Pints With Aquinas - Conversion to Catholicism, the Papacy, and Cameron Bertuzzi's Journey (w/ Dr Scott Hahn)

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

A chat about Catholicism, Protestantism, and conversion with Cameron Bertuzzi & Dr. Scott Hahn. 🤩 Join our Locals community: https://mattfradd.locals.com/ Join Locals as an annual subscriber at any tier, first 50 get a free Catholic Woodworker rosary! Best Rosaries Ever: (10% off with code: MATTFRADD): https://catholicwoodworker.com/collections/designer-rosaries?utm_source=MATTFRADD&utm_medium=YOUTUBE&utm_campaign=easter Hallow! Get your first month FREE: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Cameron's Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/capturingchristianity Scott Hahn's Youtube presence: https://www.youtube.com/c/StPaulCenter    

Hey, welcome to pints of the coinus. We've got dr. Scott Hahn and Cameron Butuzzi on the show today, but before we get to them, I want to give away 50 gorgeous pints with a coinus rosaries that I helped develop with the Catholic woodworker. If you haven't heard of the Catholic woodworker, click the link in the description below because this guy makes the most beautiful rosaries ever. They're unbelievable and I work with him to develop these beautiful pints with the coinus rosaries. Alright, so here here's how I wanna give these 50 away. The first 50 of you that become annual supporters

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If you're enjoying this show so far, which I know you are, hit the thumbs up and do us a favor and share this conversation if you think it's worth sharing. I've got Cameron Batuzzi in studio from Capturing Christianity and Dr. Hahn, who's a biblical scholar and teaches at Franciscan University here in Steubenville. And we thought it would be cool just to get around the table to have a chat about conversion, Catholicism, the papacy. Cameron, you've had several videos of late that have seemed to indicate to some that you are increasingly open to the claims of Catholicism. So we've actually locked the door.

Oh, it's actually open right now. No, the other door. That's locked. We have guards, Vatican guards set outside. And until you repent, we weren't in the live stream. It's going to be great. I'm just joking. It's really great to have you here. Yeah. Thanks for having me, Matt.

It's great to be back in the studio. This studio, I'm just, I'm so jealous of the studio. Like your baby. Because you helped create it. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I remember coming in here, you may not know this, but when he first moved in, he brought me out here and we set up the whole studio with the cameras and

the lights and everything. And so it was a pleasure. No, he explained that to me and then he invited, you know, us to have you over for dinner as well. Oh yeah. Oh, I see. That was all the same. And then you took the video of the basement library. Yes, your memory is better than mine. It was fun. So I kind of was, I was thinking it might be helpful if we say a little bit about where we're at, right? So I was sort of agnostic in my teens.

I went to World Youth Day, which is this big Catholic gathering in Rome, Italy, when I was 17 years old, and had an experience of conversion. Came back, as William and Craig sometimes say, it's like one of those Christians, so happy it makes you sick. That was me. I was so on fire for the Catholic faith. Just maybe in like 10 seconds or more, where have you gone? Where are you at? Yeah. So I started out a Charismatic and I got into apologetics and it opened me up to the world of philosophy and theology and everything. And so since that point, it wasn't really until I met you that I started to really get interested in the topic of the and theology and everything. And so, since that point, it wasn't really until I met you that I started to really get interested in the topic of the papacy, not just the papacy,

but Catholicism more broadly. And how long has it been since we've known each other? A couple years? Yeah, two or three years. So, and I've kind of gone up and down with it. So for the beginning of it, only until recently, my credence in Catholicism raised like ever so slightly, and then it kind of stayed at a certain level. And then recently I started to look into my objections that I have to Catholicism a little bit more deeply. And I've been working through those

so that they're no longer objections. And so now I'm about, I would say, 50-50, mainly due to this study that I'm currently doing on the papacy. So I'm about, I'm sort of agnostic now with respect to the question. I'm not agnostic with respect to the question of God's existence. I'm agnostic with respect to the question of Catholicism versus Protestantism versus Orthodox. So I'm kind of just on the, some days I feel like I should be Catholic, some days I feel like I should be Protestant, some days it's both and in the same day. So it's just, it's not a very comfortable place to be in, but that's where I'm at currently. And Dr. Hahn, for those who don't know you, a little bit about your story.

Okay, so 36 years ago I entered the Catholic Church. In my late 20s I had been a Presbyterian pastor going back to when I was 14. I experienced the conversion to Christ through young life, then charismatic, then Calvinistic, and then pastor. And we wrote up a book, my wife and I called Rome's Sweet Home, Our Journey to Catholicism. And it's about to celebrate its 30th anniversary. So how many books have been, are in print and what, how many languages is it in? I think about 30 or 40 languages, a few over a million. I don't really keep track. I probably should.

And then you just read it. I did. I, well, I've read parts of it. I like to be clear about that. I usually read parts of books. I was, I forget who, yeah, I forget who said that like it's okay to read parts of books instead of like having to read from front to, you know, from cover to cover. My philosophy is that with most books, most books are like most stores. I don't go in to buy everything that owner wants to sell me. I go in to buy the things I came for,

and maybe one or two things on sale. But I'm open to being surprised, but I don't necessarily feel like you have to read from stem to stern. Yeah, we were on vacation recently, well, we were out of town for a wedding. And so we were in Mexico, and I was reading through your book on the beach,

just like reading. And there was a part on the Sola Scriptura that I came across. And man, your there was a part on the Sola Scriptura that I came across, and man, your conversation with a student, your student asked a question and you said, in the book, you say that he... That's a stupid question. That's a stupid question. And then he said, well, just give me a stupid answer.

That student was named John Sperillini. He was taking a seminary course from me. I didn't know at the time he was an ex-Catholic, and he was studying for the Presbyterian ministry and we had been covering church history and got to the Council of Trent and the Reformers. And so, I mean, I thought it was just a rhetorical question, you know, where in Scripture do you find Sola Scriptura? And I realized within a moment that he was dead serious. And so, I couldn't think of anything to say except that's a stupid question. And then he was so unintimidated, he just said, well, give me a stupid answer then, you know.

He was actually working on a project dealing with justification by faith alone. And he was strongly inclined to just kind of maintain the Protestant position. I think it was about 17 years later that Giannis Sparolini came back into the church. We're now Facebook friends, and I think his nickname online is the curmudgeon. He's brilliant though, but in a low-key, you know, soft-spoken way. But that was like putting a stick in your younger brother's bicycle spokes.

I just flipped, I went home and I began to think about it like, wait a minute, I called J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, these former professors who were like, father figures to me, and they were sort of like, that's a stupid question, or that's not in the scripture, you can't prove it obviously, but it is our theological presupposition, is what Packer said,

and I knew it was over at that point. I wasn't sure if it was Catholic or Orthodox or what, but man, that was, as we would say, the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation, the principle reason why you justify the break from Rome. Would you say it's due to deficiencies in Protestant doctrines that you're open to Catholicism, or more because of Catholic doctrines that are seeming more coherent and plausible that

you're open to Catholicism? It's really a matter of my objections working through them and seeing that. I was under the impression that you can't be a Catholic and an annihilationist. You can't be a Catholic and an annihilationist. You can't be a Catholic and deny divine simplicity. So for the longest time, divine simplicity was really the thing that kind of opened me up, I would say. So that and then reading through your book, and especially the section on Sola Scriptura, just rethinking through that and realizing that there's more to the story.

It's a lot more complex and nuanced than it's just, you know, you can't just assume that the Bible is all that there is. So after going through that and then realizing through the work of Joshua Sijuwadi, the guy that I mentioned on my stream yesterday, who he's got this new model of, and he's Catholic, he's a Catholic convert, but he's got this model of divine simplicity, which was the first time that I've heard this doctrine explained in a way that just sort of made sense to me philosophically. And that, I would say, was probably the catalyst for me wanting to look into this further,

because I was not under the impression that I was going to be able to overcome that objection for years, maybe ever. And then just out of the blue, I hear about this guy, he's got this theory of divine simplicity that is just really high tech, and high tech in the sense of just really high-flutin philosophy. It's very difficult to understand and also articulate, and I attempted it going to try to attempt. I attempted it yesterday. I'm sure I butchered it. I'm not going to attempt it today, but it's, it's a. Don't worry.

Yeah. It's okay. Removing different barriers to Catholicism is really, I think what has started me to be, to being really, really open to it. So just working through those objections. Yeah. So as a Cameron, he thought, well, if Catholicism says I must accept divine simplicity and I can't accept divine simplicity, therefore I can't accept Catholicism. Is that an objection that

you often encounter with Protestants? Never. Never? Not once. But I mean, I can appreciate it because once you realize the philosophical foundations for Catholic theology, you know, Catholic theology is not reducible to Catholic faith. Catholic faith goes beyond the theological and systematic formulation of the doctrine.

You know, you accept the doctrine by faith, but then you explore it and explicate it by reason and you begin to recognize the necessity for divine simplicity. Because if God is complex, if God is, you know, process as Whitehead would say, you know, we have to go back and rethink almost everything. And I appreciate this though. I mean, this is not something I, I had a classmate years ago in the 70s back at Grove City College, Brian Leftow. Oh yes. And we all knew he was a genius, but he was a friend. And so you don't think that your friend, because you're going to end up being Richard Swinburne's

successor there in Oxford and all of the rest. I think he's at Rutgers now. But he was a Brooklyn Jew who converted to evangelical Protestantism and then went through Grove City. And I remember him telling me he was at Fordham Surrounded by Jesuits who denied divine simplicity Eternality and all the rest and you know, here is this Brooklyn Jewish evangelical Lutheran defending Basically and some of the Aquinas on analytical grounds. I mean he's sort of backed himself into analytical tomism of a sort You ought to have him as a guest. Brian left out, he's awesome.

