Pints With Aquinas - 150: Heresy, Schism, and Apostasy, with Gomer

Episode Date: March 19, 2019

Today we're joined around bar table by my good mate, Michael Gormley (Gomer) of Catching Foxes to discuss a wide range of topics through a Thomistic lens. We discuss: - Virtue ethics - Heresy, schism, and apostasy - The difference between material and formal heresy - Bishop Robert Barron's interview with Ben Shapiro - Why the institutional church is often more tolerant of Fr. James Martin types than Michael Voris types. SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/ SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd MY BOOKS  Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

G'day, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. Hope you're doing well. Hope your Lent is off to a good start. If you could sit down over a pint of beer or water, whatever the case may be, given that it's the Great Fast. If you could sit down... The point is, I guess the point I'm trying to make is just this. If you could sit down over a pint of anything with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we are joined around the bar table by my good mate Gomer from Catching Foxes to talk to Aquinas about, well, the difference between heresy, apostasy and schism. Alright, and by the end of the episode, you'll be able to differentiate them for all your friends who'll think you're fantastic.

Here we go. Welcome back to Finds with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Today was a really fun episode. I contacted my good mate Gomer from Catching Foxes to discuss a whole host of issues. Here are some of the things we talked about. Virtue ethics and how that applies to people who are struggling with habitual sin, especially pornography. We talked about heresy, apostasy, and schism.

We talked about the difference between material talked about heresy, apostasy, and schism. We talked about the difference between material and formal heresy. We get into Ben Shapiro's interview with Bishop Robert Barron and our opinion on that. We talk about why the institutional church is often more tolerant of the James Martin, Father James Martin types, instead of the Michael Boris types, and everything in between. We just talk about a lot of stuff. So that's it. And it's a super fun episode. So I really hope that you enjoy it.

I hope you're having a beautiful Lent. Thank you so much to everybody who listens to the show, who subscribes to the show. Two things I want to tell you before we jump into today's episode. Number one, if you haven't yet subscribed to The Matt Fradd Show on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you should go and do that now. Because if you don't yet subscribed to The Matt Fradd Show on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts, you should go and do that now. Because if you don't, you won't have access to these really long sit-down live interviews that I do with really interesting people.

Really cool announcement, actually. Anthony Esselin, who wrote Out of the Ashes, among other things, has agreed to be on The Matt Fradd Show. We have other very exciting guests. And so please go and subscribe now. Out of the Ashes, among other things, has agreed to be on the Matt Fradd Show. We have other very exciting guests. And so please go and subscribe now. That would really help me out. Secondly, if you want to support all of the work that I'm doing, go to patreon.com slash mattfradd. You give $10 a month, $5 a month, $20 a month.

I send you a bunch of free stuff in return. And you'll also get to feel like a really good human being. But in all seriousness, I appreciate everybody who supports all of this work that I'm doing. It sounds super bloody cliche, but I don't care because it's true. I can't actually do this work without you. So thank you to all of you who do and for those of you who will decide to do it after this episode. All right, here's the show. All right, mate, how are you? I'm doing good, man. Doing good. How are you? Good. Thank you for allowing me to text you and say, hey, come on the show immediately. That's kind of work, right?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm the coordinator of evangelization at my office. Exactly. So this is evangelism. How have you been? is evangelism how have you been oh man i've been good i've been good been really busy but um gearing up for some weird event that i'm doing on monday what is it oh wait we're recording the matt frad show oh that's until the very end i wasn't sure what you're about to say but yes that is you'll be on the matt frad show thanks for coming in again i'm really excited it's going

to be a lot of fun yeah and the crazy thing is so we messaged a buddy of ours who lives in Atlanta and we said hey we're going to come crash to your house you got to deal with it and he said when you coming in I said Friday and he said perfect that's my birthday totally random didn't even remember that and so we're all coming in for his birthday

oh that's funny you totally should have if only you knew you could have pretended we're going to come in for your birthday and we thought we'd also do the Matt Fradd Show while we were there. Yeah, just a side thing. We'll do the Matt Fradd Show. So I have one of my good mates who is really excited about you being here. I was having a cigar with him recently. I'm not going to say his name on air because I don't want to embarrass him. But yeah, we were having a cigar the other day. I'm like, yeah, Luke and Gomer from Catching Foxes. They're going to fly in, and we're going to do the Matt Frad Show here.

He's like, wait, wait, no. They're coming here? Yeah. He's like, can I come? I'm like, I guess. So he, again, I'm not saying his name, so I'm not getting him in trouble here, but he's actually like going into school.

He's a teacher. He's going in late to school. Significantly late. All of his students will be held back or not learning at least because he wants to come and see Gomer and Luke. They might not be learning but he'll be drinking deep from the school of hard knocks that is catching foxes. He will be receiving from Mama Bird. Isn't that what you say? Yeah. Okay, Baby Birds. Mama's going to feed you. boxes he will be receiving from mama bird isn't that what you say yeah okay okay baby birds mama's gonna feed you uh so that'll be fun i say that all the time when i do talks with high school

students and it immediately disarms them they're like what ew oh ew yeah that's kind of like uh uh what i do when i say all right i talk I'm going to talk about porn. Um, I talk about porn for a living. My mom is super proud of me and that I've got that. You got to love it. You got to love our weird ministry ways. Before we jump into today's topic, I got to ask you, and I want you to share for the peeps out there. Why is it that you love Thomas Aquinas and why do you think more people need to be reading him? So one of the reasons why I love him is very specifically, he synthesized things that I feel like have fallen apart since he came into this world, right? So he represents, in my opinion, the best of the church fathers, right? The best of scripture study. He was a biblical, he was a biblical man. The whole

mendicant movement was also known as the biblical movement regrounding. So it was a, it was this huge reform movement, but at this, and he was like, also he's fat and scholarly and that's what I want to be. Um, but this whole idea, I got one right. Crushing that. Just killing it, and it's killing me. But this notion of the synthesis between faith and reason that I feel like has recent interviewer of yours or a person that you interviewed, Dr. Jennifer. Oh, what's her last name? Yeah. Well, me and her had the same encounter, which is through the sources of Christian ethics of Father Servapin Cares. And she said when she was 18, I was 18 as well when I first discovered it.

And that was when I, I mean, I had heard of St. Thomas. I had done the five ways because that was a big struggle of mine. But to be immersed in his thought, especially in moral theology, that, it took my breath away. The understanding of law and virtue and how it coincides with grace. I found that so much Christian morality has been, in its presentation, is stale and lifeless. Because it just became a Catholic version of Immanuel Kant. It's this, here's a law, here's a rule, you obey it, you disobey it, here's a crisis of conscience, this is how you deal with it.

And then when you start to understand, like Pope Benedict called Christian morality as the art of life, we need to recover this presentation of the art of life, and then you read about the Beatitudes at the beginning of the catechism and how that the catechism on the life of Christ follows Thomas in it's starting with Beatitude, the longing for happiness. And when I just started experiencing all this stuff, uh, it was through the words and writings and the thought of Thomas, especially as he's carried through by his modern writers. But that really caught me, um, really caught me up, especially morally. And so that's what, that's what got me sold out for Thomas. I find that, um, when I turned to morality and spirituality by many modern authors, um, they are tried and found wanting when they try to be there, you know, like this wholly independent thing.

