize your principle, but I then need to acquire the confidence to trust Christian teaching on all points. And a good way to do that is by seeing it proved right on a bunch of points. And that's essentially the paradigm that I experienced coming into the church. In order to accept all Catholic teaching, I needed to see that the principle is right and that the principle works in enough situations

to give me the truth to then have faith and accept the remaining ones that I couldn't prove. So to say the theoretical Protestant listening who says, okay, I'm convinced on this topic, this doctrine, and this doctrine, but I don't feel equally convinced on every doctrine the Church tells me I have to believe, and that's what's holding me back from becoming Catholic, because they think they have to feel equally convinced on every topic or every doctrine. What do you say? I'd say you don't have to feel... Number one, emotions really aren't where it's at. You shouldn't be guided by your emotions. You should be guided by the

gift of reason that God gave you. Now emotions can provide some coloring support in this, but the fundamental determination needs to be made by reason. And if you see that solo scripture is false and that the Catholic Church's paradigm for formulating doctrine is correct, and then you see it work a bunch of times, reason taking emotion out of it, reason would dictate well you can and should trust this. And just like if you were a Jewish person and you saw the Christian paradigm for formulating doctrine works and they're right in bunches of things that they're claiming

that are distinctive, you know, Christian distinctives, well then at some point you need to make a leap of faith and say, reason says I need to become a Christian. Even if I'm not emotionally comfortable with every single thing Christians say, I can still intellectually have confidence in it and entrust myself to the Christian message. And the same exact principles apply to becoming Catholic. You don't, I mean, it's a great thing to just have emotional confidence in everything and have the warm fuzzies around every single teaching and say, oh, this doctrine is so beautiful. This is wonderful. I love this. And

maybe you get those emotions, and maybe you don't, because God doesn't promise us emotional experiences in this life. So what we have to be guided by is our knowledge of the truth. And if the truth is that you recognize the legitimacy of the Catholic way of formulating doctrine, and you recognize that this leads to truth in all these different areas, then at some point you reach a conclusion that, you know, I don't need to be able to independently prove every single little point in order to become a Catholic, because I can trust this. The same way, if you were a Jewish person in the first century, you don't

need to say, hey, I need to independently prove every single point of Christian doctrine before I can become a Christian. At some point, you trust yourself. That's what faith is. And so, at some point, you see enough evidence that it makes making an act of faith, making a leap of faith, to use Kierkegaard's phrase, the legitimate and proper thing to do. Okay. Is there a point in which, is there a situation in which you would say to somebody your right to not become Catholic at this point in time because you believe this doctrine the

Catholic Church teaches to be evil or contrary to Revelation? Well, I'd have to qualify the sense in which saying it's right not to become a Catholic because it's, I mean, ultimately as a Catholic I would say everybody should be. It's not right to not be, but you do need to have the fundamentals in place. So let's say someone says, oh boy, I believe that there's a God, and I believe that Jesus isn't really present in the Eucharist, and I believe in Purgatory, and I believe in all these Catholic things. I just don't think Jesus happens to be God. Well, okay, you're not ready to become Catholic because the divinity of Christ is an infallible teaching, and it's a core

infallible teaching. And so I would say it's great that you're interested in becoming Catholic. Let me help you on this divinity of Christ issue because we need to get over that. Until you're able to accept the divinity of Christ issue, because we need to get over that. Until you're able to accept the divinity of Christ, though, you should not present yourself to be received into the church. But let's work on that issue. Okay. I think another objection people have, and Return Home said he did, and a lot of people have agreed, I find the whole hell thing in regard to eternal fires forever challenging. And so maybe if I could just sort of add some color to this, to kind of add some maybe emotional

weight to it. The idea seems unjust. You have these people doing their best, having experiences in life that wound them, perhaps emotionally and spiritually, and they fall into sins because of those things. Sometimes they choose them, but it's not really a full-hearted choice. Like, you've got a bloke who's masturbating one night in bed because he's bombarded by sexual dreams, say.

Let's use that as an example. The idea that then this person who you might say otherwise is a decent fellow, his love and his girlfriend or his fiance or whatever, the idea that he's going to burn in fire forever, to me prima facie sounds stupid. I'm not saying it is, and I don't think the way I just phrased it is how the church would phrase it, but I know it's not. And that makes it stupid. Because, I mean, for purposes of illustration, you've just deliberately created a straw man there. That is not how the Church would articulate it, and the way it's articulated in the straw man form is stupid. So, yeah, that does sound stupid,

because it is. Could you give us another example of a strawman way of understanding this? Because this strawman way of thinking isn't what people intend to put up. Many people actually think this is what the church teaches. So I think a helpful way of approaching this subject is to think about cultural differences and to think about the limitations of human thought. From what we're given to understand in Scripture, the supernatural world around us, heaven and hell and purgatory and whatever other realms God may have created, exceed our understanding because in this life our minds are configured to understand and to navigate the material world in which we find ourselves. We're very good at that, but we're terrible at imagining realities that are not found

in our environment here on earth. And so as a result, because of the fact our brains are configured to navigate this life, whenever we're told about things outside of this life, they are presented to us in terms that we can understand. Sometimes theologians of all stripes will refer to this as divine condescension. Not condescension in the nasty way of condescending to someone and, you know, dismissing them, but condescension meaning coming down to be with someone on the level that they can understand. And so if we're talking about

souls, well, it's, you know, even though there have been attempts to say that the fire of hell is physical fire, the immediate objection, which theologians have known about forever, at least for centuries, for more than a thousand years, is, well, how would material fire possibly affect a soul? And in the Middle Ages, there was a kind of literalism that would lead people like Thomas Aquinas to try to argue that the fire of hell or the fire of purgatory was physical fire and nevertheless by some divine miracle it will affect souls. But that's not the only way to take this

and these days the magisterium has been favoring the view that okay so it's not literal fire. It is, this fire is a symbol of an emotional experience, emotions being something that are proper to souls. So if you recognize that God is the source of all goodness and joy and love in life, and you deliberately turn your back on that source of goodness and joy and love, what are you gonna have as a result? Well, you're gonna have an unloving existence that is filled with frustration rather than joy and that is cut off from goodness. And so, you would consequently have a negative experience and because God is the profound

source, I mean, He's the wellspring of all of these things, it would be a profoundly frustrated unloving experience. And that gets depicted as fire. So, John Paul II famously back in the 1990, gave a series of audiences, there were three of them, one on heaven, one on purgatory, and one on hell, where he talked about, look, the real essence of this experience is not that hell is a place underground somewhere, it's a state of definitively separating oneself from the source of goodness and joy, namely God, and what the

results of that are. And these images that we find in Scripture are helpful for understanding a bit of what that experience is like, but we shouldn't focus on them unduly and take them as though this is the literal truth, there's going to be literal fire that's somehow burning a non-physical soul. And so, the church would, at least today, look at this language and it's traditional, it's used in Scripture, it's helpful, but we also have to understand its limits. And we do that a little bit better today than some folks in the past. Because in the past you had a lot of people who weren't even literate. I mean, even in first century Palestine, 90% of the population was functionally

illiterate. You sometimes hear the opposite, that oh no, there were these every Jewish boy went to school and learned Hebrew. Nonsense. That is not what the archaeological evidence indicates. It was maybe around 10% of people in Jerusalem could read and write at a functional level, meaning sign more than their name. But because you had a very low standard of education at the time and people had a very poetic culture, they used this language and sometimes, especially in the Christian era, it was taken to be more literal than it was meant.