He really is, I mean, just one of- Doing stuff on arguments for God too. Now there are many different kind of approaches people take when coming into the church, and of course you may not do that, I'm not meaning to assume that you will. Some people find, say the doctrines about Mary objectionable,

or maybe they just find Catholic piety distasteful and there's a sort of like, almost like a moral objection to it. Where are you at with all that? Is there particular doctrines that you find hard to reconcile? So I'm currently doing a huge study on the papacy and that's where, so after I worked through these objections that I had to divine simplicity to Annihilationism which I'm still kind of working through that one But there was another one I can't think of off the top of my mind I might be how to address that at some point in isolationism, but oh, yeah, that might be fun Yeah, but I called up my Protestant friends and I'm like, hey look, I'm working through these objections

My objections to Catholicism are sort of falling away like what what's going on and what you know Do you have any objections that I should consider to Catholicism? And everyone that I talked to, which was basically just two guys, they were both really strong on the papacy. They said that the papacy, there was no reason to affirm it, and they gave me some reasons. In Vatican I, you've got this really strong claim about what the papacy is, and that it's been known from every age. However, when you actually look in the New Testament and you look in very, very early history, it's not there. It's not known to every age that there's one Roman episcopate in Rome or one Roman bishop over everyone. And so, I started to look into this issue and I am working on, we talked about this last night at dinner,

I'm working on a as complete as possible Bayesian analysis of the papacy. So I'm trying to take every single piece of data that's relevant to the papacy, run it through a Bayesian calculation, and then come up with a posterior probability of what the papacy, if the papacy were true, what that probability would be,

that it is true. And so I'm currently working through all of these different pieces of data, trying to figure out how likely is this piece of data given the papacy, how likely is this data given the falsity of the papacy. So, yeah, every day it changes. Like yesterday, on my stream, I announced that the probability was 0.93 that the papacy is true. And as of today, it's 0.74. So it's still positive, but it's still fluctuates as I go through. And I think more about how the evidence bears on whether or not the hypothesis in question is true. So that's what I'm currently working on. And I have several different people that are helping me. I have Gavin Ortland Protestant. He's the main one that's helping me

on the Protestant side of things. Great guy. Great guy, super winsome, super awesome. He's just, there's so many good things I can say about him. And then on the Catholic side that are helping me, I've got Swann Sona and then Jimmy Aiken and Trent Horn. I've, I realized that heann, Sona, and then Jimmy Aiken. And Trent Horn, I've realized that he's got a family. Swann has no family. He has plenty of time. Jimmy has no family. He has plenty of time. So, I'm trying to enlist the work of people

that can have the time. Great intellectuals all across the board. Yeah. So, that's my current project. And I've decided that at the end of this, once I look into each individual piece of evidence, I assign a figure that I think is conservative and makes sense, then at the end of it, if the probability says that I should accept the papacy, then I'm going to become Catholic. Like, that's what I've decided. I think that this is probably the best way to rule out any kind of, like, understating any kind of evidence or missing pieces of evidence and not factoring any piece of evidence

in when it should be factored in. I want to just... The reason why I got so put onto the papacy in particular is because I was convinced by my Protestant friends that the papacy is so distinctive, that if it's true, Catholicism is true, and if it's false, then Catholicism is false. So, it can decide between Protestantism and Catholicism, it can decide between Orthodoxy and Catholicism, it's the doctrine that is going to decide between, like, whether or not Catholicism is true. So, if there's good arguments for it and we can come up with a high posterior probability, that's the way to do it. So far as I can arguments for it and we can come up with a high posterior probability,

that's the way to do it. So far as I can see, you know, and maybe there's a better way of doing it, but to me this is like the most comprehensive, the most, the safest way to do it. And yeah, so that's what I'm currently working on. Well, I still think that all roads lead to Rome. Your road does seem to be slightly longer and more winding than mine, given Bayesian probability and the inductive logic of the papacy and all of that. But I must admit that the idea of identifying the principle impediment and enabling yourself to approach it so that I can clear this hurdle

if it's reasonable to do so. I think invariably you're going to also encounter, you know, other hurdles as you run the track and realize, okay, that was just the first one, perhaps the highest bar, you know, the hardest one. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if, you know, if you look at the body of Christ, the Catholic Church, as I would understand it, you realize, of course, that the Pope is not the head of the Church. Christ is. And the Pope is the vicar of Christ on earth, but Christ is in heaven because there aren't two churches, one up there, one down here. There's only one. It's the mystical body.

And so, what you're studying, in a sense, a sense reminds me of like if you were looking at the x-ray of a person's body and you see the skeleton, the skeletal structure, the papacy would be in a certain sense the spinal column. Or, you know, there is besides the pope all of the other bishops as successors to the apostles, the pope you know, is the successor to Peter. And so, two thousand years into this process, you can assess this and recognize, okay, there's much more to the Church than the hierarchy, than the structure, than the political form that emanates from the papacy in Rome all the way down to the Bishop of Steubenville. There is, you know, the Marian doctrines and devotions, as you said. There's also the understanding of the sacraments and the saints. And so, I would say that as

you look at the x-ray, recognize the heart and all the other major organs, because there's a lot more than just the truth of the authority that resides in the Bishop of Rome. And I know that will happen. You know? Again, anybody who's fair-minded and open to the Holy Spirit is going to recognize that going down this road, you know, even if your friends and family members are saying you're jeopardizing your salvation, Karen,

you know, I think at the end of the day, if Christ is the head of the church, then submitting yourself to His Lordship and the authority and the truth of the day, if Christ is the head of the church, then submitting yourself to His Lordship and the authority and the truth of the Word in Scripture, but also in tradition as Scripture attests to it, you know, that's the only safe way to go. That's the only way to avoid sinning against the light of Christ. That reminds me of Dr. Plato's argument that you've got to put your trust somewhere. Are you going to trust yourself or are you going to trust something else? And then when it comes to Christianity in particular,

what are you going to trust there? Are you going to trust your own reasoning capabilities, or are you going to trust the church? He used a good analogy that I've been thinking about to this day is, I mean, it's only been like a day, but he used an analogy of his sister has really good memory. So when he's trying to think back and like think about something that happened on some day in the past, he calls his sister because she's more trustworthy. She's a more trustworthy source of information than relying on himself. And so he thinks about that in terms of the church, like the church is more trustworthy than relying on himself. And so, I've been thinking about that the last couple days, and it's been really interesting

to think about. Do you have any thoughts on that? Oh, too many. You know, I'm a theologian. Alex played as a philosopher. So, I approach things in terms of the supernatural revelation that is divine. He and you approach things more in terms of the natural reason, the temporal order, and not only the logical, but also the commonsensical things like, but I mean, there's a marriage of the two, obviously, in Christ, the human and the divine. But I think in the Catholic synthesis, it really is a fruitful nuptial harmony between reason and faith. And so, the idea, it's like Bob Dylan back in the seventies, you gotta serve somebody. You gotta trust somebody. You trust Christ, but whose version? And so, I think we've

all assimilated the ecumenical councils, the first seven, so we understand Christology in a unified way. But the Church really does represent this corporate memory that the Holy Spirit empowers from my standpoint of supernatural faith, but even from a standpoint of natural reason. You look to the Catholic Church and you realize, man, it's gone through all kinds of tumultuous times and tumultuous bishops and popes and everything else, you know, and yet somehow, you know, apart from armies and apart from political parties and apart from dynastic succession, you know, this has somehow been sustained. And so, on the surface, I think there's strong plausibility for lending credence to the memory of Mother Church.

Jared Sussman That actually brings up a good objection I wanted to discuss with you today, which is the bad pope's objection to Catholicism. And this is one that I have worked into my analysis here, is the idea that some popes have made really bad moral choices, but we would expect popes to at least not necessarily be perfect, but act above a certain threshold of moral accountability. So, how do you respond to this kind of bad pope's objection to Catholicism? Pete Slauson Well, I think you have to distinguish what we mean by bad popes, because, I mean, starting off with Peter, you know, as Chesterton said, in choosing Simon Peter, Jesus is showing

that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, starting with the weakest link, you know. But I see Honorius as one pope who was cowardly in the most important area, and that is doctrinal teaching. And that's why an ecumenical council condemns him, not for teaching heresy, but for not suppressing heresy. You have Pope Alexander VI, who famously was much more of a military leader in war than he was the successor of Peter in Rome. I think the biggest problem, the worst bad pope, was Benedict IX in the 11th century. He becomes pope in 1032 around the age of 20. It looks as though the office was purchased for him by family members. He left it and then he basically purchased that again. And by all accounts, he was extraordinarily immoral, perhaps both ways. I'll leave it at that point for

the sake of discretion. But he was probably too busy sinning, because he went from 1032, I think, to 1048, and everybody recognized that this is a hellacious person on the throne of Peter. But what it did was to set into motion the subsequent reforms so that St. Peter Damien writes letters to his successors saying, you know, the sodomy that is rife in the monasteries will be your responsibility. And of course, he doesn't identify Benedict IX by name, but I mean, whoa. But one century later, the Gregorian reforms that the horrendous sin of Benedict IX set in motion establishes not only the papacy, but the Catholic Church. It sets it up for one of the greatest periods of doctrinal, liturgical, moral, evangelistic renewal that

it's ever seen. And so just as the darkest hours before dawn, so the most corrupt popes are usually coming right before reform and renewal. Jared So it can still serve a good purpose, the bad popes. Yeah, I mean, again, you don't just think of Peter, you know. Satan has demanded to sift all of you, it's second person plural there in Luke 22, but I prayed for you, second person singular, you know, but he's calling him Simon, Simon by his old name. I have prayed for you.