I just find virtue ethics to be so beautiful and powerful, which is why I teach it in prisons now. So Thomas Aquinas is in prison. Right. So that's what I do. I mean, I'm talking with these men and I say, you know, you're here because of a lack of for a lot of reasons. They have atrocious fathers and all this stuff, but the main reason why they're here is they follow their passions instead of reason. And we start talking about the virtues and for them, morality is just right and wrong applies. It applies to a rule. But as you start to teach virtue, they're like, they, they are literally excited about learning how to be just right. So I'm in prison teaching them about the virtue of justice, and they're

like, this is awesome! Okay! The consistent will to render unto each man what is his due, let's do this, right? And because there's action involved, and it's not just this head knowledge and stuff. So Thomas has hit me in a lot of ways, but I think his moral theology is what truly swept me over. I mean, how do you think this can be a blessing to somebody who's struggling with pornography? I feel like this is our generation's sin. We were raised on it. It's what we came across our iPad when we were six years old, seven years old, obviously not us, you and I are older. And I think for many people, it is just that, like, don't do it. It's wrong. Stop it. If you do it, it's bad. But the idea of, well, if you want to be happy,

you know, then maybe you shouldn't do it. And here's why it can't make you happy. Like, how do you think Aquinas' virtue ethics can be enlightening to somebody who's trying to break free of pornography? Yeah, no, I mean, that was my big hangup. And when I read about it, if you look in the catechism, it has this great line where it talks about the virtue of chastity. It's not just abstinence, which is what the Protestant world kind of proposes. Say no to these things. And Abigail Favale, one of your guests on the Math Rad Show, she was on Catching Foxes. And the reason why I had her on our show was because of her articles on First Things, where she talks about this evangelical purity culture,

and it kind of had this false view of what chastity is. It's like, look, you're a virgin, stay a virgin by God, fight off all attacks on virginity, say no, no, no, until you get married, then say yes, yes, yes. And the idea for a Catholic is the virtue of chastity. Virtue is something that requires mastery and the laws of it involve falling and failing. And for me struggling with pornography for years, I mean, I was introduced to hardcore triple X porn when I was six years old. So seeing that and the deformative character, Aquinas gave me the language to understand the, not just the virtue, but the vice, right? The opposite, like how, how it consumed my thoughts, how it was this

exterior action that then by its repeated use led to an interior habits of character. And when you understand habits of character, you have this great medieval line. So a thought reap an act. So an act reap a habit. So a habit reap a character, so a character reap a destiny. And I realized that I was reaping a destiny of eternal separation from God because porn and indulgence and all that pleasure seeking is antithetical to the blessed life, right? It's antithetical to looking at God who is beauty itself. It's antithetical to looking at God who is beauty itself. And so Thomas gave me hope because I understood, number one, that Christ is my savior, not me. And number two, that the Lord wills the good for me because he loves me.

And number three, so like if I fall, I'm not immediately cast off into outer darkness, right? I can repent and return. But the beautiful thing, so you take in reconciliation and grace and redemption all into it. But then the thing is, okay, now here is the moral effort. I have trained my will to be vicious. Now I'm going to practice the opposite virtue in order to one day hope to attain that great goal of a chaste man, right? So where I can look at my wife on our wedding day and truly say, I do without an asterisk footnote, you know, but I'll also be checking out all these other hot chicks, dot, dot, dot, you know, like, that's what I want to do, right? That's what charity teaches you. So, yeah. Yeah. What you were referencing earlier is really powerful in the

catechism 2339. He says, well, the catechism says, the alternative is clear. Either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. One of my favorite lines in the entire catechism. Yeah. I think it was St. Jerome who said, see how many masters have they who will not have the one Lord. Right. And I see this within my own life, like these petty idols that I constantly turn to and worship. And when you look at Aquinas, he gives you all of the brutal honesty. Like one of the things that I remember distinctly in college, sending this message out to my friends where he says, you know, he talks about the addictive, what we, what we today would call addictive and compulsive behavior, but for him was the end result of a life choosing the bad, right? And so your will become so habituized to

it, habituated to it, that you, that when you lose your freedom, you are guilty of the lost freedom because way before when you actually had freedom, you consistently chose the evil. And I realized reading that passage that part of virtue is education, but the other one is consistent and deliberate action. And when I found myself in, you know, hiding in corners and staying up super late just to watch pornography. Right. You know, doing all the stupid things that you do to see porn. One time I sprained my ankle severely, almost broke it because I was looking at pornography and I was trying to hide from my parents who were driving by in a car and I was in a field and I fell down a hill. I fell down this huge hill. I ripped up all my clothes, all this stuff. And to me, the response, I know, it's so ridiculous.

And to me, my response was like, this is what the life of porn does to me. But you just sit there. It's like Breaking Bad. It's just going from bad to worse. Yeah. Laying in a field with ripped pants. Who have I become? Don't look at me. Avert your eyes. I was bleeding from head to toe. Cars were driving by and

swerving to get away from me. I look like a crazy homeless person, but I was 12. You know, I was 12 and from six to 12 years old, you know, pornography back then was a Playboy magazine that was left out in the woods that I would find. But now people have like, I mean, you've said this before, a hardcore pornographic HD theater in their pockets and you just pull out that iPhone and you're, you're off to the races. And so for me, that understanding of like, if I want to be free, if I want to be free, this vicious life needs to be completely curtailed. Yeah, I'm trying to think how to awkwardly transition again, and there's no way to do it except maybe, yes, and sometimes our battling with sin leads us to want to completely apostatize from

the faith. Hey, speaking of apostasy, I was thinking it would be really cool in the remainder of this episode if we spoke just briefly defining those three terms, apostasy, schism, and heresy. I feel like we don't talk a lot about them today. And sometimes there's a lot of confusion around them, what the church means by them. And then what I'd love to do with you is to talk about heresy. Because one of the things Aquinas is about heresy, spoiler alert, is that heresy is a false doctrine that's held by a person who intends to assent to Christ's teaching, but who actually assents to his own choice and opinion. And I've heard you say this in your podcast before, right? That it's not like people who are heretics are like, I hate the church. I hate Jesus. I want it all to burn. Rather,

it's like, I love Jesus. I want to bring you to him. But there's this either compromise with doctrine or this assenting to what we believe is true doctrine that actually isn't. But let's get to that one last. And let's just define these three terms. So, here's what the Catechism of the Catholic Church, well, yeah, let's see what the Catechism says real quickly. So, apostasy, the total repudiation of the Christian faith. Schism is the refusal of submission to the Roman pontiff or of communion with the members of the church subject to him. And then heresy is kind of the one we'll look at last because this has kind of the most involved. Every word here is not without meaning. You know, it's there for a reason.

Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith, or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same. So, apostasy, schism, where do you want to begin? Well, I think schism is one of the easiest ones it's rooted in the will and your lack of submission to the roman pontiff into communion in the catholic church so if you look at it you know in there have been many schisms that are often rooted i think in different heresies but they it's ultimately manifest in a refusal to obey authority. And I think that refusal to submit to the Roman pontiff, or I like how it says,

or communion with the members of the church subject to him. I think there is this huge element where, because of today's anti-authoritarian attitude that we have and our rampant egalitarianism, anti-hierarchical, you know, views that submission to authority is easier to tend into, right? Like, well, that's fine for Pope Francis or that's fine for Pope Benedict or that's fine for JP too, but I'm not going to agree with that. I think there is, there is woven into our culture, into the very fabric of modernity or post-modernity, whatever you want to say, that it's like, you know what, that's not even a condition of me being a Christian.