So that kind of covers the aspect dealing with what is hell. Then there's the question of going there. Now you mentioned a case of an individual having sexual dreams and waking up and masturbating. Okay, any spiritual director is going to immediately spot problems with the idea that that is going to send you to hell by itself. Because you, when you're in a, and I'll use the fancy word for it, when you're in a hypnagogic state, meaning you're in that zone between wakefulness and sleep, you are not in full control of your moral faculties. So that means you're going to be lacking some degree of deliberation. And as the Catechism states, without full deliberation, where you commit

an authentically human act, you deliberately say, yes, I care about this more than God. I want this pleasure of whatever it is, whether it's sexual or anything else, I care about this more than God. I want this pleasure of whatever it is, whether it's sexual or anything else. I care about having that more than I care about God. Well, then you don't have mortal sin if you don't have full deliberation. And when you're in a hypnagogic state, you don't have full deliberation. So the fact that you have been woken up from having a sexual dream and you find yourself doing something you shouldn't or wouldn't if you were fully awake, you're not going to be held fully accountable for that. You're only going to be held accountable for the degree of deliberation that you had, but you're in a state of diminished capacity and so it's not going to be

It is very likely not to be fully more sinful Also the catechism recognizes and it really uniquely in terms of masturbation The catechism recognizes that there are mitigating factors that can stop this from being A mortal sin from being a sin that people are fully accountable for. It names things, because you read through the section on the Ten Commandments in the Catechism, it's got, you know, treatments of bunches of sins, and usually it lists them and it may say why this is wrong, but it usually doesn't say, on the other hand, there are all these mitigating factors. When you hit the passage on masturbation, it does that and it points

out things like immaturity, you know, not being an adult, psychological conditions, you know, insecurities, habits, things like that, and all of those play a role in diminishing capacity as well. So the idea of someone waking up after a sexual dream and finding themselves masturbating, and that's going to send them to be burned in flames, literal flames for all eternity, that's a straw man. That's not what the church would say in this case. There seems to be like this desire to go back to that which is traditional today, and I share that desire, and because of that sometimes people speak as if anything that sort of precedes Thomas Aquinas is just modernist crap, you know, and so well yeah sure okay the modern catechism says that but it's just... Well then Trent would be modernist crap. Trent know? And so, well, yeah, sure. OK, the modern catechism says that, but it's just being-

Well, then Trent would be modernist crap. Trent didn't come before Thomas Aquinas. Yeah. Or maybe the argument is there's like a slow spiraling into modernism or heresy. You've heard that sort of thing. I just wanted to get your response to that, as if it's older, it must be better.

And so when you talk about well this development this understanding about Pope John Paul II speaking about hell as a state etc well that's that's to be less trusted than things that came before it. Well that would seem I mean prima facie at first I'm trying to avoid big words, but at first glance, that would seem contrary to the idea that the Holy Spirit progressively leads the church into a fuller understanding of the truth. I mean, that's something that's rooted there in Jesus' farewell discourse in John's gospel, the Holy Spirit will lead you into all truth.

And the church has looked on that even though Jesus is talking specifically to the disciples there at the Last Supper, the church has recognized this is a broader principle. It's not that the Holy Spirit was going to lead these 12 guys into the fullness of the truth. There are broader implications for the Christian community, especially as it says things like he's going to be with the church to the end of the world and stuff like that. So there's an ongoing form of divine guidance and you would expect over time that guidance to accumulate and result in a more refined understanding of the truth. And even if you were to stop doctrinal

development at, let's say, the Council of Trent or in the 1500s or at Vatican One in the 1800s, well let's look at the chunk before that. Do we see a growth in the precision with which the Church articulates its faith. And we do. It's very obvious to everybody, not just Catholics, but all Christians, except maybe Jehovah's Witnesses, but all Trinitarian Christians, that there has been a doctrinal development where the Church gained in precision

in articulating its faith. At the, before the Council of Nicea, of First Nicea in 325, you didn't have everybody clearly articulating the divinity of Christ. You had some people, including church fathers, who didn't articulate Christ's divinity the way we would today. And even after First Nicaea, you didn't have the divinity of the Holy Spirit, and thus the full doctrine of the Trinity articulated in a precise way. And that didn't happen until after the First Council of Constantinople in 381. Then you have the addition in 331 of Mary's motherhood of God.

And then in 451, I'm sorry, 430, then in 451 at the Council of Caledon, you have a more balanced presentation of Christ's two natures, which then continues to be refined in further councils. And so, even if we just look at the core doctrines of deity, we see, you know, the Trinity being the central mystery of the Christian faith, we see this progressive guidance of the church to articulate its faith in a more precise way. And we see that happening through all the other ecumenical councils. As we progress through history, they define more and more points, they articulate things in a more and more precise way. We see that happening all the way up through Trent, through the Middle Ages, through Trent, through Vatican

I, that's the established historical pattern, is a trajectory towards greater precision and understanding of what's in the deposit of faith. So if you want to propose that God is going to suddenly stop guiding the church and let it veer in the other direction, then you're going to need to provide some serious evidence for that. It's not sufficient to say, oh, well, older is automatically better. Because if older was automatically better, we should chuck Vatican One, we should chuck Trent, we should chuck all the medieval councils, we should chuck Chalcedon and Ephesus and First Constantinople and First Nicaea and do what some fringe Protestants try to do and say, let's forget the councils altogether and go back and be as primitive

as we can in our expression of doctrine. So if you don't want to do that, if you recognize the trajectory that God has been guiding the church to greater understanding and precision in recognizing what's in the deposit of faith, you would at least have a presumption in favor of, and that continues over the course of time. Now there may be ups and downs, there are always crises in the church, and you always have heresies breaking out in every age and you need to identify those. But the fundamental long-term trajectory is always in this direction of increased understanding due to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

And therefore, you should presume in any given case that that's what's happening. Now, as long as the matter hasn't been infallibly defined, you could debate it. You could say, well, I think this happens to be a case where people are making a mistake, but you need to show that. You can't just presume it. That was an excellent answer. Okay, we've got a bunch more questions, but before we do that, I want to say thank you to one of our sponsors, Exodus 90.

