Pints With Aquinas - Catholicism & Orthodoxy w/ Erick Ybarra

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Ericks Book on Melchizedek: https://www.amazon.com/Melchizedek-Last-Supper-Patristic-Sacrifice/dp/B09QF9K6PS Erick's Article on "the heretical pope" Vigilius: https://www.academia.edu/49426689/Papal_Infallibility_and_the_Constituta_of_Pope_Vigilius_on_Ibas_of_Edessa Erick's debate: https://youtu.be/pkIfo15jV-8 Catholic Lofi: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZlJ1VMQEnZhs7SRfJBExwg Erick's Article “Coping” with Being United to a “Heretical” Pope?: https://erickybarra.org/2020/11/01/communion-with-the-pope-if-the-pope-is-a-heretic-how-does-a-traditional-catholic-cope-also-the-growing-appeal-of-eastern-orthodoxy/ Baltimore Office!: https://www.liturgicalartsjournal.com/2019/03/an-introduction-to-baltimore-office-1888.html  

Hey, Matt Fradd here, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pintswithaquinas.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com.com start when you would because I might say Mike's the head guy yeah it's his channel yeah I remember when we looked at the two year anniversary I want to say it started in January of 2018 okay yeah as a YouTube channel as a YouTube channel yeah yeah and it was just it's amazing how quickly YouTube videos have advanced thumbnails Thumbnails, titles, everything. If you go back to 2018, it felt like... Yeah, I mean, even the architecture of Reasoning Theology developed, because when we started, I remember Michael would be talking to me and I'd be in my car.

Yeah. And now, look at it now, I mean, it's just, I mean, he really hit the fast lane button with technological advancements. So he's very gifted in that domain. So what was it like? I didn't realize that you just told me that he was Greek Orthodox when you started the channel.

Yeah, yeah. So did he reach out to you and say, let's talk about Catholicism and Orthodoxy? Yeah, yeah. I mean, we had been talking for years before just through Facebook Messenger. No, but it is, I think I've really, you have to just calm down when you do live streams or else you just can't do this for a living because it's just, there are so many technical things that happen. Yeah, yeah, and I don't do it. I see Michael Lofton was the expert and he took all that responsibility. So, I mean, that's why, I mean, it's really, reason that theology is, you know, it's his, you know.

I mean, I was grateful. He gave me the opportunity to participate in its development. But yeah, I don't know a thing. If you were to put me in. Well, I don't either, that's why I had Neil. Yeah, so. Yeah, so.

Okay, so he was Greek Orthodox. And so how did that happen? He reached out to you and said? Well, you know, like I said, we were talking for years about these issues, you know. Oh, as friends? As friends, yeah. Yeah, and we were, you know, we spent years reading like Call to Communion, you know, Catholic answers, and some of the mainline Catholic apologetic networks. And you know, events in the world had got to a point where we were just almost going

back to the drawing board. You're like, whoa. By events in the world, you mean Pope Francis? Among other things, even if those other things are small in comparison, okay but yeah, yeah, and So it brings you back to like the the basic questions, you know, well, wait a minute, you know Where is the chink in the chain here? So we would just talking and read and read and read and go back and forth

and have very complex conversations about Catholic doctrine, history, orthodoxy, but everything kind of came back to Catholicism and orthodoxy. It just seemed like it wasn't organized that way. You know, it just, that's how it was. It just sort of just, that's how the chips fell. And he ended up going to the Orthodox Church. And I wasn't shocked by that. And I stayed friends with him. I told him, I said, this doesn't affect our friendship in any way. Now, was he Protestant? I love that the first hour of this interview is going to be all about Michael Austin.

Was he Catholic? Then went Orthodox? Was he Protestant and then Orthodox? Yeah, so he's got a couple testimonies online, I think, but if you listen to some of those, just type in Michael Lofton on YouTube, he has a journey from, so he has a wild, I mean, he's got a, he's quite a life, but when he had his conversion to Christianity, he read the Bible in like a month, I think. It was like less than 30 days. And he became a Baptist. Then from a Baptist, he went to reform.

Pete Okay. Pete Then from reform, he worked his way back through history and scripture and theology to the Catholic Church. And then was Catholic, you know, and kind of like, you know, riding the roller coaster, like, you know, traditional Christianity, this is what the apostles did, you know, and then he had a series of experiences where it led him towards considering the Byzantine claims. And that was, you know, I was, you know,

we would talk about that, but you know, he had his own journey too. He read all his own stuff and so he made his way to orthodoxy and and we still kept communications, you know, and we would talk about orthodoxy and Catholicism while he was Orthodox and It was years later, he came back, but that was after R&T was already created. So when R&T was created, he was Orthodox, and he just wanted to start a YouTube platform where theology and reason and philosophy could be discussed and freely without hostility,

getting into the real difficult things and getting feedback from the public. That was one of the real big reasons just to instead of having those conversations in private, maybe have them in public and see maybe maybe we're missing something. That's tough. That takes courage. Yeah. Because if you want an honest conversation, you have to be vulnerable that way. You're at what you're looking at. That's right. That's right. And I'm sure you can listen to some of those early videos where I said something ridiculous. Sure. Yeah. Ten years from now, you might look back on this and think the same thing. Yeah.

So, that's interesting. So, that would be fascinating to go back and watch his journey on YouTube. So, at what point did he decide to become Catholic? Yeah. So, it was, you know, I would say three years he was Orthodox, but I think he was, I think he learned that he had been disillusioned by the Byzantine claims and was expecting a certain kind of glorious experience in the Orthodox Church. You know, I'll let him speak for himself. Yeah, he's been on the show.

He's been on, yeah, that's right. About that, yeah. Yeah, he was on here and I think he's done a number of other testimony videos. But some of the things that the Orthodox hold out, because it's got a lot of YouTube glory. I mean, if you just put in Orthodoxy on YouTube, you can spend 180 hours just listening to the

chant. A little street appeal. Yes, the chant. Beautiful. Whenever they get a chance to record some monk who's got five minutes of advice, that's golden. Yeah, you've got all these things. And so sometimes when people go to the Orthodox church, they're expecting what they gathered from that scope.

But just to learn that it's kind of like, you gotta do the dirty work of just getting to know people who may not be interested in you, you've got to live a parish life. Yeah, with an imperfect priest. I mean, there's an analogy here with Catholicism. You hear about so many converts, maybe they don't say they watch YouTube and ended up in the church, but they read, they'll say,

I read my way into the faith. I know Scott had this experience and others had this experience where they become convinced of the Catholic claims and then they've got to go into a parish and realize kind of like a bit of whiplash. That's right. That's what happens. Yeah, that's what happens. So the same thing happened there. So that caused him to sort of reconsider orthodoxy under new lights. Catholicism? I mean, orthodoxy, while he was orthodox. Oh, I see. Yeah, reconsider whether he should remain orthodox.

Exactly. And that's when he worked his way, you know, as an R&T host, you know. So he was, you know, he was having people on to, you know, talk him out of coming to the Catholic, back to the Catholic church or staying. So he was really seeking, you know, and, you know, I wasn't trying to pull him one way or the other. I just sort of, because I knew how sensitive the issue was and I saw how amazing minds come to different sides of the question. I wish that wasn't so.

I wish it wasn't either. It would be a lot cleaner if we could just go with the brilliant people. Yeah, but you know, high IQ isn't one of the key passes into heaven, you know. It's virtue. So that's why I lost all anxiety over this issue, because I can do what I can. I can pray and ask for what I need. But if I don't get an answer, that's fine. That's because God didn't give me an answer. It seems like maybe you can help me understand this

or flesh this out a little more. We're in a day and age where we really want tradition, and it's probably because we don't live in the town that our parents grew up in, perhaps. We don't live by aunts and uncles. We don't have a connection to our heritage. Everything just feels so fluid that there really is this, I just want the ancients.

And you see this among atheists who are reading the Stoics. And it's like we want to, at the very time where tradition is under attack in the Catholic Church from the top, all the young people are like, we'd actually really like to know where we came from, please. And that's definitely a big part of the appeal of orthodoxy. And I mean, I saw this just like a lot of other people saw this years ago when the attacks on tradition

were happening, it's like, okay, we'll just get ready for orthodoxy to receive a ton of converts from Catholicism and also Protestantism. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I spoke about it. I called it an exodus because I was expecting it to be a little bit more, I think we're seeing it more and more, you know. But, you know, one of the things that kept me, because I was an Orthodox catechumen at one time as a Catholic, so I would be going to Orthodox service in the morning, Sunday morning, and then Catholic mass on Sunday night to fulfill my obligation. And you know, we really thought we were going to, you were gonna make the switch.

This was years ago. And, but it was there, talking to people, reading their material, weighing the options, really looking at things a second, third, fourth, fifth time that I realized, wait a minute, before I just throw my baptismal vow that I made when I became a Catholic, I need to take more time.

So I told the priest that was forming me in the Orthodox Church that I would need to take a break. And he was very gracious about it. And that led me to study more, pray more, and be a lot more patient, because I just saw how spring-loaded I was to conclusions. I'm no longer that way. I see myself as a tent pitcher. You know, I pitch tent, and until I really feel something for a long time, I don't really come to a conclusion, you know. So, but I did reach a conclusion. I wouldn't be going

to the Orthodox Church. And, and you know, Was that until you had more evidence or I've had, I've seen enough evidence to know that this isn't the right path. Well, you know, like I was telling you before, this whole issue between Catholicism and Orthodoxy is not like a first round Mike Tyson knockout, you know, maybe one of his fights with like Razor Ruddick or, you know, where it actually went the full distance. Anybody out there who says, oh, you know, the papists or the Catholic claims are crushed, you know, Catholicism is crushed or orthodoxy is crushed. They're just not to be taken seriously.

It takes a long time to really study these issues. And so I came to the conclusion that based on what I know, because it got to the point where it was becoming cyclical, I'd be reading the same sources and then I'd contact orthodox scholars, hey, what should I read? And they'd point me to the books I already read. I'd read it a second time.

Okay, the needle's not moving for me. So, and I'm here where I'm at. So, that's where I figured the Lord, at least for now, I hate to say that because it almost leaves out the potential to leave the Catholic Church. I don't see that, but just like you don't have perfect assurance of your salvation, I don't have perfect assurance that I'm going to be a Catholic for the rest of my life,

but right now, that's the conclusion I came to. This is difficult for people because, I don't know, it felt like Catholic apologetics had its glory days. And there were some sort of swipes at orthodoxy, but they really weren't on the radar. So it was a lot. Even now, a lot of it has to do with sort of script or and responding to Protestant objections. Yeah. And I think a lot of Catholics became so empowered by the writings of Pat Madrid and Scott Hahn and Carl Keating that there was a sort of triumphalism and maybe not even a negative sense. It just felt like, no, we know, you know, we had John Paul II, we got Benedict. Like, no matter the crazy things happening in our parish, we are convinced that felt great. Yeah. But I think you're right.

I think there's a lot of people who are like, OK, what does it mean for me if I don't feel as triumphal as I once did? And that's, I mean, I'm kind of in your boat. My tent is here and I feel you've studied this stuff way more than me. But where I'm at, I feel convinced still. But okay, I think the Catholic Church is the church Christ established. I see the rationale for the papacy, logically, biblically, patristically, and so I'm gonna be here, but it's difficult for me.

I find that I don't evangelize with the same vigor, and that bothers me. I wish I could, do you know what I'm saying? Oh, I befriended a priest, Orthodox priest. He was in the Rokor, Russian Orthodox church outside of Russia. And we would go on walks. We lived close to each other.

So we'd go on walks for miles together during the week, evenings. And not once did I say, hey, you know, you need to get out of there and become a Catholic. We just got to know each other and talked, and we both knew where we were on things, because he was conservative.

But sooner or later, when the question did come around, well, should he consider the Catholic Church, I almost told him to just put the brakes down and take some time to think about X, Y, Z before you do that. Whereas five years before that, I might have been like, no, this is so clear. Don't you know that without an infallible head,

you can't know anything? I was not there at that point when I met him. So I'm still friends with him. He's a rich, dear friend of mine. But yeah, I second you. The evangelism is different. And I think that even if people do cross over that, you know, the Bosphorus to Rome from Constantinople

or Byzantium, what have you, they appreciate when Catholics are a bit more tender, because it isn't easy. It's not as, oh, don't you know that without the papacy, you can't have unity. They have like 10 or 20 lunch bag things that Catholics have always thought were bullets in the golden gun.

And boy, if you get a good Orthodox who knows what he's talking about, you turn into a soft set of baby back ribs. And very quickly. So then what's tough then is that fact, right, that you see a lot of very talented and articulate apologists for the Orthodox Church. The great street appeal it has. The tradition, by and large, it seems to have maintained, all right?

So you've got all that, and then you've got on the other side, Pope Francis, well, I was just starting to love the Latin map. I can't, oh, I can't have that. Okay. And then you've got, it's, it's unfortunate that you have to qualify things to death. I understand that there are very traditional, beautiful, novice orders. I understand that no one's denying that, but it's also the case that, you know, you go on a trip somewhere and you got to go to the local parish. For me, it's like eight times out of 10. I'm really,

really, really disappointed. And I don't think my standards are that high. Maybe they are. Anyway, you couple those things together and all of a sudden it makes sense where a lot of people will be like, OK, this is a scandal ridden church. What's Pope Francis said lately? God in heaven. What do I have to defend that? Do I have to pretend that this is super cool?