Well, you'd think the intercession of Christ would suffice to preserve Peter from lapsing as all of the others did. But no, I mean, he still denies our Lord three times as a coward. Like what would he have done if he hadn't been prayed for? And so that prayer of the Lord says, you know, when you repent, when you convert, when you return, strengthen the brethren. And I think that's almost an allegory or a symbol for what Christ is saying from heaven to the vicar of Christ on earth, and that is when you wake up, when you realize that

compromise or just simply avoiding suffering is not the way to go. But invariably, when you look at Honorius, when you look at Alexander the sixth, when you look at Benedict the ninth and other types of bad popes, two thoughts. You know, one, you see that Christ is sustaining them in spite of themselves. On the other hand, you also realize that there's this whopping disproportion between good popes and bad ones. I mean, you need two hands to count the bad ones, but you've got over 200 good ones. Some are good, some are fair, some are great, some are saints,

most are not. You know, the first 20 plus were all martyred. And so, it's a mixed bag, but I would say it's one that Christ is not ashamed to say, you know, I'm the one who sustains that. I'm the one who sustains that. I'm the one who established that. Is there an analogy here too to the Davidic Kingdom? So for example, if pure moral leadership is your litmus test for the right religion, well, if you lived in the Old Testament time, you would have perhaps missed the true religion. Yeah, I mean, I think that, Matt, is the $64,000 question that I had to address.

And I'd rather hear you than me, but since you're asking about the Davidic dynasty, the Davidic kingdom, the Davidic covenant, I mean, that has been my bailiwick for decades. And when you see in Matthew 16, thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, so whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth will have been loosed in heaven, only in Matthew 16. But Matthew is the one evangelist who's drawing much more from the Old Testament than any

other evangelist, more quotations, citations, intertextual echoes, but especially the Gospel of the Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew. But what Jesus' contemporaries would have thought of when they heard Him preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom is the Kingdom of David. It's not some utopia, it's not some eschatological millennial thing. It was the only covenant that God established that formed a kingdom the Davidic Kingdom the Abrahamic family the Mosaic nation and so that's what Christ has come to restore But David and his successors never ruled alone in isolation So that when the son of David is crowned and enthroned and anointed in first Kings 1 and 2, by chapters 3 and 4 he's established a cabinet of 12 royal

ministers, presumably from all the tribes, but one and only one is the prime minister to whom he gives the keys of the kingdom. And Isaiah just assumes that you know this in Isaiah 22, 15 to 23, where you have a bad pope, where you have a bad prime minister, the chief steward named Shevnah is corrupt, and so he's going to be leaving office. But the primacy of that office is given to Eliakim, and the symbol of the primacy is that the keys of the house of David are passed from Shevna to Eliakim. And so you realize, okay, we can trace it all the way back to Solomon, who points the

12, but then only one of the 12 is the chief steward, the prime minister, the majordoma. All the ancient Near Eastern kingdoms or monarchies had something like this. And so Jesus is not just inventing something de novo He's fulfilling the latest form of the divine covenant and as you said Matt, you know when you look at the Davidic dynasty You need at least three hands to count the bad Kings You need one maybe to count the really good ones And so if Jesus, you know, it would have been easy for Him to justify, look, you know, Father, with all due respect, I can't enter into the human race through that dynastic line. I mean, look at Manasseh, child sacrifice.

Look at David, an adulterer and a murderer. Look at Solomon, you know, 700 wives, 300 concubines, you know. And yet, God, in spite of their weaknesses, sustains this for the purpose of not only producing the Son of David, the first verse of the New Testament, the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, but then to restore the kingdom and to do so by appointing twelve, no coincidence, you'll sit on twelve thrones and judge the twelve tribes of Israel, but to one and only one he gives the keys. And as you probably know, you know, the excavations known as the Scavi of Peter's tomb back in the 40s and 50s, there were lots of forms of graffiti, you know,

pray for, but the thing that you find all over the tomb of Peter are these keys. You know, there was such an awareness in the first, second, and third centuries in the period of persecution, martyrdom, where you're not building seminary libraries, you know, and keeping good records, that Peter got something the others didn't have. In Matthew 18, they all have the power to bind and loose, but in Matthew 16, he alone gets the keys. So back in the Davidic Kingdom, if the minister of commerce wanted to open up trade say with Ethiopia the Queen of Sheba But the prime minister said no what there wouldn't be any commerce or likewise if there's a Minister of Defense that he wants to go to war against Syria the prime minister could rescind out or affirm it

And so they all have authority in a way that is derivative and participatory But the primacy is what Jesus is referring to when he says, I give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And even Davies and Allison and Protestant biblical scholars recognize this. But I think what you're doing, I want to just pivot for a moment, Cameron, because what you're doing is profoundly interesting, no less than my own theological investigations as to scripture, the old and the new. Because the idea of the papacy as a historical fact, as an empirical institution, as apparently a human organization that has somehow been sustained when nothing else looks like it

and nothing else has been sustained like it, And there ought to be some kind of rational explanation for it. It could just be the luck of the draw. You know, he chose Peter and we've had success in succession. Or it could be something more. And I think what you're backing into is the something more. There's like so many places to pick up on. One place is on the Davidic Kingdom. I think a good question for Protestants is in what sense did Jesus come to reestablish the Davidic Kingdom? Because if you want to deny this typological connection between Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16, then the question arises, then in what sense did Jesus come and establish

a Davidic kingdom if it wasn't to resemble something like what's going on in Isaiah 22? That to me is, I mean, I almost want to call like Gavin Ortland on the phone. You can do it. No, I don't think we will. But it's just something I've been thinking about lately is in what sense did Jesus come back and reestablish or rebuild the Davidic kingdom? You know, obviously it can't be in the same exact way. There's got to be differences. Does Gavin's objection, I don't mean to speak for him, but does it boil down to you're reading far too much into this? There really isn't.

His objection to the papacy, he's got- And especially as it pertains to the Davidic kingdom. The Davidic kingdom, that I'm not exactly sure on, where he sits on the- I can't speak for him, but I can say this, that for nine out of 10 Protestants, maybe 99 out of 100, the Davidic kingdom is not on their radar, unless they're dispensationalists. And in which case they expect the Davidic Kingdom is not on their radar unless they're dispensationalists, and

in which case they expect the Davidic Kingdom to be restored physically, literally, politically, liturgically after we're raptured to the heavenly Jerusalem, and he comes back and he gets down to building, you know, he gets down to business in terms of restoring that sort of thing. And for a few months after my conversion back in the 70s, Hal Lindsay, the Lake Great Planet Earth, Dallas Seminary, I just, I mean, it was like turning on the fire hose and filling, and then suddenly I realized, wait, this is really, this is not tenable. This is not ultimately defensible. And so you go in search of an understanding of the relationship between the old and the new. And, you know, it took me many years, but to find it at last in the early Church Fathers,

that was decisive, because for them, the Davidic Kingdom was not just a cluster of religious symbols. It really was the final form of God's covenant in its earthly, temporal state. And so, when Christ relocates Jerusalem from Earth to Heaven, he's actually tapping into something that second temple Judaism was well aware of. You know, that there is a man-made temple and then there's a divine temple, such as we read in Revelation 1119. There's an earthly Jerusalem, but there's a heavenly Jerusalem. And the temporal form of the Old Covenant is a kind of geographical political sign that is pointing the faithful to something much greater. And so when exile comes, when Jerusalem is destroyed, when the temple is demolished and desecrated, it's sort of like,

wait, God, you didn't just say you wanted it, you swore an oath to establish and sustain this. And so, this is why the opening chapter of New Testament of the Gospel of Matthew goes all the way back to Abraham and then to Joseph, Mary, and Jesus in Nazareth to show the unbroken line of succession that God is faithful, God is true even if every man is a liar, as St. Paul would put it. I want to come back to another thing that you said, is that in Matthew 16 verse 19, He's given the keys. Is that in 19 or in 18?

I think it's in 19. I think it starts in 19. It starts in 19. He's given the keys, and then it says, and then whatever you bound on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. So, but then in Matthew 18, he gives that same ability to all of the apostles. Whatever you bound, whatever you loose. So, here's a question that I've got because in Jimmy Aiken's work, he believes that in verses in Matthew 16, in each verse, 16, 17, 18, and 19,

I wanna make sure I'm getting the references right. Is that it? It starts, blessed are you, Simon, Bar-Jonah, in 17? That is 17, yeah. 17. So in 17 and in 18 and in 19, the first part of the verse is explained by the later two parts of the verse. And so, I guess my question, this may be a better question for Jimmy Aiken himself

because this is kind of his own view, is, maybe we could call him up on that. I'll call him a few-call. Just call everybody. So he believes that in Matthew 16, 19, that the second part of the verse is explaining the first part. So what we mean by that you are given the keys is explained by, and then whatever you bound on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. But if that explains the keys, then wouldn't that then that connection still exist in Matthew

18, such that all of the apostles would also have their own set of keys, so to speak, or metaphorical set of keys? So that's, do you see the connection that they're making? Yeah, I mean, first of all, I'm grateful for Jimmy. He does masterful work and I wish he were here so we could defer to his explanatory judgment. In lieu of that, I would say that, you know, when I was saying before that, you know, Solomon in first kings, two, three, and four, is established as king, he establishes the

cabinet, the twelve royal ministers, you know, the evidence suggests, no, the evidence, I think, strongly supports the idea that like in every other monarchy, you have a prime minister. But that is not like a tug of war. In certain issues, it will be. But in Isaiah 22, you have the language, I give you the key of the house of David, he shall open and none shall shut, he shall shut and none shall open, which is just a variation on whatever you bind and loose.