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leader God has called you to be. Jimmy, I think part of the frustration people have is that they wish it was simpler. You see this in sort of theistic apologetics as well. We're asking very complex questions and then get really frustrated when the answers are relatively complex. Do you find that? Well, it certainly can happen and it doesn't just happen in religion. I mean, if you say, I mean, just flip it over to the realm of science for a second. Suppose you say, I want to know why arsenic is poisonous. Okay, well, okay. So arsenic is element 33 and the reason it's poisonous is because it has this outer electron

shell that is filled in such a way that when you introduce arsenic into your body the electrons in that outer shell will the the electromagnetic force will attempt to combine that element with other elements in your body in a way that disrupts chemical metabolic processes and then you need to dig down from there if you want to give a full explanation for why arsenic is poisonous. I remember as a child wondering why are some things poisonous? Because I was like all children, I was told don't eat that, that's poisonous or things like that.

Well, I'm old enough that they even had the skull and crossbones on like containers. Yeah. Why don't they do that anymore? That seemed effective. they even had the skull and crossbones on like containers. Yeah. Why don't they do that anymore? That seemed effective. Well, because some people thought, oh, it'll remind kids of pirates and pirates are cool. So they might want to drink the bleach like it's pirate crap or something. And so they, for a while in the seventies, they came up with this Mr. Yuck face that

they would use instead. But I haven't seen that on cleaning products lately, so I guess that didn't work out. In any event, I remember wondering why are some things poisonous? It's like, do the atoms in them hate the atoms in your body? I mean, they can't, they're atoms, they shouldn't be able to hate anything, so why are things poisonous? And there is an answer, but it's going to be complex. So when you ask fundamental questions, you

should expect a sophisticated answer if you want to fully understand it. Or you can give a highly simplified answer that is possibly misleading, but at least captures elements of the truth. But that's the price of understanding. If you want to fully understand something, get ready for a full answer. Well, and I asked that question in part because Jack Harris here, his response was, and I think it's a little troll-ish, he says, well, I reject the theologism because of its inability to answer basic questions about the basis of our faith. It's a very broad... Okay, if he can give examples, I'd be happy to interact with them, but I don't know which

basic questions about the basis of our faith he has in mind. Yeah. What about this? This is a pretty prickly topic, so we'll see what you think. This comes from Mike Martin, and this is again why the objection he has to Catholicism. He says, the Pope and his minions who covered up the child abusers, the vicar of Christ, my butt. You know, I'm sympathetic to that. I mean, you hear about the abuse taking place in the church, and if your response is something other than disgust and even anger, I'd be worried. So it's a fair, I think a fair point.

So I think it's certainly fair if you mean the vicar, he's acting like the vicar of Christ my butt. Well, okay, that's certainly fair because he's not acting like the vicar of Christ my butt? Well, okay, that's certainly fair because he's not acting like the vicar of Christ if he's covering up child abuse and not dealing with it effectively. But is that a disproof that he is the vicar of Christ? He may not be acting like the vicar of Christ, but in a particular case, and it doesn't have to be child abuse, it can be almost, it could be all kinds of things. Does it mean he's not the vicar of Christ? Well, in this we have a helpful example in scripture, which is Peter himself, because Peter, even though he was the vicar of Christ, he denied Christ. He denied, and that means he denied being a Christian. He said, I'm not a Christian. That was an act of apostasy. And furthermore, in Mark's gospel,

it says that Peter cursed, that he began to curse. And the probable meaning of that, or at least what has struck many New Testament scholars as the probable meaning of that, or at least what has struck many New Testament scholars as the probable meaning of that, I mean, today we think of cursing as saying bad words. You know, that's where the term cussing comes from. It's an abbreviation of cursing. And we think of cursing as just saying offensive words. That's not what it meant in the ancient world. In the ancient world, if you were cursing, what that meant was you were saying

things that would bring down bad stuff on someone. So if you said, you know, Matt Fradd, I hope God causes you to break your leg, that would be a curse. Or if I said, Matt Fradd, may God break your leg, that would be a curse. Cursing involved, and by the way, there's an episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World on curses, if you want to find out more about them. At some point, we'll do blessings to balance that. But right now, there's one on curses, if you want to find out more about them. At some point we'll do blessings to balance that, but right now there's one on curses. And cursing was wishing harm on someone and coupled in the ancient world with the belief that God or the gods would bring about the harm that you are wishing

someone. And so the question is, if Peter starts to curse, and he's trying... Who is he cursing? Well, he's trying to please the servants of the high priest. He's not cursing them. He's trying to keep them from spotting him as one of... or trying to deflect them from what they have spotted, which is that he's a follower of Jesus.

So who's he going to be cursing in this context of trying to protect himself from the wrath of the high priest and his household? He's going to be cursing Jesus. And so here you have the vicar of Christ not only denying that he's a Christian, but cursing Jesus publicly in front of these people. Okay, easy to say, Peter is acting like the vicar of Christ your butt, he's not, but nevertheless that's who he is. And so this drives us to a recognition of the profound difference

between what the office holder, who has an office, and whether he is acting in keeping with that office. Just like with the high priest Caiaphas we mentioned from John 11, he was the high priest and he did prophecy about the death of Jesus because he was high priest, even though he was in the midst of plotting the death of the Jewish Messiah. He was still the high priest, and he still prophesied without even realizing it. So in both of these cases, in Peter and Caiaphas' case, we see that they can be personally profoundly sinful and nevertheless have an office that was instituted by God. Thank you. Another objection people have and has been brought up numerous times here is contraception.

Isn't this just sort of like a scientific advancement, like Tylenol or like other things that we use to enhance our lives? And besides, if the church allowed contraception, we wouldn't have overpopulation and we wouldn't have as many abortions, which you Catholics seem to be so against. So what about contraception? Well, there's a number of things there. And like you said, we could go in depth on any of these. I know you want me to keep it fairly short.

So the goal of contraception is to limit the number of children one has. It's like it's not the right time for a child, so we're going to use contraception now. Or we have reasons, maybe financial or medical or psychological, we don't think we can handle more than a certain number of children or whatever. Either the number or the timing of children, the purpose of contraception is to limit the

number of children that are had, either for a time or overall. Well, okay, the church doesn't have a problem with that. There are times in life when you shouldn't have a child and there are situations where people find themselves in a situation where for medical or emotional or psychological or financial reasons they shouldn't have more than a certain number. And God gave us the gift of reason to use to discern when we're in such a situation. And he gives us the gift of reason to figure out how to achieve that.

Well, the question really is, do we want to work with the way God designed human reproduction to work, or do we want to act in a manner that's contrary to that? For example, suppose that I'm married and that my wife and I shouldn't have a baby for whatever reason, but we do. So we've got this baby now even though we shouldn't have it. How do we deal with that? Well, we could kill the baby. You know, we could, we could, we don't even have to do it immediately. We could, we could say let's wait and see if it's really as bad as we think it's gonna be. You know, let's wait until this kid is say two years old and then we'll decide are we going to kill this child or not.