OK. Or they have the sacraments Do I have to pretend that this is super cool? Okay. Or they have the sacraments and they have the priesthood. So I don't know. I feel like there's that saying, he who is convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. And it seems to me that like 98% of people are convinced more by what they want to be true, including myself. And then it's the intellectual thing. A lot of people want to say, oh, I read into it. But I think before, a lot of people need to want it to be true to then be open to the evidence to then be led.

Yes. Yeah, I think that's true. I had the benefit, I call it a benefit. Some people might not, but I was a high church Anglican before coming to the Catholic Church. So, I had beautiful liturgies, you know, and in fact, I love the English patrimony. That's the Book of Common Prayer. It's beautiful. And just, you know, morning and evening prayer at the parish and the chants, holy Week. I mean, it was just great.

So I had the benefit of parking at the fork between Byzantium and Rome. And one of the things that that did for me is it didn't make me jumpy because you have some people that wanna jump to the Orthodox Church. You got some Orthodox that I know they send me messages, they want to jump into the Catholic Church. And I had beautiful liturgies already,

so I wasn't running away. I would have stayed Anglican, happily. It was sort of difficult for me to leave where I was, because I was in a high church setting and the community was great. Liturgical season was great. So going to the Catholic church was a step down. The parish I went to was a step down.

It wasn't terrible, it was a novas ordo, but it wasn't anywhere near what we had at the Anglican church I was at. And so I think the benefit with me is it gave me more patience to realize that I can't use beautiful liturgies. This is one of the things that differs between me and others is that I had known

about Coptic Armenian rituals, Anglican, the English, all Spanish rituals, before becoming Catholic. And I knew that there's a diversity of beauty in different churches, you know, the Coptic Syriac Church, the Armenian Church of the East, or the Assyrian Church of the East, you've got the Armenian right, you've got the Roman right, the Western rights that don't

exist anymore, and then you've got the Byzantine right. Sure, Byzantine is beautiful, but so is the Coptic. I mean, the Coptic Church that was next to me… I find it so weird. Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean… Just because I'm not a part of that culture, it's a difficult thing to… Darrell Bock It is weird. But they do some traditional things, like if you walk in, you take your shoes off.

Mason- It's beautiful. Darrell Bock The woman and men separate. They can't be seen together. You don't hear a woman anywhere in the church. I'm not trying to say that's good or bad. I'm just saying I think it's beautiful. Mason- You're bringing up a good point though, because I think it's beautiful. But... Will Barron You're bringing up a good point though,

because I think a lot of us Catholics or Orthodox, let's say there's a Catholic who's looking to Orthodox here, Orthodox looking to Catholicism, we may find it easy to write off Protestantism. We might see the virtue in it, but ultimately say, you know, I just can't justify, say, sola scriptura. So, okay, so then we think there's literally only two options, you know, I just can't justify, say, sola scriptura. So, okay, so then we think there's literally only two options, you know. Yeah. So, explain to us why that's not the case. That's not the case at all. And you know that that's sort of axiomatic for many people because

they talk about the one church until 1054. That's not true. Break this down for us. So, number one, schisms are as old as the church. You already had divisions during the life of the apostles, you know. You already had a group in the early church with the apostles alive who were citing scripture against the apostles. You know, some of the Judaizers would, they'd go to Genesis 18 where it says, no, this circumcision in your flesh has an everlasting covenant. The Gentiles have to be circumcised.

So doubting apostolic infallibility, in other words, the infallibility of the apostles, there was already people doubting that during their lifetime. So you had divisions, they turned out to be the Ebonyites later on,, but you had the Gnostics and then they had different disagreements between themselves. You had the early Montanists, you had all these different sects grow. The Donatists grew, they lasted until the seventh century. Arianism was massive and it didn't die out just because of the Council of Nicaea was there. It grew.

It had military backing, it had intellectual backing for centuries. But even closer to home, to the Roman Church, or to the Roman Empire I'm talking about, not the Roman Church, meaning the Italian Peninsula, I'm talking about the Roman Empire that was Christianized, you had a massive break with the Nestorius that led through political geographic relocation to the Persian Church of the East, which was not in communion with the, they called it the Romans. To them, the Romans was everything west of them, which included Constantinople Antioch and what have you

So that was a huge split and the Persian Church grew was massive And they're not identified with the Byzantine Roman duo There they're out there. Then you had the split with the monophysites or the metaphysites That came that became the Coptic Syriac Armenian Church bodies that you have today Then you had the split with the monophysites or the metaphysites. That became the Coptic Syriac Armenian church bodies that you have today. They split in 451 and they became massive, had military backing, had scholarly backing, had institutional schools.

I mean, they were big. So that you already have, and I quote one Protestant scholar, in fact, I recommend him, even though he's a lapsed Catholic. He wrote The Lost Christianities. His name is Philip Jenkins. His book, The Lost Christianities, is really devoted to talking about those breaks. He said, and I'm tempted to agree, he said that as early as the fifth century you already had enough division within Christendom as you would have in 16th century continental Europe with the

Protestant. That is fascinating, yeah. I would never have thought that. It blew my mind when I read that. But the thing is I couldn't deny what he was saying because he was backing it up with sources. A lot of sources that we didn't, you know, people and scholars didn't know years ago, but now we do through translation of Syriac and other languages.

There's a plethora of Christianity that we don't know, other languages. We just, there's a plethora of Christianity that we don't know that, you know, I was tempted to learn. So when I learned that, I really, no, this whole thing of one church till 1054, so therefore, the Byzantines are not the only ones on the menu, you know. And in fact, I came to the conclusion

that if I ever was gonna go east, I'd probably go Syriac or Coptic. And that's because they are more innocent of succumbing to the papal claims. See, I'm of the opinion that the papal claims were clear in the first millennium. In other words, I believe that the popes of Rome were making the theory and the practice of their position very clear. Of course, the Byzantines, I think, tolerated that. Sometimes they accepted it, most of the time they didn't. But by the time 9th century comes, you start to see, you know,

oh no, it's clear. the Greeks don't believe that. They don't believe that the Bishop of Rome has this authority. But they went nine centuries under it, tolerating it, being in communion with it. Whereas the Miaphysites. What does that mean? Miaphysite, it just means one person.

Miaphysus. They're really serillian in their Christology. So the one nature and the Lord Jesus Christ. So the one person is divine? Well, no, I mean, the clarifications abound on this. And I think the Catholic Church and the Coptic Churches have an essential agreement. The differences were semantic, but they did speak of meophysiase.

Christ is one. The unity of Christ is so emphasized that – So, is it that they deny the two natures? No, if you define it correctly, they still believe the duality of the natures. Okay. But there was a concern over how to explain that. Makes sense. Yeah, when postage takes nine months

to get back and forth, you know, disagreements can happen and impatience grows. Those schisms happened, I think if they lived in a global communication world, they probably would have had an easier time to nail this down, but it took centuries. But the Miaphysites, they got out from the papacy in the fifth century. When the papal claims became more clear, like Leo the Great, they don't consider him a saint. So it was around that time that

they became... So why did the Coptics break off? Because of that? Yeah, because of the Tome of St. Leo and the Council of Chalcedon. They believe there's all kinds of political problems with that council, and it wasn't a legitimate council. They accept the validity of the council that took place a year before, at the council of Ephesus 449, where Chalcedon basically annulled that council, and they believe that Chalcedon was an abuse on the part of the emperor, and the emperor and the

pope basically forced the doctrine, the dual nature doctrine of Leo's tome. And they, so in schism, it was a huge, there was a huge schism in Egypt, Syria, there was a schism in Jerusalem over this, and so that kind of split the church, and that schism never has been healed since then. Yeah. So one criticism that I hear of Protestants is the idea that they're very segmented and separated. So it sounds like what you're saying is like,

schisms have been a thing throughout Catholic history, but all that being said, so what would be the pushback? like schisms have been a thing throughout Catholic history. But all that being said, so what would be the pushback? What would be the claim for papal infallibility? What does that look like? That's a good question. In the face of these things. So I bring that all up in the conclusion of my book, which I'll talk about later, but I think that number one, you have the biblical

testimony of the apostolic government, Peter's role in that. You have the early testimony of that theory, the Petrine theory, you know, I call it that. You have testimony of that building up in the early pre-Nicene era, and that's undivided for the Miaphysites, Coptic Syriac, and the Byzantines, and the Westerners. So, I think you already had the papal claims there before the Council of Nicaea, even, so that's way before Chalcedon. And if you look and see what really Catholicized the Christian faith, I see the Pope, St. Peter's successor at the heart of that. So, let's say we put these all in competition. I know we don't like competition, it gets us nervous, but studying church history, you're going to have to learn how to do this. How to be nervous and continue.

Yes. If you're going to put a competition to, you know, the Byzantine Orthodox, the Coptics, the Syriacs, the Armenians, the Assyrians, even in the West you had some schisms like the Donatists. Obviously, there's some immediate defeaters. Donatism doesn't exist anymore, right? So nobody's going to try to resurrect that as the true church. But I think Catholicism has its toughest opponent in the Orthodox, Byzantine Orthodox, and the Miaphysites. And out of those two, I would say they've got it rough with both of them, but I think the Miaphysites have a little bit of a leg on the Byzantines.

But I think what successfully Catholicized and evangelized the world to make it truly one holy, Catholic, and apostolic, I see at the center of that is the Petrine architecture that the Catholic Church teaches. So I see it biblical, patristic, even though it's got, we take some shots, we get some jaw, you know, we get some jaw hits, you know?

But I think we come out, even if it's by millimeters, we win, it's very important, millimeters. So, I don't know if that answered your question. Yeah, I mean I realized after I answered it. Yeah, and then you know there's other issues like the filioque. I think that's, for me, that's a much bigger indication that they're wrong. You know, forgive me, my Orthodox friends who are listening, I am convinced the filioque is true, so that's another issue.

Yeah, yeah, we'll get to that. Yeah, like for me when I read, I remember when I had just become a Catholic, I had Protestants objecting to the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And because I had never read the Bible, I'm 17 years old, I thought that our only sort of reference for that was the Last Supper. And so I, because I had not read John, you know. And I remember one day in my room opening up John chapter six and my mouth just dropped open because to me, whatever objections you might throw at it, prima facie, it seemed clear to me

that it was teaching the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. And for me, when I read the scriptures, whatever objections you might throw at the papacy, I can't help but see the Catholic claim to the papacy in many of those verses. And again, even if I'm wrong, prima facie, it seems as obvious to me as reading John 6 does regarding the Eucharist. lot of objections that do hurt us, you know, like for example, a lot of Catholics, a lot of Protestants who become Catholic, they become mesmerized with the philosophical acumen of

Catholic apologetics, especially with the papacy. It is one of those issues that I talk about in my book, is the issue of epistemology between orthodoxy and Catholicism. A lot of Catholic apologists will talk about, for example, in order to have visible oneness, visible unity, it just makes perfect sense to have an authority that is singular and not variegated in many different heads where it depends on their agreement, because history shows that it's hard to get agreement

with the masses. So it makes sense a priori, even without a consideration of the Bible, without a consideration of the patristics, just- Having the buck stop somewhere. Just the notion, you having the buck stop somewhere, just, just the notion, you know, you know, you hear these analogies like, well, when the, when the United States was constituted,

you have the constitution, they did that because for, for the progeny, you know, how, how are we all going to maintain what we have? Well, we're going to follow this rule, this canon or the constitution. Well, if, if they're smart enough to do that, obviously Christ is smart enough to do that with the church. And you know, so they go through this like natural...

I'm getting nervous because I'm like, yeah, that makes sense, but I know you're about to poke holes in it. Well, what happens is you start to get, you get hooked in and it's like, well, yes, okay. And then if you have a religious institution like the Christian church, obviously it can't fragment, the break apart into different fizzled out groups. So there's gotta be a way to maintain the coherence,

the visible oneness, so that way people, when they go to church, they know I'm going to the right church. So, and since we know having variegated and a plurality of leaders, there is a tendency to crystallize in separation. People separate. And when people separate,

sometimes it's difficult to discern who's right and who's wrong. You're gonna have defenders and naysayers on both sides. And so to prevent that, you have to have one person whose voice ultimately settles the whole dispute. So that's a priori, but the thing is, you start to look in history and things weren't always that way.