And again, Protestant scholars, D. A. Carson, Davies and Allison and others would support that. So what? Well, it's participatory, it's not competitive. It isn't one versus eleven, unless there is a situation where you have bad bishops teaching bad doctrine, and then you have the successor of Peter convening a council, perhaps, and formulating the Nicene Creed or the Chalcedonian formula as we have in 451.

But you really have something that you have to understand in terms of a hierarchy that is not a political power structure. It's much more like an extended family, so that Peter has authority and he possesses a primacy, but I would say that he would joyfully defer to his brother bishops as Christ has deferred to him on every occasion. But the thing that isn't repeated in Matthew 18 is the idea of the keys of the kingdom. So that whatever you bind, and I think we have got to get the verb tense right, whatever you bind on earth will have been bound in heaven.

So you don't have the earthly tail wagging the heavenly dog, so to speak. The Holy Spirit is being poured out from Christ the Head to his vicar, so that, you know, he doesn't always do it in a timely way. He might not say the right thing in the right way at the right time, but the Popes over the years, the centuries, will invariably lead the Church to an authoritative understanding of right doctrine, sometimes in spite of themselves, or in spite of delay, or in spite of ambiguity.

But I think that is something that the other eleven shared in the lifetime of Jesus, and that this is why Vatican I teaching papal primacy and infallibility needs to be balanced with Vatican II that teaches Episcopal collegiality, because it's not a rivalry. You know, at times James and John made it seem like it is, you know, we want the right and the left. But ultimately, you see that if this is traceable back to the Trinity, the Father is not threatened by having the Son be the King of Kings. Peter is not threatened by the other apostles proclaiming the Gospel and defining doctrine. And so this is why there really is a sense in which bishops to this day, and they number in the thousands, participate in the charism of infallibility that is not ultimately traceable back to Peter or the Pope, but to Christ himself.

So that, you know, on this rock, I will build my church. He doesn't say, you know, you're the rock, build me a church, and the other eleven, you'll get around to it as well. He doesn't say, you know, you're the rock, build me a church and the other eleven, you'll get around to it as well. It's on this rock I will build my church. And as we explain in the notes of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, the keys go back to Isaiah 22, where Hezekiah is establishing the prime minister after Shevna is deposed and Eliakim replaces him. But you also have on this rock the Hebrew tradition of the Evan Shetiyah, the foundation

stone laid in Zion that you read about in Isaiah 8 and in Isaiah 28 as well. So this is where we have the dome of the rock today, the Muslim shrine built over the foundation stone that represents the temple mount. And so here Jesus is also tapping it as something that is non-competitive that if Peter's the rock that doesn't mean Christ isn't. No, Christ is first and foremost the rock and then Peter who has professed that faith, then the other eleven as well, and then all of us are living stones that are built into this spiritual temple as our first pope writes in his first epistle.

I don't really have anything to add on that. What about, I mean, that objection though that we should expect the popes to be more moral than they've been, does that feel answered to you? Because to me that doesn't strike me as much of an objection, because you could also say, well, if Christianity were true, you would expect Christians to be better than they are. Or if the Davidic kingdom was truly willed by God and guided by God, you would expect the kings to reach a certain level of moral purity. There is actually an atheistic argument called the argument from meager moral fruits or something

like that. Yeah. Yeah, there's so, yeah. And I think it's a palpable one, right? When people look at the immorality of Christians, I can see how that, yeah, would. Yeah, but I mean, my response to that is that it's, that's not gonna be much evidence to give to atheism. Right, so likewise.

Yeah, and so applying that. For Protestants though, it might be, I mean, I remember, buy your fruits, you shall know, buy their fruits, you shall know them. And for me, I just thought of my Catholic friends in junior and senior high school and I'm like, well, you know, case closed. But you know, then somebody stated the obvious to me, buy their fruits, you shall know them, not their church. You know, and so when I was a Presbyterian pastor, I recognized that there were Presbyterians who were not living up to what we thought

was right doctrine and right life, you know. And so you really have to look at those who are bearing the fruits that reflect the one, the holy, the Catholic, and the apostolic. And by the saints' fruits, you shall know that this is one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And that too is what Vatican One is getting at. But you were going to say something, I think I might have interrupted. Well, my mind is jumping all over the place. We can turn to another

objection that I think would be fruitful to discuss, which is another objection from Gavin, which is another objection from Gavin, is that his basic objection to the papacy is that in the New Testament and in very early history, we don't see an explication of the very strong version of the papacy that's laid out in Vatican I. And so the three things that he focuses on are infallibility, supremacy, and succession. And so what he argues is that in the New Testament, even if you have some verses that may get you to some sort of seed form view of the papacy, nevertheless, in Vatican I we have this really strong view of the papacy that says it was known from every age, so we can't go back to the seed form view. We've got to defend, as Catholics, you have to defend that the papacy is found in Scripture and at least in the early church somewhere, this really strong view of the papacy.

But he argues that it's not found there, that the opposite is actually found. In Acts 15, you've got the story where Peter gets up and he makes a pronouncement, everyone gets quiet, but then it's James who ultimately settles the matter. And that seems more consistent with there not being a sort of supreme bishop in anywhere that's sort of ahead over above everyone else. So that's basically the objection, if that makes sense. It makes total sense. Yeah. So what are your thoughts on that? Where would you even be? I mean, I have my own thoughts

on it. I could share mine after you share yours. Okay. Well, you think and speak in sound bites. I think and speak in terms of lectures. And so, I've got to put my foot on the brake here, you know, if that matters, if that even helps. You know, on the one hand, I would say that doctrine develops gradually. And so, you know, Mary wasn't assumed into heaven in 1950 when the dogma was defined, obviously. You know, Jesus doesn't become divine in 325 when Nicaea defines the mystery of his divinity. Will Barron The books of scripture didn't become inherent at the Council of Trent. Dr. John B. Bollinger That's right. That's right. So, it takes the

church centuries to recognize what was there. Well, you know, it would take us years to recognize what is latent in an acorn, because when you look at an acorn and then you look at an oak tree is a total disconnect. There can't be any connection. But what if organic growth and continuity does involve this acorn becoming a sapling and then eventually an oak tree? Okay, well that's the Catholic understanding of doctrinal development. And so when you look in the Old Testament you find analogies. So

for example, you have the conquest of the Promised Land. That not only takes centuries where it should have taken one or two generations, it's also described in the Book of Judges as, you know, there are like a dozen judges, mostly from all of the tribes, and they're all basically decentralized, they're disunited, you know, there was no king, and so everybody's doing what is right in their own eyes. Well, I mean, that's reading history back into it. Where was there any necessity for there to be a king? There's permission given by Moses in Deuteronomy 17, but Judges is sort of like describing the history of the ancient church of Israel

in a way that only you do retrospectively. And so when you read first Samuel, you see, okay, now there's a monarch, but it's Saul, who's a typical Gentile king, handsome, strong, you know, and he exalts himself over the priesthood of Samuel. Then you find a man after God's own heart in David, and you find, okay, there you have in David and in the Son of David the Anointed One, literally the

Mashiach, the Messiah, the Christ, spell it with a small c because he's not Jesus, but you have the Son of David as the Son of God, he is the Messiah. He rules in Jerusalem upon the throne of his father, and the temple that he builds becomes the center for all twelve tribes. But it doesn't take long. I mean, Solomon's dead in 930 and the Civil War. Ten tribes revolt against the temple and the house of David. And so you have competing interpretations of what the law of Moses really intended. So for about 80 years you've got a monarchy It's almost like Camelot a golden era a golden age, but it's it's fleeting

It's it's transitory and it was not without its wrinkles to be sure So the analogy is such that you know if it took ancient Israel, which is just a nation, you know literally generations to kind of get with God's program in terms of the unity of the country, in terms of the sanctity of the Holy Land, and in terms of the one who will represent God, the true King, you know. And then even when they attain that, it's lost within a generation or two, the divided kingdom from 930 until 722 when the northern tribes are destroyed by Syria and all of the rest So it seems to me that as the church is expanding its principal point is not to become a political structure

That can be universally recognized as a top-down hierarchy No, it's an apostolic organism, an extension of the body of Christ. Thomas goes to India, you know, and they're all over the place. No internet, no radio, no cell phones, no TV. So, the decentralization, the conquest now is to make disciples of all nations not just a tiny slice of turf the size of New Jersey, Palestine. You know, and so, it seems to me, and I mentioned this to you before I got started, this book by John Colaraffi and my friend Scott Butler, Keys Over the Christian World, the evidence for papal authority 33 AD to 800 AD from ancient Latin, as you'd expect, but also Greek, Chaldean,

Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopian documents, what emerges is a gradual consensus. You know, two centuries into it, you barely have a sapling. But already in the second century, Irenaeus, in Adversus Hierasus, against the heresy says, you know, we could do this with all of the bishops, but I'll just do it with the Bishop of Rome. And then he traces the contemporary pope all the way back to Peter, identifying the unbroken line of succession and clearly implying that there is something unique about this line. Again, not competitive, as though it's him and so we don't need the rest of you, but it's him and so we recognize

the centrality of this particular role, this figure. So I would say you have primacy in the Old Testament background from Matthew 16. You also have succession implied in the notion of the keys of the kingdom, and you have infallibility implied when you hear Jesus say, on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it, so that whatever you bind on earth will have already been bound in heaven. So Christ is the head working through fallible instruments, but we already know that Christ can send the Holy Spirit down to infallible men like Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

so that they will not only teach infallibly, but also write gospels that are infallible men like Peter, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, so that they will not only teach infallibly, but also write Gospels that are infallible and authoritative. So why not just sustain that project by empowering not only Peter, but all of the successors, and not only the eleven, but all of their successors, so that thousands of bishops and all of the faithful have access in the living tradition to an authoritative and infallible interpretation of sacred scripture. What's your response to the objection that Acts 15 actually disproves? Oh, on the other hand, yeah.

