Pints With Aquinas - Cameron Bertuzzi CONVERTS to Catholicism (Here's how it happened)

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Cameron Bertuzzi discusses how and why he converted to Catholicism with Matt Fradd overlooking the Vatican. ... Please support Cameron Bertuzzi here: https://patreon.com/capturingchristianity Best Rosaries ever: https://catholicwoodworker.com/?utm_source=Matt+Fradd&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=christmas_22 Please support us on Locals: http://mattfradd.locals.com/support

G'day, yes? Alright, welcome to Pines with Aquinas. My name is obviously Matt Fradd. Massive thank you to EWTN Vatican for allowing us to use their beautiful terrace overlooking the Vatican. Today I have a very special guest for you, Cameron Batuzzi, who many of you know. We've had debates together, we've been friends for several years. He's got a wonderful channel called Capturing Christianity and he's decided to become Catholic and so today we're just gonna break all that open and discuss it. A couple of things before we begin. If you're not yet subscribed, do that. We're almost at 300,000 and looking forward to that. Secondly, I know that many people have questions but the only

questions we're gonna be taking are from local supporters, and it's going to be During a live stream later on tonight Me and Cameron are going to be in a different rooftop really close to the Vatican Drinking what are you drinking Italy apart from wine? What's a good liqueur? Lemon cello and we'll do a special bonus live stream for our local supporters over there where we'll take your questions So be sure to stick around to that and then finally I want to say a massive Thank you to catholic woodworker for sponsoring this show catholic woodworker makes beautiful home altars and the most beautiful rosaries I've ever come across

Sometimes you'll get a rosary. That's far too What do you say? Frail, you know it breaks apart in your pocket. Others are so big, you could strangle someone with them, but they're impractical. These are the most beautiful rosaries out there. There is a link in the description. If you click that link right now,

you get 20% off any of the rosaries, any of the home altars that they sell. I know Jonathan, the fella who runs it, really wonderful Catholic guy, and he gave me this rosary to give to Cameron Batuzzi. Cameron, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. Do I do the, no.

Yes. Thank you, no, this is beautiful. And I've been needing one, so appreciate it. Good, it's so lovely to have you here. Yeah, it's great to be, actually I think I'll keep this up here because of the wind. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty bright and windy. Now listen you're from Houston. Yes. And you were really a Protestant. Yes. So how does Lakewood Church compare to St. Peter's would you say? St. Peter's is a little bigger. Uh-huh

Well, I would hope it's more beautiful Yes, it is a quite quite more. What was your tour like today? So that was actually something we did we wrapped up and the guy who took me on a tour He's sitting right behind us and is a Swiss guy and he's a Swiss guard and he took me up all the way to the top Which I didn't even know if you I don't know if you guys can zoom in you probably can't but the very top there's like a little when you say I'm sorry They're very very top like the tippy top that not the tippy top no, but right around the top There's like it. It looks like a little like bars. Can you see it? Yes? There's people up there. That's amazing That's where I went and so I was able to see all of Rome from up there and it was we toured inside the

St. Peter's Basilica and then we went up to the like the little dome inside where you can see the letters and everything that Are like 10 feet tall and then we went up to the very top and it was great But yeah, no, the the differences are vast between something like Lakewood Church and St. Peter's Basilica. Yeah. But is there like a, for Protestants, is there like a church that is like something that's... It probably is. Anyway.

Maybe so. But yeah, this is fun. And a lot of people are so happy for you. I know many Catholics have been writing to me and writing in the comments section, just saying they've been praying for you for so long. And many of these people are converts from Protestantism themselves.

They, unlike myself, understand how difficult it must be to convert, much less if you have a successful YouTube channel. And many of your subscribers and viewers are Protestants and who you love and, but that takes courage. How are you doing? Yeah, this has been, I think I told you last night, this has been one of the most difficult things

I've ever had to do. And I think that does kind of like, tell people a little about the things that I've, the difficulty of my life, but it's been very difficult for me and for my family. And so I'm trying to be as sensitive to that as possible. And let me also say as we start this is that I know that a lot of people are really excited about this and they're really excited to like send me, you know, congratulations, welcome home and this sort of thing. but I did want to ask at the beginning

everyone watching to please give some privacy to my wife so don't send her messages don't don't send her friend requests just give us some privacy right now that would be that would be huge so yeah I know but it's been very difficult yeah I bet I can't imagine you're the only way I can think of it is what if I that would be huge. So, yeah, no, but it's been very difficult. Yeah, I bet. I can't imagine. The only way I can think of it is, what if I became convinced by, let's say, James White or somebody, you see?

And then I'm running this YouTube channel called Pines for the Quietness. I mean, honestly, I want to go wherever the evidence leads, even if I'm uncomfortable with it, as you've said said but there's that kind of more superficial part of me that doesn't want pain doesn't want discomfort yeah what was that like for you yeah um with capturing Christianity it's a it's a little bit different because what we started out doing and what we're gonna continue doing is sort of theistic apologetics or like mere Christianity and so me, I feel like you don't have to be Catholic or Protestant, or you don't have to specifically be one

of those in order to gain a huge benefit from supporting a channel like Capturing Christianity. And so the way that I view it is like that wasn't really a deterrent for me to embrace Catholicism, because I feel like anyone who is a Christian can support the work that we do in defending mere Christianity. So that it's, you gave a great analogy years ago

on your podcast that I heard, where your goal is to get people to Catholicism, but in order to get an atheist to Catholicism you have to start from where they are and move incrementally up to that point and so I see capturing Christianity as a sort of base level where people can go from say atheism to Christianity and then if they want to investigate further then they can look at other resources. So I hope that answers your question. No, I love that.

Because I mean, I remember you telling me that some of your intellectual heroes, maybe you discovered after the fact that they were in fact Catholic. Yeah. And maybe that caused you to say, okay, well, maybe there's something to this Catholic thing, even though they didn't necessarily wear it on their sleeve

with every podcast or every talk. Well, eventually I came to learn that not only were there a lot of Catholics who were great philosophers, but that a lot of them were Protestants before and then embraced Catholicism later on after doing their own personal investigation. And that is very common. It's very common in the academic circle

to go from Protestantism to Catholicism. I'm actually not aware of a single person who's gone from being a Catholic and being a philosopher to then embracing Protestantism based on some set of arguments. So, but there are many examples of Catholics who have done that. At what point in your Christian journey, because you're somewhat of a revert back to the Christian

faith, aren't you? After you started the channel, I think, to investigate the claims of Christianity. At what point did Catholicism become a viable option for you, or was it always that, that you just didn't know much about it? That's a good question, and maybe it's a good way to kind of segue into some of the things that really opened me up. So what really opened me up was actually, so one of my objections to Catholicism for a while was divine simplicity. I can't remember where it is, but there is some dogma that says that you've basically got to believe divine simplicity in order to be Catholic. And I knew that and I was like, okay, well, I don't accept that doctrine. And I can't even make sense of it. It doesn't even make sense to me.

How can all of God's attributes be identical with each other? Like that just doesn't make any sense to me at all. And so then there was this new, he's another example of a Protestant who became Catholic, Joshua Sijuati. He didn't do this on my channel, he did it on another channel, but he actually wrote a paper on it, so that's the genesis of where this came from, but then he went on to another channel, I don't know which one he went on, but he went on to talk about his new analysis like analysis or view of a divine simplicity. And so he spelled out this new view based on trope theory, which we're not gonna get into that

because just the word itself is like enough to make some people think. Exactly. So he's got this new theory of divine simplicity and when he spelled it out I was like okay, okay that actually kind of like, I can see that maybe being the case okay and so that was like the first light bulb that went on in my head where I was like okay so maybe I might be able to actually like work through some of these see this is

interesting because for many Protestants they may come at this from a different angle they may say the view and I'm sure we'll get to this, the view Catholics have of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Purgatory, but I suppose the fact that you were doing such a deep dive into arguments for God's existence and what that means, it's interesting that that was your first kind of objection. Yeah, that was my, because I've heard people talk about it

and then when I would hear someone spell it out, I was just like, doesn't make any sense to me. How can all of his properties be identical? And yeah, so it's just, and then I learned later on that that was a sticking point for Catholicism. And I was like, okay, well then I definitely can't accept Catholicism if I can't accept this doctrine. And so that was one of the sticking points for me.

There were two others that I spent some time working through as well. One of them was the Eucharist, which you and I had a debate about that. Yeah, that's so online. People could check that out. I defended the metaphorical reading, which I don't think I hold that anymore, not because of some dogmatic claim from the Catholic Church. I just as I was reading it one day again, I was like coming back at it with this metaphorical reading in mind and I was like, is that really the right reading of this passage? I don't know anymore. But that was one of the objections that I had was that if you read John 6, John 6 is the part where he says you've got to drink my blood, you've

got to eat my flesh in order to be saved. Very explicit. Yeah. And Catholics will often point to that as like, here's evidence of the Eucharist. And so one of my objections was, A, it can be read more metaphorically, and B, it's not even a Last Supper narrative. The Last Supper narratives happen in the other Gospels. This one's in John. And so it's not even a Last Supper narrative. What does this have to do with the Eucharist? And especially if it's metaphorical. But then I came to realize that you could actually take a metaphorical reading of John 6 and then consistently hold that the Eucharist is like the real body and blood.