You know, yeah, you have the claim being made. There are many times where I think that's what won the day, was paid the aid of the papal charism. But you do have challenges to that because it doesn't always work that way because what happens if that singular head himself becomes a fountain of problems? What do you do then? You know, so that's the question. So, you know, Catholics have often said, well, we just maintain that there's certain

impossibilities about that fountain. It can't grow corrupt because if it grows corrupt, then all the streams that come out of the fountain are corrupt. So, ergo, papal infallibility, all that stuff. So it's almost like you can just construct this a priori without any religious influence. And that's one of the reasons why some of the Orthodox are very suspicious about it because it lacks divinity. Did Christ really teach that? Did the fathers really teach that? I happen to believe that the a priori instinct that we philosophically think of, it matches

with the claims of the Bible and the patristics. So that's why I'm Catholic. Yeah. Yeah. I see an intersection between those two things. But if all you're resting on is the a priori, and if that's all you communicate, the Orthodox, I think they can sort of undo that argument because it's very natural, so it doesn't have a lot of biblical and patristic grounding. But if you can show that they intersect, then you have good ground to hold it up as the

truth. So in history, when we have had a pope who's been, as you say, like a fountain of all sorts of issues, can you give us an example from history, like what did the church do with a previous pope who may have believed heresy? Yeah, so that's a good question. So the famous cases in the first millennium are Pope Vigilius and Pope Honorius. Now, Pope Honorius, I don't think is a very difficult issue for Catholics, that is.

Jared And help explain to us too what they did. Pete Yeah, so a lot of people don't realize that Pope Honorius, he was dead by, for 20 years when they dug up his letters to Sergius of Constantinople, and the setting was the council of Constantinople 681. It was at that council, and nobody got to that council thinking that Pope Honorius was going to be a subject of examination. It was only when Macarius of Antioch, the Bishop of Antioch, when he was accused of heresy, of holding to the doctrine of one will in Christ, that he, as a way to retaliate, one will in Christ, that he as a way to retaliate, he said, well, that's what Pope Honorius said. So that's when Pope Honorius

came on the table at the council. And so they dug up his letters and they read it like, he says he believes in one will. Boom! He's added to the list of the heretics. They've got Theodore, you've got Sergius, you've got all these names, Paul, Pyrrhus, and then finally, boom, Honorius, even Honorius. So that's 20 years after he was alive. So he didn't even have a chance to stand and say what he meant. And in fact, if you read what he wrote, it's very forgivable. I mean, it doesn't sound unorthodox at all. Now, forgive me, I go with the council's verdict, but I have to admit that when I read it, I do feel

like he was fine. What he was saying was fine. You know, there hasn't been a settled dogmatic decision by the church on whether factual things that are not consubstantial with doctrine at councils are infallible. So, it could be that the decision on Honorius is not an infallible dictum. Table that for now. But he wasn't a formal heretic because according to developed canon law, you've got to be able to formalize your matter. You have matter and form. They have to get together to be a formal heretic. So, Honorius' situation is not really that bad because we all know that popes can materialize error without the form. So Honorius, and at that council, they say that the Pope is, that the apostolic see is

infallible in the writ of the council, accepted by both the Greeks and the Latins. You know, they cite the promise of, the Lucan promise, you know, I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith will not fail They quote that they quote Matthew 16. They quote the the Joe Haineen Commission feed my sheep They quote the the the Gotho Pope of Gothos dogmatic epistle. What year was his counselor? 681 mmm He made those claims in the in the Greeks accepted it, you know, so it's in the official acts So how does an Orthodox respond to that council? Well, there's various it, you know, so it's in the official acts. So how does an Orthodox respond to that council?

Well, there's various ways, you know. Number one, they point out Honorius. You know, well, if Rome was supposed to be pristine by this perpetual protection, then why did they condemn Honorius? That's a difficult question to answer. That's a difficult question to answer. And the council doesn't resolve the matter. It has this claim that the apostolic see is infallible by the divine design of Christ through Peter. And then you also have this condemnation of Pope Honorius. And the Pope in Rome ratified his condemnation in terms of Petrine authority.

He quotes, he cites, by the authority invested in me through Saint Peter, I condemn my predecessor. In other words, that's what he did. So he already assumes the validity of the Petrine claims in his condemnation of his president. So they didn't see this as a threat to the papal claims. But how do you reconcile the claim to infallibility and get the condemnation of a pope for a papal, for a doctrinal failure? Council doesn't resolve it. It's not until later that canonists and theologians

talk about this ex cathedra conditioning. That it's not just everything, not just, you know, we talk about the privatus persona, the private person of the Pope versus his official magisteria. And it feels like this is what Catholic apologists are clinging to right now. Exactly. It's, it's, it's cliffhanger, right? So you've got this division between private teaching and magisterial teaching, but then now you've got this other distinction within magisterial teaching of infallible versus fallible. I don't think anybody in the seventh century

was working with that distinction. But at the same time, the council kind of got itself in a ditch there because it condemned the Pope for heresy and then claimed that the successors of Peter are protected from error. So there had to be something to resolve the tension or just dismiss the council as an erroneous council. But you know, the fathers believed that even the text of those councils was written by the Holy Spirit. So, you know, the Orthodox have a very strong view of ecumenical councils.

Someone in chat is asking what council that was again? This is Constantinople III, 681, convened by Emperor Constantine IV. So, the council left a tension that's not resolved, and I think, I do think the only thing that resolves it is this divisive conditioning between fallible versus infallible papal teaching. It's not, it almost seems too manufactured, because this is one of the fears I had. It seems so artificial. Like, did the apostles teach this? Did the early church fathers teach this? No.

In fact, the early popes seem to give the indication that everything they do is infallible. But – That's what I'd do if I was Pope. So they put a lot on themselves, but I think that around the 12th century, you start to get theologians teasing this out, that just, that just like a king has certain, you know, magisteria or certain constituta commands that are subject to revision, but then there's like universal mandates that are solemn. They kind of use that to compare that. It might seem artificial, but it does seem to make sense. I mean, unless

you want to say that every pope is inspired by the Holy Spirit and everything he says. Exactly. Well, I mean, it's kind of a necessary distinction to keep the Bible on two legs, because even the apostles had that distinction, right? When Peter got up from the Gentiles in Antioch, that's obviously not an infallible act. Right. But we all, but everybody believes that he was infallible when he wrote his two epistles, even Protestants believe that. So you already have a distinction between infallible mode versus fallible mode that

the apostles probably didn't teach that distinction, but you have to posit it to survive the New Testament. So there's a similar way, you know, development of doctrinal works, you know, you have to come up with certain things in order to keep Christianity surviving, because the objections and the inconsistencies begin to mount if you don't have a way to explain the tensions. So, anyway, that's what I would say about that council, you know, that situation there with... But then Vigilius, he's the problem. Tell us about him. Yeah. Pope Vigilius by far. Orthodox listening, if you want to capitalize on the strength of your side, this is it.

This is, you know, a knockdown, okay? I think we get up before ten, you know, a knockdown. Okay. I think we get up before 10, you know, before the referee counts to 10, but we get knocked down here. Pope Vigilius is a sitting pope. He's not dead. And he publishes a few decrees. They're called constitua, constituta, constitutas.

They're called constitutas. And the first one, basically it reiterates Chalcedon's judgment on a certain letter, the letter of Ebus of Edessa to Marie the Persian. For anyone listening, those details, you can search those details. details But then later on he comes out with a second Constitute I'm basically saying the first one was wrong And the language in the first one is powerful. Hmm by the authority vested in the apostolic sea Which is already an issue because why is he claiming that if he doesn't believe that he has the confidence? When did he live? This is a...

So he was basically kidnapped from Rome in 539, 540. And he was in Constantinople under house arrest for about nine years. So he was taken from Rome against his will because the Emperor, you know, this is a huge history. I mean, this is one of my favorite parts of early church history. The Pope was under duress for nine years, basically in Constantinople. There had been a couple of times he tried to escape, they dragged him back. Why did they drag him back?

Why was he under house arrest at all? Good question? Good question Good question. My answer to that is the is the Emperor knew that without Rome's approval of his doctrinal scheme It wasn't going to walk him with two legs I think he knew he needed to have the agreement of the West in Order to make the policy that he was trying to enact with the Catholicus of the West in order to make the policy that he was trying to enact with the Catholicus of the East, these are the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Council of Chalcedon. Well, not everybody was on board with Emperor Justinian. He was a theologian, so he thought he had the wherewithal to know what was going to

solve the problem between the Coptics, you know, I call them that. That's not what they called them at the time, but the Miaphysites and the Catholics who were, you know, the five patriarchs. Rome wasn't on board initially. Eventually, Rome came on board, but it was through this enforcement. It was an imperial aggression. Justinian took Vigilius from Rome, sailed him back to Constantinople, and had him there until he finally gave way. But it was tough. Vigilius went back and forth.

That's the issue. And he went back and forth with documents that claim the investment of Peter's authority. So it's like, what do you do now? Now you got two documents. They both claim to be, you know, protected in some sense by the authority of Peter, but they contradict by the Pope's own admission. So it's like, now what do you do?

It almost looks like you're seeing those guns that shoot out a flag, you know, it's just a fake gun. It's like capable infallibility, here's your bullet, boom, and it was a failure. It's like a people infallibility, here's your bullet, boom, and it was a failure. The resolution there is that, and I go into detail on this in an article I have on academia.edu, so if you're interested, listeners are interested. We'll get a link before you go and put it in the description. I don't believe that the first constitutum or the second constitutumutive really on its dogmatic axiom, on the point at hand, it was not a

doctrinal matter. He was upholding Chalcedon's defense of a certain letter and he realized that he applied it to the wrong letter. Once he realized, no, Chalcedon was applying that to a different letter, then he came around and said, no, the letter, I had the letter swapped, you know. There were some other issues there, but the dogmatic content was not theological. It was more an issue of whether Chalcedon's 10th session about a certain letter was going to be upheld or not.

So I don't think that it comes under the umbrella of faith and morals. Suppose it did. Where would you be right now? Do you know what I'm saying? That's a good question. Yeah, if that was the case, I think it would be a falsification event. Of the Catholic Church. Yeah. Yeah, I remember, yeah, I mean, we say things like,

well, if you could show me one infallible statement by a pope that contradicted a previous one I'd have to give up. I guess that's true Yeah, so I think looking in at the Catholics it sometimes feels like What do you need exactly to show that you're wrong here? Because every time I say well this pope said this and this heresy, or he contradicted a previous infallible statement, well, technically it's like we technically everything to death so that we can remain standing, it seems. Right, right, right, which is very uncomfortable, you know. On the other hand... But I guess you don't think that, though.

Well, so for example, let's say Pope Aigilius did have two ex cathedra failures What what's left there is not Greek conciliarism What you have is an imperial II led You know Cesar O papist model, you know, Caesaro papist model. You know, Justinian was firing and hiring bishops at will who would go along with his program. That was the main issue.

That's why Vigilius took nine years before. That's another reason. Some Catholic scholars have said Vigilius was under duress. So no decree under that time has any force because he was under duress. This was not a free, deliberate thing of the pope. I don't buy that, personally. I think that he was there for long enough.

He was given quarter. He was given a nice place to be. It wasn't like he was hooked up to chains. But it's something to consider that, you know, this was not a free decision, perhaps, you know. But let's say Fagilius does disprove the papacy. I don't see this like collegial majority thing going on at that time. I see an emperor-driven program that requires acceptance of the Cesaropapist model, which doesn't exist anymore. So if Vigilius does disprove Catholicism, I don't see side by side Greek Orthodoxy. I see something, I see the Byzantine papacy and the person of the emperor.

So now if that's something I'm going to convert to, I don't have anything to convert to. So this is one of the reasons why some people look at this and they, you know, they, some people go Protestant because of this, because they realize that historical narratives, it's a broken compass. It doesn't have a navigational clarity. You know, you've got one claim here, another claim here, two people going at it here. There's no crisp, like, oh, here's the map, this is what it is. It's like different maps, everybody's going different directions. So that's one of the reasons why liberal scholarship

went the way it did, because it, you know, what was going on between the fifth century to the Reformation, it's kind of variegated. You know, it's not just one story. You know, you've got all these, this whole Christian world in the east, far east, you've got the Christian world in Byzantium, you've got the Christian world in the west, and they're not all necessarily an orchestra. If you all put them all together, it's like, ah!

You know, there's no orchestra. If you all put them all together, it's like, ah! You know, there's no orchestra. So sometimes people look to the past and they don't see historical coherence. And so they don't think history is a compass to search for their journey. So they'll go to the Bible. You know, well, the Bible is what doesn't have any, yeah. But then, see, that's 17th, 18th century, enlightenment and all that, they realized, well, the Bible itself is God in coherence. So the Bible itself is not a compass with which, you know, you've got two Isaiah writers, you've got five writers of the Pentateuch, you've got, I mean, there's all kinds of things to pick apart.

You know, speaking of all the technicalities to maintain our position as a Catholic, anybody who believes in biblical inerrancy, you've got a big job to do defending biblical inerrancy, the traditional view of infallibility of the text of Scripture. Christians, we have work to do one way or the other. If you want to be a Christian, you're going to find yourself uncomfortable under criticism, and you're not always going to have a knock-em-down-drag-em-out answer for everything. So what's the swing back, I guess? We're talking about all these kind of troubling things. So what would the swing back be either, you know,

just thoughts on this or like things that bolster confidence? Yeah, because at this point you're like, shit, maybe we should just be atheists. You know? So, well look, Vigilius, number one, Justinian wanted Vigilius's agreement because he knew that Rome had the authority

to make this some sort of official. So even though there was this fiasco, there was already a recognition of the papacy, I think, in Justinian. Virgilius himself obviously thinks that he has the authority to decide the matter because it is one of the points that Father Richard Price, a phenomenal patristic scholar, he translated many of the ecumenical councils into English.