Like, I'm not even going to think about submission to someone or an authority. Yeah, and it's easy, and I'm not picking on our evangelical friends. We have a lot of evangelical listeners, most of whom are better Christians than me and teach me to be a better Catholic. But, you know, it's easier, I think, to be submissive to text, which in and of itself is tone deaf, you know, because you can kind of manipulate it to make it say what you want. I'm not saying people do that intentionally necessarily, but it's more difficult, I think, to be submissive to a person. This always reminds me of the conversation I had with my Mormon next door neighbor. We were debating back and forth the merits of Mormonism, and I was pointing to different passages of Scripture, and it began to get to her.

She began to see the logic. And I remember the next day she came out all smiling. I'm like, well, what's up? And she said, you know, I just realized just all that matters is that we love Jesus, you know. And I just thought, whoa, that's what you had to do. that we love Jesus, you know? And I just thought, whoa, that's what you had to do. Like you had to somehow, I don't know, like oversimplify this as if to say loving doesn't require submission. Like if, like we love Jesus. Well, doesn't it, would it matter if he asked something of you then? Like, shouldn't you submit to his will then if you love him? What does it mean just

to say we love if we won't submit? Yeah. And I do, I see the value in what she's trying to do. You know what I mean? Like, okay, well, at least we love Jesus. But then the Mormon understanding of who Jesus is, is not the Catholic understanding of who Jesus is. Right? And so, then you stop and you say, well, Jesus says, if you let me keep the commandments, right. Jesus says very specifically, Peter, thou, you know, you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church. He's founding a church and he's building it on the rock that is Peter. Right. So what does it mean to love Jesus? Yeah. Right. What does that actually look like? Does it look like I love you? I'm going to basically create an idol that's named Jesus, but he does all these other things that I want him to do and not those things that I don't want

him to do. And part of this is St. Augustine's great line. When you pick and choose what parts of the gospel you would believe, it's not the gospel you believe in. It's yourself. And it is so easy for everyone and anyone to do that. Yeah. Which is kind of the culture that I'm in or the political party that I belong to or whatever, and constantly say, is this the gospel or am I shaping the gospel to be this? So apostasy then, let's move on to that. By the way, schism, it's pronounced schism. Think of scissors, like a cutting away from the rest. Nope, I'm saying schism.

Did you say schism? No, I always say schism, and then you said schism, and then I got scared, and I was like, well, he is... Oh, that's funny. I didn't say that because I thought you said schism. I was like... Blatantly correcting you. Well, you do belong to the Eastern Church, so you'd know more about that than I. Schismatic. All right, so let's talk about apostasy. We don't talk a lot about this today. It bothers me that we don't. I mean, we don't even need to use the language. It's not the language that bothers me. I just feel like we don't talk a lot about the supernatural consequences of our decisions these days.

Very often in homilies or from the pens of bishops, it feels like we're talking politically about the church and Christians in a political sense, but not often in a kind of supernatural sense, the idea that we can actually apostatize from the faith. Yeah, well, when you throw out metaphysics, all you got left is politics. And when people throw out truly what matters, namely the kingdom of heaven being realized here on earth, when you throw that out, then all you have left is us and our petty games. And so people just don't think about the afterlife or the supernatural repercussions of our individual human actions, which is a great thing from CS Lewis, right? The weight of glory. Every person you meet is, it's not just a person, right? You are meeting someone who in the future

will be like this hideous demon monster or this glorious angel you might, or glorious being that you might be tempted to worship, right? It's the weight of glory that we all carry. So apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith. It's a rejection of the full gospel. And, you know, I don't think of lapsed Catholics in this regard, because I don't think they've rejected totally the Christian faith, but so many of them are practical apostates, right? Like, they just reject having to do anything about it. Yeah, I want to get to this idea of material and formal heresy when we touch upon heresy in a moment, because I think that can apply both to apostasy and schism in a sense. Here's what the modern Catholic dictionary says about apostasy. It's the complete,

as you said, abandonment of the Christian religion and not merely a denial of some article or creed. Since apostolic times, it was classified among the major crimes along with murder and adultery, sorry, adultery, whose remission in the sacrament of penance carried severe censures, and among certain rigorists, even remission of sin was denied. Since Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, defended the Church's right to remit apostasy before the hour of death, and the practice was supported by Pope Cornelius, under the Christian Roman Empire, apostates were punished by deprivation of civil rights, including the power

to bequeath or inherit property. During the late Middle Ages, Christians who apostatized were subject to trial and punishment by the Inquisition. The Code of Canon Law of 1918 declares that apostates from the faith, as also heretics and schismatics, incur ipso facto excommunication, are deprived after warning of any benefice, dignity, pension, office, or any position they may have in the church, and are declared under infamy. After a second warning, clerics are to be disposed and members of religious community automatically dismissed. All right, there you go. And that comes from straight out of scripture, Hebrews chapter 6. I don't think people realize this, but St. Paul talks about let us leave the elementary doctrines of Christ and go on to maturity. He talks about all this stuff.

And then he said, And then he said, for it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come. And then verse 6, if they then commit apostasy, since they crucify the Son of God on their own account and hold him up to contempt. Right? contempt, right? So you think about this very specifically, and he's saying apostasy is so evil because we have no idea of the goodness that we have. And so just sweeping it away and rejecting the whole deal, he's like, it's impossible. If you truly reject and repudiate your faith, then St. Paul or the author of the letter of Hebrews says, it is impossible to restore again to repentance. Now, that could just be a good Hebrew, you know, like an exaggerated thing to emphasize the teaching, but that's pretty epic.

Well, and it also sounds like a kind of proof text against once saved, always saved. Because we're not just talking about people who've kind of come into communion with Christians. These are people who, what does Hebrews 6 say? Partook of the Holy Spirit. And then made shipwreck of the faith, as it says, I think elsewhere. Yeah. It's impossible to restore again to repentance. So that implies that they had been restored once to repentance and the life of enlightenment and heavenly gift and all that stuff. Yeah. So it's deadly dangerous. And I think the reason why we minimize this stuff is because we don't understand what we have. We don't understand what grace is. Someone one time asked me, you know, if you could snap your fingers and do something to totally change the church,

what would you do? And I said, I would have every Roman Catholic study for seven days, the church's teaching on grace, because I feel like we're so Pelagian. Like I just got to do these things and earn these things and act this way. And that's not essentially what the Christian faith is. It is a movement of grace, right? And so when you deny grace or you don't even think about grace, you don't know what you lose when you mortal sin. You don't know what that compromise is. And you don't know what you're rejecting when you enter into heresy which you gotta admit that was a pretty good segue yeah it was a great segue thanks for doing it for me clearly i am incapable of it so i appreciate that uh so uh let's see the catechism says heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of some truth which must be believed with divine or Catholic faith,

or it is likewise an obstinate doubt concerning the same. So, let me just go over some of these terms. So, like obstinate. So, this isn't like a Christian who thinks the church teaches something that it actually doesn't. This is an obstinate, like a persevering denial, and it's post-baptismal. That is to say, if you have not been baptized, you cannot be a heretic, even if you deny some truth which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith. By the way, divine and Catholic faith refers to the faith that was handed over once and for all by the apostles. These are the things that was handed over once and for all by the apostles. These are the things that we have to believe. So, it's not things like apparitions in Lourdes or particular devotions like the divine mercy or how many mysteries ought to be in the rosary and how exactly you ought to

say it. That isn't what has to be believed with divine faith. It's this faith handed on by the apostles. And I think it's also important here that we distinguish between material and formal heresy. So let me just say a little word about that and let you say what you want there. So when we talk about like material heresy versus formal heresy. So most Catholics, I would say the majority of Catholics are probably material heretics. Because to be a material heretic just means that you deny some truth that has to be believed, but you don't really know that you should believe it. Like, if you have a theologian drill down on any regular Catholic about, say, the natures of Christ or soteriology or something, they probably believe something that's false.