You could hold transubstantiation and a metaphorical reading of John 6. So that was another barrier that was removed for me, is that I could see how like even if I took that view Could be the case that you know, the the Catholic teaching on this is also correct Okay, so that was what that was another another big piece and then the the third big piece Which I still am kind of working through was Annihilationism so this is a view about the end times or eschatology That says that in the end, the ungodly, the people that are apart from Christ are going to be wiped out, they're going to be annihilated,

destroyed. There's no sort of such thing as eternal conscious torment. And that was a view that I had held on the basis of listening to other Protestant apologists like Glenn Peoples, Chris Date. They've got great work on rethinkinghell.com. So I started to investigate this and could annihilationism be consistent with Catholicism was one of the questions that I asked. And I did get a couple names of some Catholics who have been annihilationists, but I wasn't

really satisfied with that. And then I listened to a debate with an atheist on the topic of universalism, and he actually rattled off some really interesting arguments for universalism. And my journey as a Protestant had been sort of going in the direction of annihilationism toward universalism. I was always at least what I would call a hopeful universalist. So I was hopeful that everyone would be saved. Sort of Bishop Robert Barron's view.

Exactly. And so what I've come to recently is that hopeful universalism is more consistent with the Catholic understanding or just the traditional. Most Protestants accept the traditional view as well, eternal conscious torment. But what I saw is that hopeful universalism seems to be a better fit on the traditional view as opposed to the annihilationist view.

So if you had to choose one. So here's my hope, here's my hope, is that everyone, that hell will eventually be emptied. That people will eventually come to see that this was, it's silly to remain in sin yeah I don't think you can maintain that as a Catholic okay yeah I think you can maintain a hopeful universalism as Baron does I think Baron is within the realms of orthodoxy but to deny eternal conscious torment I don't think is within the realms of what is

his do you mind if I just ask well I don't want to speak on behalf of the good bishop but he's not making the claim that there is nobody in hell yeah and he's not that's not the claim either I know I just want to make sure I spelled this out well because I know Bishop Barron sometimes gets straw manned and I'm trying to say it as accurately as I can he's not making the claim that there is no one in hell. He's not making the claim that everyone will be saved. But I think he says we can at least hope for the salvation of all. Yes. And that's what I think is more consistent because if I was to say it. So the idea though

is that like if everyone is just annihilated, there is no hope for everyone to enter it. When did Solos Scriptura become a... Surely that's a... Sola Scriptura was never a sticking point for me. I eventually came to reject Sola Scriptura, but it wasn't like a linchpin or something that really made me see the truth of Catholicism. So I never used that as an argument for Catholicism. But I eventually... I mean it's relevant.

I did eventually come to disagree with that view. So I just didn't really see much reason to adopt it. And the typical proof texts that are offered in favor of Sola Scriptura just didn't seem to do what they need to do to support that. And so just personally, it's not as if I've got some like knock down argument against Sola Scriptura. I just, I'm saying that the proof texts that are often used, I just don't see it. Personally.

Yeah. And I know for you, perhaps the biggest thing was the papacy. The papacy. You said you had, you can correct me, but you had some good Protestant friends say, listen, if you look into this seriously, you'll understand that Catholicism has to be false because the papacy, the claims of the Catholic Church regarding the Pope and infallibility are false, unhistorical, unbiblical. So the way that it went down, those three initial items that I was telling you about, so divine simplicity, the Eucharist and annihilationism, I was like, okay, I called some Protestant friends of mine and I was like, hey, look, you know, these are my objections to Catholicism and I no longer have these

objections. Like, and that's basically, that's basically my objections. So what should I do now? Where should I go at this point? And I called my Protestant friends. I didn't call my Catholic friends. I called my Protestant friends because at that point I wanted to remain Protestant. And so their advice was, bro, you've got to look at the papacy.

Like when you look at the papacy, first of all, it's a distinctive doctrine. So if the papacy is true, pretty much Catholicism is true. But if it's false, Catholicism is false. So it's a very distinctive doctrine and also they were convinced that there's really good evidence, historical evidence, and there's virtually no biblical evidence for it too, was their view. And so they were the ones that put me on the path of really looking into the papacy. And so I was really serious about it, like I was very serious about investigating

the truth claims of the papacy. I really wanted to know because I felt like if I could really narrow in on this one topic, taking their advice, this could really settle the matter for me. And how much emotionally were you hoping that that would be the case? Because as we've already pointed out

It's a difficult and I'm sure an emotionally exhausting thing. So change I have to be honest. So there were emotional reasons against Conversion conversion, but there were also emotional reasons for conversion. So I've attended Mass I've attended a really beautiful Catholic churches and I'm really drawn in as a photographer, like my background, to beauty. I'm really drawn into beauty. And so I've had what I would call, what I would actually say are religious experiences in Catholic churches.

I haven't really had those in any Protestant churches. I mean, if you just go to any, your run-of-the-mill average Protestant church, they're just, they're going to be ugly. It's going gonna be an ugly place, honestly. And so, so there were emotional reasons I would say on both sides. Sure. And so I had to do what I could to put the bias to the side and really investigate the truth of it. And I tried to that. I really tried to do that. So where did you go to first to look? Was it the kind of patristic sources? Was it the biblical evidence, historical evidence?

So the first thing that I did was I wanted to have a way of categorizing and putting have a way of categorizing and putting all of the evidence into a worksheet or a document that I can say, yeah, here's this piece of data, here's this piece of data, all of this speaks to the paper C, I don't wanna leave anything out. I love this, could you just give us an overview of what you mean by this? Because you were on my show with Dr. Scott Hahn,

people should go check that video out, because at that point you still weren't convinced of the paper C and it was great to have Scott there. But you actually, so I would like you to talk about this, you created a spreadsheet. A spreadsheet. I mean, I love that even Scott was impressed by that. Scott is a nerd of the most beautiful variety, right? And so the fact that he was impressed with that and then you assigned what?

Points to each line of evidence for and against? So what I did was I created what I call a Bayesian analysis of all of the evidence for and against the Papacy. And so I used the Bayesian framework because I think that it's a more formal way of doing everyday probabilistic calculations that you do in your own, in your head. And you're like, okay, how likely is this event? And you'll say, oh, it's really likely. That might be some example that you would just come up with. But in Bayesian terms, like what you'll do

is you'll assign a figure to that probability. And so you can be a little bit more precise in seeing like, okay, well, how much of an effect probabilistically does this piece of evidence actually have? As opposed to just going on the sort of more informal, okay, this is some evidence, here's some evidence, here's some evidence, here's a lot of evidence,

here's a lot of evidence. But then you don't really know at the end of that how it all combines. How many lines of evidence did you have for and against the papacy, roughly? There weren't a lot for the papacy. There were the biblical arguments. I see.

And there's a lot of Protestant objections. There's a lot of pieces of data that Protestants will say. So I would say, like counting them up, I probably had like four for the papacy and about 15 against the papacy. And it seems to me that what's interesting about this analysis is that rather than going on your kind of intuition, you actually don't know what the evidence is going to show you because you're going through them one by one and assigning a number. Yeah.

And so what I did at the beginning was I wanted to be charitable to both sides. Again, I'm trying to fight my bias. So I'm trying to be charitable to the Catholics. I'm also trying to be charitable to the Protestants. And so what I would do is I would assign a charitable number to each of the pieces of data and be like, okay, well, yeah, how likely is this? Like let's give the Protestant something here. And so we'll give them a little, like this is a little bit of evidence against the papacy.

Can't really say this a whole lot, but this is still being charitable. And so, but what you can do with the Protestant case is you can accumulate all of these different lines of evidence. So they've got the dedicate, they've got these different documents, these early church documents, where you don't see like the papacy clearly laid out and specific names and everything.

And so they'll say, this is a document we would expect to find the papacy in this early document. And so, but there are obviously Catholics who want to respond to that like like Jimmy Akin, and be like, well, no, there's actually reason to suspect that they wouldn't have names, specific names in the early church because why? The church was being persecuted. So you're not going to just spell out all the names of the most important figures in

your religion so that people can just read the letter and then go hunt him down and kill him. And so there's reasonable like responses to that but nevertheless I was still being charitable to the Protestants and giving it some weight of evidence against the papacy. You would think if you have around 15 arguments against the papacy and only four in favor of the papacy that it's got to be hard for the papacy to come out on top unless those four arguments are very strong. Yeah. So there's really three passages in the New Testament that are sort of relevant to the

papacy in terms of giving some positive boost to it, which is Matthew 16, John 21, and Luke 22. And if you look at those three, you'll see that, I mean, I think being charitably, you can say, okay, this does give a little bit of weight to the side of the papacy. But what really surprised me, and this is why I spent so much of my time focusing on this one piece of data, is there's this argument called the typological,

there's all sorts of names for it, but the typological Eliakim argument, you may call it something like that. But there's a connection, there's a textual illusion between Matthew 16 19 and Isaiah 22 22, which talks about the office of Eliakim. And it's a textual illusion back to this Old Testament character, Eliakim. And so the argument goes is that Peter that's mentioned in Matthew 16 19 is the fulfillment of Eliakim so he is the new Eliakim. He's the type that's the typological Yes

argument the connection between the Old Testament character the the New Testament character and what you do then is you see that the office of The Old Testament office is going to be very similar in all sorts of ways to the New Testament office. Not in every way. Obviously, there's going to be, because Jesus' kingdom was greater than David's kingdom, there's going to be greater properties that are going to exist in the anti-type, the fulfillment that you see in the New Testament. So it's not going to be a one-to-one correspondence between the two, but you're nevertheless going to see some correspondence. And so if you look at what properties Eliakim's office had, then it was very close to the papal office.

And so then the question is, does that really transfer over? Does that office transfer over to Peter? And so I was not convinced about this argument for a while, but what I saw was that if this argument is true, and again I was trying to be charitable to both sides, if this argument is true, it is so unlikely that Protestantism or Orthodoxy is true. Again, this is the distinctive doctrine, is the papacy. And so basically it's like, if you've got Peter, he's got these papal-like qualities, with his office being the new Eliakim.

How likely is that on the papacy? Seems pretty likely that we would find that in Scripture. But then you flip it around if you're doing this Bayesian analysis. And then you ask, how likely is that data given something other than Catholicism, something other than the papacy, so like Protestantism or Orthodoxy, how likely is that data?