Or maybe two years because they go through a rough patch at two, the terrible twos. Maybe we should wait until this child is seven years old and we'll have a better sense of whether we can really handle having this child on a long term basis. And at seven years old, if it is as bad and we conclude yeah we really shouldn't have had this child, we'll kill him when he's seven. That is working against the way God has designed human reproduction. Now, if I had this child that we shouldn't have had and it's really bad and we really

can't take care of it, there are other options that work with God's design for the way humans should interact. Like, okay, let's give them up to a foster home, or let relatives raise him, or let's have him be adopted, but not let's kill him, because that thwarts the way God has set up humanity to work reproductively. We shouldn't be killing our children. Well, if we shouldn't be killing them after they're in the womb, we shouldn't be killing them in the womb either. So that takes care of abortion.

But let's backtrack it all the way to contraception. Now, there are multiple things I could say here. Some of them could get quite technical, so I won't go into them. But fundamentally, the church doesn't have a problem with people making a decision that given our circumstances, we shouldn't have a child and working with God's design for human reproduction to achieve that goal. You can do both, have this pleasure and the bonding experience as parents, and avoid having a child. There have been various ways of doing that. Now, one way yet not have a child because one of the things that God designed into human nature is an extensive period when women are not fertile. Most women for most of the month are not in a state of fertility.

Nevertheless, among humans, they are sexually receptive. Now, this is not the case in all species. Some species, the only time that females are sexually receptive is when they're fertile. This is known as estrus. And various species like dogs, for example, when the female is in heat, that's when she's sexually receptive and that's when she's fertile. But God decoupled those two things in the case of humans. So human females are sexually receptive throughout the year, not just at a certain time, and nevertheless they are only periodically fertile within that. The probable reason why God chose

to do this in setting up human nature is because unlike dogs, human infants require are extremely dependent and they require decades of support. So that means because they're so dependent, I mean, and the reason for that is because we're so smart. In order to get, we have these huge enormous brains compared to other creatures, and in order to get them through the birth canal of a creature with an upright posture, they have to be born amazingly prematurely compared to the offspring of other species. No, they have to be born, human offspring have to be born at an amazingly early developmental stage compared to the offspring of other creatures.

For example, you know, you see deer and a deer baby gets born and it's up and able to run in minutes. Well human babies can't do that. They're way developmentally early and that means they place intense demands on their parents to take care of them. And because we're highly intelligent creatures, it takes a couple of care, more than one person can reasonably give. And so unlike other species where the parents mate and then the male goes off and abandons the family, there needs to be a reason for the male to stick around

so he can help with child care for a couple of decades. And that's why humans have marriage. And to incentivize males to stick around and help with all this child care stuff, they need an incentive. And part of that incentive is emotional and part of that incentive is sexual. And that's why humans, compared to other species, it's why human females remain sexually receptive throughout the year. It helps cement the union on a psychological and practical level between the spouses so that the children can receive the long-term care they need in order to become mature, successful adults. So given that God has built us so that humans can have sex at

any time in the year, but they can only have babies at certain times of the year, that means it's not wrong for humans to have sex when a woman is infertile. During, in fact, most of the time they're going to be have sex when a woman is infertile. In fact, most of the time they're going to be having sex when a woman is infertile. And so, if we by modern means use the gift of reason that God has given us and can discern when those periods are, and we can discern whether it is an appropriate time to have a baby or not, then we can use those two things in harmony to achieve the goals of the sexual and emotional bonding that spouses need to have and the goal of not having a child at this

moment that reason also dictates. So here we're working in concert with God's plan for human reproduction rather than trying to thwart it by some means like rendering ourselves sterile or killing the offspring or something like that. I see. Okay. Wow. Thank you. Okay. So we have so many objections here. How would you feel, Jimmy, about doing a lightning round even though in in so doing you no doubt won't be able to answer as sufficiently as you'd like? Yeah no that's fine. And then as I say we'll put links below every topic that we're discussing so people can go deeper. Okay so this one

this one actually right after having said, I saw some objections to the Filioque, which is probably going to take more time, so feel free to respond to the Filioque controversy as long as you'd like, because this is something that keeps coming up. Okay, so... What is the Filioque controversy and why, well, it's often an orthodox objection to becoming Catholic. well, is often an orthodox objection to becoming Catholic. Okay, so we should start for people who may not understand or know where the word comes from. Filioque is a Latin term. Filius means son and quae, when it appears on the end of a word, it means and. So, phileas and quay, in this case, becomes phileoque, which means

and the son. And it comes from a line in the western version of the Nicene Creed that says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father phileoque, from the father and the son. And this is not found in the eastern versions of the Creed. It was not originally there in when this version of the Nicene Creed was formulated at the First Council of Constantinople back in 381, but later in the West this term got added. So the creed didn't just say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, it came to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And it's become a dividing point between East and West. Now in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance there

were some reunion councils where this issue was addressed. And it was pointed out that the Church Fathers, even though they didn't all use the phrase and the Son in talking about the origin of the Holy Spirit, the spiration of the Holy Spirit, various Eastern Fathers and others would accept the phrase through the Son. So the idea is that the Father gives the Son everything He has, which is why the Son is fully God. And then the Father, through the Son, also makes that gift to the Holy Spirit. So it's not like the Son has anything independent of the Father that He could give to the Holy Spirit in the Holy Spirit's spiration. And so these medieval councils and subsequently the

Magisterium has said as long as you understand, as long as you don't pit these two formulas against each other, through the Son and and the Son, they can be understood equivalently to each other, and they are authentic expressions of faith. So, if you can accept that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, in keeping with various expressions from the Church Fathers, then that's what we mean by from the Father and the Son. So we don't need to fight about that. Now there's more that I could

say, but since we're trying to move in the direction of a lightning round, I'll confine it to this point. If you want to say, yeah, but the Western Church shouldn't have added that to its creed, okay, you can have that opinion. The Church does not claim that every decision was always made at the best time. Maybe there should have been a wait until, okay, we've reunited Christendom and now

let's deal with how we should formulate the creed now that we're all back together. Maybe the West shouldn't have acted unilaterally on that. If you want to hold that opinion, okay, that's a prudential question. As far as what should separate us, well, if you don't think that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father through

the Son, well then that it would be a substantive point of separation. But otherwise it shouldn't be and if you want to hold a particular opinion about how history should have played out, well then that's fine. That's your right. You can argue that and you know state your case for that and you know I'm not gonna say you're automatically wrong. I mean maybe you are but your case would need to be taken seriously. All right, thank you. All right, are you ready for the lightning round? Sure. Here we go. The quicker you can answer each question, the more

points you get. This is like whose line is in anywhere, where everything's made up and the points don't matter, right? Exactly. Women can't be priests. Well, so I understand that this is a difficult teaching for some people in our world today. The basics are Jesus, God, chose to make us with two sexes, male and female, and Jesus chose to only appoint men to the priesthood and the church feels bound by that decision. It's not due to a hatred of women or anything like that. It's simply we feel bound to do what Jesus did. And the idea that Jesus did it only because of the cultural situation at his time is implausible.