And so, in that sense, you know, most of us would be material heretics, but we're not necessarily culpable for that sin, because we don't know that we have to believe it or have to reject something. And so, this is why the church today doesn't call Protestants heretics. So, whereas Martin Luther was a heretic, Zwingli, Calvin were heretics, if you've been raised in a Protestant home, baptized as a Protestant, raised as a Protestant, you don't necessarily know that you're denying a truth that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith. So, I just want to kind of throw that out there and then get you to

explicate it for us. Yeah, so I love podcasts and I've been listening to podcasts since the format was invented. And one day I heard this Catholic or not Catholic, excuse me, technology podcaster, a guy named Leo Laporte. He's, I think, a lapsed Catholic. And he was talking with another ex-Catholic or whatever. And they were talking about their upbringing. And he threw out this line very casually. He said, you know what what's interesting. I bet you, if you were to interview 100 people that just walked out of the same church building, you would get 100 different answers as to what does it mean to believe, or like, what are your core beliefs? And I thought about that. And I realized like how, how true that statement probably is in the sense of like, like if you start talking

about the, you know, the two most central doctrines of the Catholic faith is the Trinity and the incarnation, right? So who God is and who Jesus Christ is, right? So this understanding of Trinitarian theology, if you probe a lot of Catholics, they'll say, well, you know, that most, I've discovered most Catholics are, um, modalists or subordinationists, right? They think the Father is really God and Jesus is kind of like a derivative. He might, you know, maybe they're Aryan heretics, right? He's a creature, but he's just like the greatest of all creatures, you know. Or some of them are, you know, they think of like, well, there's one God.

And in the Old Testament, he's the Father. That's why he's so angry all the time. And the New Testament, he's the Son. That's why he's so loving because he can kind of sympathize with us. And in the age of the church, he's the Holy Spirit, right? So he's giving the gifts to us. I've heard people say all of those things and they just, they don't understand that basic doctrine. So they're not denying an article of faith. They just have no clue as to what the true teaching of the church is and how it applies to their daily lives.

So, yeah, so that would be a material heresy. They are materially subordinationists or modalists or whatever. Yeah, just to help people kind of get that into their brain. So when we – because sometimes it's difficult to think, okay, which one was which? So to say someone's a material heretic is to say they have the material they need to be a formal heretic. You might think of it that way. Someone isn't formally guilty of heresy if, one, their ignorance of the truth is due to their upbringing in a particular religious tradition or something. Or two, and two, they're not morally responsible for their ignorance of the truth.

And so this is where we talk about invincible ignorance. That is to say, someone isn't just ignorant, but they're not responsible for their ignorance. Now, I want to touch upon Bishop Robert Barron's interview with Ben Shapiro and the fallout that took place after that, because it seems to me, well, I have a lot to say on this issue, and I'm sure we'll get into it at much greater length in the Matt Fradd Show, but a couple of things., well, I have a lot to say on this issue. I'm sure we'll get into it at much greater length in the Matt Fradd show, but a couple of things. Number one, I feel like we're all looking for blood as Catholics right now. Like we're just super angry and someone has to take the fall. And so- In one way, you could say someone has to be the scapegoat.

Scapegoat. Do you know what a scapegoat is? I learned about this the other day. I had no idea. About the fainting goats. I guess you can raise goats who actually faint. Have you not typed in fainting goats on YouTube ever? Never. So, you know all about this. I just learned the other day. I was with a farmer and he was telling me about this. And so, how awful is that? That you actually buy a goat that'll take the fall for the rest of it. Anyway. So, I think this is the distinction that Bishop Robert Barron should have made, but didn't. So I wish he had have answered differently to Ben Shapiro, but I think the outrage directed against Bishop Robert Barron, some of it was unjustified. So it's kind of like I'm kind of

in the middle there. So I wish he had have pointed out this idea of invincible ignorance. So what in particular were they talking about? Let me ask you, what's the Catholic view on who gets into heaven and who doesn't? I feel like I lead a pretty good life, a very religiously based life in which I try to keep not just the Ten Commandments, but a solid 603 other commandments as well. And I spend an awful lot of my time promulgating what I would consider to be Judeo-Christian virtues, particularly in Western societies. So what's the Catholic view of me? Am I basically screwed here? No. The Catholic view, go back to the Second Vatican Council, says it very clearly. I mean, Christ is the privileged route to salvation. May God so love

the world, he gave his only son that we might find eternal life. So that's the privileged route. However, Vatican II clearly teaches that someone outside the explicit Christian faith can be saved. Now, they're saved through the grace of Christ, indirectly received. So, I mean, the grace is coming from Christ, but it might be received according to your conscience. So if you're following your conscience sincerely, or in your case, you're following the commandments of the law sincerely,

yeah, you can be saved. Now, that doesn't conduce to a complete relativism. We still would say the privileged route and the route that God has offered to humanity is the route of his son. But no, you can be saved. Even Vatican II says an atheist of goodwill can be saved because in following his conscience, if he does, John Henry Newman said the conscience is the aboriginal

vicar of Christ in the soul. It's a very interesting characterization that it is, in fact, the voice of Christ. If he's the logos made flesh, right, he's the divine mind or reason made flesh, that when I follow my conscience, I'm following him, whether I know it explicitly or not. So even the atheist, Vatican II teaches, of goodwill can be saved. So is Catholicism act-based or faith-based? Because this has been sort of the traditional distinction between Judaism, for example, and Christianity, is Judaism is a very act-based religion where it's all about what you do in this life and that earns you points in heaven. And then there's the faith-based religions that are more based on you believe in the truth,

the way, and the life, and now you're in. Where does Catholicism actually stand, or is that division too stark? No, I would say it's love-based. God is love. God so loved the world, he sent his only son. We're being drawn into the divine love. Now, do we have to accept that love as an act of faith? Of course, right? So God makes this great offer in Christ. Is it accepted in faith? Yeah. Aquinas says faith is the door of the spiritual life. Without faith, you can't get into the spiritual life. That means a trust in the divine love. Now, having made that great fundamental act, are you now called upon to be fully engaged, mind, will, passion, body, everything, in response to that love, a love, awakening love in you.

Yes. So we'd use the language of cooperation with grace, that grace comes first, accepted in faith. Luther was right to that extent. If Luther had said, gratia prima, we'd be fine, grace first. That's true at any time you're relating to God. If you're saying, I'm going to do it, I'm on my way to climb the holy mountain. Well, then you're on the wrong path, just by definition. So of course it begins with grace. But then God, who's not competitive with us, he wants us fully alive. And so God invites us now to respond, body and soul, everything we've got,

in love to the love that he's offered us. So I put it that way. It's grace and then cooperation with grace, which manifests itself in a life of love. And that's what salvation consists of. See, one thing, too, Ben, think of it this way. What gets me to heaven? Well, what is heaven? Paul says the three things that last, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love, because in heaven, faith fades away. I don't need faith anymore.

I'm seeing. In heaven, hope fades away. Who needs to hope? You got it. But love endures. Because love is what heaven is. So if you say, well, I don't care about love. It's just pure faith.