And I just have to say, thinking about it charitably, again, it's gotta be super, super low. It's gotta be very, very low. I see. And so this is really strong evidence for the papacy if you're convinced of the typological argument. I see, so if you're not, it doesn't do much damage, but if you are, it's very convincing.

Is that what you're saying? There's a caveat there. So I was gonna wait to talk about that a little bit later. Let me do you mind if I pull up my notes? Of course. See if there's anything that I've missed. And just while you're doing that just so for those who aren't aware when we talk about typology We're referring to persons places and events in the Old Testament

That foreshadow a greater reality in the new so st Augustine says the New Testament is concealed in the old, the old is revealed in the new, and this is not some medieval invention. St. Paul talks about Christ as the new Adam and there are many other examples. Yeah, yeah. One of the Catholic philosophers I had on the channel recently said that Christianity is a typological religion. And this is one of the things that's really given me like a better appreciation for the Bible is the fact that the New Testament ties in to the Old Testament. It's the fulfillment of the Old Testament.

It's not as if, I mean, as a Protestant, my view was kind of like, we could kind of like get rid of the Old Testament. Like, let's forget about it. Let's try to forget about it because you have these problematic Old Testament passages about the Canaanites and bears attacking children. It's like, can we just forget about the Old Testament? Can we just forget about that and just focus on the New Testament because it's all about love and... The Marseian heresy, isn't it? It's not a new...

Well, it's something that I was just sort of drawn to unconsciously. I was like, I wish that I could just do away with the Old Testament. Yes. Because then it would just like... Solve a lot of issues, especially in your debates with atheists. It's like, gosh, if we just put that to one side, I feel like it wouldn't be as embarrassing. But I love that, yeah. But then typology helped me see the importance of the Old Testament and how important it is for the New Testament authors, including Jesus. Jesus went through and looked all the Old Testament scriptures and was like yeah this is Moses had to do this and all that and

that's why I'm here. And so it's it is a typological religion Christianity. Would you mind if I pressed back against this maybe try to play devil's advocate with this or would you rather me not do that? Well, let me, do you mind if I just continue the journey? So, at this point I did start to look into this one argument. So, because I saw if this argument actually works, then it's really powerful evidence for the papacy. And so, then I wanted to actually study it and look into it a lot deeper. And so, as I studied it, I continued to remain

sort of agnostic about it. I continued to just see, I mean, yeah, like this argument, there are good reasons to think that it's successful. But then you hear objections from Gavin Ortland like typology run amok. You're like, that seems like a good objection. I don't really know what to do with that.

Aren't you just reading into this? How do you know that these properties transfer over? You don't know that. And so I remained agnostic about it. And so I was, but I was talking one day with a friend of mine who's an expert in Bayesian analysis and I was like, so what do I do at this point? Do I just ignore that piece of data?

Or what do I do with it if I'm not convinced about this data being an actual data point? Do I ignore it and then just go with whatever, the other evidence that I've got? And he was like, no, you don't ignore it. What you do is you cut its probabilistic force in half. If you're unsure about that piece of data, then you cut its probabilistic force in half.

And so naturally I went directly to my document and I did that and the probability after I cut the probability in half came out to 0.91, I think. It was 0.90 or 0.91 that the papacy is true. And so at that point, I was point, that was one of the first points where I was like, this could really be, this could be it. Like this could be the thing that really convinces me of. If that argument didn't work, would the Bayesian analysis still lean

in favor of the papacy according to your document? That's what I'm saying is is that that may be controversial. I got this from an expert in Bays, so I don't know if that's like a controversial move or what. But this is what I was, on the basis of talking with one of the world's foremost experts on it, this is something that you can do. What's up? I'm just doing this. No worries. Everyone thinks that your audio is off, but it's OK.

Oh, OK. OK, yeah, no, my audio is not off. I have a microphone. So yeah, so what this is saying is that you can still have the argument play some level, give some level of support, have some evidential force, even if you're not convinced of it. Because if you deny the argument, that's not an argument in favor against the papacy.

Right, because this is an argument for it. So if you just deny it, then you would just do away with it. So if you do have reasons, and again, I was in the position of, I see good arguments on both sides. There's good arguments that people have given, like so and so and so, that Peter's office will have these paper-like like qualities and then I see arguments from Gavin Ortland and I see that side too and so there's like these equal supports that I can see on both

sides of it so I was kind of like teetering in the middle and so that's where I was now if if maybe what you're saying suggesting is if you're convinced that Gavin is right Peter's office doesn't have these people like qualities and yeah, it's not going to do much work for you right, that Peter's office doesn't have these paper-like qualities, then yeah, it's not gonna do much work for you. Right. But I was at the point where I was like even on it. So if you're at that point, if you're sort of, if you can see both sides like I was being the case, then it can have some evidential force. And it can indeed have a lot because of how unexpected that data is, again, given what we call in the Bayes, we call it the negation.

So the negation of the Papacy hypothesis. When was it that you saw that then and kind of concluded the analysis? That was probably about a, I want to say, it's hard to know the exact timeline of that, but I would say it was probably a couple of few months before I decided to actually convert. So there's still more time between those two points. So what happened in between those two points? In between those two points, I continued to study the argument. And so I continued to look into it, but then I really started to consider, because I saw this move that can be made

in when you do a sort of Bayesian analysis and when you're equally convinced of both sides of a piece of data like this, very unique situation. And then I really started to think, what would actually happen if I were to just And then I really started to think like, okay, okay, what? What would actually happen if I were to just like follow this evidence like what? would actually Be the case for me. Well, how would this change?

me my ministry my relationship with my wife and so I had to like I had to really think about that and so I I Decided I'm gonna put the brakes on it Like I'm gonna I'm gonna chill out for this on a while you know and just really sit down and consider everything and so I I slowed down I Really took my time with the argument and I also wanted to look into Eastern Orthodoxy See what the what it was like over there And so I had I only had into Eastern Orthodoxy, see what it was like over there. And so I only had one Eastern Orthodox on the channel.

And so the reason for that is I had an Eastern Orthodox to come on and share his story, because he converted to Eastern Orthodoxy from Protestantism. And well, I think he came all the way from agnosticism. But I eventually, I got in touch with Michael Lofton, and Michael Lofton has gone through this whole journey as well, I think he came all the way from agnosticism, but I eventually I got in touch with Michael Lofton And Michael Lofton has gone through this whole journey as well as well where he went from Protestant to Catholic to Eastern Orthodox back to Catholic and I think I got in contact with him one day and I was like Hey, you know, what do you think about Eastern Orthodoxy? And he was like immediately his first answer was the papacy and I was like no duh

That's what I've been studying this whole time and so it just kind of reconfirmed to me that it just comes down to whether or not there's good reasons for the papacy being true. Yeah big shout out to Michael Lofton he's doing a lot of great work I'd recommend everyone go subscribe to his channel Reason and Theology. Yeah and so it just reconfirmed for me that I need to focus in on that piece of data, the Lyakim typological argument. When does this date back to?

It was a few months before I decided to come up. I mean, where does the argument date back to? Oh, the argument. So Daniel Vecchio, he's a Christian philosopher, I think I mentioned I had on the channel. He's found it in, I think, mentioned I had on the channel, he's found it in I think a sixth century source. So there's a typology I mentioned there in like a sixth century source. So I think that there's also probably not a lot of work that's been done on searching the church fathers for this type of argument because it's a newer argument that not a lot of Catholics have sort of...

Yes and that's interesting because you know the medieval saints such as Thomas Aquinas didn't have access to all of the fathers. Yeah. So, for example, thinking perhaps of Mary as the new Eve or when she was on the cross, for example, in John's Gospel where Christ says, you know, to John, behold your mother. I went to John's gospel expecting Aquinas to say, you know, the kind of the Catholic argument, woman, she is the new Eve, and he didn't. And I was a bit surprised at that.

And then someone pointed that out to me. It's like, it's really today that we have more access to the early church fathers than ever before. So just because you don't see a popular argument springing up and being developed in the middle ages doesn't mean it isn't somewhere. Yeah, and they didn't have Google back then. They couldn't just like do a search

on New Testament, Old Testament, and see all the different textual illusions that pop up and try to formulate arguments. So at this point when you're struggling and you say, I'm just gonna put the brakes on, I'm gonna rest because I'm aware of what this is gonna do to my family, I'm aware of what this is gonna do to my family I'm aware of what this might do to my ministry like at that point are you like guys

give me anything like if there's an argument to keep me from Rome then I'm really really all for it yeah well that's that's I mean based on the data the the data that I got from my Protestant friends, that is something that I did. So I called my Protestant friends, I talked to in particular Gavin Ortland at some point. And I said, which I love, I love Gavin. He's like one of the best Protestants that's currently speaking on this issue.

And he's gonna take issue, he probably will have a response video to what I'm saying today. And I'm all for it. Again, I love Gavin. And I called him up one day and I had him, just like I did with Catholics, I said, spell it all out. Give me every single piece of data that you have that supports the negation of the papacy

that the papacy is false. Give me everything. And he did that I wrote it all down in my document and so I had I have what I thought was a very representative summary of of the evidence that is that is important to the papacy and then I also like eventually I got a fuller list from Jimmy Akin but this was already after I decided to convert based on that that are you. So I had so now there are some additional data points I just haven't plugged them in yet from Jimmy Akin on the pro pavisie side

How how did you handle this emotionally once you'd made the choice to convert? What's that like? Again, it's not like you're just Joe blow We say in Australia if you say that America, but you know in a small town no one really knows you. It's like no you've got this big online following there's a there's a lot of responsibility there to kind of get this right in a way. Yeah I mean so is the question like what how did I feel when I actually decided to? Yeah how did you feel, how did you process those emotions? Because we have a lot of people who watch the show, right? And they say I'm looking into Catholicism, but I don't know what to do. I'm scared. My family, my job, my... Yeah, so from then till here.