I would say, oh contra mo, I don't know him, but I would say it's almost the exact opposite. And this is something that I held as I was a Protestant, that you have in Acts 15 much debate. So, in Acts 15-6, the apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter, and after there had been much debate. This is no easy question. This is not a slam dunk. And so, after there had been much debate, what happens? In verse 7, Peter rose and speaks, Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth, not Paul's, he's the controversial lightning rod figure, but it was by God's providence, my mouth, the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. So Cornelius was baptized but not

circumcised, but he was baptized by Peter, not Paul, and only after God had given Peter that vision in Acts 10, three times, the sheet coming down from heaven with all of these unclean animals, rise, kill and eat, Lord, I've never eaten anything unclean with the Lord has cleansed you must not call unclean. So Peter, you know, it takes him three times to finally realize God is cleansing the Gentiles, so then the knock on the door and the baptism of Cornelius in his household. And so Peter is the one who stands and speaks, and as we were discussing this at Benign last night over dinner, God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving the Holy Spirit just as he did to us.

He made no distinction between us, Jews, and them, Gentiles, but cleansed their hearts by faith, which is Peter either quoting or echoing Deuteronomy 30 verses 6 through 10, where God will circumcise their hearts in the Hebrew becomes God will cleanse their hearts by faith in the Septuagint, the Greek. And so, Peter is recognizing the fulfillment of that and so basically he says this is it. They're baptized, therefore they're cleansed, therefore they're equal to us and all the assembly kept silence. And then in turn they listen to Barnabas and then Paul as they relate to signs and

wonders and all of the rest. And finally, in verse thirteen, James replies, as the bishop of Jerusalem, presumably James the Less, he is obviously concerned about his own diocese. The Jerusalem Jewish Christians who are going to say, wait a second, you're going to baptize these Gentiles and tell them they're full-fledged, equal members of the family of God, the body of Christ, as we are, without circumcising? You know, wait. And so, what James is doing is giving, you know, I would say on the one hand, what Peter is teaching has doctrinal authority that binds us 2,000 years later, because you're baptized, not only do you not need to get circumcised, but you need not to get circumcised if you

think that is obligatory when it's not. On the other hand, what James gives us is, I think, what you would describe as pastoral discipline. In other words, if that's true, Peter, how are we going to maintain unity in the church between Jews who are going to be easily offended at the misbehavior that they perceive coming from baptized Gentile believers. And so, on the one hand, James basically validates what Peter has said, brethren, listen to me,

Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name, and with this, the words of the prophets agree as it is written, after this I will return and notice, I will rebuild the dwelling of David that has fallen So James rightly perceives that this is how the kingdom or the house of David will be restored But the Davidic Covenant differs from the Mosaic Covenant Dramatically, I mean there's a continuity but a discontinuity at Mount Sinai Gentiles were excluded at Mount Zion Gentiles were invited and the temple built by the son of David the largest precinct was the court of the Gentiles were excluded at Mount Zion Gentiles were invited and the temple built by the son of David the largest precinct was the court of the Gentiles

Where they would learn that the God of Israel is our father too and we can learn the Psalms of David We can learn the wisdom of Solomon we can discover that this is one international Family in the kingdom of David but not in the nation of Israel at Mount Sinai So James is basically saying you know Peter Peter has led us to something of a breakthrough. This is going to be the unexpected way the Davidic kingdom is restored. And he quotes Amos 9, 11, and 12, the climax of the prophet Amos. And then he says, therefore, my judgment, and notice he says, therefore, my judgment. Whereas Peter said, the Holy Spirit.

He basically identifies his doctrinal teaching with the Holy Spirit. And how can we put the Lord to the test by imposing a yoke which neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? Whereas James says, my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the following, the pollution of idols, from pornea or unchastity, what is strangled and from blood. And as I indicate, as we point out in the notes of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible,

if you avoid any association with idols, like Paul is describing to the Corinthians, if you know that this meat you're about to eat was sacrificed to a god in the pagan temple of Corinth, avoid it because the Jewish brother is going to see you and stumble. So for the sake of love, you know, on the other hand, you can eat anything because ultimately all things are clean by Christ. So by the fourteen hundreds the the councils of Basel and Florence identify James decree as pastoral discipline that

served a temporary purpose to keep Jews and Gentiles united but then if you eat meat today that still has blood in it you're not excommunicated. And so the point is that James is giving sound and necessary pastoral advice that is so fitting for that situation where you're going to try to create one family, one body, one church with Jews who have, like Peter, struggled to recognize Gentiles as anything but goyim, you know, unclean swine.

And so for the temporary purpose of keeping them united, let's apply this pastoral discipline. And it seems to me it's a perfect illustration of the doctrinal authority of Peter's teaching that settles the matter, and then the episcopal wisdom of pastoral discipline that James recognizes as fitting and needed for the Jewish Christians not to end up turning their backs and walking out of the church. I'm gonna do the soundbite thing. Good.

You ready? Thank you. I'm so sorry for that. Don't be sorry, you kidding? That was amazing. No, that was great. Yeah, no, the soundbite thing is again from Dr. Plato from two days ago, where he said this is basically just Peter being a good pope. Well, he said, if you want to use the argument that James concludes, why not also

think that that could possibly be an argument in favor of Peter not having to have the last word, or not having to lauder over the others. It seems to be equally in as much of a... Yeah, and I find that pretty plausible. Like when I look at Acts 15, I mean just the fact that everyone gets quiet after Peter speaks, I think that counts for something. Yeah, sure. Yeah, it's not nothing. It counts for something. So even if James counts against that, the fact that Peter speaks and everyone is quiet, that counts for something in favor.

So I ultimately, I actually just adjusted my figure. So now Acts 15 doesn't provide evidence either way. So now the probability is 0.78. Okay. Well, before we go on, I want to say thank you to our sponsor, Hallow. Hallow is an excellent prayer and meditation app that will help you grow in your spiritual life. It's the number one Catholic app in the iTunes store and iTunes, no, App Store, and for really

good reason. They've got all sorts of wonderful presenters that will help you pray. You might want to pray through the Rosary. It'll lead you through that. You might want to do an examination of conscience. It'll have these different people who lead you through that. You can even put Gregorian chant in the background as the Rosary is prayed. Different people have read sleep stories. So if you think Dr. Hahn's voice is very soothing, I do, he actually reads about 30 minutes of the Book of Romans. That's right. I also did the Novena to Saint Jude, my patron saint. I was born on the feast of Simon and Jude.

And so some other things too. Yeah, I really do appreciate the Hello app. You know, I don't know, you probably remember this, but it felt like maybe 20 years ago we would say things like, it's good for a Catholic, so such and such. Well, this is just one of the best apps out there. Across the board. Yeah, Catholic or not. So I want to recommend that people go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Is that right, Neil? Link in the description below. And when you sign

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How often, you said you use it every day? Yes. What do you, like practically, how do you use it? I play, it has beautiful music, so I play Gregorian chant. You probably, you've heard it in the house. I'll actually listen to a sleep story if I'm gonna have a nap, I think. What a. You probably you've heard it in the house. I'll actually listen to a sleep story if I'm going to have a nap. I think what a cool use yesterday.

No, no, I didn't yesterday. But when I do have an app, I'm like, what a beautiful thing to go to sleep to the words of scripture. Yeah, you know, and it's and that's the other thing too, like, there are apps out there that are new age and then teach false things. You do not want to start listening to them, even if they have good things in them, they could lead you astray. The cool thing with Hallow is it's 100% Catholic, 100% Orthodox, and so you don't have to worry about that. It's really good. Anyway. That's cool. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. So, how about the next objection? Let me just do something. Lord, help me to speak in soundbites.