It doesn't hold up, number one, because Jesus was an iconoclast. He had no problem attacking institutions in his day and dismissing them and doing away with them. Furthermore, there were priestesses all over the Roman world, like the oracle at Delphi, or the Vestal Virgins in Rome. They were female, they were priestesses. So the priestesses existed in the world at the time. Jesus had no problem dismissing uniquely Jewish or other institutions that he disagreed with. So you can't simply say this was just because of the time and the church feels bound by Jesus's choice Okay, but what about prayers to the Saints? I mean where in the Bible does it took about praying to dead people anyway? Well, it doesn't have to because Sola Scriptura is false and

Once you realize that it then becomes would it be a good idea to ask the Saints in heaven for their intercession? well So if suppose you've got a friend that's dying, who's going to be with Jesus really soon. I did this with my wife when she was dying, but suppose you've got a friend that's, or loved one, that's dying, they're going to be with Jesus really soon. Might you have any prayer requests that you would like them to pass on when they are in the presence of Jesus himself? Of course, yes, you can pray to Jesus right now, and you probably have, and you certainly

should, and yes, Jesus will know about it. So it's not like Jesus is not going to hear, but if it makes sense to have other people praying with you even here on earth, which the New Testament to hear, but if it makes sense to have other people praying with you even here on earth, which the New Testament clearly teaches, and if you have a friend who's about to go be with Jesus, it could be entirely reasonable to pass on that prayer request. Say, hey, when you're in heaven, could you pray for this for me? And if you can ask them when they're about to die, when they're about to go to heaven, to do that,

and if there's no verse saying, don't do this, if they're already dead, then logic would suggest it's okay to ask them if they're already in Jesus' presence. If you've got someone right there at the throne of God, I want that person as a prayer partner. Not because God's not going to hear me without that person, but because it makes sense to have additional people praying for us. And if, as long as it makes sense for additional people to be praying for us, having people right there at the throne of God praying for us sounds good to me. But why do Catholics call priests father when Jesus explicitly says call no man father? Well, because they're following the example of

the Apostles. When you look at the New Testament writings, you find multiple instances where the Apostles and New Testament authors are assuming a role of spiritual fatherhood with respect to other people. And they talk about it. You know, Paul talks about various people that are in his group as my son, like my son Timothy. Peter talks about my son Mark.

Paul talks to the Corinthians about, you're my spiritual children. John in his epistles is addressing his audience as my children. And so you see, you have other statements about, I became your father in the faith, and stuff like that. So you see it recurrently over multiple books, over multiple authors, the inspired authors of the New Testament using spiritual fatherhood metaphors to reflect the role of Christian leaders. And so, obviously what Jesus was saying was hyperbole because if it wasn't, exaggeration to

make a point, because if it wasn't hyperbole then we couldn't even call our biological father's father, which would deprive the metaphor of God's fatherhood of its basis in human life. And knowing that what Jesus said is hyperbole and knowing that the apostles and other New Testament authors regularly use spiritual fatherhood metaphors. We need to recognize that it is legitimate to conceptualize the role of a spiritual leader as a father, and if it's okay to do that, as the inspired authors do, then it's okay to call them that. We just need to avoid the kind of attribution of fatherhood to them that Jesus is talking about, which is confusing limited forms of human fatherhood with the unique fatherhood

that God has. Okay, but what about the bottom line? If someone has a role as a father, God doesn't mind if you call him that. Mm-hmm. In the New Testament, the Sabbath was on Saturday. The church seems to have changed that. That's wrong. Okay, the church didn't change it. The Sabbath is still Saturday. The question is who is bound to observe the Sabbath? And the answer is Gentiles have never been bound to observe the Sabbath.

The Sabbath was part of the Mosaic covenant with Israel, and as a result Gentiles, and you know Thomas Aquinas agrees with this for example, but he's also just right exegetically, Gentiles were never understood as being bound to observe the Sabbath. It was a uniquely Jewish holy day. And in fact other cultures did not observe a Sabbath. In the ancient world, Romans didn't have Sabbaths, Greeks didn't have Sabbaths, Egyptians didn't have Sabbaths, their work week was ten days long and you only got half a day off. But the term for Sabbath came into these languages from Judaism. So this is a uniquely Jewish institution. And according to St. Paul in

Colossians, the Sabbath and other Jewish days, like the annual feasts and the monthly new moons, were a shadow of the reality. They were types of Christ. And he says now that the substance, which is Christ, has come, the shadows are no more, so we don't have to observe these days anymore, and he therefore says let no one judge you in food or drink, referring to kosher laws, or in respect

to a feast or a new moon or a Sabbath, the three kinds of Jewish holy days. So Paul says nobody today is bound by these things because the law has been fulfilled. It's not even required of Jewish people anymore. So what the church did do in recognition of... so the church didn't do anything with respect to the Sabbath. Christ, it was never binding on Gentiles and Christ fulfilled the law so it's no longer binding on Jews. What the church did do was say, hey, you know that thing back there where Jesus died on a cross

to redeem us from our sins and let us go to heaven? That's kind of important. Maybe we should celebrate that. And since it happened on the first day of the week and our Lord did something amazing when He came back from the dead to prove to us that we get to live with Him forever in God's joy. Well, let's call that the Lord's Day and let's celebrate that. So that's how we got Sunday celebrations because Sunday is the first day of the week and thus it's the Lord's Day. It's even the name of the day. I mean, Sunday is English, but if you look like in Spanish, Sunday is Domingo, the Lord's, making it even more clear. Okay, what about those who say the rosary is vain repetition and that was condemned by Jesus himself, so he ought not to be praying the rosary. You know, so the problem with this is that the Greek term is not properly translated

vain repetitions. That's how it was translated in the King James Version, but it is not really what Jesus says. The term is battle of geseta, and in Greek it means something like stammering. So Jesus is saying when you pray don't be like the pagans who go stammering on because they think they'll be heard because of their long prayers. Well, okay, so don't do that. That doesn't say anything about repetitions. And in fact, we know that repetitions can be perfectly pleasing to God. Take a look at the inspired, another divinely inspired thing here, Psalm 136. If I'm remembering the number correctly, where it has a refrain. It's an antiphonal psalm, meaning that it has an antiphon, a recurring phrase that keeps coming in. And the phrase in that case is, His mercy endures forever. Or in other translations, His loving