I was very excited that day and that night it got really bad. I mean, I've been very vocal on my channel about the fact that I have struggled with struggles with anxiety and depression at points. But that night I experienced a whole lot of anxiety like because I told my wife that day I was like, Hey, I've decided to become Catholic. And her response was like, okay. And that night I was I was just thinking, did I make the wrong choice? Did I, and we haven't talked about the whole story up until that point by the way.

We haven't gotten through the, everything that went on with the data. But when I got to that point, it was very hard. And it's been extremely hard ever since. Feel free to go back and flesh out the data more. Yeah well let me talk about some of the other things that I reflected on and so as I was thinking I wanted to be very sure about this because I realized how much it was going to affect my family and so I I slowed down and I tried to do my best to acknowledge my bias.

I wanted to be like, let's realize, Cameron, that you have emotional reasons to want Catholicism to be true. Yeah. And I did that. And I tried to do what I could to acknowledge that and really just assess things logically and assess things evidentially, probabilistically. And so I also learned, or I, not really learned, but I remembered that I'm also a fan of what's called reformed epistemology and phenomenal conservatism.

And these are really big philosophical terms. I'll try to break these down a little bit. But as I was going through this process, one of the things that I mentioned, and I kind of tied this into being biased about it, but for a while now, as I was studying things, I sort of eventually, the seeming that I had was toward Protestantism.

It seemed to me like Protestantism was true. That's what it seemed to me. But at some point before I made the decision, it seemed to me like Catholicism was true. So this was, I think, maybe prior to discovering the big thing that I did, talking with the Bayes expert on what you can do when you're sort of unsure about a piece of data. That, I think was I was already at the point where it seemed like Catholicism was true to me

And so my seemings what seemed intuitively the case had already switched Toward Catholicism, but I didn't want to go on that. I didn't want to I wasn't happy with that The implications were too were too massive and so I didn't want to just like tell my wife, hey, I'm converting because it just seems to me like Catholicism is true. Because what had happened at that point is that I had worked through my objections and I hadn't really had any more objections at that point to Catholicism. I also wanted to say this at some point during this interview is that my situation is not going to be your situation. My objections to Catholicism may not be your objections to Catholicism.

You may have different objections. You may have objections to Mariology, for example, which I didn't have those. And so you may not be at a place where you're ready to accept Catholicism because you may have objections. But at that, where I was is that I had worked through those. And so it seemed to me like Catholicism was the case. So what I remembered at that point was that I don't actually believe

as a reformed epistemologist, I don't think that you've got to have arguments for your belief in Christianity to be justified or warranted. You don't necessarily have to have arguments in the same way that you don't, I don't have to have any argument that a person is sitting here talking to me. I don't have an argument for that. I haven't like- And if I try to disprove it by saying I'm a sophisticated cyborg, it's like, yeah, well,

maybe I can't disprove it, but it seems to me that you are there but most of our beliefs Most of our beliefs are like that yeah where you don't you you believe it based on some maybe some Deep experience that you've got but it's not as if you like Just assess everything so rationally and you're just you have all these arguments for all of your beliefs including your memory beliefs like No, you remember something and then you believe it because you remember it. Like you flew to Rome the other day. Yeah I don't have an argument for that.

So what I remembered is that you don't necessarily need an argument in order to be rational about making a decision about something like this. Basically it was one of the things that I remembered. And that ties into both reformed epistemology and the other thing that I mentioned, the other philosophical principle, phenomenal conservatism. But I won't get into the details on those

because I think I've made the point on that is that it just, I remembered that when it comes to philosophy and what's called epistemology, how you come to know things, my epistemological views made it such that you can actually, you know, I didn't really need an argument in order to convert to Catholicism at this point. So the seeming wasn't as suspect as it first appeared. Yeah, the seeming that I could, if I wanted to, on epistemological grounds, I could embrace

Catholicism purely on those grounds because I didn't have, I'd worked through those objections and it seemed to me like Catholicism was true. But again, that wasn't enough for me because I realized how important everything was. And so what I did then at that point was, okay, I really need to study this typological argument. And the outcome of that was, I watched this four hour video that Swann did on his channel, intellectual...

Conservatism. I think he just changed it to intellectual Catholicism. Okay. So, Swann Sonner, for those who are... S-U-A-N. Great guy. Yes. And. It's a swan sonar though for those who are. Swan sonar. S-U-A-N, great guy. Yes, and he's got a four hour video where he builds the whole case that the Eliakim typological argument is a sound argument.

And so I worked through that video and on the basis of working and listening through that video, I became convinced that instead of being where I was sort of agnostic about it, which again still got me to about.9%, I became convinced that it's a good argument. And so when I updated the Bayesian analysis, I think it took me up to like.95 instead of.92 or whatever.

And so, or.91. And so that's, at that point, after I became convinced, I think it was maybe the next day or the day after where I was like, I just need to do this where I was like, I just need to do this. I just need to do it. I need to follow the evidence. I need to be consistent with where I'm at in my seemings, what seems to me to be the case.

I need to be consistent with that. And it was not easy. And it's been very difficult. Dr. Hahn said as he you know, he said he was the most anti-catholic person he knew. And if somebody had told his friends that one day he'd be Catholic, they would have said there's just no way. But he said as he investigated the evidence, he got to a point where to prolong conversion felt more and more like disobedience. Is that? I felt that way too. I even remember distinctly telling my wife that. You know, if you don't mind,

I just wanna do a shout out for your Patreon account because, you know, I'm sure you're taking a hit for making this decision. And if it's okay, of course it is. I just wanna invite everybody who's watching, if you wanna support Cameron Batuzzi, because you've got a fantastic channel, and I know you've got a lot of plans for the channel,

and those excellent plans don't just materialize. In Australia, we say waters free whiskey costs money. If you want something good, money helps. And so if people wanna go, I think, is it patreon.com? Capturing Christianity? patreon.com? Capturing Christianity? Please, please go support our brother because you've got a fantastic apostolate. And I know it's going to continue to do great things for the church. And you also have a way they can give. If they want to do a one time or if they don't

want to give on Patreon, you can just go to capturing Christianity comm slash donate Okay. Yeah, and I Mentioned in my announcement video yesterday That our ministry is currently operating at a deficit And so what that means is that we had at the point that I made my video Which we have had a lot of support that has been pouring in. So I did want to say thank you guys so much. The best line, can I share it, is yesterday,

we were having dinner, eating some pasta, drinking some wine, about to get on some electric scooters, which was a bad idea. And I texted Michael Lofton, and he's like, hey, I just did a video, and I told everyone to go support him. And you said, ah, I could kiss a video and I told everyone to go support him. And you said, ah, I could kiss his bald head.

Best line of yesterday. Maybe the trip. It really means a lot because we have been, we've been really struggling the last year or so. Yeah. We've had a, we've had a deficit and we did have a period of prosperity with the, with the channel. So we had money in the bank that we were working through,

but we've gotten to the point where we had a $3,000 a month deficit that, we can't operate at that amount. You can't operate nor can you expand. No, no, and we can't do what we need to do. I had to stop making shorts. I had a marketing company that was making shorts for me. I had to stop doing that.

I had to stop. We cut all of the expenses that we could that we could cut Yeah, and things just seem to be going and And then this happens and I'm like, what do I yeah, what am I doing? Now I am I gonna make this announcement and we're gonna lose and I know from last night speaking to you You've had people right say I can't support this anymore. But and I think there was even a fella Protestant fella saying on it was a video. He told everybody you to stop I watched it last night and people can support you and not support you like yeah no one has to support you that's fine yeah yeah I wanted to say that too is that people need to support ministries that they really believe in yeah and so

if you feel that way honestly like if you feel that way about capturing Christianity you can't support it anymore I think that's the right move to make I think I think it's you don't need a Bayesian analysis for that It just seems like you shouldn't be supporting Yeah, well But but thank you guys for supporting it really I'm really excited to see what the Lord does with your beautiful Apostle. So, okay. What was it like our CIA? How did you approach a church?

How's it going? So Scott Hahn put me in touch with an RCIA director near me. His name is Michael Gormley. Big shout out, Michael Gormley. Not only is he brilliant, he's as brilliant as he is hilarious. For those who are watching, Goma is nicknamed.

He's the fella who runs catching foxes we have beautiful Italian kids waving at us from that window oh let's move here I mean Subinville's great but how bad was that pretty bad alright yeah okay so we'll edit that out Michael Gornley is amazing. He knows more about Catholicism than anyone. He knows so much. He was telling me, he went to Mass with me the other day, just explaining how it all works.

And he was like, yeah, so we genuflect because the first century Christians, you had to kneel down to the Caesar and when he was like crossing the road and they didn't want to do that because it was and so what they would do instead of Genuflecting on the left knee they would genuflect on the right knee. And so that's why you genuflect in the church He was like and the reason why we do the sign on the cross is because what we were doing originally is we would do like this little sign of the cross on our foreheads, but then as Nero and these other emperors would start to persecute the Christians,

then they wanted to let everyone know that, hey, I'm a Christian. So they would do the sign of the cross across their whole chest. So people could see. Christian civil disobedience. It's a beautiful thing. And so there's all sorts of reasons for everything.

It's so good. It's so rich. it's so rich. For everything. It's so rich. I love being Catholic. I'm so grateful to God that I am. So Scott puts you in touch with Gomer. And he's been amazing.

He's been meeting with me one on one as my schedule allows. Because you could probably teach the class I would think at this point. There's way too much to learn. I know about this one particular thing that I've studied, so I can teach on that. Yeah, if you want a typological argument with the paper, sit down, Michael Gormley. I got this. But apart from that, fair enough. Yeah, yeah. So, and I also did want to mention at some point that there have been some new developments with the typological arguments since the video that Swann put up, which is currently being worked on. Swann is doing an updated version of his argument.