Well, what are you going to do all day in heaven? That's what heaven is, is the act of love. So it begins here below as we cooperate with grace. I'd say that's the Catholic way of looking at it. So people have kind of honed in on that privilege route. What the heck does that mean? Can you imagine the apostles getting up on the day of Pentecost and saying, you're not screwed. All we're saying is Christ is the privilege. But I think one of the things Bishop Robert Barron does so well is he uses language differently to try and communicate something that we're deaf to because we've heard the term so often. So he says things slightly differently so we get it anew, which I appreciate about him. I wish he had have made this distinction between invincible ignorance. Like, he could have said, if you, Ben Shapiro, or I

reject knowingly anything that we ought to believe, you know, with divine faith, we will be damned. So, yeah, if you are culpable for your ignorance, then you won't be saved, or something like that. He could have said it with a little more teeth and a little more well accuracy the funny thing with bishop baron is he was later on the is it dan rubin or dave yeah dave rubin shows really i was gonna say the opposite well i felt like about homosexual marriage i thought was okay yeah fine but in terms of the Christian Jewish debate, he was much more aggressive on that show with that rabbi than he was with Ben Shapiro. Who's a controversialist. Ben Shapiro's got thick skin. Ben Shapiro interviewed John MacArthur who told him that

he's going to hell for all eternity. Like, did he really? Oh yeah. I mean like that's, that's what John MacArthur does. John MacArthur is a reformed independent. That's his shtick. Like you're going to hell and you're going to hell. Everyone's going to hell, except for these eight reformed independent people. You're all going to heaven. But I've listened to so many of his sermons. So I just thought, because they said, what's the difference between you two? And he's like, well, it starts with the J, Jesus. And he just went into it. Whereas with Ben Shapiro, I felt like he did that, a little polite hemming and hawing, which translated into, what the hell are you saying?

Privileged? Come on. Yeah. But, I mean, the reality is the church, the relationship with the church and the Jewish people, it's the most complicated relationship, because in a way, very clearly, they are unlike all other non-Christian religions, insofar as real revelation from God was really expressed to them, and they really are turning to God in faith. I think maybe Bishop Barron saw that interview with John MacArthur and perhaps realized, well, we need to emphasize the harmony that exists between Catholicism and Judaism and how Catholics view themselves as the fulfillment of Judaism.

So, maybe he kind of went in with that intention and maybe that question blindsided him and I don't know. I just think it's okay that people express things differently because I feel like, and like for some people in the church, unless Bishop Robert Barron pointed at him and went, you're going to hell unless you repent, there would be people who would still be angry at Bishop Robert Barron and would be calling him out in the Catholic blogosphere. That said, I think he could have done a better job answering that question. Fair enough, fair enough. It reminds me of this one ecumenical gathering I was at for a local community college, and it was this adult faith ongoing learning.

And I was there, and one of the problems with ecumenism today is it's entirely led, and this is going to sound really bad, but it goes right to our topic. It's led by liberals who don't know what they believe anymore, and so they are very comfortable compromising their various beliefs for this vague thing called unity. Right. And so that is what the church has always called a false eroticism. That's a false peace. So when I see someone like John MacArthur who looks at Catholics and says, you are condemned to hell because you have a false gospel. St. Paul is very clear in Galatians that even if an angel should preach you a different gospel, you know, like you will be anathema, cut off, you are banned, right?

He views that of the Catholic church, right? 100%. But the funny thing is, I find myself, because we have the same scriptures, because we have so much tradition and history that overlaps, I could pray with John MacArthur for, you know, the Holy Spirit, or I could do this, or I could do that. Whereas there is this element where for liberals, like, and I do mean liberal, I mean liberal in every sense of the term, they don't have a hard, firm grasp on what they believe. Therefore, it's okay with compromising it for unity. So I'm at this thing. There's four other representatives of different Christian denominations and whatever. And this guy in the back was so perfect. He goes, look, I'm a Jew from Brooklyn. I don't ever go to synagogue. I'm basically an agnostic. I'm listening to you tell me about all your different beliefs. I have no idea what is the difference. So the guy running the event was a Presbyterian. He was part of the liberal congregation. I think it's Presbyterian

church USA. And he said, uh, right. So the last Presbyterian. He was part of the liberal congregation. I think it's Presbyterian Church USA. And he said, right, so the last Presbyterian Church USA member is probably walking around with us. Like the church is going to collapse any year. Five minutes ago probably. Yeah, and so he talks about – His stance on abortion is abominable. Yeah, I mean it's horrific. I mean they don't believe in the infallibility of scripture and all this stuff. So they have this whole thing, and this guy, like just all he can do is knee jerk.

Well, you know, we all believe in Jesus and with, and then it goes to the next person and I can't remember what the next person was. And then it goes to this woman who's essentially a Unitarian. It's called, uh, unity circle of light. And she talks about this stuff. Jesus is essentially a high moral ideal teacher and all that stuff. And then it comes to me and I was like, wow, no one answered the question. So as a Roman Catholic, I believe that Jesus Christ gave us the Pope, the Roman pontiff, the Bishop of Rome as the authoritative

head of the church today. And all the bishops in union with him constitute the magisterium. Number two, we have these things called the seven sacraments. And like, I just went through some of the big highlights and this guy, like the whole place applauded and said, thank you. Now I understand. And I just looked at them and I'm like, guys, if we can't honestly discuss our differences, there's no such thing as a humanism because it's a fake humanism. Right. That's why I can have more respect for people like John Arthur than others. John MacArthur.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Of course, he thinks respect for people like John Arthur than others. John MacArthur. Yeah, yeah, totally. Of course, he thinks that humanism is a work of Satan, but anywho. Yeah. Yeah, this is really fascinating stuff. This gets us into what I want to talk about today in particular. I want to hone in on this point. And I mentioned a moment ago that Aquinas, this is in the Secunda Secundae.

Where are we here? Question 10? So he's 11 on heresy. Aquinas points out that heresy is a false doctrine held by a person who intends to assent to Christ's teaching, but who actually assents to his own choice or opinion. And actually Aquinas says in this article that heresy means picking and choosing. And he says that a heretic is one who picks and chooses what he wishes to believe, and that heresy is essentially a corruption of the Christian faith, and that it shouldn't be tolerated by the mind, because the mind ought to be directed towards the truth. So, heresy isn't just like a, screw you, I'm rebelling against the system, like I'm sticking it to the truth. So heresy isn't just like a screw you, I'm like

rebelling against the system, like I'm sticking it to the man. It's like, no, to be a heretic is to believe something that's false, which ought to be repugnant, you know. But I remember hearing what you had to say, and I just thought it was really excellent. It really has rattled around in my brain for a while now. There's not much in there. So even if there's one thing, it rattles. of my brain for a while now. There's not much in there. So even if there's one thing, it rattles. But this idea of why we're more sympathetic to heretics or near heretics, those who are flirting with heresy, than we are those who are like stringently conservative. Do you want to just talk about that? Yeah. So part of this goes back to people like Father James Martin, who is doing his darndest to bring those who identify in the LGBT plus community into the Catholic Church. And there is a lot of the work, a lot of that work you can applaud, right?