Don't speak in soundbites on my accord. Okay. Well, my students wish that I did. Okay, okay. You know, I would say that in the opening chapters of Acts, Luke is doing something that would almost imply Peter's uniqueness, his primacy, if you will. So, for example, in Acts 1 we read in verse 15, in those days Peter stood up among the brethren. The company of persons was in all about a hundred and

twenty. So there were twelve apostles. He is the prince of the apostles, always named first in every list. But there are now 120 more or 120 altogether. And he recognizes the problem and that is a successor for Judas. And so he explains from scripture, the scriptures had to be fulfilled which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David concerning Judas who was guide to those who arrested Jesus. And so what he suggests then, he quotes two Psalms. One, let his habitation become desolate. In other words, now that he's dead, let his house remain vacant. On the other hand, his office let another man take. And so this second quote there from

Psalm 109 verse 8, in the Greek it's his episcopae, or in the King James it's his bishopric. So if Judas dies and even Judas leaves a vacancy that Peter recognizes that it would be important to- Pete Slauson Let another peak his office. John Svig Yeah, let his, and so what do they do? They draw lots by Peter's initiative. You know, it's not Petrine monopoly, it's Petrine promissory, but it's a collegiality. So all the Apostles are participating in this act, but they choose Saint Matthias by drawing lots. Well, where's the only

other place we have drawing lots? Well, in Luke 1, when Zechariah is chosen to offer the sacrifice as the priest, lots are drawn and that falls to him. And so Luke is assuming that you know his Prequel Luke's gospel and then when you read Acts 1 you could almost get a sense that this is becoming the priesthood of the New Covenant and Matthias is going to be the successor to Judas and if Judas's office is vacant and it cries out for his successor, how much more would the others, when they die, end up also calling out for that succession? And then in Acts 2... I've never heard that before.

Yeah, in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit falls upon all of them, but who's the one who gets up and addresses the crowd? Verse 14, Peter standing with the eleven, and that's the key. He is the one who goes on and on about Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. And so, Peter is exercising his primacy over the apostles in Acts 1, but in a collegial way, over all of Jerusalem and preaching that sermon at Pentecost, again, in a collegial way. And then in chapter 3, Peter and John going to the temple at the hour of prayer, the lame man, silver and gold have I none, you know the rest of the story.

So Peter and John raise this man, they heal the lame man, and then Peter goes on to preach why and how that happened in the temple precincts. And you don't preach there without a license, and so he's in trouble there. But it's almost as though Peter is exhibiting this unique authority entrusted to all of them, but especially to him, by healing and then by preaching, even in the temple precincts where only Levites and scribes are allowed to preach. And then when he's put on trial for that in Acts 4, he's there before the council, the Sanhedrin, with Peter and John, but the only one who speaks is Peter, not John, and he's not defending himself, he's basically putting the Sanhedrin on trial for executing the author

of life. And so, Peter is gently and subtly exercising a sort of spiritual primacy over the eleven in one, over Jerusalem in two, in the temple in three, in front of the Sanhedrin in four, and then just ask Ananias and Sapphira, he's exercising authority within the church too, because when they lie to him about how much they sold the property to, what does Peter say? How would you lie to the Holy Spirit? And I could just read Ananias' mind. I didn't lie to the Holy Spirit. Peter, just who do you think you are?

I lied to you, but he never expressed any of that because he dropped dead right on the spot. And then, and when Peter confronts Ananias, his wife later on, Sapphira, she repeats the same lie. And I mean, there are all kinds of questions about the discipline for Ananias and Sapphira, but not about Peter's unique role exercising primacy in the church in five, the Sanhedrin in four, the temple in three, Pentecost,cost Jerusalem in two and the other apostles in chapter one and by then Luke is on a roll, you know And so by the time Peter basically authenticates Paul's gospel that it's Christ and him alone faith through baptism Not circumcision in the works the law, you know, who's going to stand up to Peter?

Well, James finesses that with pastoral discipline who's going to stand up to Peter? Well, James finesses that with pastoral discipline, but I would say that Peter authenticating Paul's gospel is precisely why the letter is written and circulated among the churches at the end of Acts 15 and why Paul can go forth to a second missionary journey totally confident that I've got the backing of the pillar of apostles in Jerusalem. Yeah, I don't know if it's 79%, but... It's now at 81%.

Okay. It's fun. See, isn't it? It is fun. At some point over the next hour, I'd like to take questions from our supporters, but I also don't want to derail this. Yeah, no, let's do... I have one more question, and then I think I'll be good. Sure. Cool. So, let's turn now to the first Epistle of Clement, and he mentions basically multiple bishops in Rome. Thoughts? Yeah, I mean, what you will find is a model of the church back then that is surprisingly

different than today, you know, because you have the monopiscopacy, I think, prevalent in many sources, but the idea of the plurality is not only necessitated by the lack of any unified form of mass communication, but this has continued long into the Middle Ages as well, where in a city you might have different bishops, but only one metropolitan. And I won't mention the names of my colleagues who feel the same way, but I would sense that this would be a pastoral exigency for today as well. Bishops end up practically being bureaucrats and administrators who can't preach and teach on a daily basis precisely because they've got this sprawling bureaucracy to administer finances and everything else,

personnel, human relations. And so in the early church you do find bishops in Rome, but none of them are claiming to be the successor to Peter. And there isn't any debate in Clement or others that you have multiple successors to Peter. By the time you move from twelve bishops as successors to the twelve with adding Matthias, you end up with literally hundreds of bishops as the gospel spreads from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. But it really does arise as the practical necessity to have a father figure over the expanding household in any given region.

And because Rome wasn't just like Steubenville, a small city that you can just kind of walk through in an hour, you have lots of neighborhoods, lots of regions of Rome, you're going to end up with lots of bishops as well. So what about the idea that there were still, there had to have been, if the papacy is true, there had to have been one bishop who was head over all of the other bishops, but he doesn't mention that. Does that count as any evidence against the papacy in your view? Well, I mean- That he doesn't mention one who's over the others? You know, it doesn't arise to the level of an objection in as much as it's coming from

Clement. Okay. I mean, even if Clement is only a presbyter at this point, he's a presbyter in the Church of Rome, and he's writing with this awareness that the Corinthians recognize an authority that pertains to the Church of Rome. And if Clement is writing, as the majority of scholars suppose, you know, as the Bishop of Rome, so it's lion is cleat, it's Clement, sixth is Cornelius, you know, all of these that are named in the Eucharistic prayer are the successors to Peter, generally all were martyrs for the first

century or so. You know, Clement is writing in a way that I would say is similar to Peter. When Peter writes first and second Peter, he's not flexing his muscles, he's not strutting his stuff, he's talking about how these elders are shepherds. He refers to himself as an elder. Just as Jesus says, you know, the first shall be last, it takes Peter a long time to learn that lesson. But the greatest among you shall be one as one who serves. I think what you're finding in Peter's epistles is what you're finding in Echo of in Clement as well, that there's an awareness that just because there is a center doesn't mean there's

no circle. In fact, it's what makes the circle, it makes what holds together. The center will hold as the circle expands and you end up with literally thousands of bishops and they're not singularly traceable back. He's touching the computer. He's touching the computer. Making an adjustment. No, I'm not. I just think of Swann and Jimmy. I wish they were in the room because I can address this, but I'm not a church historian.

So what Trent Horn has said about it is that just because there's mention of multiple bishops doesn't mean that there's no head bishop over all of the other bishops. That's right. Just like if you were to mention that the Democrats decided on something, if you were to say that in today's language, that doesn't mean that there's no head over all of the Democrats, the House Speaker. That's right. And in New York City, Minneapolis, and lots of metropolitan areas, you have the Archbishop

and then you also have other bishops in that city. I was just in Pittsburgh where Bishop David Zubik is, but he has what we call auxiliary bishops, but they're bishops. They're not like vice presidents or co-pilots, they're bishops. They could lay their hands upon and therefore ordain priests and that sort of thing. So there really is in the teaching of Vatican II, the plentitude of apostolic authority resides not just in the archbishop, but even in his assistants, those bishops that we would call auxiliary.

All right. We want to take some questions from our supporters on Patreon and locals. And I want to apologize in advance because there is no way that I can get to all of the questions that have come in. Maybe we can think of this. How many people are watching? Yeah. How many people are watching? Okay. Okay. It's amazing. They're all going to hit the like button. They're all, everybody, every single person is hitting the like button right now. Thank you.

Well, as I say, I apologize. I won't be able to get to all of these, but I'll do my best. Ryan Pope, I felt like it was good to start with this man. Okay. A supporter and no doubt an attractive man says, and I know because I know him, to Cameron, I understand that your wife's family runs a Protestant church there in Houston that you and your wife have been connected to.

Realistically speaking, does this effectively kill any chance of becoming Catholic? No, no, not at all, not for me, because the journey that I'm on is, I suppose, my own journey, like my wife has her own journey that she's on. And she, right now, I feel like she's almost just open to it happening just because I've been talking about it for so long.

And for so long, I mean, basically since we've been together, the conversation started and she's kind of loosened up. She's almost like just at the stage of acceptance that it's it may happen at some point. So it's not it's not something that's going to hold me back. We don't even attend that church anymore. So it's it's not really something that's going to hold me back personally. Supporter Amy Fennis has a question for both Cameron and Dr. Hahn. Cameron, how has the current Pope, Pope Francis, affected your views on the papacy?