Would you do me a favor, give me the link to that video, or to the updated video, we'll put it in the description below. Okay. Because obviously we're just talking freely over wine here. We're not expecting you to give an academic argument for this, but it might help people who are interested. We'll put that up soon. But I did want to just let you guys know,

there are some new developments. And this is not something that you know that was was doing all of this work convincing me that Catholicism is true again but there are some new developments that will be highlighted soon that I think it's gonna be big. It's gonna be big. So it's gonna make the case even even stronger. So when do you get confirmed brought into the church? So it was going to be November 20th, which So it was gonna be the 20th, but We decided that it was too soon. Yeah, we talking with with Michael and he and his wife were praying over the whole situation and everything

And we we both agreed that it was best to wait. So we're waiting until Easter. What are some sort of unexpected surprises that you've had about Catholics? Because you just said something that I think would shock a lot of Protestants. You said this, Gomer and his wife were praying over this. You know, like, I mean, there are a lot of bad Catholics, you know? And I'm one of them, and sometimes I'm worse. That's why I went to confession the other night, you see? Well, one thing that I didn't, I mean,

this may not be necessarily tied to Catholics, but one thing that's really been a surprise to me is that it's really ignited my spiritual life. My spiritual life was super dry. It was super dry. I didn't pray, didn't even read my Bible that much, or study. And it wasn't always like that. I'd have my periods of being up and down. So, but I was very spiritually dry. And one thing that sort of just happened as a result of this is understanding that there's all sorts of things in Catholicism that can help you enter into a deeper and richer spiritual life including like your prayer life doesn't have to be spontaneous and extemporaneous you can follow a written prayer just like what Jesus you know

commands in the Alphabat yeah and so there's all sorts of things you know I want to keep going sorry my spiritual life has been reignited as a result of this and that was not something that I expected and I know that people are going to be like yes well the way he's already is yeah of course that's going to is one of the difficult things about coming out public about this is there's nothing you can say that people aren't going to use against you. Yeah. But I think what I saw last night in some of the comments from your wonderful Protestant friends and I mean you've been my Protestant friend for so long and I love you and I love

and I'm not just saying that to sound patronizing like I really do learn a lot from my evangelical friends about you know their devotion to scripture, the small group communities, their love of Christ, there's a lot I do learn from them. I love it. But one thing I love about being Catholic is the seasons of the church It's like which I haven't even here comes Advent buckle up, you know, and then you know It's like the Christmas season that starts at Christmas, you know And and then you've got the beautiful the rosary and then you know The praying the praying the hours perhaps in the morning and evening.

It's kind of like your marriage. It's like if the only time you thought your marriage was going well is when you felt really emotionally kind of satisfied. It's like well that comes and goes. Maybe you had a bad night's sleep. Maybe you haven't had your coffee. Maybe you're sick. But if love is more than that if it's about my duties, you know, and I know many Protestants would agree wholeheartedly with that, but you know, that's beautiful to hear that your prayer life is...

Yeah, it's been... Is there a particular devotion that you feel may be drawn to? Because just a word of warning, okay? Okay. A word of warning, okay? I think sometimes Protestants become Catholic and they get really excited and they wanna do everything and they get exhausted really quickly. We have Catholics nodding. Were you a Protestant at all? No.

And it's just like there's too much. There's a billion chaplets. There's a billion different, well, okay, there's several colored scapulas. There's all these different things. And I love Jose Maria Escrava's advice. He says, there are many devotions within the church's treasury. Choose only a few and be faithful to them. So I don't, I honestly don't even know what you mean by like different devotions. Like what does that even mean?

Well, the rosary, the divine mercy chaplet. So, I mean, no, I don't, I don't have anything that I'm like super, one thing, and I don't know if this is even related, but something that I've been sort of contemplating a lot on recently is the fact that like, asking the saints to Intercede. Intercede, yeah. Intercede on your behalf.

Like that has just opened up a whole new resource to me that I had never done as a Protestant. And so I find myself in my prayer life like asking a saint to pray for me. You think of Hebrews 12, we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. Like imagine the man, you know, in the arena who's striving but for some reason he's completely unaware that everyone's around cheering him on and then all of a sudden you become aware That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah, so that that's that's one of the big things that I've What's the weirdest thing about Catholicism that you think is gonna take you a while to overcome? Even emotionally all the different things you have to do

Like there's a lot of rules and that's that's one thing that like my wife and I have been talking about too Is that like there's just a lot of things you just have to do and have to accept Yeah, and so it's like there's like a long list of things like in the catechism Yeah, you just you have to accept all of it and it's like, yeah, and that's That's kind of difficult to be very honest. I mean I see how like the analogy that I was giving was that like I mean, I see how like, the analogy that I was giving was that like, all of the different things that you've gotta do and believe as a Catholic,

you might say that those are the leaves, but what I've discovered is the trunk. I've discovered like the foundation of all of that. And so, and then you eventually see like, okay, this connects to this branch, that branch leads out to then this leaf. So it's not random arbitrary teachings. There's a unified whole. Yeah, and it all goes back to Jesus. Jesus is the trunk.

Amen. Jesus is the one who established the church and established a new kingdom. In a way, don't you think it's going to be less tiring? Because I think one of the things I would find difficult about being a Protestant is, gosh, how do I? Well, I kind of looked at it like it was very freeing. And that's one of the things that I've had to give up as a Catholic is like you don't just have the freedom to believe whatever you want and do whatever you want. Well, to a certain degree, you know what I mean.

So that was one of the things that was kind of pulling me back from Catholicism was the fact that like even when it comes like some of these central doctrinal beliefs, there's obviously wiggle room within Catholicism on these sort of tertiary doctrines. Different interpretations, perhaps different ways of phrasing it. Yeah. And so you have different models and different things. And so there is like variety in the Catholic faith. But at the same time, you don't have nearly as much freedom ecclesiologically in things that you believe. And so I was kind of worried about that.

I was like, I kind of like just reading the Bible and then just being like, all right, that's how it seems to me. Or hearing an argument for something, be like, seems like a good argument. And then just going with that. But as you're probably already discovering, seems like a good argument. And then just like going with that. But as you're probably already discovering, there's a new grade of freedom that comes from realizing

you don't have to be a brilliant historian or a patristic scholar. You don't need to read all of Martin Luther. Like, who has the time or the intellect, very few, to go back into every council and then pick a part, and say, okay, he was right, but he was wrong. The church got it right here, she got it wrong there. It's like you get to a point where you just sort of submit your intellect to the church Christ established

and put in charge of teaching. There's a freedom that comes from that, I think. How do you deal with there being so many bad Catholics, so many scandals in the press? I heard just today, what happened? Where was it? It doesn't matter, but there's more, sex scandals and wicked people, you know, who are doing horrible things. So how could this be the church Christ established

if this is happening? Yeah, I actually had a, in my Bayesian document, I actually had that as some evidence against the papacy. The bad popes. And so I use that as like, that's a little bit unexpected if the papacy is true. How unexpected? It's hard to say. Because when you actually spell out what the papacy actually is, it doesn't say that popes have got to act perfect or whatever.

It would be great if they did. They should be. They should be godly. It would be nice. It would be nice if all Catholics acted in good ways, but we have to continually realize that we're sinners and that it affects everyone. And Protestants are in the same boat. It's not as if they've got some silver bullet that's going to take care of this issue either. There's bad Protestant pastors who commit adultery

and do all sorts of bad things. And just because there's Catholics that do it doesn't mean that there aren't Protestants and so I think that to me it's like if it's an argument against Catholicism it's an argument against Protestantism too and so it if it is an argument against Catholicism it's actually an argument against Christianity more generally but I don't think that's actually a good argument. I heard someone say once, you don't judge the medicine based on those who haven't taken it. You judge the medicine based on those who have, and those are the saints.

You look at their lives. Yeah, the saints. That's another thing that's just been really cool is to see some of the lives of the saints. Because as you learn, if you're going in through confirmation or whatever, you pick a patron saint to be, what is it? Yeah, your patron saint, confirmation saint. Your confirmation saint. And so I've been really thinking about that and like, who am I going to choose?

That's another thing that's just really cool about Catholicism is that it sort of show it integrates, I would say, like humans. It integrates humans into the whole thing. And it's like, humans are involved in this. That's what the Bible is all about. It's about humans, and it's okay to celebrate the humans that have gone on to be exemplars. I don't know, I think that that's just really cool

that the whole thing about saints is kind of cool to me. Also, also because I'm a real big fan of the soul building theodicy, which is an answer to why God allows so much suffering in the world, is that he does that in part because it helps build our character. And so the the the Saints are paradigmatic examples of soul building. To me, a lot of these cases, when you look at them, you just look up... I mean, even some of the recent ones like Maximilian Kolbe, I was wearing his face on my shirt the other day,

he is such a paradigmatic example of the way that God can use suffering in someone's life to build these or exemplify, I'm failing to come up with a non-philosophical term for it, exemplify these great goods, these great goods of sacrifice and his story is really particularly incredible in that he was sent to Auschwitz and as a Catholic priest he was like I Auschwitz and as a Catholic priest he was like I don't think that they were necessarily like trying to kill him first or whatever but he was discipling people and helping others that were that were there along with him as being prisoners and there was this

one guy a Jewish man friend yeah who was being sent to death, along with many other prisoners to die of starvation. And this guy is crying out for his life, I have kids, I have kids, I have a wife, I have kids. And the priest just goes, take me instead. Maximilian just goes, hey, just take me instead, I'll do it. And like, no one could believe it. This Catholic guy wants to die in place of this Jewish man.