He brings up this point that Vigilius felt he had the investment divinely through Peter and the succession from Peter to do these things. He's backed up by predecessors who have the same view. The Council of Ephesus announces the theory that Christ bestowed to Peter the keys of the kingdom and that that invested Peter's successors stationed in Rome with binding and loosing powers over doctrine and discipline. So you have this preceding history, repetitive history of testimony. You have Vigilius himself. And then when you see what happened after the fact, okay, Rome is still being defended. What happened in 681? Did people say, oh, remember that Vigilius

event? So I guess we don't rely on Rome anymore. No, they relied on Rome again with the Council of Constantinople III. How about the Council of Nicaea too with images, the doctrine of the veneration of images? Did they say, oh well, we have Honorius, we have Vigilius, we have Liberius? Maybe those claims are not right. No, they rehearsed them. So, you see that it survived. So, if it survived, there's reason to believe it survived for a reason. And if it survived for a reason, what reason is that? And it seems it was instrumental, like I said, in protecting the faith, the Christian faith. So, the Pope is right there with the protection, the Christian faith. So the Pope is right there with the protection

of the Christian faith for the first 10 centuries, even with some of these death-defying events, they're mulligans, I guess. So I don't see, I'm not of the view that, oh, look at these things that happen, these terrible events, therefore Eastern Orthodoxy. I can't do that because I have to test Eastern Orthodoxy by the same critical, coherent consistency.

If it doesn't have patristic backing, if it doesn't have patristic coherence, I can't just say, well, if not Rome, then Byzantine. Byzantine, you know, I can't do that, especially with the Vigilius event. All right. So we've spent some time sort of, I think that was really helpful. Man, it gets messy quickly, doesn't it? It does. I remember once being in rural Texas in this little town, and I thought to myself, man, this would have been a really cool place to be a Christian, like back in the 70s or something,

where like you had maybe very little access to Catholics or Orthodox or atheists. Everyone was just kind of Christian. There was a simple narrative and we can exist in a simple narrative. We like it. Life's too chaotic and confusing enough to not have some sort of narrative that's simple. You know, I almost, I almost kind of regret us having to get into these issues publicly. I wish I had the faith of my grandma who just didn't care and maybe didn't even have the IQ to,

like I don't probably, to kind of delve into it. Do you sometimes sort of envious of that in people who can? Yes, that's kind of where I'm at. I kind of put myself in the shoes of someone like that in order to lose the anxiety over this because God is not going to require more of me than I can handle. That's a promise in the scripture, you know. He gives us grace. And you don't worry that you've got to justify your belief in biblical inerrancy to accept

that God has told you He won't give you more than you can handle? Yeah, so similarly with the whole issue with the papacy, you know, there's a couple of things that really sink it, like really, like this is true because of this. I am just 100% convinced of Jesus Christ as the Lord and Messiah. the resurrection from the dead, the birth of Christianity, the coherence of the Old Testament and the New Testament. I've been blessed to see that the Old Testament – it was tough because you read the Old Testament, it's not like painting this picture, one day in Nazareth a boy will be born and he will do this and that, and he and that, he will die, he will raise and he will, it doesn't say that, it's very almost cryptic, it's got a certain

hiddenness to it. But when you understand the key to unlock the Old Testament, then you know, okay, no, this has been a plan since the beginning of history. I am convinced of Christianity. There's no way that I'm gonna be unconvinced of it And yet within the umbrella of the Christian world you've got these good-hearted Sincere people who are praying for the truth. They're praying to know the truth and then the truth. They're praying to know the truth. And then they're Presbyterian for

55 years. They're Orthodox for 40-something years and they die in that state happily serving the Lord, Catholics, you know. So if one of the requirements to get into heaven is that, oh, Eric, you just didn't learn German enough to understand how poor the papacy is in the apologetic scheme, and you just didn't read this enough, and you didn't learn Greek enough, and you didn't knew this enough to really find out that the Catholic Church is wrong and the Orthodox Church is right. If God's going to be that fine on the requirements, then even if I get into the true church, within the first 10 minutes, I'm going to have something that he's going to be able to slice and dice

and prove me condemned over. I don't believe God's that way. And you see the person of Christ and you see he's not that way. Yeah. I mean, he hung for hours for my soul. Is he going to really put me through this academic maze to figure out, like an escape room? Like one of these, you know, you do these escape rooms where it's like, you got to be a genius to figure out how to get out of it. Yes. If he's going to hang as God made a man on that, I mean, naked, hung on the cross, die for my soul for hours and then turn around and say, no, you got to figure out this, you know, ingenious escape plan.

Yes. You know, I thought it just doesn't go together. I thought about that recently. I started a and we'll throw this out there. I started a little Catholic lo-fi channel just for just for fun. And the next day I got this warning from Google. They took my video down and said it was spam and a bunch of stuff like that. And I had no idea what it was talking about. It made no sense to me.

And so I wrote and said, this is me, and then I got like an automated response that I'm shit out of luck at this point, because there's no recourse. And I think many of us mistakenly view God like that. He's arbitrary, and He will punish you, and you won't know why, and there's no recourse. But again, you go back to the person of Christ in the Gospels. You want to know what God's like, look at Jesus. And it'll really soothe your anxiety. Exactly. I mean, I'm a convinced, convicted, persuaded Catholic.

So if somebody wants to see why, my door's open. But I'm not going to just shut an Orthodox or a Coptic or a Syriac or Protestant out just because they haven't travailed the historical details. And quite often I'm listening in to see where I may have gone wrong. Maybe I should be a Syriac Orthodox, maybe I should join a parish,ac orthodox. Maybe I should join a parish,

even if the whole parish are doctors and it's just one big family of Egyptians. Maybe I need to be there. I always try to give myself time to listen. This is why I think people don't really listen because it's exhausting to have to actually view other options as live ones. It's exhausting. Like what, I gotta read the Book of Mormon now? Just to... Exactly. Well, Christianity is a tough man's religion.

If you see the amount of pain that God does allow us to go through sometimes, losing loved ones, being confused about the true church, whatever it is, He still requires us to to serve Him with joy. That's tough. Yeah, rejoicing the Lord at all times. Yeah, I mean when you're young in the faith, maybe you don't see it, but live long enough as a Christian,

get your teeth knocked in a few times, spiritually speaking. And you realize, no, this is a tough person's religion. This is not easy, you know? So I take that and I just say, this issue of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and all that, it's cake compared to what I see some other people going through, who have cancer, who are dying, whatever.

Yeah. So if I have to spend another five years studying a number of books, what I see some other people going through, who have cancer, who are dying, whatever. So if I have to spend another five years studying a number of books, I will do it without anxiety. I will do it without worry. I just can't do that. This arrival at peace and lack of anxiety that you seem to have right now, did you reason your way into that? Is it a grace of God that you've received only recently? Is it both? Yeah, that's a good question. I wanna say I reasoned my way,

but I think there were supernatural occurrences that revealed it to me. So for example, when you read the Book of Acts, when Peter goes to Cornelius, and he's like, wow, am I going to go to these Gentiles? The Jewish people used to clean their whole house if a Gentile stepped foot in their house. And he said, oh, he said, I recognize that God does not reject anyone who practices justice. Cornelius was unbaptized. He, in God, received his prayers

and his alms, right? And he received the Spirit before baptism. Exactly. I think that's really beautiful. I think that's also like a really good foundation to have, to build ecumenical apologetics on, is that confidence in grace and patience and the kind of search and dialogue and things like that. Right. Yeah.

So I think I can count on God's tender mercies. So okay, we've taken a few shots at Catholicism just to show that it's not... Did we call it this way? Yeah, I'm sorry. I have a lot of good things to say too. No, this is so good. This is so good because I really think that in order to stand with confidence in this multi-faith day and age, like we don't live in a rural Texas town with no access to the outside world. I mean, we live on the internet and everybody's

story can seem, again, to use that word prima facie, plausible. Whether that be the evolution story, the creationism story. You're like,'re like how much do I need to know to figure this out like what's his name that Gideon laser fella a Lazar who's going to be doing a debate with him next month with with Aiken I mean he starts talking about young earth creationism I don't know what I don't know I'm sure I guess I mean what am I to do I can only go with those I consider to be more experts than you. And yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I was just going to say that we have taken a few shots of Catholicism, maybe just to show, to show that the, the, the simplistic narrative,

you know, it's not, it's not helpful. It's not helpful for others. Ultimately, it's not even helpful for you because once you start receiving those shots, it might lay waste your whole faith when it needn't. No, it doesn't have to. But okay, so someone's looking at the scandals in the church, they're confused, they feel like there's no father figure, they want to just, okay, I'm just going to become Orthodox. That seems like a good alternative. After all, they have these fathers.

That's what I want I just want a father to respect who'll lead me who'll guide me Why isn't that an obvious? Choice why shouldn't people why should people not watch people throw on the brakes a little before making that jump? Yeah, so it's a good question. So I have an article I wrote if you go to my website Ericie barh org type in, and this is, you know, it's kind of a risky title.

Will you put the link? Do you mind looking for the article, Neil, putting that in? Its title is, on quotes, you know, coping with a quote unquote heretical pope and answering some of the aggressive invitations from the Orthodox. Do we have a heretical Pope? No, I put it in quotes, you know, to save myself. But do you think we have a heretical Pope? You know, I think that he is the kind of guy, and this is the best I could give it,

is he knows the boundaries of the faith. He knows the dogmatic bound, he knows Densinger, the lines. But he sees this need to pastoralize the church to the point where he's going to the, he goes, he runs in parks his feet right at the boundary and kind of lean. So he's not just standing on the edge, he's leaning. But he sees it as well.

We need to lean for the sake of this person. That's the best picture I can give. If somebody says, well, wait a minute, are you denying this or that? He could always kind of lean back and say, no, look where my feet are parked. Technically, I'm in the lines. Which is so unhelpful in a pagan age. Even just happened the other day where he came out and said don't don't be harsh with your children if they're experiencing gender dysphoria It's like okay

No one would disagree with that and yet we live in a society where everyone's telling us that this new thing is the is The new secular dogma we have to all you know step in line with it would be helpful if you would actually Say something in that regard right exactly to balance it out. Otherwise suspicions grow. But, you know, that's the best thing I could say about Pope Francis. Without sitting down and listening to him, right now I feel like I can't even, you know, anything he writes or something, especially in his private capacity, I just don't even

read it. But in that article, I rehearsed the aggressive claims of orthodox apologists. Hey, look, look at what's going on with Pope Francis and look at what you could have here. Look at this link versus this clown mask or this and that. But in that article what I do is I go through some of the things that you can expect to learn as an orthodox when you start to go. So if you wanna go, go.

But here's some things you're gonna learn and you're gonna have to foresee how you're gonna manage with this. Okay, so I was talking to one guy and he said, yeah, you know, the Pope, he condemned the death penalty, that's part of the Christian faith and that's like a clear heresy and I have to leave. Okay, well where'd you go? Oh, I'm going to OCA, you know, I'm going to the Orthodox Church of America Okay

Are you aware that the Orthodox Church of America as a synod has condemned the death penalty in even stronger terms? Oh Wow Well, well, maybe it well, they didn't we don't have an ex cathedra, we don't have like a binding, this or that. Well, okay, but your synod still says that, right? And you think it's heresy? Oh yeah, okay, so are you now in communion?

Did you leave a communion of heretics to join a communion of heretics? Well, no. Well, okay, well, so wait a minute. You gotta kind of backpedal here, okay? It's not consistent to condemn the Catholics for condemning the death penalty in unsubstantial foundations.

Pope Francis didn't say it's intrinsically evil, even though suspicions mount, but he didn't say that. But then you go to the Orthodox Church and it's got a claim, it's got the same teaching in stronger terms, and yet they're not a problem. you know? What are some more examples of this? Yeah, so there's more examples.

Obviously, the whole Orthodox Church doesn't condemn the death penalty, right? The Russians, I mean, they're all pretty much saying that mercy should be considered first, but I like the Russian synod does not condemn the death penalty, it says the state has the right if the state needs to. But some synods, some parts of the Orthodox Church world have denounced the death penalty. But another realm would be in this issue of ecumenism. A lot of people don't realize, but in the Orthodox world, they had their own little slowly creeping Vatican II.

You don't know about it until you get involved. But around the 1920s, you had sort of a, I don't want to call it liberal fallout, that's way too strong. But you had this tendency to sort of ecumenize within the Greeks did. And it sort of developed a variety of schisms. They're called the old calendarists, but that's really kind of a... it's not really describing them. They've separated from the main 14 autocephalous heads because of ecumenism and other liberal teachings that they think the 14 heads have succumbed to. When I say the 14 heads, I mean, when we talk about Eastern Orthodoxy, the canonical version, we're talking about those 14 heads, you know, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Moscow, Georgia, you know, the rest.