kindness endures forever, or things like that. And so in this Psalm you will have a series of things that God is being praised for and sometimes the psalmist does not even get out a complete sentence before the refrain repeats. And this is divinely inspired prayer here. So obviously God doesn't have a problem with repetition. It's not the fact you're repeating something that's the problem. And in fact in Matthew 6 where Jesus talks about this, he singles out the problem as pagans thinking that they need to make long prayers in order to be

heard by the gods. You don't. The true God knows what you need before you even ask, so you don't need to make a long prayer. Don't think you are obliged to do that. And that doesn't mean you can't pray for a long time if your heart is burdened and you really want to pour it out to God and you can, you know, pray for as long as you want. Just don't think that he's like one of these pagan gods where you got to grind him down with the length of your prayer like he doesn't really care about you and so you need to explain yourself at length to him to get him to understand and buy into your need. The true God already

knows your needs and already cares about you, so don't think you need to do that. But isn't there a problem in the Rosary in that we're actually encouraged not to think about the words that we're saying as we say them, by the very fact that the Church tells us to meditate on something else? I think that if you're told not to think about the words and that's a goal, it's a stupid goal. I think you should think about the words as you also meditate on a particular mystery. I think you should do both. How do you do that though? I don't know how to do that. One way that I do it is, so I'm saying this,

and I'm meditating on a particular mystery, like let's say the crucifixion, if I'm doing the sorrowful mysteries, I imagine I'm talking to Mary as she's standing at the foot of the cross thinking about what she is witnessing in this moment. That's beautiful. Yeah. And I work my way through the mysteries in that light. I imagine, even though she may not historically have been at every single one, like in some of the ones in the Luminous Mysteries, but she was at most of them, and I imagine Mary being at these scenes, and I imagine saying the Hail Mary to her as she experiences what the mystery is. That's really great. Thanks. I mean, I'm sure that's been said a million times.

I think that's the first time it really sunk in, so thank you for sharing that with me. Okay, someone might say, listen, guitars, bongos, electric keyboards at mass, all this does is trivialize the most sacred thing taking place on the planet now, and no church that would endorse that sort of behavior can be the true church. Every church around me does this sort of stuff and so I want nothing to do with it. Well, okay, so a couple of thoughts. One, there's a Latin phrase for this, degustibus non est disputandum. Okay, what does that mean? It means there is to be no disputing about tastes. So if this is not to your taste, okay, fine.

What are the consequences? I mean, it doesn't have to be to your taste. And not everybody else's taste has to be yours. So we see a situation like this, I know this is a little less lightning roundish than it could be, but we see a situation like this in the Old Testament where David is bringing the Ark of God to Jerusalem and as he does that he dances. He's like got on a special clothing and he's doing a liturgical dance right there in front of the most holy object of all, the Ark of God. And his wife Michael sees him doing this out of the window and she has this very negative reaction and says, oh, this is so undignified. That's the reaction I have at Bongo Masses. I'm like her, Micah is just freaking out,

like come on. Yeah, well, so she's freaking out and she thinks, oh, this is so undignified. This is so out of keeping with the station. He's acting like a common buffoon. And she judges him in her heart. And as a result of that, she never gets to have kids. We're told, and Michael had no children until the day she died. Because even though it wasn't her thing, God didn't have a problem with David showing his enthusiasm and dancing in front of the ark, even though it seemed undignified. So we shouldn't be quick to judge other

people for their tastes and how they show devotion to God. God didn't make us all the same way, and so we need to be understanding of things that are not our tastes. And I am sympathetic. I mean I've been to masses where it's like it's it's Sid whatever his name is the 1960s wall of sound style. Okay it's not my taste in music but it's also not intrinsically wrong and so I try to be understanding of other people even if it's something that's not to my taste. But let's suppose it's really, really not to my taste. Am I going to not go to a parish?

I mean, assuming it's the one that's available. Let's say I'm in some town, there's only one church. Am I gonna deprive myself of confession and the Eucharist and being with God's people and fulfilling St. Paul's commands about serving the body of Christ? Am I just going to sit off by myself and cut myself off from all of those things just because I find something they're doing annoying? Am I being spiritual by doing that? Is that what God wants, or does God want me to roll up my sleeves and stay involved with

His people and His sacraments and His worship, despite the fact that I may have a little bit of personal annoyance that I need to work out as part of my spiritual growth. So with all of that said, and I agree with it, I think, you're not thereby saying that all forms of music are equally fitting. I'm sure like a death metal mass isn't something you think ought to be promoted. What I said was that no form of music is intrinsically immoral for no style. Now obviously there are intrinsically immoral pieces of music. The Beatles' why don't we do it in the road comes to mind.

But rock music is not intrinsically immoral and if something's not intrinsically immoral then because no style of music is not intrinsically immoral, and if something's not intrinsically immoral, because no style of music is, it can in some situations find a place that's appropriately done as worship music. And so there are rock songs that can be used to worship God. Christian rock is a thing and it's not automatically wrong. Now it may or may not be to the taste of a particular congregation and it may not be the, it may not be suitable to use in particular church context because of the connotations it has of secularity for example, but those connotations it has of secularity, for example, but those connotations are

learned. It's not like a certain time signature is automatically secular, or a certain instrument is automatically secular. It's because those time signatures and those instruments are used in secular contexts in our culture. But it's not the time signature or the instrument that that connotation of secularity comes from. And yet, I just feel like maybe this is an unhelpful dilemma to say intrinsically evil music and music that befits the holy sacrifice of the mass. I mean, what about some music is more fitting and has been promoted by the Church and that ought to be the music that is encouraged? Well, so I think that if you want an accurate answer on this, you have to say why is certain music

fitting? Because the church has not mandated a particular style of music for everybody in the church. Not polyphony, not plain chant, not Gregorian chant. It has recommended those in the Latin Rite, but it hasn't mandated that for everywhere. So, we have a judgment that certain forms of traditional church music are fitting for use in the Latin Rite. What makes them fitting? Is it something intrinsic about the time fitting? Is it something intrinsic about the time signature? Is it something intrinsic about the number of voices that are being

used in polyphony versus plain song? I'd say yes to the first one. Can I say yes to the first one? I could see... Well, I'm just thinking this through on the spot with you. Which time signatures are, are, make for sacred music? 4-4, 2-4, 6-8, 3-4, which ones? Maybe I don't know the answer to that, but I could imagine a song being far too quick. Well that's tempo, that's not time signature. Oh, of course, okay, I'm with you now. That's what I meant when I said,

when I said, when I was referring to Times of the Century, okay. But like, just like a marble altar is more fitting than a card table, but you could use a card table if that's all you had. Right. Why would it be wrong to say Gregorian chant, which has an ancient pedigree, is more fitting to the holy sacrifice of the mass than has an ancient pedigree is more fitting to the holy sacrifice of the mass than rap. Well I'm not saying, I would agree with that. So I'm not denying that, but the question came from a point of view of I hate this music, therefore I'm going to cut myself off from the church. Fair enough.