And then Dr. Hahn, how has the current Pope affected your evangelization efforts? So, starting with you, is it a stumbling block at all? Dr. John H. Hahn, Ph.D. I haven't looked into it, to be honest. So, I'm looking at history and I'm looking at the New Testament primarily right now, so I'm not focusing on, I haven't focused on that. I can't speak on it. Okay. Yeah. I mean, Pope Francis has said some wonderful things, but not typically on an airplane in a press conference. That's where he reminds me of Peter, you know, who just opens his

mouth to put his foot in it. But at the same time, we love him. We pray for him. We revere him and his office. And so, I would say what Pope Francis has done is so good at so many levels and so questionable at other levels, problematic. I'm kind of a glad trad as you know, Matt. And so the suppression of the traditional Latin Mass raises a lot of questions in my mind about prudential judgment, especially given the German bishops, etc, etc but at the end of the day, you know, he is gleaming compared to Pope Benedict the ninth or

Alexander the sixth and others as well So we've had stellar popes for quite some time that even if he is a little lackluster in his clarity and precision You know, no surprise. I also think it's really useful and important for us to advance the new evangelization apart from something that could almost end up becoming something more like a personality cult. I remember when I converted back in 86, when John Paul was still young, I met him in 92.

It was so inspiring. But I also remember, you know, having studied the church history, the popes and all of this, this sense of like, okay, there's a lot of chaos after Vatican II, but don't put all of your eggs in just one papal basket because this guy is so, you know, extraordinary. And John Paul obviously was, but I came from a tradition that was partisan, that ended up with personality cults, televangelists and that sort of thing. So I was wary even early of putting too much weight on one peg, even if he is, you know, St. John Paul II or Pope Benedict, you know, and so I think in a helpful way, the Church is rediscovering its own decentralization,

that it isn't the Pope that we are to listen to, it's Christ. It's also our own Bishop, it's also our own pastor, but we really do submit to the Word of God, the Word and fleshed in Christ, but the word alive in scripture and tradition. And so, you know, it's sobering, but at the same time, I think it's profoundly animating. Also, Jimmy Aiken just texted back and he said he'd be happy for us to call him, put him on the livestream. Okay.

But I also, maybe we've passed that point, so I'll leave it there. Yeah, I mean, I'm open to it, or I can just call him after the show. Okay. Get us started. Thank you, Jimmy. Yes, Emma asks, Dr. Yeah, I mean, I'm open to it, or I can just call him after the show. Okay. Thank you, Jimmy. Yes, Emma asks, Dr. Hahn,

are there any parts of Cameron's looking into Catholicism that remind you of your own conversion? Oh, too many. I mean, we were talking about this at dinner last night, especially with Brittany, because Kimberly and I were so deeply united in ministry for years. And when I was a pastor, she not

only played piano, but she just did a lot of stuff around the Presbyterian Church. And then when I began to move into this Catholic direction, she was not budging. And so it reminds me of the freedom that you're affirming for your bride that I had to recognize for mine. It's complicated. It's really complicated. And I'm reminded too, that people said to me- Can't force anything on her. Exactly.

And she can't force anything on you. And so I had a friend who ended up converting, but he waited until his wife did, and he rebuked me, said, you should have waited till Kimberly. Well, I would have said, hell would have frozen over you know if if Kimberly knew that I was waiting for her she admitted this later she would never have even opened a book but because I said look you know you've got to submit to the lordship of Christ and give an account on the last day and not to me but to him so must I

and so if the light of God's word is so clear that I've got to submit to the Lordship of Christ, and I told her, delaying obedience is feeling more like disobedience every day. And she's like, okay, in that case, you've gotta do what you've gotta do. And then later on she said, well, you know, if I ever become Catholic,

I would not get up in front of people and share my story. And I said, well girl, you know, I think you ought to wait until you not only think it's true, but you ought to wait until you couldn't wait. You would be eager to get up and share the discovery of not just the truth, but the beauty and the power of the Catholic faith. And she said, I don't think that day will ever come. You know, well, it did. And I would say that kind of freedom is not something I gave her,

it's something she already had. And she recognized it in me before I recognized it in her. And so we focused on dating and romance and raising the kids and telling them stories, yeah, that kind of stuff. So we identified the common ground, which was much more substantial than the significant differences. But you so easily fixate on those differences that you end up with a dysfunctional relationship. Brad Mead asks, this question is for both Scott and Cameron. I'm drawn to Catholicism, but don't know how to feel about mystics. What are your thoughts on the accuracy of and reliance on the visions of mystics? Maybe that's more a question for you. Well, first of all, I too am a little wary of mysticism and mystics. You know, the old

line is mysticism begins with mist and ends with schism and at the center is the eye. Oh, wow. And so I'm wary of mysticism. On the other hand, since we're here with Pines with Aquinas, I would emphasize how Thomas was a contemplative first and foremost, more than just a rigorous philosophical brain. His heart for Christ was so in love, and his prayer life, and his devotion to Christ's real presence in the Eucharist, etc., etc. And I'm thinking also of Gerard de Lagrange, Reginald Gerard de Lagrange, who arguably was the greatest Thomistic theologian of the 20th century and John Paul's doctoral supervisor in Rome. And he wrote a book that we were privileged to translate

with Matthew Minard's help and published through Emmaus Academic called The Sense of Mystery. And this is so important to recognize that the doctrines that we believe are sacred mysteries. When Jesus says to Peter, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, he could have said philosophical and historical arguments do not lead you to profess your faith in me. My Father who is in heaven has revealed this to you." There's, you know, natural reason can go so far, supernatural faith goes beyond reason but not against it, although at times it might feel like it goes against it. Bottom line is, I think, you know, I'm a Thomist, but I prefer to tell my students, I'm a Thomistic, because

Thomas was a mystic. Spell it with a Y. And what Thomas is best at doing is showing that the sacred mysteries are so true, so real, so beautiful, so powerful, that you shouldn't just kind of develop the head, but the heart. But the heart follows the head, and that's where mysticism, I think, goes off the rail sometimes. Yeah, I would say, as I've said before, that a faithful Catholic should not only submit to what the Catholic Church teaches authoritatively, but he should also not demand uniformity where

the Church allows diversity of opinion or custom, and that the revelations, so-called of mystics, if that's kind of what he's referring to, can never rise to the level of public revelation that must be assented to by faith. And so sometimes you see people getting really excited about a particular apparition or a particular mystic who's allegedly conveying something from heaven. Well, we're not bound to submit to that. It might be said by the Church to be worthy of belief, but... That's important. Even with Church approval of an apparition or of a mystic, you know, it's a

nihil obstat. There's nothing offensive. That doesn't mean that it rises to the level of public revelation and therefore becomes part of the object of our supernatural faith. No, it's worthy of credence, but credence is not the same thing as Fidesz. We have a question from supporter Ryan Anthony. This is a good question. We didn't bring this up yet, I think. Does it count against the papacy that it wasn't defined until Vatican one? Shouldn't we expect something so central and important to be defined much earlier? Yeah Suellentrop Yeah, that's the objection of the recent pope dogmasization. Pete Slauson Yeah.

I mean, that was my objection for a couple of years. And then, you know, it takes someone stating the obvious, you know, and that is, shouldn't they have defined the divinity of Christ within the first generation? I mean, certainly Paul is assuming that Jesus is divine in the Christ hymn of Philippians 2 and elsewhere, but I mean New Testament scholars today could pass a lie detector test and contend that no, it isn't clear that Paul was affirming the divinity of Jesus. We had to wait until, what, 325 in the Council of Nicaea. And even there, the Holy Spirit's not defined as a divine person until 381.

So, you know, God basically has humans to work with. And even though it's God, the Holy Spirit, nevertheless, it kind of feels like tar or sludge at times. So it takes the church a long time. And typically, it isn't the case that you have a definition until you have a heresy that is denying the truth. So Arius the presbyter who's denying the divinity of Jesus is almost the precondition for the doctrinal definition, the formula that we recognize with the Nicene Creed. And for centuries, literally, the pope had Christian monarchs, Catholic kings in France and everywhere else to kind of

enforce whatever the teaching was. And suddenly in 1870, when the dogma is defined, you go back to 1789 and the eldest daughter of the church, France, with the revolution, you know, rope spear, the reign of terror, the heading of the nuns and the priests and so on, you know, suddenly all of the nations, you know, byope Spear, the Reign of Terror, the Heading of the Nuns and the Priests and so on. You know, suddenly all of the nations, you know, by 1848 dozens of former Catholic nations are now in total enlightenment revolt. And so, if you don't have the political backing that would give you temporal support to enforce

the doctrine and the morality, what do you do? You basically have to say what Christ says to Caiaphas, and that is, you'll see the Son of Man riding on the clouds of heaven. In other words, at that moment in history, you have so many denying the authority of the pope that the gloves come off and the definition is given saying, look, the pope is not authoritative

because he's got Catholic monarchs to back him up. The pope is authoritative because this is what Christ established. So this is authority that transcends the political, the human, the secular. It is and always was divine and heavenly. And I would say that the heresies that came with modernism, you know, and then also with the revolutions were God's providential forcing the church to back into the recognition of the need. Newman did not support the definition of the dogma, but Newman was living in

England where, you know, there was still persecution, but it wasn't France, it wasn't the revolution, it wasn't the violence of the other continental countries that were not just ex-catholic but profoundly and violently anti-catholic Yeah, I only have that as counting as very small evidence Okay This is why I brought up the inerrancy of scripture being defined at the council of Trent because this is something that a Protestant might Say just just like well, how could the papacy not be defined much earlier?