Well, you've got schisms coming out in the 20th century, you know, Rokor, for example, that was a schism from the Moscow Patriarchate in the 20th century. They came back, well, most of them came back into communion with the Moscow Patriarchate in 2007. So when most people go, oh, I'm going Rokor, they're talking about this newly healed schism between Rokor and Moscow. But you still got Roka, which is the those who didn't come back into union. Right. Well, they left because they recognized that the Orthodox churches were becoming succumb to the heresy of ecumenism. So the Assisi prayer in 1986, a lot of set of accountants will take cropped pictures

of the Pope. R. Yeah. But there's like three or four Greek hierarchs there. In fact, in 1986 there was one representative from, I think like nine or 10 of the archephaless churches that went to that event. And they went again in the anniversary events. So in 2002, you had a representative from even Moscow that came. Yeah. So then it's like, well, now I've got to justify that.

What do I do about that? I'm certainly queasy about that as a Catholic, but now I'm an Orthodox, well, what do I do? Nobody can, I mean, back in the fourth century, if somebody saw that, you would have been yanked out, your name would have been yanked out your name would have been yanked out and remembered like Arius you know and yet it's tolerated so now you've got this issue to come up with a reason why

you're gonna stay Orthodox you know even despite these issues oh well we don't have infallible leaders so it doesn't really matter. Okay, well, fine. But you're still rubbing elbows and shoulders in communion, especially at the altar, with these people. So, these schisms started in the Orthodox Church. They call them the old calendarists or the true church, the true Orthodox churches. churches, and you know, they're coming out with some legitimate accusations against the 14 auto-Catholic heads. A friend of mine was running away from Pope Francis, and he joined the Antiochian Church in his neighborhood,

and when he was there he started talking to the priest. The priest basically up and said, you know, hey, I love the You know, I don't know what he said, but in other words, like Ratzinger is my favorite theologian. Like when you go, when you're leaving Catholicism to go to the Orthodox church, that's the last thing you want the priest to say, right? You want to see the antithesis of Catholicism. You know, you're leaving Catholicism, you want to see the antithesis of Catholicism. You're leaving Catholicism, you want to see the antithesis of the problems you left. So when you start to see them clone in the Orthodox Church. So he left the Antiochians, joined the Russians.

He found a Russian parish thinking, well, the Russians, they got it. And he found out, no, they're breaking canons, quote unquote. I'm not saying they are, okay? I'm just saying this is what he came to see. And then he realized he needed to join one of these break-offs to be truly canonical. Is that where he is?

Yeah, last I, you know, he was ordained priest in the break-off. So you got that, you. So you've got that, you've got Patriarch of Constantinople who's officially supporting the licity of contraception, and the Russian Orthodox Church in certain cases, there's a nodal document, it certainly doesn't condemn it. They see that there's been some sort of development where you can, you know, this might be, as long as it's not aborted, facet. Now imagine if the Vatican tomorrow came out and said that. Yeah. Well, I'd be looking for it. People know, people would be looking for a more pure, more pristine.

It would basically say the Catholic Church has finally sank. But if the Moscow Patriarchate or the Constantinopolitan Patriarch comes out and says, well, you know, we've undergone biosexual development and now if it's not a board of facient, you could talk to your confessor and it may be okay, and it doesn't make news. So there are some things that you're going to learn as an Orthodox, and I list some other things, you know, and I link to official synodal statements. These are not just like, oh, Father John Meyendorf

said this, or oh, Metropolitan Calistas Wehr said this. This is official synodal documentation. And so, and maybe you'll be okay with it, but I guarantee you you're gonna have to, you'll start giving yourself some of the same reasons to be Orthodox that I would have to be Catholic. Can I read to you, I don't know if you saw a video I did the other day, I don't know if you ever watched the show, but I texted a priest friend of mine, he's an Eastern priest. I won't say his name because I want you to give me your honest assessment of a text message he sent me.

I was interviewing a fellow called Derek Cummins who's been a Protestant for a while, he's been discerning between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, ended up choosing Orthodoxy as a catechumen. And I texted my Eastern priest friend, I'm like, dude, there were times as I was listening to Derek, I'm like, I kind of would love Orthodoxy to be true so I can escape this scandal-ridden church as a vulnerable, maybe even an inappropriate thing for me with the Catholic YouTube channel to say, but that's where I was at. So I text him and I say that. Here's what he said back to me, and I want to see what you think. He said, my friend, you are eating my daily bread, but that's the age-old temptation, a spiritually pure church.

This is the spiritual manifestation of the primordial fight or flight mechanism. We want to run away from the church where our shepherds deny shepherd denies Christ thrice. We want to run away from the church where her elite inner circle fight among themselves about who is the greatest. We want to run away from the church where here where her most trusted collaborator sold him for a few farthings. We want to find a church which has none of the above, but it won't be Christ's church. Now you now you know what it won't be Christ's church.

Now you now, you know what it's like to marry Goma. I've been down this hallway and it's appealing at first. But which door to enter, which orthodox church? All the many orthodox, except the Russians on paper, allow contraception. They are not in communion with each other. There is no center, essential authority on discipline or doctrine and homosexuality and the problem of concupinage is widespread. Our only option is to fight for our mother.

She who is abandoned in the ditch, half dead, fouled, wasted and covered in myron vermin. That's the bride. Before you respond to that, that was a text message. I mean, he wasn't like writing an official statement to me. So, you know, whatever you might think of that, like, recognized, like, that was just him texting me back. And I texted him back and went, can we meet for a cigar? I love this man.

What do you think of that, though? Because it's because what you're referencing when you talk about your friend leaving Catholicism, this it's like this purity spiral, right? Where we're just desperate to find solid ground somewhere Yeah And I think I don't think it's any coincidence that we're looking for solid ground somewhere when we come from broken families We exist in a broken nation. We're now existing in a broken church. I mean, it's an understandable reaction, but what do you think? Yeah, I think he's spot-on. You know, I I think that

In that case it was father Jason Sharron. Okay. I just didn't want you to ream him. Yeah, no, thank you. Father Jason. Yeah. Um, so I agree. You know, I agree. I, I, like I said, I, I was an act, uh, a catechumen for a while and I got to learn certain things, you know? Um, you know, with no names mentioned, um, I was at the catechumen class, you know, with no names mentioned. I was at the catechumen class, you know, and we were going around the table and a young couple had voiced their opinion, oh, I'm glad that my husband did not decide to go Catholic.

And I said, and in my eyes, I'm like, oh, I understand that I'm trying to get out I said why? She goes because we can't have kids right now. I Said what do you mean? It's like yeah, we we're gonna use contraception and The priest sitting across the table. I was looking to him to hear. Oh, no, we we don't you know, we believe in the Procreative command of Genesis we believe, of Genesis. I was expecting him to say something, but he just almost agreed. So once I got to asking, my wife actually put the question, do you guys believe that this is condemned? And the answer we got was, well, we don't judge. Which, you know, at that time,

that's just not what I wanted to hear. You know, it was already, things were already mounting about orthodoxy at that point, where I knew that if I was gonna become orthodox, and I was gonna have the same critical mind that I did as a Catholic, I was gonna have the same critical mind that I did as a Catholic, I was gonna have to start saying, well yes, but. Yes this is here, but. Yes this is here, but the liturgy is beautiful. Yes this is here, but the liturgy is beautiful. And the chant's beautiful. And the prayers are

beautiful. And the booklets are beautiful. And all this stuff is beautiful. But I was already doing that as a Catholic, like, well, yeah, this is a problem, but we've got the fullness of the faith or yeah, we've got adoration. Yeah, we've got the mystics. Yeah. I was already doing that as a Catholic, you know. So how can I break my baptismal vow just to find myself in the same spot? Granted, there's a honeymoon phase, right? You've got the chant and you've got the... You just bought your fresh shot key and... Lord, save thy people.

I mean, it's like, it's beautiful, you know? But like I said, I had that time as an Anglican where I left because I needed to know if the claims were true. And so for me, you me, if somebody says, why shouldn't I just go to the Orthodox Church? Well, I would say, look, I would say the Orthodox Church has more difficulties with keeping itself defended on this issue of history and doctrine.

But those are not sensational because, you know, you don't really...it's hard to get a feeling from it. You know, you study, for example, the filioque, and let's just say the filioque is true. If the filioque is true the Orthodox have condemned it sufficiently in Official venues to the point where It stands or falls, you know orthodoxy does it stands or falls on whether it was right and condemning the Filioque so, you know there's some scholars today, ecumenical scholars, oh no we could talk about it, there's room to talk about it and we just we just don't like the addition to the creed. No. If you

study the Byzantine reaction to the West, they condemned the filioque doctrine. That's what was intolerable. If they're wrong about that, then that's a puncture to the heart of orthodoxy. So there might be some stabs at the surface of the lungs as in the Catholic Church right now. But I don't think we have a spear through. I just love how violent all of your analogies are. I'm sorry. No, I just love it. It's like being punched in the face. Have your teeth locked out. Now this is good. Spear directly in the heart. Got it. Yeah. But it's not sensational.

I like the analogy. It's not sensational. You still got the Orthodox beauty. You still got the chant. You still got the liturgy. But I do believe that they condemned a biblical and patristic doctrine. Let's get into that then. Let's keep in mind though that most people who are watching are like Phileoque, and the son or something. So help us maybe.

I know you're writing a book on this, so it's going to be like drinking water from a fire hydrant. Oh no, I can keep this short. I have to because, you know, but the filioque, you know, in and of itself, you know, means and the sun, and obviously that's not explanatory, right? It's couched in a larger structure of thinking. That's in the procession of the Holy Spirit, which again, that's also couched in a larger structure about the Trinity. The Philioque is possibly one of the most difficult doctrines you can study.

So that's one of the reasons why not many people are interested in it, and more so, that's one of the reasons why people don't look to study it, to decipher between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, because you spend a month studying it and you realize you need to You need to read five years. You need to read Platonism You need to read Dionysius You need to read like you need to read a lot to understand Where the Byzantines were coming from when they constructed the Trinity where the latin's were particularly Augustine when he you know Trinitized the one guy the one God and how he did it.

So it's very tough. So people don't usually go there. But I think if you do, you'll see that at least the first half of the church, so the first 1000 years, the Latin West was clearly phileoquist. They clearly believed the phileoque. They clearly believed the phileoque. Augustine believed the phileoque.

Scholars are pretty much unanimous on that. Augustine set the pattern, paradigmatically, for Western theology, especially on the Trinity. Pope Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville, Leander of Seville. I mean, Western saints teaching the philiocue. And one of the things that a lot of people know about is the Queen Kunque, the Athanasian creed. It's linked to Athanasius, probably not made by Athanasius, probably a fifth century

production. But that Queen Kun Kunque, means whoever wishes in Latin. It has the Filioque in that creed, but whoever wishes to be saved must keep the Catholic faith inviolate, without which he will perish everlastingly. And in it says the Filioque. So they were already believing the Filioque as an apostolic deposit, you know. So the Orthodox are gonna have to look back and figure out how half the trunk of the tree was corrupt for the first 1,000 years with the same corruption that they gave as a reason

to separate from the Catholic West. And while that is not, doesn't give you the butterflies, you know, to me that is conclusive. You know, I couldn't do that. It would just be too incoherent. What about the Eastern Fathers? So that's a good question. So I think the Catholic Church can bridge the Latin and the Eastern Fathers, whereas I don't think the Orthodox can do that in the converse. So the Byzantines never said the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. It's not there, okay? The Eastern Fathers,

they never say that. And when they began Great, some major, Cyril of Alexandria. These are like home run hitting Eastern fathers. They at least believe that the spirit proceeds from the father through the son in his personal existence. So in other words, you have a producing principle and then you have the terminating product. The producing principle is the Father and the Son, and then you have the terminating product, which is the Holy Spirit.

So the Father and the Son produce the Holy Spirit eternally. Well, whether you say it's from the Father and the Son or from the Father through the Son, if you're speaking in this context, you're a phileoquist. You know, from the Father and the Son, from the Father through the Son, you're a phileoquist, okay? So, that's why it's important to know that Photeus, when he started to criticize the philiac way, he could not tolerate either from or through. You know, today we're kind of, we see a lot of, you know, ecumenical orthodox saying, oh no, you know, we accept this dia huyu through the sun. Yeah, through the sun.

Well, wait a minute, you know, you guys were condemning that for centuries, you know. The only time that the Greeks accepted this idea that the Holy Spirit can come through the, from the Father through the Son is at the Council of Blacherne, as far as I'm aware, at the Council of Blacherne in 1285, where they relegated this issue of procession to the mode of God's energy or activity. So when God does an action, it's got this triadic structure from the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. It's got the one, two, three. It's got a certain triadic order. So the spirit comes from the son in that sense. But that has nothing to do with the hypostatic origin.

That's in the realm of activity, God's activity, which is equal in the Father, equal in the Son, equal in the Spirit. So that's not a hypostatic procession. That's an energetic or an active procession. Much different than the issue of what I think like Gregory of Nisawas teaching, which is that the Holy Spirit originates from the Father as cause, but not without the mediation of the Son.