In the context of our discussion. And because we're saying, what are your objections to the church? What's keeping you from the church? If someone says, it's the music, I'm gonna point out, hey, not all music may be to your taste, but that doesn't mean it's intrinsically wrong. You shouldn't cut yourself off on that basis. You're might find... You're majoring in the minors if that's what you're doing. Because the spiritual realities of the church are far more important than the music that people are using in church. Yes, because I think most Catholics would agree if they found themselves in a

particular town where the music was decent at the Catholic Church but glorious at the Mormon group, that wouldn't justify one leaving to experience more heightened and reverent music, although it might be the cause to encourage that in the past. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anything else on that before I give you the final question?

Nope. Okay. Jesus is just a spin-off of pagan deities. We can't trust, and these are two different things, I suppose, and I know you've given an excellent talk on this, which we can link to as well, but the New Testament documents are ultimately unreliable. So there's two objections. So two objections.

So with regard to the first one, it is simply not true that, I mean, I don't know what you mean by Jesus, what was the term? Ripoff that was used to paganize? A spin-off. A spin-off. A spin-off. Well, so I would want to, I mean, I understand that's your objection. I would like to see what you mean by that and what your evidence is for that, because

the evidence is actually that that's not true. You often hear on the internet claims like Jesus is just a redressed version of Horus, for example, and you'll hear claims like Jesus was born on December 25th, Horus was born on December 25th. No, he wasn't. We don't have any Egyptian records saying, we've got lots of Egyptian records, none of them say Horus was born on December 25th. This is just an internet rumor that is false. It does not match up to the

archaeological and literary evidence that we have. And the same is true of all of these claims. Now, does Jesus have certain similarities to various deities that have been worshiped by other cultures? Sure, cause he's a God, duh. If he were a man, he wouldn't, but he's a God. And when humans think about gods, you know, that term has to have some content. So, well, what are some

attributes of gods? Well, they're more powerful than us. They're likely smarter than us, usually in most mythologies. They're smarter. They can do things we can't. So, they aren't bound by death the way we are. Oh, and they answer prayers. Okay, that's just what it means to be a god. So of course Jesus is going to have similarities to gods. The question is, is he a true god or not? And the evidence is that he is, which gets us to our second thing, the New Testament documents not being accurate. Actually, and we don't have a lot of time to go into this, but the New Testament documents are among the best sources found in the ancient world of anything. There was a Protestant scholar about around a century ago named A. N. Sherwin White, who was raised in this school that was popular in New Testament

circles at the time that was very dismissive of the historical value of the New Testament text. It stemmed from a school of thought in Germany known as the Turban School. And he decided, and it was very influential in the thought of the day, but he decided, I'm going to check out Luke. You know, he wrote the gospel, he wrote Acts, and I'm going to check out everything that Luke says that can be checked. You know, I'm going to compare it with these, with archaeological inscriptions, I'm going to compare it with what ancient historians say. And he found Luke was astonishingly accurate, even on minor details, things you could not look up on Wikipedia in the day.

Find out what's the official title of the kind of official that runs this town in this obscure part of Asia. What do they call that guy? Is he an Asiarch or what is he? Well, Luke is right in the titles he gives to obscure local officials. Also, this is something I did myself a few years ago, Stanford University has an ancient mapping system. It's like the equivalent of Google Maps only for the Roman Empire. It's called the Orbis system. And I believe the URL is orbis.stanford.edu. But what it lets you do is put in your destination and where you're coming from and it will map the route for you and tell you how long it will take

you to get there by different modes of travel. So what I did was I listed every location in the Book of Acts that Paul and the others travel between and how long Luke said it took them from get took them to get from point A to point B and I then looked everything up on the Orbis database and Luke is right every time Well, they all it's so the only way to explain this is Luke or someone else in Paul's company is keeping a travel diary of where they started, where they went, and how long it took them to get there. They go dozens of places and it's all accurate. This shows that Luke was a very careful historian in writing the Book of Acts, not just with

regard to the titles of local, not just with regard to like the titles of local officials, but the travel times and again, there was no Google Maps in the first century. You couldn't look this up. He was keeping these records as they or someone in Paul's party was keeping these records as they were moving. And so he Luke has extreme attention to detail. And if we know this is how he handles his historical materials and acts,

then by extension, he should be applying the same level of care to his gospel. And so it was no surprise that A. N. Sherwin White concluded not only is Luke a reliable historian, he is a world-class historian who should be taken very seriously. And so, as a brief sort of lightning round answer, that's probably all I can do with that. But I would say actually the evidence indicates that Jesus is not a spin-off of pagan gods and the gospels are historically reliable. Yeah, thank you. Jimmy, I've been writing down each of these topics we've been discussing in order. So afterwards, I'll shoot you an email and you're welcome to add any links to articles or videos that that you've provided or have written or whatever that could fill in some of these answers. Just two comments before we leave from the live stream. The first from Austin Weber, he said the Maya Culper as death metal would almost be fitting.

Almost. How about Diaz Irey? The famous Wrath of God as death metal. That could be interesting. Here's a question from Austin Sarabia. Can Jimmy give an example, giving a distinction between not my taste and versus abuses in the liturgy, which I think that question is leaning to the latter. Well, just that. So, so I read a whole book on liturgical law and it's and the abuse of liturgical law.

The most recent edition of it is called Mass Revision. The easiest way to get it is in its Kindle edition, because I don't think it's in print and paper anymore. So I take liturgical abuse very seriously. In fact, that was the first book I wrote was on liturgical abuses. And what a liturgical abuse is, it's when you break the law. If the law says, for the liturgy, do this, and you ignore that and do something else, you are committing a liturgical abuse. But there are no regulations about exactly what type of music must be used. And so I could have an opinion that I don't think this music is

suitable or helpful or I can say it's going to push people away from an authentic worship experience. But that's my opinion. That is not a violation of the law. And you might even be right in your opinion. The law is... What's that? Sorry to interrupt you. I was just saying and you might even be right in your opinion. The law is, what's that? Sorry to interrupt you. I was just saying, and you might even be right

in that opinion. Yeah, I'm sure I would be in many cases. And that doesn't mean that it's a violation of liturgical law, yeah. Correct, and I would say that if, I have been of the opinion that the law is too vague. Now I understand on this point, I understand there are challenges in talking about music

and trying to legally define what is and is not permissible. I mean you either say, this is the only music we're going to use, here's an official list of hymns and that's it. Or if you give, but the problem with doing that, or one of the problems with doing that, is we're dependent on musicians. Historically, now today if we wanted, the Vatican could, or the USCCB could just publish a bunch of mp3s and say play these on your sound system in church and don't do anything else. God forbid. Yeah, but historically that has not been an option because historically if you want music in church you need local musicians and the problem