Go ahead. Yeah, sorry, I was in Auschwitz this year and. Or he may not have been Jewish. He may have been. No, you're right, Franszyszek Gajewniczek. Was he Jewish? He was a Jew, yeah. Yeah, he was actually here at Kolbe's canonization process

and spoke at it. Right. Yeah, and then did a pilgrimage to Auschwitz every year until his death honoring the man who saved his life but but when I was in Auschwitz what shocked me was I just figured that he was one brave hero among many so I felt a little silly asking our tour guide if she had heard of Maxwell and Colbert and she says of course and there's like there's like a big candle in that starvation bunker there's there's a big plaque dedicated to this man.

And they say that in the starvation chamber, they were used to hearing screams and groans. And he was hearing the Catholic's confessions. He was praying with them. Oh my gosh, how good is the Lord? How good is the medicine he wants to give us if we'll just take it, huh? You know, I got the joy of doing the scabby tour the other day where you go beneath the

Vatican. Yes. Beneath St. Peter's. I didn't get to do it. I'm so upset. Maybe we'll try it tomorrow morning. Maybe someone will hook us up. Pope Francis, if you're watching, surely you can pull the strings.

But it was such a joy. He's here. He's somewhere over there. Is he? Yeah, where is he? Well, we don't know. He's over there. No, I saw it this morning. I saw where he lives. Ah, that's beautiful. It's right on the other side of the Basilica. But what was fascinating to me, right? He said like Nero

hosts a circus here and he Mart kills St. Peter who was crucified upside down. The new Eliacom. Yeah, the Obelix that we see here, did I pronounce that right? Is maybe one of the last things he sees before he dies. Here's what else is cool, Obelisk. This was taken from Egypt to Rome to show that the Romans are greater than the Egyptians.

And then the frigging Catholics take it and put a cross on top of it. Boom, I love that. The subsuming of all things and giving it to the glory of God. But what was fascinating to me, right, is St. Peter's, well, the altar at St. Peter's is built upon another altar, upon another altar,

and it was only in the 1930s. It was always believed that St. Peter's bones were beneath the altar. It wasn't until the 1930s we actually had archeological evidence believed that st. Peter's bones were beneath the altar wasn't till the 1930s We actually had archaeological evidence of that fact. I got to go down there to see the bones of Peter The history are you telling you the story to make you jealous? And so you come back and do around too, but the beauty I was just standing there It was like I went to a CrossFit gym and realized how out of shape I was

I'm among the Saints and I'm like, I am terrible. But again, I got to do something about that. I got to go to confession. And it's such a, how excited are you to make your first confession? More excited than I should be. People may not be able to really like, why are you so excited to go to confession? But I don't know. I just, I'm so excited that that's a part of Catholic life. Like confess, you get to go confess your sins to someone else, which

the Bible says to you. And then the guy can absolve you of your sins, which the Bible says you can. And you don't have to do mental gymnastics to feel forgiven. Yeah. And I've heard Protestants say this sometimes. They'll say, I would go into my room if I had committed some grave sin and I would confess. And I would do that until I felt forgiven.

But you go to the sacrament of confession and when he says, I absolve you in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, doesn't matter how you feel, it's been done. It's really cool. I love confession. And it's cool, because because I mean a lot of our lives are spent kind of posturing, unfortunately, until we grow in sanctity. We tell people

the good things about ourselves. You do not go to confession to tell the priest what you've done well. You go and you're like, I'm a schmuck. And he's like, I know, tell me more. It's a cool, even just on the- How often do you go? Me? Because what I've learned is that you have to go once a year. Yeah. I go- Once a you have to go once a year. Once a year seems like so infrequent.

This is how good Holy Mother Church is. She's so kind and she's so gentle. So when you say, like, you've got to believe everything in this catechism, the church realizes that you may not, but that doesn't make you a formal heretic, maybe just a material heretic. We have many false beliefs, but that we're not culpable for the church is so gentle So loving and so saying once a year is like this is the least we love you You know The church doesn't want to put a burden upon us that would put us outside of the grace of God

So I go once every two weeks once a month Drag my kids. What's cool is my kids wanna go. Actually, it's weird. They wanna go. It's not weird though. It's not weird. No?

No. To be like, you wanna go tell this strange man all the bad stuff you've done? Yeah! But you kinda like, you kinda get to get it off your chest and like, and then you get to move on. Yeah. It seems kinda, which I mean, I mean, Protestants are gonna say,

you can just do that directly with God, and fair enough. And you can, that's the thing, why can't I just go straight to God? You can. Yeah, no one said you can't. Why can't I pray just directly to God? You can. Yeah, you can pray directly.

Catholicism is the both end. Why do you ask your friends to pray for you if you can go straight to God? So, capturing Christianity. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What's gonna happen? What are the plans? What is the five-year vision which you may not have thought of but let's do it. I don't have the full five-year. Well the vision had kind of like been going like this because of our situation. This man just intuited my needs. I looked at him and he brought the wine over. Wow. It was amazing.

So one of the things that we've been wanting to do for a while is hire, which the firm that we were using to create our shorts, I'd like to hire them to create shorts and clips and handle our social media and do all of it. Because that's something that really ties me down and it requires a lot of work and effort to do that. But what I need to be doing is focused on creating the new content, the new direction for the channel. So that's one thing that we're really looking forward to being able to do. Now what we're doing right now this deficit that that I Explained earlier sir bug on my head. No, you're good. Um, thanks

the deficit that were that I was talking about earlier is to cover our expenses, so if You know we do get to the point where we get an excess you will by the end of this episode weren't he Catholics That would, I mean, that'd be an answer to prayer. But what we would do with that money is then use that to hire an advertising firm, to create shorts, to create clips, handle the thumbnails, handle the titles, and make them SEO friendly and do all of that,

handle our social media, post clips to Instagram, and do all the things, and like that would be, and I know that you do that on yours, and it's very successful But that's one thing that we're looking forward to do what about your in-person conferences that you've been doing yeah, so we're Right now what we do is we have two events a year two special events one of them is CC exchange where we have two people on each side of an issue come together and have conversations. And then we have our annual CCVN conference, and we just finished our CCV2 conference in August,

and it was on the topic of science and God. And the next one is gonna be on religion, which if we can raise the support to get to that point, then we're gonna obviously continue doing these conferences and the next one's going to be on the resurrection. So, and Brittany is the mastermind behind- Your wife. My wife, she's the mastermind behind all of our conferences.

The reason why she is on board with Capturing Christianity full-time and the reason why we need funds is so that we can do these special events and conferences take a whole lot of time and effort to throw together. And if you've been to one, then you see how much work Brittany does.

And so, yeah, so conferences, the CC exchange that we'll do once a year, and then the CCV3 next year in August. And then my long-term goals, eventually to be as cool as you, to have my own studio where I can fly people in and have incredible lighting and an amazing little space and do really cool lights and beams and not fog, necessarily, but a cool aesthetic and everything.

And that's my ultimate dream. And my ultimate dream is eventually hire people to come on and to do Capturing Christianity full-time and to do kind of like what Gregory Pine does on your channel. You've got someone else to come on and he says hi by the way. Oh yeah? He emailed me today and said he's gonna celebrate Holy Mass for you and your family tomorrow. Yeah what a guy. What a guy. I love when you say that. what a guy. What a guy. I love when you say that, what a guy.

What a guy. Oh, what a guy. Stop it. What a guy. Isn't it being cool too, just to kind of like show up in Rome and meet these priests? You're like, I'm part of this family now. We met this brilliant guy yesterday.

Oh my gosh. Was it yesterday? He was amazing. He's incredible. And I was telling you in the car, I was like, this guy is like, he's brilliant. He's like one among many. There's so many people like this guy is like he's brilliant he's like one among many yeah there's so many people like this that you meet in Catholicism the guy that

you're your spiritual mentor that when I was we were in the backyard of oh father Boniface yeah like him he's another example Plato himself Alex Plato yeah who was on your channel recently like all of these there's so many examples of brilliant Catholic I think that's right the the impressiveness the sanctity of the good Catholics is far more interesting and impressive Hey, we're just talking about you Do you want to come up do you want to come up here say hi Get no pressure now that we just built you up. I mean friggin soccer

This guy is the new play. Well, I would step out and let him. No, he can just scoot over here. I think they can use the wide shot. Oh, good. How's it going? Doing well. Good to see you.

Good to see you, Father. Great to see you. Hi, everyone watching live. This is the guy we're talking, I don't even remember your name. Father Michael Baggett. Father Michael Baggett, I'm unforgettable. I should remember that.

I should. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yeah, great. That's great. So what were you saying? Was it true? Everything. Everything.

Everything is true. Yes, yeah. Great. Yeah, we talked about the whole journey. Some of the things that we talked about the other day. Beautiful. Yeah, and so. Well, it's great to have you as a brother in the church. Yeah, so not excited for you. Thank you. Yeah Thanks. Well, I'll see you soon. Yes, so I'm gonna be interviewing father Michael tomorrow I we won't release it live. I don't think but we will release it at some point

It's gonna be an excellent discussion within the next next decade you're going to hear an exclusive interview. And it's gonna blow your mind. That's right. So use this next decade to prepare. Alright, well thanks for letting me sabotage this big moment. No problem. It's so good to be here with you. And this incredible backdrop.

Oh glory god. Did you know today is the anniversary of the dedication of St. Peter and Paul's Basilica. I did not know that. Did you already tell me that? I got to go to Latin Mass in the, what do you call it, the tombs, the crypt? Yeah, the crypt area. It was a joy. What a fitting day to share your journey.

Glory to God. Good. Amen. Well, you can come on my interview if you'd like okay, you can totally sabotage it. Okay Thanks, thank you very much. Thank you. I'm up here looking forward to having a lemon cello with you soon Some people have over 3,000 people watching right now. I've been following this brother for quite some time This is you should we take some is that okay with you? All right, and you he would come home. His love for Christ kept him searching.