That's hypostatic origination. origination. And I think the Orthodox have denounced that view in their condemnations of the Catholic Filioque. When you say the Orthodox, what is, how? So yeah, so the Council of Leones, 1274, the Catholics taught the Filioque. Well, in response to that, you had the Council of Blacquernet. That was the, in Constantinople, you had certain people like John Becos and other unionists, they called them, those who read the decrees of Lyon and said, no, we can agree with the Filioque,

because our fathers, they don't say it in the same terms, but they mean the same things. Well, that pro-unionist party was swallowed up by an anti-unionist party led by Gregory of Cyprus at the Council of Blacrony in 1285. So that's what, 10 years after Leon, something like that. So that was like the official orth reaction to the philiocue. Then you had the Council of Florence, right? There, okay, going back to that issue of the Latin Fathers, at the Council of

Florence, the Greek delegates were like, wait a minute, if the Latin Fathers teach the philiioque, it's impossible that the Latin fathers and the Greek fathers are at odds, because they were in communion and there was one Holy Spirit that they were receiving. So that was one of the major motivations for why they agreed while they were there, because it was absolutely clear that at least the Latin fathers taught it. There is no Latin in Greek in Christ, right? Just like there's no Gentile or Jew in Christ. Now we talk about legitimate differences, but when it comes to the faith, there is no

– there shouldn't be. Eastern West. Yeah, there is no Eastern West in Christ because all are one in Christ Jesus, you know. So how do you have Latin fathers teaching a heresy, who we venerate in our liturgical books, and then the Eastern fathers completely disagreeing, and we're going to sit here and go with only the Eastern fathers? It was, the Catholics were saying were saying no there's a way to bridge them. As far as I'm concerned the Catholic side was the only way to bridge the fathers. Whereas the the contemporary you know the Orthodox reaction then, the Orthodox reaction now, I think divides the fathers. And so that's another nonsensational,

maybe too academic realm of falsification for me, or for others, but it seems conclusive for me. It's just the main reason that if you would leave the Catholic Church, God forbid, you would perhaps become Coptic, because they haven't condemned it in the same way or have they? That's another good reason, yeah. That's another good reason.

Although, you know, I've run into some Coptics online that they condemn the philioquist. I don't know if they should or can, because Cyril of Alexandria, which is, you know, their main proponent, patristically speaking, Athanasius, you know, both heroes of Alexandria, Egypt, I think they both teach the philiac way. So yeah, that would be a, if I had to think critically, like a Navy SEAL who pitches his tent, what's the next wise move? My gut obviously would say, well, the Byzantine Orthodox will be easier because there are more plenty here and I'm familiar, but if I'm going to go

with my mind, I couldn't go there. So if I couldn't go to the Catholic Church or them, I'd probably have to consider the Coptics and C-Rac. But at that point, I may be not coming out of my tent for a while. I don't know. I hate to be difficult, but... You know, this is terrific. This is really great. Yeah.

I wish it was easier. Yeah. And when people come to me and say, how do I resolve this? How do I resolve this? I just wanna know the truth. What's the answer? I say, well, I hate to tell you this, but I cannot give you an easy one, two, three.

I just can't. Everyone that's ever given me one of those, through study I realized they didn't know what they were talking about. So I'm not gonna do you the same evil of something like that. Although I do think if you search hard enough, you can get the answer. I don't want to sound boastful here, but I think I can defend my position. I think I could defend the Catholic position over the Byzantine position, but it's not

easy. Mason What was it like for you going from a Western experience to an Eastern experience just culturally? Because I think with the crackdowns on tradition, we're going to see the Eastern Catholic churches, even the SSPX, Anglican Ordinary, exploding as people seek tradition within the realms of orthodoxy? Yeah, I think that it felt, to me at first I was leery. You know, when I went to the Orthodox Church at first, I walked in, I got the smell. There was a bunch of cubbies with family names on identifying each cubby, you know, something, something Golovsky, something, something Opulous, something. All the names were like hard to pronounce, so I felt like I was coming, I was like

stepping off the plane from, you know, traveling overseas. What do you mean the smell? Oh, like the, I was... The incense? Yeah, they have a certain kind of incense that where I was going, and it was just very powerful, distinct. I felt out of place, you know, because there were some people that were not speaking English And so at first I kind of had that normal, you know where Again sensationally I felt out of place. But if you put your thinking cap on well, where would you have been in 900?

If you were going back in time, You would have been in a Latin church thinking that these people are all foreigners. Same thing with the West and the East. So at first I did feel like there was like an ethnocentricity about the Orthodox, but I began to learn how Christian the traditions and the customs were. And, you know, I don't mind the Eastern ethos, you know. I prefer the English-Latin ethos. I don't know. It's just embedded in me. But I think the Byzantines know how to do the liturgy and they know how to do it far better than the Roman ritual. In fact, I think they're better than the Tridentine. That's just me. That's just me. I love the Tridentine mass, but it's got its own little developments over

time, pre-16th century history, which the trads will say, oh, but that's organic. It's part of the wood of the church. Okay, but I think the Easterners, especially like the Armenians, when they do their liturgy, it captures something that was there, like in the early church, that I don't think the Tridentine mass does. I'm not an expert in the liturgy,

but that's the sense I got. So it wasn't too difficult over time for me to acclimate to the Eastern ethos, you know. Did you have a Western devotional life in the Catholic Church that then swapped into the Eastern devotional life and then back again? How do you pray right now? Yeah, so right now, no. Right now, I'm, you know, with six six kids it's tough. It's really tough. There's some friends where I just let me not strangle this boy. Well, you know, I just,

I've had to learn how to not, you know, turn my house into a Holocaust because, you know, at first there's this thing, well, we want this to be solemn. We want this to be holy. I know what you mean. We want this to be quiet. we want this to be holy, we want this to be quiet, we want this to be serious. Here you are Mary, shut up and sit down! Right. Mother of God, we've all had that experience. And if you haven't, you can judge us only after

you've had two or three children. Right, exactly, when you have six of them and they're close, or three of them, just have three of them, and they're close in age, you'll see. But, you know, no, right now actually we, I use the St. Gregory Prayer Book until we can get the funds to get the Divine Worship of the Ordinariate. Rupert Spira What's that?

Dr. Michael O'Brien So that's our, basically our office book, you know, the Ordinariate has an office book now that we're, it's been out for... Rupert Spira I haven't heard of this, Divine Worship of the Ordinary. Adam Lerner Yeah, so that's their, that's basically their liturgy of the hours. Rupert Spira Who's their liturgy? Adam Lerner The Anglican Ordinary.

Rupert Spira Oh, you go to an Anglican Ordinary. Adam Lerner Yes, I'm an Anglican Ordinary. Rupert Spira I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. Adam Lerner No, no, that's okay, that's okay. So yeah, but at night, you know, we read, we just finished the book of Acts, so we actually read from the scriptures. And imagine that we have, we complicate this, so don't we? We overcomplicate it.

Yeah. And just read from the scriptures. Sometimes we just pray freely, especially if it's late, you know, but there are times where we, you know, we could do a rosary, but most of the time we're in the St. Gregory prayer book. And, but if not, I was using the little office of Baltimore. I don't know if you've heard of that. No, I haven't. So in the 1800s in the city of Baltimore, some of the Catholic priests there got together and said we need to make a

book of hours, Liturgy of the Hours for the Laity. And they made a shortened version of what, like the official bereivory, you know, going back to Benedict of Nursia. Is this the same time and place of like the Baltimore Catechism? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, very, in fact, yeah, they had basically like a revival. They wanted the lady to learn the faith. They wanted the lady to pray with the church. So they got the catechism and then you've got the Baltimore office. Do you mind looking that up and putting the Baltimore office in the description?

Oh, yes, people would love it. They would love it. I mean, it's just amazing. I like it. It's traditional. See, I don't know about you, but this is how I feel right now. I, I, sometimes I feel like I don't have a home, you know, I, uh, I, uh, I go to the East, you know, and I love it. And then I just think to myself, gosh, I wish I could do the prayers that my grandma prayed, you know? Yeah. You know? And so then I'll, I'll become more attracted to the trad side of the church and then I'll go on

different YouTube's. And I just think this would kill me because it just seems like it would plague me with scrupulosity the way they speak about certain devotions and how you ought to pray this, you know, and I just know myself enough for that. We crush. So I'm looking around like, where do I find, where do I find some solid footing in some, yeah, some regular day to day piety? And I suspect there's a lot of people who are in that position.

Yeah. Yeah. I went through that too. I mean, I had my trad phase and, um, I, I, most people would consider me a trad, but if I ever get in a group of them, they quickly realize, they're like, Oh no, you're not one of us. I don't know why, but, you know, there is scrupulosity to be suffered in those circles in many ways. And in some sense, you know, Eastern spirituality is a remedy, but if you stay long enough in the Orthodox, you'll find the trad groups in the Orthodox Church who say, oh, you got to pray this way, you got to pray this way, you got to say it this way, you got to do it at this time.

So, I mean, it's in both worlds, you know, but I find that now I'm just more eclectic and you know, some people don't like that. But you know, at this point, this is where we're at. This is where we're at. If it's wrong and a year from now I look back and say, oh, we did it wrong, we were supposed to do this, I'm open to it. But right now my kids, my son, I'm happy with where my sons are at

because they're asking all these beautiful questions at night. They're interested. Because that hurt me, you know, obviously my one-year-old is not interested, my two-year-old's not interested, my five-year-old's not interested. But when they got, the older ones got around six, seven, I was always worried, you know, that they were not listening. And I'm like, this is Christ, we're talking about Jesus Christ here. But the older ones, my 14-year-old and my eight-year-old,

they're like super alert and asking questions with what I'm doing right now. And I would never get that if we did the rosary. If we just did the rosary, I'm sorry. Don't be. We would, I just wouldn't get it. Yeah. Yeah.

Pray as you can, not as you can't. And you know, it's much better for kids to have a peaceful dad praying amidst chaos than a sort of tyrannical dad who needs to do this perfectly, because then you just exhaust yourself and you won't continue to do daily prayer with your children and they'll feel anxious about prayer. This is something that took me a long time to learn. And in a way, I'm still learning it. I had these visions of the way Scott Hahn must pray with his kids, you know, they're

kneeling, one of them's levitating. Meanwhile, I'm like, don't strangle your kid with a rosary. Don't do it. You'll regret it. Don't do it. You know, and that's just so, and you know, of course, if I was to call, if I knew Scott back then, he'd be like, are you kidding me? You know, and I think it is so important that we dads be real about how prayer can look. You know, I used to, I used to get really frustrated with my kids. Whereas now we'll pray and one of them's laying on the floor and one of them's going to get his fourth glass of water. It's okay.

It's okay. Yeah. I heard something from one of my favorite Protestant theologians. A long time ago I heard this. It convicted me then. It still convicts me now. He said the worst Christian home to grow up in is a home where there's all these rules, but there's never any joy and there's only anger over the rules being broken. Oh. Is it the best Christian home to grow up in is a Christian home that hasn't set up these,

this calculus of rules, but the activity of doing it, just doing it smoothly, gently, and everyone, maybe the first 10 years, nobody's on board, but then eventually people get on board. That's the best Christian home to grow up. There's D.A. Carson, he's a New Testament professor. He's one of my favorite.

And when he said that, I was really convicted because I was Nazi, I was really convicted because I was Nazi for a while. And I still struggle with it because, you know, there are some times where I'm like, well, how could we, how could you ignore this? Or how could you do that while this is going on? Or how can you go a day without reading the Bible. But I have to just, you know, that's the worst thing you could do is to put these heavy burden on your kids. And I'm trying to undo a lot of things. I don't know if I can successfully do it with the time I have left with my eldest.

I hope so. But my prayer is, Lord, make up for the ways I. Yeah, and I trust in you. You're that good You're better than I think you are. I Keep going back to Jacques Philippe's line in his book searching for a maintaining piece Have you read that? No, but I've been can you continually I recommend you a copy? I wish I had one here to give it to you But he says, you know when you're not a Christian you often want the wrong things in the wrong way You want sin and you're sort of anxious and arrogant about it.

You become a Christian and then the problem isn't that you want the wrong things because you want the right things. You want your kids to pray. You want good things for yourself, but you often want the right things in the wrong way. So you're not patient. You're not patient the way the father's patient with you and all your mess-ups. As you say, you're a Nazi, you're a tyrant, you're angry, you're fretful, you lose peace. But to want the right things in the right way, that's a difficult bloody thing to learn,

isn't it? And I completely agree. I've known families who seem to be doing everything correctly. They even have a place in their house where they've got the stations of the cross nailed up and that's terrific you know more power to him. But there is this sort of sense of legalism in the home and then I've got families here in student bill and you know they've got tech policies that I wouldn't dream of for my children kids are walking around with iPhones and stuff like that. But they're all hanging out in the end of in their very messy kitchen right all laughing together and joking. Feet on the counter. Yeah, just that kind of crap that just drives me nuts.