I mean, trying to reach out to a group that feels utterly condemned and rejected by the Catholic Church or by Christianity or by religious people or whatever. utterly condemned and rejected by the Catholic church or by Christianity or by religious people or whatever. Um, there is an element of, of heroism that is involved in going to that, to that work. But there always is this tendency where we are tempted to engage in heresy. So heresy is not a complete repudiation. It's taking one or two things in the faith and rejecting it. And there is this tendency in order to make the gospel more palpable, more acceptable to those in the world, we compromise in this or that area. And one of the compromises he wanted to make, and he's very explicit about this, so I'm not telling tales out of school, I'm not reading into his stuff. One of the compromises he wants to make is to change the catechism to say that the homosexual attraction is disordered,

to say it's differently ordered. And disordered, once you change that one word, I can understand. The reason why I think we have sympathy is he is trying to go out and bring in a group that consistently feels ostracized. So by someone from that group who doesn't understand that this is metaphysical language and only sees it through the lens of modern pop psychology, to say that someone's sexual urge is disordered, they think you mean a mental disorder. You're basically sexually schizophrenic or something like that. And so he, you can understand why, right? So I think the reason why we have this, um, we have more sympathy for a father, James Martin, we can tend to then say like a Michael Voris, we can have more sympathy because he is trying to make the gospel more inclusive, and he's trying to open, you know, build the bridges and tear

down the walls and all this stuff in order to relate the gospel to the world so that the world becomes Christian. Whereas someone like Michael Voris, you can hear in the tone, right, like the dismissive language he uses about homosexuals, where often it's like, no, you can hear in the tone, right? Like the dismissive language he uses about homosexuals, where often it's like, no, you are clearly on the outside. So there is this element of exclusive. Now I affirm 100% of what the church teaches in regards to homosexuality and gay marriage and all of these things. But there is this element of like almost anti-ev evangelism that's written in an exclusive mindset. And there's this element of a distorted evangelism rooted in the inclusive mindset, right? So one is willing to

compromise the truth in order to bring in those in the world. The other one is so repugnant of the world. They will, they, they think that in their affirmation of the truth by shoving people away, they're doing the Lord's will. And so I think it's easy for us to see self-righteousness in the one exclusivistic tendency. And nothing angers people more in America than self-righteousness, right? And so I think we all – like we love to use the word hypocrite and you're self-righteous. You're uptight. You're too rigid. And we use all those things to kind of characterize those people but for me what i realize in the method

of father james martin is by saying like and you see this in his book building a bridge um he only praises groups that are antithetical to the church's teaching right so i think it's called new horizons these are groups that have that are outside the catholic church's teaching, right? So I think it's called New Horizons. These are groups that have, that are outside the Catholic church's teaching. Whereas something like Courage, which is a group that is within Catholic church teaching, that is accompanying men and women and loving them and doing all the good Christian things, but they do it from the perspective of what the church teaches, what they end up doing, and this is the insidious nature of heresy is in his effort to build a bridge to this group. He's actually building a wall around those who are seeking to truly live by the gospel.

And that's the turn that I don't think these people realize. And so I had a whole bunch of people write in to try to defend Father James Martin and this notion of accompaniment and gradualism, to which I all agree. Like, I agree. I agree with all the statements that they said, but I still pointed out to them that in the end, he doesn't want them to repent and convert and believe in the gospel. He wants to change church teaching, and that ends up only believing in ourselves. And so you go right back to the St. Jerome quote, see how many masters have they who only will not have the one Lord. Christ is asking us to follow him in this specific way, right? He's asking you to give up moms and dads, husbands and wives, lands and honors and

all of that and children in order to follow him, to take up a cross every day. No one is worthy of me unless you hate all this stuff. Yes, even your own life in order to follow me. And the liberal compromiser wants to say, well, you don't have to do all that. Just, you know, I mean, come on. There's a love of the gospel. Jesus was very inclusive. He ate at dinner table with all of these people. So there is this tendency between looking at the inclusiveness of the table fellowship of Jesus and the exclusiveness of the Pharisees, right? The Pharisees, I don't

know if you notice this, but the Pharisees only eat with other Pharisees. And then when they bring Jesus in, it's only to attack them. But when you see Jesus eating on his own terms, he's eating with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, right? So he's eating with the sinners. So that's an element of inclusivity. But a lot of times people who want to totally binary this thing, like the left, the right, the Pharisee versus the inclusiveness, is he also ate with the Pharisees. That's right. Right. So Jesus ate at the Pharisees' houses, yes. But he also, when he's eating with sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes, there were also Pharisees there. And people also neglect the fact that the Acts of the Apostles tells us that priests and Pharisees converted to Christianity in the early days. So I think there is this

element that is like the both and and the neither, right? So it's like, we need to go forth, but we can't compromise the gospel, right? We can't. I can't. Yeah, no, you go. I've talked so much. No, what you're saying is golden. Could you distinguish for us, and I think this is a really important distinction that a lot of people aren't familiar with, that is the gradualness of law versus the law of gradualness? Because I think some people think these are the same thing. Well, I mean, very specifically, if you are preaching to someone who is caught up and bounded in sin, the thing that you don't want to do is convict them so much of their sin that they despair, but rather that they repent. So a gradualism, right, is this understanding of you meet the people, and I'm going to say it, you meet them where they're at. Someone who is in youth ministry has heard that phrase 10,000 times it, you meet them where they're at. Someone who is in youth

ministry has heard that phrase 10,000 times, but you meet them where they're at. You don't have false expectations that they are capable of heroic virtue tomorrow. That's antithetical to a virtuous ethic, right? And so this idea of I am leading you to a place of truth, but I understand that you have so accepted the lies and distortions of our culture that the only thing that will get you from point A to point Z is by gradually progressing you towards those truths. And sometimes I might need to jump you from one section to another because – so for instance, I think it is easier – I remember this one guy. He's active homosexual, right? Straight up, all this stuff. And he says, my faith is so important to me. Do you think I'm gay so I can't believe in the Trinity?

He said, I love the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I adore God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And he's like, the doctrines of the Catholic Church, I don't have a problem with. It's a moral teaching that I think is wrong, right? And so for this guy, the gradualism is not believing in the tripersonal God, which it might be for an atheist today, but rather it was assent to the moral teachings of the church. And so there is this gradualism of understanding that I, as the evangelist, if I walk up and say, well, unless you're willing to walk away from homosexuality right now and divorce your spouse and all this stuff, you can have no fellowship with me. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's the distinction. I didn't mean to cut you off. No, please do. I talk too much. No, you don't. Not on this show. See, on your show, Catching Foxes, it's discussion over instruction. So there you might.