All right, let's go to our massive thanks to our local supporters. Again, we're gonna do an exclusive live stream for our locals in a couple hours. Lemon cello in hand. But let's see if we can take at least a few questions. My goodness gracious, let me see. Is there something really Catholic you want to get before you go home? Like a Bible

that's complete? One thing that I would like is like a cross necklace. Oh dude. I'll buy it for you. Okay. Yeah. I've been looking for one for a while, but yeah He not much of a necklace guy Yeah, but or like jewelry and in like I've got my wedding ring when I was a in my 20s Or maybe earlier. I was like a big rings. It was weird. I had a face Okay, but back to the bling now your're Catholic. Alright so we have 35 questions. We're not gonna get through them but also feel free to give inadequate short lightning round answers. Awesome. Stacy B says was Cardinal John

Henry Newman an influencer for you? No. Aldo and Isabelle says can we support him on locals if we don't like patreon like Patreon and prefer it to his website? We do have a Locals account, but it's not active right now. Yeah, good for you. I recommend capturingchristianity.com slash donate where you can do one time or monthly if you don't like Patreon. Dunk Boys, is there any book recommendations that really helped you in joining the Catholic Church? Unfortunately, there is not a book length treatment of the argument that I was talking about and so I can't recommend, like, Swan is working on, I think, a book that he'll

eventually publish on this argument, but there is no book-length treatment, unfortunately, that can be heard about. Was there a perhaps most helpful book, not having to do with the papacy necessarily, that you thought, this is a really good book that helped me with the Catholicism in general or? People have been sending me books since Since you've been on my show You have a library at home There was a book. I can't remember the title of it. There was that one book that was Specific to the papacy, but I can't remember the title of it. Chris asks when someone is caught up on limited historical proofs

What can they do to sincerely restore their faith? the papacy but I can't remember the title of it. Chris asks, when someone is caught up on limited historical proofs, what can they do to sincerely restore their faith? Theological arguments often sound good in my brain but they don't always convince my heart so I end up feeling distant from God. Can you repeat the first part of that? When someone is caught up on limited, I'm not sure what he means by this,

historical proofs, what can they do to sincerely restore their faith? Perhaps what he's saying is these proofs aren't fully convincing to me. Maybe what you should do is familiarize yourself with the word, you may just not be familiar with like the best arguments that there are for the resurrection. So two resources that I would recommend on that, one of them is Richard Swinburne's, The Resurrection of God Incarnate.

He's Greek Orthodox, by the way. But he's got an amazing book, but as if it's like a bad thing. He's got an amazing book on the resurrection, and he approaches it from a Bayesian standpoint. He's got at the end of his book, and think in the appendix, he's got all the calculations that he uses. Wow. He ends at a probability of either, I think it's a.97 that the resurrection is true. So that means 97%. And he uses very conservative figures for his calculations. So that's one resource.

Another resource is the essay in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology by Lydia and Tim McGrew. They also have work beyond that article that I mentioned there, but if you look up the McGrews on the resurrection, top-notch stuff. So you may just not be familiar with like the strongest arguments that there are for the resurrection. Steven says, my biggest obstacles to conversion was Marian dogmas, praying to the saints and the second of reconciliation, converted from evangelical to Catholic in 2019. And these issues stem from pride, he says. I know we've discussed some of this, but feel free if you want to take another swing at it. How has these issues gone for you?

Yeah, so Mariology is something that seems foreign to me. It still seems foreign, but it's never been really an objection of mine. And the reason for that is because even though I didn't grow up with those beliefs about like Mary's immaculate conception or the fact that she was a perpetual virgin, I didn't have an argument for the conclusion of the Protestant beliefs that I sort of grew up with. And so when I kind of looked into things, there was a book by Brent Petrie on the Jewish roots of Mary. Yeah.

Yeah. And in one of those sections he talks about the fact, like, could the brothers of Jesus be referring to, like, maybe Jesus' cousins or something and someone else? And he actually does give a pretty compelling case in there that that might be the case. But it was never really an objection of mine, because again, I don't really know how to formulate an argument for the Protestant positions on those subjects. So it's not that I haven't tried,

it's just that I haven't found a good argument for it. And so it's never really been an objection of mine, although I still think it's still very foreign to me. Now just a heads up to some of these locals who are asking questions some of these questions I'm not going to ask because they're about personal issues that Cameron hasn't asked me Wants to keep private which of course we respect and so that's I'm not snubbing you I'm just that's why I'm not asking your questions. Yeah, Jacob says Cameron Who was the biggest influence for you to start an investigation on what the true faith is?

Probably you, probably you because I had never, never thought about the Catholic versus Protestant debate until you invited me to come on your show to talk about something completely unrelated. It was reformed epistemology and the argument from contingency. And so we talked about those things on your channel, but then we did a separate thing on my channel where we looked at some of the objections and I kind of shared my thoughts. And that was like, I think in that video, which now has over a hundred thousand views, maybe more at this point. But in that video, one of the things that we talked about was the Eucharist,

and that was one of the first times that I had actually read John 6 and been like, that is pretty straightforward actually. And you were the one, you were the sort of catalyst that got me thinking about these issues. But not to like, degrade you at all all but I didn't look at like Matt Fradd when I was trying to decide like is the papacy true. Yeah I know. I wasn't looking for Matt Fradd's arguments. No I'm happy to be the tip of the spear. Joe Ward says favorite part of Rome also a new convert and would love to make a pilgrimage. What's your favorite part of Rome? This has got to be your best.

Vatican. Just look at it. St. Peter's Basilica. Oh lord, thank you. If you've ever been in St. Peter's Basilica, I mean I've been here about seven or eight years ago as a Protestant and I remember going in and just like it's hard to even comprehend that this is a real structure. I know it really is. You walk in and you're like how is this here? How am I having this experience of looking at this? It must have dropped down from heaven. Yeah. Who did any of this?

Chris says, what are the top theological arguments that tripped you up the most while considering conversion? What are the top theological arguments that may be obstacles to your conversion? We've kind of been through that. Yeah, yeah. Annihilationism, divine simplicity. Will Hellfam says, what advice does Cameron have for a Catholic who is helping a previously agnostic friend discern or confer to Catholicism?

To convert to Catholicism or from agnosticism all the way? Yes, all the way. Yeah, so there's, again, there's kind of steps and that's why I think that it's important that capturing Christianity be that first step from atheism to Christianity. And so, yeah, what I would suggest is, there's an amazing book that I can recommend that you read

if you want to have a really good argument for the existence of God that is is very accessible very generous to the skeptic to the atheist what is it it's called how reason can lead to God yes by dr. Josh Rasmussen I have I need to have him in person oh yeah what a guy that would be amazing his I'll fly you to the Vatican when you convert. Deal? Josh? No? Alright. Being a Batusi says Rachel. Do you feel like Catholicism is in your blood? It probably is somewhere. Yeah. Well, yeah, but I grew up very charismatic Protestant. Okay. Tommy Lee says Cameron

Have you chosen a patron confirmation saint yet? I've been no I haven't chosen one. I'm considering Maximilian Colbe but I haven't I haven't is it Colbe or Colbee? Colbe. Colbe sounds more like Colby. Whatever you like. Colbe. Heidi says, would you Cameron be willing to share your experience, excuse me, of at Mass that moved you to really want to be Catholic? One of the things that I remember distinctly going to Mass in Georgia with you at the the Divine Liturgy, the Divine Liturgy was the reverence that I experienced because in Protestant church, it's not very reverent. Granted, it depends on the church and it depends on the pastor. Sure.

Maybe that's another reason why Protestantism isn't true, but it's not one that I would like to defend as an actual argument, I'm just making a joke. But what am I even talking about? It's okay. Holy Mass. There was this experience perhaps. It was the reverence. Yeah, the reverence of the priest face forward, which I know that there's like there's different English, the regular liturgy, that regular English liturgy, they face forward now and some of those changes. Sometimes, yeah. of Vatican one well here we go it's a big debate but uh somewhat time after Vatican two though it wasn't called for in the documents right

Padre that's right we could talk a lot we'll talk about that when you have father when you'll have Cameron on your podcast and you can okay uh the kingdom scribe says thanks be to god praying for your continued journey, Cameron. Question, do you think your conversion will affect many other Protestants to cross the Tiber? Why or why not? I think it can, but that is not necessarily my goal in doing this. The goal today is to share my personal story because I've been very public about my journey, and so I think I owe it to everyone that's been

watching to at least spell that out and explain what the purpose of that is. I wanted to say though that something I kind of mentioned earlier is that your objections to Catholicism may not be my objections to Catholicism. So your, another philosopher's term, noetic structure, your web of beliefs, the beliefs that you have may make it such that Catholicism, in your view, is false. And I want to say, I think that can be, it's a person relative, but I think that if you've got that set of beliefs wherein you think, you've got some argument, some reason to think that Catholicism is false, I don't wanna say to that person,

you're being irrational. I wanna say, nevertheless, I disagree at this point, given my set of beliefs, but I think that someone on the other side can be perfectly within their epistemic rights, they can be justified in their belief. So I'm not coming at this trying to proselytize or trying to convince people to become Catholic, but nevertheless, I think that some of the things I've talked about today might move someone in that direction a little bit. Pope Francis will be happy. Okay, do you... Pope Francis will be happy.

Well, he talks against proselytizing. I know, I know, I know. This wasn't a criticism. He makes the distinction between evangelism and proselytizing. This wasn't a criticism. He makes the distinction between evangelism and proselytism. How does he feel this will affect his current follower listener base? So I had to, and this is something my wife helped me with a lot and I'm very thankful to her to help me out with this, but I had to really think about the impact that this was going to have on capturing Christianity.