But I'm like, oh yeah, this is how you do it. But they're holy, right? Like they pray, but it's not in an anxious way. Just exactly like, is it Carson you said so that? Carson, yeah. That's what I see. Yeah, Carson, yeah. He's a Baptist, but boy, I wanna see him when I go,

if I get to heaven, I wanna see him there. But yeah, I know one family just like that, where I'm like, wow, they don't do this at this time, they don't do that. And I've seen them grow up, and their kids are still strong Christians as they're older. I'm wondering, some of the other families where I've seen

the kids take off, if that had something to do with it. So I don't want to... I think you're about to say the same thing I'm about to say. I mean, part of the problem is thinking that there could possibly be a formula. Right. Clearly, there are some ways in which we can guide and guide our children into the faith and away from the faith for sure. But there's that bloody free will thing as well. Yeah, I mean some kids do run away

and it's best that they did that for the time. So that they can. It is funny that a lot of us parents, we've had that experience in our own life, rejected the faith, started doing drugs, started looking at porn. Clearly we would never want that for any human being, right? And yet we see the slightest imperfection in our own children. We come down on them like a ton of bricks. Hey, before we go further, I want to say thank you to, to Hallow, who is one of our sponsors.

Have you, do you know what Hallow is? I'm going to sell it to you right now. I was really impressed with these guys. I actually had the founder of them in the studio. He was into Buddhism and he had this, what was the app called that he would listen to? I forget. It's like a headspace. I think that's what it's called headspace or calm. You know, those different kinds of apps that help you pray. So he's like, we need something like this in the Catholic world. And so he created it. It is for freaking nominal. If you're into that kind of thing. You think okay like Catholic app that helps you to pray. I'm going to show it to you right now on my iPad. I'm sure it's fine but like good on him Catholics given it a shot. All

right. So just let's see here. I got to subscribe here. This is an iPad that isn't on their business. Look at the images. It's like second to none. I compared this app to Headspace to come. It's objectively superior. So if you're out there today, you wanna grow in prayer, look, we're talking about anxiety, we're talking about wanting to pray in a non-anxious way, download Halo, H-A-L-L-O-W.com slash Matt Fradd. There's a link in the description below

that'll give you, I think, three months free. That has free stuff on the app now, but you can get access to the entire thing by going to hello.com slash Matt Frad and signing up. They have sleep stories you can go to bed to. They've got examinations of conscience. It'll help you pray the rosary if you've never before. I just had an aunt, a former Antifa member who was sentenced to prison for five years. Tell me that it was because of my advert on Hallow that he was kneeling and learning how

to pray the rosary. It's a great way to grow in your prayer. So go to Hallow, H-A-L-L-O-W dot com slash Matt Fradd to learn more. You know, check it out. Like this is actually something like just as we're talking here, I'm like, I want to start playing these sleep stories to my kids in bed, not mine. I did one for him. It's atrocious. No one wants to listen to this, but father Mike Schmitz. Yes, please. You know, so people can check that out. Hello dot com slash Matt Fratt or Daily Reflection. Check that out. That's pretty cool. Anyway, or you can even choose from different people.

Look at this. It's been a while since I've opened this up. Jonathan, Anna, let's listen to Jonathan. Oh, I got to put the volume up. Jonathan Rumi. Oh, Jonathan Rumi. Check that out. Let's make the sign of the cross. Oh, yes, please. In the name of the father and of the son.

All right, that's good, Jonathan. Now, Anna. Hello and welcome to Hallow. She's your Anglican lady. That's what you want. In the name of the father and of the son. All right. What about our Nazi? What?

And welcome to Hallow. My name is Francis. Yeah, I don't like you at all. Abby. Hello and welcome to hello. Nice. My name is. All right. I'll stop doing the advert. They either got way more than they paid for or way less. Hello.com slash Matt Fred. Hey, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back, back for more. And I want to let people who are watching know that at the end of each of these long form discussions, we always have a post show Q and a wrap up. That's only available to those who support us on locals or Patreon. If you want to get access to that, if you want to support the show, go check that out.

Links in the description below. Cool. Show it to me though. Okay. So this is tell us, tell them what it is. Yeah. So this is a book that I recently published. Um, it's on Amazon. It's called Malchysidek and the last supper. And, um, it's actually, I love how it's laid out first of all. Oh yeah. Yeah.

I really do. I mean, it's, well, sorry. Yeah, no, no, go ahead. I, I, it was a project of mine from many years ago. I wrote a long article on this issue of Melchizedek and how I think that the typology between Christ and Melchizedek is sort of like a proof for the Catholic doctrine of Eucharistic transubstantiation and the sacrifice of the mass. And so, I took that article and just expanded and made a book out of it. So that one's already published.

So that, you know, if anybody's interested. Do you have a link yet in the description? Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, Melchizedek and the Last Supper. Yeah. It's beautiful. And the front here is, this is a church in, oh boy, here. It's in the front page here, okay, the mosaic. This is a mosaic

of the sacrifice of Melchizedek. It's on the wall of the church of Sant' Vittale in Ravenna, Italy, and it was made in the 6th century. So, I had a tough time choosing my cover, but this was to signify that Melchizedek prefigured Christ in the mass. It's actually a really great front cover. Yeah. So anyway, so that's that one. It's really good for a Protestant who's inquiring, and it really would enrich Catholics and Orthodox. But the other thing I wanted to mention was I have a book on the papacy and the orthodox.

Is that going to be a tome? Well, it's like 10 years of my research put into text. Wow. So, yes? Yeah, I guess you could say that. I didn't want it floating in my head. I did it primarily because I wanted the research I had done for my kids. But I figured might as well make the best of it.

So, M.A.S. Academic, I'm happy to say, was blessed richly with them looking at the book, peer reviewing it, and I'm in contract. So the contract is already signed, we're agreed editing has been done, red line edit, copy editing has been done. Redline edit, copy editing has been done. We're expecting it to be sent to the printers soon and estimated publication is Mayish-Junish because some delays are to be expected.

Oh, believe me. I just published a book with them. Oh yeah. Although I had to read mine for Audible. Hopefully you don't have to read your tone Oh, no. No. Yeah, it's gonna be like from what I hear after editing. It may be like seven to eight hundred pages. Yeah Which you know, it's going to attract people who are interested and that's really who who would benefit from it So what do they do when they have a peer review? What is that? What's that process like? And were you nervous? Yeah, what I think they do is they take your manuscript and they send it to somebody and I don't think they Tell the person who wrote it

Okay Because if they if I just happen to be really good friends with that person then he could give a good review, right? So I and then they don't tell me who is reviewing it. So, I was able to see a document come back to me with a bunch of red line comments, you know, with suggestions, things like that. And originally, I think it was a thousand pages. So, they came back and said, this is a great book.

They thought it was great, but some subtractions are gonna be necessary. So I did the hard work of doing all those subtractions in 2021 and early in the year, 2021. And then after that, we did like the editing, the punctuation Whether things were said correctly or not and that's all been done. You know now we're at the stage of Looking at design, you know, that's fun. Yeah

So if you were to say to somebody this book will help you what? Yeah, so the book is written for people who I play the investigator. If you're looking for Eric, the apologist in this book, you're not going to find it. And I know some people feel that it's a disservice because this is, you know, right now, especially with this issue with the papacy and the Orthodox, they want to hear from somebody who knows what they're talking about.

You know, I want to give them an an answer and I wish I could do that. But I'm the kind of guy who I need all the details. I'm like at my job they compared me to a hound dog investigator. I just have to know everything before I ever do something. And so I play the investigator. So the first thing I talk about is how difficult the issue is. The second thing I talk about is why another papacy book? Why another book on the papacy and the orthodox? Well the answer to that is that there's only two really in the contemporary times. There's Ed Szechenski's book, The Papacy and the Orthodox, and then there's Henry Chadwick's book, East and West, Story of a Rift Between East and West.

Those are not plenty, you know? And then the books defending the papacy back in the day, they're great, but they rely too much, I think, on what's called patristic florelegium, which is basically, today we call it quote mining, where they just, they cite a bunch of citations from the past. Oh wow, Peter, supreme, keys, blah, blah, blah.

And not enough attention was given to historical context. So I think, I felt handicapped when I was studying this, when I was planted at the fork between East and West, I could have used a book that really slowly went through the historical context of history. And so that's why I did that. So that's one of the reasons why I wrote the book. And the book starts off with trying to show where we agree.

We agree between Catholics and Orthodox on the source material, scripture, tradition. And under the umbrella of tradition, you've got councils, church fathers, ecclesial consensus, you know, conciliar canons, whatever. Scripture tradition, we all agree that's the source material, and then I basically say, okay, if we agree on the same source material, what is the bare minimum information that we need to see in the source material that would show a logical continuity with the Vatican's decree on papal primacy. And I come down to four things.

Number one, that Christ singled out Peter and gave him a unique leadership in the apostolic government of the church. Does anybody deny that? No. Yeah. Number two. Okay, good.

That's gonna be a much more complicated question. Nobody denies that. I mean, you can get D.A. Carson, you know, in writing that. The second thing is that this unique office of primacy given to Peter in the apostolic government of the church was meant to outlive Peter In the person of his successors Okay, that's number two orthodox can base. I mean most I mean today orthodox are open to that historically they weren't but number three

The successors of Peter are exclusively the bishops of rome So not the bishop of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, the bishopric of Rome where Peter was last stationed when he died. That his primacy of office that was given to him by Christ outlives him there. And then the last thing, number four, is that this office of primacy in Rome was designed by Christ to be part of the permanent fabric of the church, and therefore is to last until the ages last. So, I think that's the bare minimum. Okay? Nothing about jurisdiction in there, nothing about infallibility in there, but I think that's the bare minimum that

You can't it you can't right now with those just those four things the only thing that's come that comports with it This catholicism. Yeah, so I think if you go through the source material and you find these four things and not one of them not one less it's got to be all four. Because if you have this notion of terminability or reversibility or transitoriness where it could change, it could go from Rome to Constantinople, what have you, then you don't have the Catholic teaching. Interesting, that's fascinating.

So yeah, I basically nail it down to those, that's the bare minimum data required to be Anything close to a proof of the Catholic teacher? I hope you'll write a layman's version of this book for a maybe a different publisher I thought about that I thought about that and actually I already have a manuscript That's only like a hundred pages that kind of does that good. So we'll see that'd be great So then the book goes, the next chapter deals with epistemology, because this is one of the biggest issues today with the Orthodox, especially in the 20th century, they looked

at the Catholic Church and they saw this whole issue of the papacy as a result of poor epistemology, which means, oh, the Catholic Church doesn't realize, and I'm not quoting anybody here, but I'm kind of dumbing it down, the Catholic Church doesn't realize that we have the Holy Spirit, and so we don't need a pope. If we all have the Holy Spirit, then we're all internally taught by God. And so, we don't need a criteria for a criteria on a criteria for the truth. Like, well, how do you know this is true? Well, we know because we have this invincible machinery in the Pope. Certain Russian theologians in the 20th century, some Greek too, they criticized this view and they said it's the result of poor pneumatology that the Catholics need to manufacture. They need to manufacture this epistemic... It really does sound like a Protestant argument

that you're making, doesn't it, almost? I go there, yeah. So they see it as the Catholics don't realize that we have the Holy Spirit, and so we don't need to have a pope making decisions for us as if we don't already have the truth. So you see criticisms like this from like Father Demetrius Staniloius, probably mispronouncing his name, Romanian Orthodox priest, the late Father Demetri. Great theologian. But him, other scholars, you see an English writer, Philip Sherrard, some of these guys criticized the papacy in the 20th century. Father John Meyendorf.

It goes back really to Alexei Komikov, who was a Russian thinker, he wasn't a theologian, but he was an orthodox, he was a Russian philosopher, you could call him, and he kind of looked at the Catholic Church and the West in general as having this epistemological problem, where they needed to have an infallible machine so that everybody knows what the truth is.

Whereas, the alternative is, no, the Orthodox, we have the truth through the Holy Spirit and through the collegial structure of the Orthodox Church. And the Catholics, on the other hand, are framed as these people who don't know the truth, like we're all a bunch of dumb sheep and we need to have this pope resolve all the problems because we just can't ever come to an agreement. So I mean, as it's stated, it kind of looks like bad, like the Catholic Church is teaching like we're all like not infused with divine knowledge, and we need to have this Pope manufactured from logic rather than the Scripture to know the

truth. Well, I go through that and I explain where this, I studied a lot of Russian writers, because this is one of their, this is one of their fortes. And I show how that's not true. All you got to do is read the papal documents of the 20th century, the mystical body of Christ, Mystici Corpus, we all believe there's a supernatural impetus in us through the Holy Spirit,

but there's a safety measure when things are not, perfectly unified. But I contrast the epistemology of East and West in that chapter. The next chapter I go through the fact that there is no East or West in Christ, like I was telling you before, because a lot of people will say, oh, well, that was Augustine, or that was Pope Leo, or that was Pope Leo, or that was Pope this and such and such. What about the Eastern Fathers?