is local musicians have different levels of talent, they know different styles, they prefer different styles and you kind of got to work with who you've got on a local setting. And so if you're going to allow flexibility to, you have to allow some flexibility to allow for the variances between what musicians you have available to you. And the church has also deemed it appropriate to allow

variability on things like hymn selection. You know, whoever the music director gets to pick which hymns we're gonna do, under the pastor's authority, because the local musicians don't all know the same songs, even if you wanted to, you know, write out a lot of, say, a whole year's worth. Let's suppose we had, like we have scripture reading cycles, A, B, and C. Suppose you wrote equivalent hymn cycles, you know, so every church is going to play this hymn on this day of this cycle of the liturgical year? Well, it would be massive and the musicians would throw a fit because they're not going to all know the same

hymns and they're not going to want to be micromanaged in that way because musicians are artistic types. Duh! I mean, you know, watch Amadeus or something. You know, these Amadeus or something. You know, these guys are, historically have always been cantankerous. It's like, I want to do my creative vision! And so, the Church has always been willing to work with that to one degree or another. And that means that there needs to be a certain amount of flexibility built into liturgical law regarding what music is used.

And now there is more flexibility than there has been in the past, and you can think that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it's a reality. And so you may or may not like it, I may or may not like it, And so you may or may not like it, I may or may not like it, but right now the law is vague on exactly what's allowed and I can't accuse someone as much as I might like to of committing a liturgical abuse in the sense of you're breaking liturgical law. I can say I think you're dishonoring the liturgy, I could say I think you're doing something that's really unhelpful for people, that's not going to be conducive to their spiritual growth. But even in making those judgments, I should be careful, because Jesus kind of is down on that judging other people thing, and I

need to realize that my own tastes and what helps me feel closer to God is not what helps everybody feel closer to God is not what helps everybody feel closer to God. If we take this out of the musical realm, and what can one accuse a priest of should he skate up to the altar on a skateboard? I presume that there's no injunction against that. That's kind of a please don't eat the daisies situation and that's a famous... I don't know what that means. Oh okay so back in I believe the 60s there

was a humor author I don't recall if it was Irma Bombeck but there was a lady author who was known as a humorist and she was having a dinner party and she gave her children meticulous instructions on what they should not do at the dinner party because she didn't want them misbehaving in front of her guests. So it was like, don't yell, don't run, don't do all these things. She neglected to tell them, please do not eat the daisies that I have set in the flower holders on

the tables. Yeah. So that was a very, very difficult situation for these things, she neglected to tell them, please do not eat the daisies that I have set in the flower holders on the tables. That was an example of something that was beyond what the legislator could imagine. And so there was no law against it. So when you have a priest riding a hoverboard up to the altar, I understand what he's trying to do. He's trying to be hip and relevant and engaging, and those are good things. But there's no way the legislator could have envisioned someone doing that.

And so, technically, there's no law against it. Now, in this guy's case, he got severely punished. I don't know that I... this was like a guy in the Philippines who did this. Oh, I didn't know that this was an actual thing. I was just coming out. Oh yeah, yeah. It was a couple, a couple, three years ago. This priest in the Philippines, like, rode one of those hoverboards up to, up the central aisle to the altar, got severely punished for it. I don't know that I... and I can't really judge that because it's a different culture. I don't know that I can't really judge that because it's a different

culture. I don't know the dynamics of Filipino church psychology, but this was deemed really inappropriate. I would have just, if I was this bishop, I would have just told him knock it off, don't do that again. Because I, and I understand the desire to be hip and engaging and capturing people's attention is part of helping them to think about and engage with their faith. If they're ignoring you, then they're not going to do those things. So it is important to be engaging, but I don't think this is a constructive way of doing it. Excellent.

Well, Jimmy, thanks for taking so much time to be on the show today. People want to learn more about you. Where should they go? They can go to... So I work at Catholic Answers. They can go to Catholic.com and do a lot of appearances on Catholic Answers Live there. They can go to JimmyAkin.com which is my personal website, j-i-m-m--y and then Aiken is easier than you think. It is just four letters. A-K-I-N as in Nancy. Aiken, A-K-I-N. So go to JimmyAken.com. You can learn about all the other stuff I do. And in particular, check out Jimmy Akin's mysterious world. Yes. It's available on YouTube if you go to Jimmy YouTube.com slash Jimmy Akin and by the way I'm starting to do live streams as well so you may want to sign up and hit the bell for notifications if you want to participate in those and also

mysterious world is available wherever you find podcasts. It's in all the big directories and we cover a new mystery every Friday and it can be a natural mystery or a supernatural mystery and we always look at it from the perspectives of faith and reason. Well I just realized I knew that you had uploaded the mp3s to YouTube in the past but it's nice to see that you're actually, I'm looking at it now, are actually doing video interviews as you record these. Yes, correct. We've moved to full motion video for the

podcast so it's both an audio podcast now and a video podcast and we recently got some editors who were helping us out by doing cutaways and maps and animations and things like that. And you had told me that it usually ranks high in the iTunes categories. Yeah, it's consistently in the top 30 documentary podcasts in the US on Apple podcasts and we've been as high as number 13 and we've got something like going on a hundred thousand listeners per episode.

Yeah, I mean I said it in the beginning but this is just such a great podcast And we've got something like going on a hundred thousand listeners per episode. Yeah, I mean I said it in the beginning, but this is just such a great podcast to give to people who have fallen away from the faith. So my dad is a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. Well, a few months back you just released a couple of excellent episodes on that very topic. And so even though my dad probably, I don't know, probably wouldn't be super into listening to a Catholic podcast, he would be fascinated in this, especially given what a great job you do with it. So that's something for people to keep in mind as well. Thank you. And I really try in these to be respectful

of all points of view, even if I ultimately come to different conclusions. So in the 9, 11 episodes, I'm respectful towards various conspiracy ideas. I say let's talk about the evidence, let's evaluate them. And I don't rag on people, I don't run down people for having particular views. I simply say, well here's where I happen to think the evidence goes. And sometimes the evidence is that there is a government conspiracy like in Operation Northwoods. I don't know if you've had a chance to listen to that one yet but in the 1960s the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the American Armed

Forces recommended to President Kennedy a plan to start a war with Cuba by staging false flag terrorist attacks on American soil and this really happened. There really was a government conspiracy. Fortunately, Kennedy said, no, thank you. But there was a real government plot that was proposed for false flag terrorist operations and I'm not afraid to talk about things like that and acknowledge when the evidence does support one. So you know you might point that one out to your dad as something to show my bona fides and taking stuff seriously. Yeah yeah and you did a good job at that the beginning of the 9-11 episode in which you kind of like cataloged the series of

podcasts you've done on conspiracies that have taken place in the United States. I thought that was great as well. Alright well God bless you. Thanks for being with us. See you later. Thank you Matt.