And I had to think long and hard, what's going to happen with this channel now? Is it going to become just another Catholic channel where it's like pure Catholic content, we're always going to be defending Catholicism? Or are we going to stick to our roots and defend beliefs that are central to all Christians and that all Christians can get behind. And that's something that it took a lot of thought and reflection to finally come to that realization that no, we need to stick to our,

like the reason why I think God blessed this ministry in the first place was to do that, was to serve that function. And so that's one of the things that I think is hopefully helping to mitigate, I know that a lot of the things that I think is hopefully helping to mitigate. I know that a lot of Protestants and a lot of supporters are going to be upset about this, especially if you disagree and you think that you've got reasons to object to Catholicism. So I completely understand that.

And again, I want to emphasize that you're totally, please support the ministries that you really believe in so Tasha W says first Thank you for previously talking about your past struggle with anxiety That really helped me and was a consolation at a difficult time My question for you is how can we pray for you and support you and your family at this time? Welcome home, brother pray for peace, pray for... Peace is the main thing because that covers so many different aspects of the anxiety that's a result of it.

So just pray for peace. Joey says, what can Catholics do better? Know what they believe. Alex, that's good. I think it's great. Catholic.com. Alex says, what is your favorite leisurely activity? So a softball question perhaps.

What do you do for fun? I enjoy playing video games with my friends. What's your favorite video game? Super Smash Brothers. I even started a new gaming channel. I saw that. What's it called? It's called CC Gaming. Catholic saw that. What's it called? It's called CC Gaming. Ooh. Yeah, where I do like... Catholic Christianity Gaming.

This could be your Catholic channel. You could grow that. No. Okay. It's still going to be generic. What we do on that one is it's very topical. So like I'll be playing a video game with an expert, like an expert gaming professional.

And then I ask them during that stream questions about big questions, like do you believe in God? And so they'll pause the game and I'll ask them, hey, so what do you think about God's existence? And then it's like random, yeah, they're expecting it. But this random professional gamer is then they share their thoughts. What a wonderful idea, I gotta watch this. Yeah.

Chubby Spider. Chubby Spider. Probably not his real name. These are local names? Yeah. The name his mother gave him. Chubby Spider. No question, just a virtual hug and a warm welcome

to help restore him for his continued journey ahead. Thank you. Which would be very lovely if it wasn't coming from a Chubby spider. Matt says, Congrats, Cameron Batuzzi, future patron saint of good hair. Question, any plans to publish your Bayesian analysis on the paper seat? It'll probably be on some other channel where I mentioned in my announcement video that I won't be covering the Catholic Protestant debate on my channel so if someone maybe invites me to keep going sorry if someone

maybe invites me to come on to their channel to talk about it I'd be open to that all right here's a good one Anastasia says is it possible to congratulate him in person in Rome yes can we invite everybody to come to this thing we can't let's just do it What's the worst that can happen? So what time are we going? Seven? At seven o'clock we are going to be at the Pope Paul the sixth residence on the rooftop pounding lemon cellos, sipping lemon cellos and you are welcome to come and say hello to Cameron there at 7 p.m. Alan says, how do you make sense of bad popes or the possible failures in the current pontificate? I think you've got to, again, kind of realize what the papacy actually means. And that's

what Catholic apologists will often point out is that it's about faith and morality, these infallible claims or statements, are ex cathedra and they concern faith and morality, these infallible claims or statements are ex cathedra, and they concern faith and morality. And so if he's not operating under those specific circumstances, then you leave open room for error because that's only human-only natural. And so I think it really just, you've got to understand what the actual papal claims are. And most Protestants that are informed on the issues, well, they don't really use that as a

as a very good or strong objection to Catholicism. They'll point to things like maybe justification or the papacy saying that it's not found in history. And so they don't typically use the bad pope's objection. Although it is used, it is used and some people do. What are you most looking forward to about becoming Catholic? Probably prayer and attending mass. Receiving the Eucharist. Okay, final question. If you want to discuss more, you can let me know.

Okay. Final question would be, there's a Protestant viewing and he's just kind of at his wit's end. And as you say, different noetic structures aside, what sort of advice would you give to him or her? Follow the evidence wherever it leads, but just be open to it. Like really be open to following the evidence. That's what I tried to do. I tried to be open while acknowledging my bias both ways. So again, I had bias toward Catholicism, but I also had very strong bias

against it. And just do your best to follow the truth. I can't really give any yeah it's very it sounds cliche it sounds like anyone can give that advice but that's the best advice I can give is just really do your best to follow the truth and don't don't stop until you do it until you find it. You know maybe the first step is acknowledging that you don't want to do that like to act because I think most of us would say yeah of course we should follow the yeah yeah but you're like I don't want to do that Like to act because I think most of us would say yeah, of course we should follow the yeah Yeah, but you're like I don't want to do I'm not sure if I want to do that Like what if it led to who knows where Islam Mormonism? I am NOT so okay admit that and of course you don't have to investigate every worldview and every religion

But if you are feeling drawn towards Catholicism because of some particular reason maybe admit I don't actually want to become Catholic and then say, okay, but at a deeper level, don't you want the fullness of the truth? Well, yes, I do. Okay, then. What you said. Yeah. And this is great.

I think people should respect the heck out of you, Cameron, because even if they disagree with you, it feels like everybody always says, follow the evidence. And we're all good with it when it leads to our side. We're not good with it when it leads to somebody else's side. But to say, well, even if this person disagrees with me, you know, they're stepping out, they're making a courageous decision that's not necessarily going to have a positive impact

on their family or their ministry or their finances. And yet you're doing that. So I really commend you for that. It's been pretty tough. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Well, here's what I'd like to do. We have about 3,000 people watching right now and I would like to ask those 3,000 people plus anybody

else who will watch later to pray a Hail Mary with me for Cameron, his family and ministry and please go and subscribe to Capturing Christianity. Subscribe to this channel if you haven't already. Become a local supporter of mine by clicking the link in the description so you can be part of the live chat that's going to take place in a couple of hours. And please consider supporting Cameron Batuzzi on Patreon.com slash Capturing Christianity or by donating to him maybe at a one time at CapturingChristianity.com slash donate. Christianity or by donating to him maybe at a one time at caption Christianity comm slash

Donate donate. Yeah. Yeah, let's let's let's be good to our brother here, Matt I feel like we should have said something at the beginning about your sunglasses You're not wearing these to look cool. Yeah, or to like be that's just an accidental byproduct It's an accident happened to be that I like your shirt is open. You're like your chest. I'm Italian I like the taco. Well, you're like your shirt is open, you're like your chest hair is coming out. I'm Italian, I let the taco meat float. And you're... But it's for practical reasons. These aren't even your glasses.

There is a sun and there is a light brighter than the sun in my face right now. That's correct. So I'm glad we got that out of the way. I feel like I should have mentioned that. Here's a test. If you've watched all the way up until this point, I would like you to say in the comments section your glasses look great. Here's a test. If you've watched all the way up until this point, I would like you to say in the comments section Your glasses look great

Or don't look great since I don't want you to lie and that will be evidence that you have watched up until this point And it'll also confuse everybody in the comments section who hasn't Well, maybe it won't because I had him on at the beginning. Anyway, how do you feel about praying a Hail Mary with me? I've never done it. Oh stop it. I know. This is terrific. What's funny is that I've never done the rosary but I've also had dreams about the rosary, about praying the rosary. I've had one specific dream where I remember praying the rosary in it and I don't even know the rosary but I don't know. That's beautiful. Yeah and just a shout out again to Catholic woodworker who sent this rosary he wanted you to have it it's really isn't that beautiful? It is beautiful. It's really beautiful there's a link in the

description click the link 20% off and check out his rosaries they're beautiful yeah. So do you even do you know the Hail Mary? No, I don't. I know the first line of it. Here, can we look it up and you can pray with me? Hail Mary full of grace. You are so terrific. You said something the other day that was so adorable, and I mean that in the most patronizing way possible.

Thanks. You were like, can we pray? And I'm like, yeah. And you're like, okay, In the name of the Father, it was so awesome to hear you do that. And then at the end, you're like, do we close that way as well? Ah, dude.

So, you know what it's like? It's like when someone comes to your home country and you see it with fresh eyes, through their eyes, you know? So seeing the beauty of Catholicism. All right, can you look up the Hail Mary prayer because I don't have a- Oh, your phone isn't working.

Let's see. And we'll ask all 3,000 people to pray it with us. I think I may have got it now. No, I can't do it. Hey, if you type in Hail Mary. Should we just confirm him now, Father? Sure. Who's your bishop? My bishop is named Francis. Should we just confirm him now, Father? Who's your bishop? You are in the Diocese of the Vatican? Text your bishop. That's amazing. Text your bishop and ask him if we can have a... No, no, we're waiting're waiting. I can't confirm him, but I can at least give him a recent blessing. That would be beautiful.

Okay, here it is. Here it is. All right. We'll pray Hail Mary, and then Padre will give you a blessing. So I'll pray the first half, and you pray the second half. Does that sound good? Okay. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Hail Mary. Holy. Holy, I've already messed up. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Amen. Let's invoke God's blessing upon you. Right here with St. Peter's tomb behind us. We'll call on Saint Peter's intercession as well. Heavenly Father, we call down your blessing upon your son, Cameron. We thank you for his many gifts. We thank you for inspiring this pursuit of truth because you are the author of all truth. You are the source of all goodness and beauty and your splendid Basilica St. Peter's

is but a pale reflection of the glory to which all of us are called to experience surrounded by your saints forever. And may the blessing of almighty God, the father and the son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you Cameron remain with you forever. Amen. Thank you you father thank you to everybody who's watching God bless you peace out that's it glory to Jesus Christ this it doesn't get better than this you might think that

it does it doesn't this is it this we've might think that it does, it doesn't. This is it. We've peaked with human experience. It doesn't get better.