The Eastern Fathers didn't accept that. So what do you say there? Check on the chessboard. Well, that kind of competition is not consistent with either the Catholic or the Orthodox view of the Fathers. The Fathers are supposed to be in agreement. Now, that's not always the case, but to have this large scale dichotomy

between East and West, and then to believe that Rome misunderstood its position for a thousand years, I mean, the consequences are pretty bad. So I try to show that in this study, we can't do this, like, we can't infuse the schism back into the fathers as if, oh, the Latin fathers might say that, but not the Eastern fathers. The Eastern fathers say this, but not the Latin fathers.

Like, as if you're imposing the schism back into the history of the church. I say, can't do that. So even if it's a Latin pope making claims to infallibility in the fifth century, that's an Eastern Orthodox witness because they say their territory is the whole first millennium. So for example, they believe that Roman Catholicism is a creation of the 11th century.

Before that, it was the Eastern Orthodox Church in both East and West. To them, the popes of the West, those were Orthodox Christians. They died Orthodox Christians. Those aren't Roman Catholics, you know, Pope Agatha, Pope Hadrian, the first, those are Eastern Orthodox. But the thing is, they're all teaching papal supremacy. So what tends to happen is the Orthodox tend to say, oh, well, those are not, you know,

those were, they're in the West, that wasn't what the East accepted. Obviously, now we're committing this issue where we're infusing the schism back into the flops. So, I make that point. Then the rest of the book is just a journey through, from Scripture all the way to 1054. I play the investigator, and then in the end I come in with my view on which side I chose and which side I think wins the debate.

And that's basic. That's it. Who would you say is the number one orthodox YouTuber online? Do you think that's maybe doing the best job at articulating the orthodox position and characterizing the Catholic position in a fair way? Yeah, that's a good question. characterizing the Catholic position in a fair way? Hmm. Yeah. That's a good question. That's why they pay me the big bucks.

You know, I'd have to really think about that because every time I hear or somebody sends me something, I consistently find just lack of education on this. But I would have to say that somebody like Father Patrick, Father John Ramsey, I want to say he's probably the best because he's very careful and he's very humble and he wants to know both sides, you know, and he's willing to read anything you write to him. You know, so I like him, you know, but he's not like a major YouTube outlet, you know. He doesn't swing punches either, does he?

I wish, you know, there is a few networks out there. I just wish that we were compatible. It's tough because some people, oh, why don't you debate this guy? Why don't you debate that guy? Well, number one, debates are real limited. And even if there is good to get out of a debate, I want it to be, I want the best to come out of it.

And for me to spend myself, I want to spend myself on somebody I know that we can get the best kind of debate out of. And I don't really see a lot of contenders that qualify for me, you know? And so, you know, some people say, oh, that's because you're afraid, and that's because you don't want to be,

you know, you don't know the truth, and you're, you know, yeah, yeah, whatever, right? Well, look, I mean, Father Patrick was a scholar. I'm willing, I don't wanna necessarily debate, but if somebody asked me to debate, and they're Orthodox, they have a face like two men can get in front of a screen. Yeah.

I'll probably do it. That's what you mean I'll probably do it not with some people. There's some people out there. I already tried, you know, everybody knows You know the whole jay-dyer debate the whole classic debate on that I won't do that again. Probably, you know It would be cool as if jay-dyer came on and argued the Catholic position and you argue the position. Yeah. That would be and if both of you took that seriously. Yeah, yeah. I mean, in my debate with him, I just, I didn't get the sense that he knew the sources, you know. His strengths are in the contemporary fallout, you know. Mosques, popes in the mosque, clown mass. When you go into the history, I don't think he,

that's not his forte. I think his forte is like trying to show the current corruption, you know. So, you know, that's why I think he excels more in that kind of framework. And he's a, it sounds like he's a good debater, you know, but I don't, I didn't see it with me, you know, and, uh, let's put that. There's a link in the description. There's a link in there. There is a link. I, if you go to reason and theology, I think that's the YouTube channel. I think their most popular episode is a debate.

I guess Jay Dyer called up and you guys went at it. If we could put that link to that video in the description, Neil, if people can stomach it, it was, we were actually, I mean, I had intentions to debate him a year prior, uh, at R and T Mike Michael Aloft and was, we were setting up a thing between, uh, you know, me, I agreed to debate the filioquay with Jay Dyer. I agreed to debate the filioque with Jay Dyer, but that didn't fall through because we saw some things

that told us we needed to get away. And so I wouldn't probably have agreed to debate him, but we did a show where he came up and then he showed up in the comments basically saying, let me in, let me in. Is he there now? Let me in, I want to speak and this and that. So at the moment I made like a spontaneous, I was like, all right fine, you know. So it wasn't like a planned debate, it wasn't, you know, it was just came on. I think I'd like to apologize to Jay if he's watching. I posted a comment, you know, on YouTube,

you've got like a community section. I was asking, are there any very good orthodox debaters? And then I said, and I don't want to give Jay Dyer a platform. I didn't realize that that would get out to everybody. I shouldn't have said that and I'm sorry I did. I was really honestly just because I heard that discussion and I did not think he comported himself well. I thought he was just yeah, golly. I don't know how else to say it. I wish I hadn't have said that. Well, I mean, at the same time, he wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared. I mean, it wasn't planned.

It was just, it was a from the hip type of thing. But look, I'm sure if we met in person, we would have had a different kind of relationship. Same goes for any other Orthodox that if we meet in person, I have a feeling that it would just be, and I just don't think they're really themselves online sometimes like ubi Petros I Remember he often to debate and I didn't know who he was and I'd heard things about him I don't know from who but because he didn't show his face. I was very reluctant to give him a platform

But I have to say that when he debated swan sonar, I thought he comported himself very well and did a good job. He did. He did. And I think he did well also against Dr. James Lakoudis, I think he had another go around. Okay, I didn't see that one. Yeah. I mean, look, I would have loved to have gotten that from a movie. But, you know, now, look, there's kind of a history, you know, that I really just can't reproduce here. But, if- We don't have to get into it either.

I hope you don't think I'm pushing you into that. No, no, that's okay. Maybe one day. I mean, I could say that. Maybe one day. But right now, if anybody wants to know what Eric Ibarra thinks about this or what he... I haven't even listened to all of his material, but I know right now, Ubi

Peck, which by the way, they're like a team. It's not always one person because I was talking, I had said, I had made comments one time, you said this one time, and they said, oh, that was a different user. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and the guy who speaks on the YouTube video is actually not the guy who does the research. And yeah, so it's like a team of guys. Interesting.

So who did the debate? That's the guy I think is the thinker of the team. I think. He's the guy who like, he's like the mainstay. But there are more users. And look, they call themselves Ubi Petrus because it's like where Peter is, it's kind of a playoff. Hey, we're the real Petrine Church, the Orthodox Church is.

So it's kind of nifty. But, yeah, to your question, It's kind of nifty. But, you know, yeah, to your question, you know, look, some people come to me and say, hey, should I listen to Ubi Petrus? I don't want to stop anybody from listening to him. In fact, if you listen to him and you make some progress, ball power to you, you know?

And if you want to know what I have to say about it, just ask me. That's it, you know? And if you want to know what I have to say about it, just ask me. That's it, you know? They're dying to see me get in the ring with the guy. And I just don't want to spend myself right now, you know, to do that. It'd be easier if I could see who it was. Yeah.

But, cause right now it's like, oh, it's all about the content. It doesn't matter who's it. Well, I don't know about that. I mean, back in the disputation days, if you showed up in a box with a breathing hole and said the only thing that matters is the content. Yeah, I know it shows goodwill to say,

this is my real name, this is who I am. And some of the post-production, some of the members of the ortho-rosphere, I don't like what they did with clips of me and pictures of me and things like that. It almost seems to me like the whole Catholic and Orthodox online has turned into a Miyagi-Do versus Cobra Kai.

I don't know if you guys can see the Karate Kid, you know, the new remake. The new remake, yeah. Where, you know, you've got Cobra Kai, tough guys, you know, they're, you know, strike hard, no mercy, the fathers did that, they cussed at their enemies, Christ called Herod a fox, let me do this, let me at him. Yeah, but Christ was divine and the fathers were saints, and it's very difficult to be angry and not sin.

Yeah, I mean, even the apostles were saints, but even Christ said to them sometimes, get behind me, Satan, or you're not of the right heart. But you got the Miyagi-Do, which is kind of like, more passive, less offensive. I see more catlets, like you see that on the Catholic side, maybe people have a different experience. But there's gotta be a way to meet, and you see that in the show itself. These guys have a moment, like hey, we need to see eye to eye in order to get a way to meet. And you see that in the show itself. These guys have a moment like, Hey,

we need to like see eye to eye in order to get what we want done. So there you go. Watch Cobra Kai. Yeah. Watch Cobra Kai. And hey, man, reach out to me. Yeah. That's good. Cause I would have to say like, cause I've seen you slandered in those images and videos that people have posted. And I would say like, if I saw someone in the Catholic space doing that, like, just frankly, if I saw, um, uh, reason and theology, my Michael, my,

if I saw Michael Lofton portraying Jay Dyer in a way that made fun of his appearance and things like that, I would actually immediately distance myself from Michael Lofton. I don't think he would do that. But I would like to see that reciprocated on the orthodox side. Like if you're gonna make fun of somebody's appearance and just mock them like that, even if you don't flat out condemn it,

which I think you probably should, you should at least be distancing yourself from that. Clearly. Right, so that's why I did that. I distanced myself from it because I can't compete. You know, somebody sent me a YouTube clip one time where Jay Dyer said, we're going to war with Eric Ibarra. And it wasn't a joke. Like he, so, you know, he sees that as a, the heretics, the Palomite denying heretics.

And when I heard that I was like, wow, this guy is really, this is not, I'm not cut out for that kind of internet war. So that's why I chose to look at my books, you know? And when, just so the people know, once those books are out, if anybody wants to do a live, I prefer dialogues because debates, I hate being cut off. I like talking for a while.

And I like when my opponent talks for a while. Anybody who wants to kind of have a dialogue, I'm open to it. Yeah. I'm open to it. You say, oh I have ten pages folded in your book I want to talk about because you're wrong about these things. Yeah. Okay, let's have a talk. Let's have a talk. Do it. And so that way all my thoughts are out there. Nobody's saying, oh well he didn't realize this, he didn't realize that. No, I've got all the footnotes,

I've got all the non-Catholic scholars. I've cited from that show that I'm not just making things up. And I even have an article which has like 20 Protestant scholars who admit that Pope St. Leo the Great taught basically the Vatican One papacy. And, you know, so you can't accuse them of having the Peter syndrome, you know. So if that's fair, admit it, you know, and then we can have an exchange. So anyway, yeah, I'm open to, you know, but going to your question on who's the best Orthodox, I just don't know enough. Well, here's a good question then. Who is the best Catholic addressing orthodoxy in a way that's fair

and isn't straw manning them? That's a good, I don't know who would qualify. I mean… Jared Well, that's, yeah, I guess that's because you've done a real deep dive into this, and the deeper you go, the more nuanced you have to be. Pete Yeah. So, like, for example, you know, Catholic Answers, who's, you know, wonderful ministry, they haven't really catered to the Orthodox, right? So, they're not really speaking about these issues. Michael Lofton, Regent of Theology, I would say, is the only one that I can think of that really takes these on, you know, and he can speak from Orthodox experience. But I wish there were more, you know. Byzantine Scotus, I think, he's another one, Gideon.

Gideon Laza. So, I think we're gonna see more, because I think the Exodus towards orthodoxy is only gonna grow. So I think we'll see more, but hopefully, we can have networks that, you know, are man enough to equip themselves with the virtues of old. Hey, here's my beliefs.

We can test them and we can both be gentlemen. We don't have to be friends. Just be decent and let's see who's got this right. I'm all for that. Yeah. Where can people learn about you? What's your website? and let's see who's got this right, you know? I'm all for that. Where can people learn about you? What's your website? So erikybarra.org, you can go there.

I started a YouTube channel a long time ago. There's only two videos from like five years ago. It's called, it's called Classical Christian Thought. And my intentions were to have my own channel, kind of like what Michael Lofton does, but I just lack the know at all. So I need to learn, but once I start learning, hopefully I'll put videos up. You have the book there, Mount Kisidek and the Last Supper. Check that out on Amazon. Just type my name in, in the Amazon search

and look for Emmaus Road Publishing. Yeah. For Emmaus Junish for the PPC and the Orthodox. Yeah, terrific. Well, if you're back during that time, which it wouldn't surprise me, we'd love to have you back on. Oh yeah.

We can talk about the book more there. All right, Eric, pleasure. Thank you for flying up. Oh, this was great. Being with me. It's really great to chat with back on. Oh yeah. We can talk about the book more there. All right, Eric, pleasure. Thank you for flying up and being with me. Oh, this was great. It's really great to chat with you. This was great. Yeah, I was telling them before, I didn't sweat my armpits in this interview.

I was totally relaxed. Cool as a cucumber. Good, good. Cool as a cucumber. Well, okay, so what we're gonna do now for those at home, we're gonna do a post-show lightning round Q&A for our supporters. So if you wanna support Pines with Aquinas

on Locals or Patreon, the links are below. Do that and then you'll get access to this upcoming clip. Cool.