But we're all about instruction over discussion. Let's just cut through the human banter. So there you might, but we're all about instruction over discussion. Let's just cut through the human banter. But yeah, like this idea that like gradualness of law is essentially like lowering the bar, you know, which is actually quite demeaning to people because it's saying, like, and you don't expect that they're going to reform their lives in an instant. There are elements when you're gradually bringing them to the full truth. You don't take the truth and minimize it. Here's the interesting thing that I would say about Bishop Barron, okay? Bishop Barron, I think think does great clarification where he talks about, have you ever heard him with the analogy of the infield fly rule and Christian morality? So he talks about when you're evangelizing someone, it's like the game of baseball. If someone's never heard of the game of baseball or never seen a game played,

the first thing you don't do is talk about the intricacies of the infield pop fly rule. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. He said, but what you do is you introduce him, you take him to a ballpark, you let him walk the grass, run the bases, you let him see it. Then you watch a game and you explain it to maybe give him a bat and a glove and blah, blah, blah. He said, the same is true about Christianity. When Christianity, you start with faith and you propose the person of Jesus Christ and you lead them to an ascent of faith. right? And then as they accept Christ and who he is, then you can introduce the demands of the Christian life in a way that is contextualized within, you know, this living vital faith, right? So the problem is often what we do in the right or on

the conservative side is we want people socially to adopt our morality. So we tend to lead with that, especially in the political and legal sphere, right? We want to make abortion illegal. We want to make contraception illegal or whatever it is, pornography illegal. But what ends up happening is people immediately opposed to that because it's a constraint on their freedom. And it's not connected to who Jesus Christ is and what he's done for their lives, right? It's not connected to the gospel, but there's another counterbalance to that that I think a lot of evangelists aren't aware of. Because I can lead a lot of people to faith in Jesus Christ and never talk about the moral demands of the gospel. I can get people to understand the Trinity and redemption,

but never talk about catechesis. So as to lead them to receiving the gospel, but not necessarily assenting to the church's teaching on sexuality. Case in point, I teach a class called inclusion. It's for baptized Protestants who are becoming Catholic. It's a 90% apologetics. Every single class that I teach, I tie back to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Every single one, the papacy, right? The hierarchy, the role of the laity, sacraments, everything is tied back to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because I know that Protestants have accepted Christ. They love Christ. They love the death and resurrection of Christ, right? But I want to show them how the Catholic church is the fullness of what he gave

us after his death and resurrection. So in walking them through this, half the class is ecclesiology. If you can understand what the church says about herself, and you accept that Jesus passes authority to his apostles and their successors, then what the church says of the second half of the class, you can more readily accept, namely morality. And I wear with pride that two or three every session do not become Catholic because of the moral demands of the church. And what I point out to them is if you accept Jesus Christ's authority over your life, you accept that Jesus Christ instituted the apostles, the apostles pass on their authority through their successors, then you are rejecting Christ in rejecting these authoritative teachings. then you are rejecting Christ in rejecting these authoritative teachings.

And I said, so we need to work on this together, but you need to clearly see this. Now, what if I never told them about those sexual teachings? Because it's always sex. The only time people walk away, people do not care about morality in any way, shape, or form except when it comes to sex. That's right. Right? And so what happens? I mean, if I hide that, I could have had two converts per semester. Yeah.

But if I didn't hide that, what are they saying yes to? And there's a great professor out in Rome named Livio Molina, and he talks about some priests, and he's a moral theologian, right? He says they hide behind the kerygma because they're afraid of disunity. They're scared of doing the moral teachings because it can be divisive. Yeah. I had this idea when it comes to liberal and conservative, and I'm using both of those in the negative sense. So even if you think that the word

liberal and conservative can be used in a positive sense,'m like pushing them to the farthest extreme when we kind of all realize it's become unhealthy and i've thought of this kids game that my my kids play with me sometimes it's called sharks and minnows you ever played it super fun uh you are basically a fish and that you have to run from one side to the other and the shark has to eat you you know and if the shark eats you you have to stop where you are and sit on the other and the shark has to eat you, you know? And if the shark eats you, you have to stop where you are and sit on the floor and you are now on the ground and you are now seaweed. And your job is to try and reach out from where you are to touch the other fish. And if you touch them, they become seaweed. All right. And I was thinking how this is kind of how we

ought to do evangelization, right? So when it comes to the, I know this is a funny analogy, but this is what happens when you're the father of four small children. Hey, Jesus called fishermen to be fishers of men. You're rocking it. Yeah. So it would be wrong. It would be against the law of the game if the seaweed would be like, yeah, screw this. I'm tired of just sitting planted here and trying to tell you, I'm going to get up and run around like the shark. It's like, well, no, no, no, that's not how you should do it. But it also wouldn't be good if the seaweed was like, screw it. I couldn't be bothered. I'm just going to sit here. So it's almost like we need to be rooted in orthodoxy and tradition and from that place, reach out to try and bring people into the church. And because I feel like that's authentic

evangelism where we're faithful to Jesus Christ, to Holy Scripture, to tradition, and to doctrine. And we don't leave that, but we can make it attractive. And that's sort of the reaching out, as it were. Like, we're not closed in on ourself, which would be the other negative extreme, where we're like, you know, screw this, I'm not going to do this, I'm just going to sit here and curl up in a ball. What do you think of that analogy? sit here and curl up in a ball. What do you think of that analogy? I think it works because you can have clearly defined roles, right, that understands how they interoperate. I think the problem with Catholics today is we as laity are spectators and commentators, rarely practitioners

of evangelization. And so what ends up happening is we don't want to participate, but we want to tell everyone who's participating why they're doing it wrong. And I think they're right now. Right. Well, I mean, in a very real way, right there, but there are rules to the game. You know, there, there is a way, a right way and a wrong way of doing evangelization, but the way you discover those internal principles is by evangelizing, right? So the problem with someone like someone being critical of Bishop Barron is Bishop Barron is sitting down with Ben Shapiro, right? He is sitting down with someone and he sees Ben Shapiro put up a wall and he's like, all right, I'm going to do an end run around that wall.

He thinks that all Christians are, you know, thinks that all Jews are condemned to hell immediately. It's more nuanced than that. I can't go into the nuance right now. But I'm just going to say these things, privilege, blah, blah, blah. And I'm going to do an end run. Now, to devout Catholics who don't evangelize Jews, right, they might see that and just say, oh, well, you're a heretic. You're giving up the faith. You're selling out because of, you know, you want page views or whatever it is.

Now, I can tell you, as someone who evangelizes Jews in a prison setting, right, the more authentically Catholic you are and the more respectful and knowledgeable you are of Jewish history and tradition, the more they will listen to you. Right? They're under no illusion that you're a Catholic. Like, oh, I thought you were Catholic. Turns out you're a Jew. Right? Like, we play I thought you were Catholic. Turns out you're a Jew, right? Like we play these silly games. And I think that's where someone like a Bishop Barron could get in trouble where

he's trying to be polite, but it can sound like compromise. And I think that to someone who engages in evangelization often, if you just come out and attack someone, you're going to shut them off. My goal is to win them for Christ. My goal is not to compromise the gospel because it's not my gospel, it's Jesus'. So, this notion of heresy, I need to make sure that I'm not committing heresy. I need to make sure that I'm not denying aspects of the faith. So, when I can propose it to someone else, I'm giving them the full truth that they need to ascend to. Now, there's a great Protestant scholar named, or Protestant pastor. You ever heard of him, Reverend Timothy Keller? Yeah, he's terrific. I love listening to him.

Oh, man. He's super dichotomous. I have discovered that Protestants love dichotomies, especially when they're false, but he loves dichotomies, and he's always proposing two things. One is antinomianism, which is anti-law. We have so much grace, we don't have to obey anything,

that false image and legalism, right? Which you would probably say Roman Catholics are hyper legalists, but this notion that he always tries to navigate these two ways. And he talks about AB doctrines. If you take a bunch of rocks and throw them in a river, they're going to sink to the bottom. If you take a bunch of logs and float them across the river, they'll float and they'll go to the other side. So how do you get the rocks to the other side of the river? Well, if you put the rocks in first and you tie them to logs, the rocks will literally pull the logs down underwater and hold them there. He says, but if you put the logs and you tie the logs together and then just stack the rocks

on top, you can float the rocks and the logs across the river. And he says, this is my analogy for proposing the faith in different cultures. The rocks are like the B doctrines. They are those doctrines that'll be immediately rejected or defensive against or hostile. The A doctrines are those like the logs that will be accepted when you floated across. Timothy Keller is a genius at crafting AB doctrines appropriately for the setting that he's in, namely postmodern New York city, you know, millennials, single millennials, right? He's brilliant at it. Right. And I have found that so fruitful.

So the idea is liberals, right? We'll often keep the rocks on one side and just float the logs, right? They like, Oh, you reject these things. Well, I'm just going to keep them over here and not even talk about it. I'm just going to float you these logs. The tendency of an evangelist is to want to do that because you're so eager to get someone to accept Christ. The conservative side tends to be, I think personally, not just throwing rocks over. I don't think they do that.

I think that often it's tying the rocks to the logs and the logs get sunk. It's like, no, you have to accept this. And, oh, you're not going to accept this? Well, you're also not going to accept Jesus. Good day to you, sir. But their idea is I'm sending you both, right? I don't think, I think very few people, I don't think Michael Voris in a million years thinks he's just lobbing rocks, right?

And I think it's wrong for Catholics to think that. But I do think his thing is I'm going to lead with the B doctrines. It showed you how you don't accept them and therefore show you how you're not a real Christian. And I do find problem with that. The idea is what will you accept? I send that I'm going to meet you where you're at, but I'm also going to include, I'm going to show you how the A is connected to the B logically, how if you deny the Trinity, you're also going to deny human sexuality. If you deny the incarnation, you're going to run into issues with transgenderism. Accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ that God became an individual, took on

a human nature, right? He entered into our world, has implications for human sexuality. That's the theology of the body, right? So you can float. And has implications for human sexuality. That's the theology of the body, right? So you can float. And once you begin telling this to people, I'm telling you, I have worked with the most hardcore progressive liberals. I have worked with the most stringent Orthodox Jews. And I have worked with the most anti-Catholic evangelicals, all in the prison context. And I have seen them come to faith in Jesus Christ because when I can understand where they're coming from, I can say, okay, I need to emphasize this and I'm going to wait on emphasizing that, but I'm not going to not

tell you about that. Right. And that's the problem. I think in terms of conservative and liberal, liberals will lead with social justice. Conservatives will lead with personal morality and doctrine. All right. Timothy Keller points out people think, you know, conservative churches, they are very orthodox. Liberal churches tend to be very orthopraxis, right? They going out and serving the poor and all that stuff. He said, but what people don't understand is often our gospel messaging, caring about right doctrine, is carried on the back of gospel neighboring, actually loving our neighbor and reaching out to the poor and all that stuff. He said they're not antithetical.

To make them antithetical is the modern distortion of the gospel. Now, I think the beautiful thing about St. Thomas Aquinas was he could see a way through both. Aquinas was he could see a way through both. So when I did that audio book for you on the Saracens, um, what is that? The Rationibus Fidei. Right. Well, the whole point of that, that, that document that I read for you was he was talking to Muslims, Saracens, right? He was talking to certain Greek, yeah, Greek thinkers, but you know what he did? I mean, like very subtle. He's like, well, this is what they believe, but here's where we hold the common, and then you just, like, move quickly through it. Well, if you hold this and you can't hold that, but we both hold this. So, therefore, you have to hold that. That's over the first half was him addressing Muslims and he doesn't quote scripture once. And then he begins addressing the Greeks and it's filled with scripture. Right. Right. Right. I mean, you can, if you were a true, if your apologetics was towards

Muslims, right, you would probably end up, you would start probably with philosophy. You would start with revealed religion through Abraham, right? But you would have to throw in and show the inconsistency inherent within the Quran. So you'd have to master the Quran in order to actually engage in a conversation with Muslims, right? I've read the Quran before. I haven't read every single word, but I've read the Quran before, right? So when I begin to talk to Muslims about their faith, right, I do it from a charitable perspective. So they don't think that I'm coming at them. But at the same time, they know I'm Catholic. They

know I know this stuff about Islam, but I made a decision for Christ in the Catholic church. So why? So that's where we can enter into a charitable, but honest conversation. And I just find the left isn't concerned about honesty and the right isn't concerned about charity. Now, these are wide generalizations. Yes, yes. Which means that generally they're wrong. But we can see this, right? Like inclusivity, charity over all things, right?

Doctrine, exclusivity, right? You believe in – if you don't accept A, B, and C, therefore I want nothing to do with you. And I think Christ is asking of us in these crazy times something so much more. to do with you. And I think Christ is asking of us in these crazy times, something so much more. Aquinas brought the synthesis of the greatest of the pagans and their philosophy with the heart of Christian revelation. He didn't get rid of Christianity. He also didn't cast off the pagans like Martin Luther did, who was scared of the footsteps of Aristotle and all this stuff. And by bringing that synthesis together, right, you can see that there is profound truth that our culture today desperately needs. And by helping the culture go from the things they already accept

to the things they find unacceptable is the task of the evangelist and the apologist today. Bloody well put, Michael Gormley. Thank you very much for being on the show, dude, especially at such late notice. That was awesome. Oh, man, it's just an hour and a half among friends. Yeah. Tell us about your podcast. I know everybody who listens to my podcast already knows, but tell them anyway. Well, I do Catching Foxes with my buddy Luke.

Luke was on that live episode that you had with Seek on Scrupulosity. Yeah, that was fun. I got a lot of great feedback from that. Yeah, Luke was giddy with excitement that he was on your show. So giddy. So we do Catching Foxes. The whole point is discussion over instruction. We have frank and honest conversations. One of your listeners came to our show, listened to our episode about Michael Voris and Luke's frustration. Luke dropped an F-bomb in regard to him. And then one of your listeners says, why didn't you publicly rebuke him? And my response is, oh,

you don't listen to the show. So this is of, of us going back and forth being like, yeah, you should, you know, I really shouldn't have said that. Right. So the idea is that we want to have discussion. If you want instruction, there are so many great shows that are out there, this one especially. Um, but our whole thing is how do we talk about these things? And we're brutally honest. So yes, we have cussing, uh, because sometimes things get, uh, cussy. Uh. My other podcast is called Every Knee Shall Bow. There is no cussing. It's put out by Ascension Press and me and my fellow evangelist, Dave Van Vickle. We do that.

We're on episode eight or nine. It comes out on Wednesdays, and it's a lot of fun to help train Catholics on how to evangelize. And it may have beaten a particular evangelical pastor in the iTunes ranking. For four days. For four days, we beat Joel Osteen. It was amazing ranking i mean just for four days for four days we beat joel osteen it was amazing it was a great four days your best life now awesome dude well thanks so much yeah thank you for having me matt and thank you for all the good work that you're doing and know that even in my own life as a wizened old man uh i always benefit from your show so So thank you.

Thanks. Thank you as always for tuning into Pints with Aquinas. I love doing this show and I love that it's been a blessing to you. At least that's kind of what I'm assuming. You haven't told me specifically. I don't even know if you and I have ever chatted, but many of you have told me that. So thank you so much. If you have not yet, please review us on iTunes. And if you want me to send you a bunch of free cool things like car magnets and stickers and Pints with Aquinas beer steins and a signed book and non-Nissite Domine shirts, if you want access to our ever-growing audio library and audiobooks from Thomas Aquinas, all you've got to do is start supporting me on Patreon by going to pintswithaquinas.com slash donate. And once you go there, you can click through to Patreon,

give to me there, or you can give to me directly on the website. And I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks. Bye. And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you. And I would give my whole life To carry you To carry you To carry you

To carry you To carry you Thank you.