Well, you could say the exact same thing about the Scriptures, but it was around the Council of Trent that we're responding to Protestant objections. Yeah, and I like the idea that it was because something was happening in the church, like there was a sort of person who was going against, and that's why we needed to have someone come in and give the dogmatization like final. And that's true for 381, the Council of Constantinople. It isn't until the new Matamachians are denying the personhood of the Holy Spirit that the Cappadocians have to stand up with St. Gregory of Nonsiandis kind of convening and supervising the council to define the

consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit as the third person. And we're off and running. You have an historiast denying that Mary is the mother of God, and so Theotokos in 431 in Ephesus. And so you really do have to match the providential allowance of certain heresies with the providential guidance of defining certain dogmas. Wesley Phillips, thanks for being a supporter, Wesley. He says, my brother is trying to discern orthodoxy versus Catholicism after being raised Protestant and then non-practicing in his adult life. Praise the Lord I converted in 2014 and my parents are coming into the church this Saturday at the Easter Vigil.

What would be the best points to discuss with someone struggling between going towards Orthodox and Catholicism? Pete Who have you interviewed on this question recently? Jared Eric Ibarra. Pete Eric Ibarra, yeah. Jared He was excellent and I would strongly recommend have you interviewed on this question recently? Eric Ybarra. He was excellent and I would strongly recommend that you go to my YouTube channel and search Eric Ybarra and point him to that. How do you spell his last name? Y-B-A-R-R-A.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I would say go to Eric. And there are others too. James Lakoudis has written a number of classic works on this subject as a convert from Orthodoxy. In Rome's Sweet Home, I allude to the fact that I was sort of drawn to a more Byzantine approach to the liturgy and to Orthodoxy. And when I discovered autocephaly, the idea that you have all of these autocephalous Orthodox bodies, you know, the Greek, the Russian, now the Estonian, the Ukrainian, it just struck me as not the same as Protestant denominations,

but a kind of denominationalism, that these ethnic national churches are self-headed. That's literally what autocephalous means. And so, you know, I remember being at Marquette when an Orthodox scholar came and was asked the question, you know, when do you think there'll be a pan-Orthodox council? He said, well, that'll be numbered among the four last things, because you're not going to have all of these autocephalous Orthodox bodies agreeing and then submitting. And that's when I knew, you know, that is no way, that's a fraternal association that utterly lacks any true paternity. And obviously God is

the Father working through Christ, but Christ is working through all of the Apostles, but especially Peter and the successors of Peter. And so it just struck me at the time we have a Polish Pope, he's not an Italian, then a German, you know, and now a South American. And so the newness of the New Covenant is that it transcends ethnicity, not just the Jewish but the Italian or anything else that would represent an ecclesiastical reduction to the Greek, to the Russian, to the Estonian, or I think there are well over a dozen different orthodox bodies that are all

autocephalous. Final question because then the three of us are going to go to Holy Mass, so I figured this would be an appropriate question. Okay. Is that all right? Sure, yeah. This comes from Marte88. How to tactfully explain without offending to a non-Catholic friend visiting at Mass,

you, that they should not receive Holy Communion. The priest typically explains at Christmas and Easter and funerals, but not at most Masses. I hesitate to invite because I did the advisement to my stepdaughter many years ago at Christmas. She went up for the blessing, all that she received instead. So I want to ask you first, did you find that somewhat offensive that you can come to a Catholic Church? But maybe I'm just like, I don't find it offensive at all.

Yeah. Cool. I'm just, am I weird? Like do a lot of Protestants have issues with that? You know, my response is, and this might sound a little harsh. You go. I remember something you said last time that we were here and it was like, this is actually done for you. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Good memory. I had forgotten that. Yeah, no, it's funny. Last week we had Jordan Peterson here at the university and he spoke and he came to noon mass and he was in the front row so we could all kind of watch the priest and he spoke. And he came to noon mass and he was in the front row. So we could all kind of watch the priest and then in the corner of our eyes,

watch Jordan Peterson. As Father Dave Bavock, our president said, who was presiding, he was like a child in this awestruck sense of wonder, just taking in all of the songs, the prayers, the gestures, the vestments and all of that. And he went forward. Oh.

But he cropped. He knew. He knew to do that. That would have been a very odd moment. He bowed his head, it sure would have been. And Father Dave laid his hands and he prayed for me, blessed me and all of that. And then at the end of his presentation, that evening he did the same thing and You could tell, visibly, how moved he was. Father Dave, I have such respect for him. He did such an excellent job, didn't he?

Yeah. Interviewing Peterson. Wait, so I go up there and I put my hands like this and that signifies that- You'll receive a blessing instead of holy communion. You can do that in half hour for now. Okay, I didn't know that was even an option. Well, yeah. It is.

The thing, I mean, I agree. When I went to Mass for the first time in the basement chapel on campus at Marquette, in the basement chapel on campus at Marquette. I remember hearing the words of consecration and realizing both head and heart, this isn't bread anymore. This is what I didn't have the power to do, even when we started celebrating the Eucharist every week. I was playing church.

This is the real thing. And by the time he consecrated the chalice, I'm like, that's his precious blood. What's going on inside my head? And when they said the Lamb he consecrated the chalice, I'm like, that's his precious blood. What's going on inside my head? You know, and when they said the Lamb of God and the people came forward for Holy Communion, I knew this wasn't the same thing that we did when I was a Protestant, when I was a Presbyterian pastor. You know, for us, it was so profound and sacred, but it was like a handshake, it was like a

hug, maybe even a kiss. But in reading the Church Fathers, I realized why they would link it to the marriage supper of the Lamb, because it's not just a supper, it really is a one flesh union. Eucharistic communion is the bridegroom saying to the bride, this is my body. And so you're entering into what is a sacramental analogy for marital intimacy. And once you recognize that, you know, it makes total sense, it did to me, that if I'm ever going to identify myself radically with the bride of Christ as the Catholic Church, then and only then would it really be fitting to share in this level of intimacy.

And at that moment, suddenly I realized why my friends who were offended, we have open communion, why is yours closed? Well, I would give a handshake to a stranger. I might even give a hug to a parishioner. I might even give a kiss to, you know, a close friend on the cheek, you know, but that is reserved only for the covenant of marriage and this unique bond that Christ calls us to share by identifying ourselves with the Church as His bride. And so, I didn't have that hang-up, but only because I had already gotten to the point where if the Eucharist is what they say it is, it's not the same thing as what we've been doing all my life. Final thoughts? On the discussion so far?

Yeah, I kind of want to know, are you giving yourself a time limit on this list? Because well, I have potentially forever. Yeah, so what I'm waiting on now is Jimmy Akin's working on a systematic list of different data points that are going to be in favor of the papacy. I'm waiting on that from him. Swan Sana has a list of 15 that he's gonna give me and I just haven't had time to call him. I've had several conversations with Gavin already and so I pretty much know where he stands on all of this

and I've got the data points from him. I'm gonna rewatch something that he's got, but I would say I'll try to have some kind of answer to this, maybe a couple of months. Good for you. So knowing Jimmy, as I do, you'll get a list more comprehensive than Thomas Aquinas could have put together. I'm sure like that man's brilliant and meticulous. Yeah. And he's, I mean, I'm just,

I'm so fortunate to be in this position where he would be willing to do this for me. And we were in a fortunate position too, to be with you, to accompany you as the parlance goes. I would also say that if you do end up accepting the truth of the papacy, that really is like discovering, okay, this is the country that I wanna be a citizen,

I wanna be naturalized. But it's a process, you know, so that, you know, once the papacy becomes true to you, you know, what the Church teaches. I mentioned to you last night, you know, that you want to dig the tunnel from both sides, you know, the head, the historic arguments, basing probability, but at the same time, the heart, but not just the heart as emotion, but the heart as devotion, so that the Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin Mary doctrine, but also devotion, the saints, these things make sense. But as I drove home last night, I was thinking about this isn't just like a tunnel being dug

from both sides. You know, I went to grad school at Gordon-Conwell Seminar up in Boston when they were beginning what they called the Big Dig, which was like this whole tunnel complex. And it strikes me that's probably a more fitting analogy for what you'll end up doing, and that is not just a straight-line tunnel, but you'll be looking at the saints, you'll be looking at the Blessed Virgin, the other sacraments, you'll be looking at things besides the papacy, and you know, it just represents recognizing the Catholic Church is true from the outside is not the same thing as allowing yourself to really be transformed as a Catholic within.

And I think that will be involving not just the next couple of months, but give yourself as much time as the Holy Spirit wants. Great. Well, thank you so much to everybody who's watching the live stream. Do us a favor, click that like button, smash it, destroy it, roundhouse kick it, or whatever. And if you've enjoyed this conversation,

you thought it was worth your time, it'll certainly be worth others' time, so please share this on Facebook. It's a great way to support the channel, and we will see you next time, thanks. Does Cameron have a YouTube channel? Does Cameron have a YouTube channel? No, no, he doesn't. All right. See you later. No, tell us about YouTube channel.

Yeah. So I run Capturing Christianity. It's a Christian apologetics organization, nonprofit organization, and we do videos primarily on apologetics, but also as a result of being friends with Matt Fratt, I also have been doing videos on Catholicism. So for and against, I recently did the case for the papacy and then the case against the papacy with some really high top notch guys. And so that's what I do on my channel.

I'm a layman, but I interview all the experts and that's how I have all the fun. Let's link to his channel below because it's gonna make it a great Catholic YouTube channel one day. I would be really sorry. I would be remiss if I didn't mention. Yeah. That's a great, I love it. I'm just being cheeky.

Lord hear our prayer. The St. Paul Center also. Please. Much of what I've been saying this morning in our time together. Yeah, let's put a link to that YouTube channel. It's excellent. Yeah. The St. Paul Center, Dr. James Meerit, Dr. John Bergsmann, a whole lot of other teachers.

We've got over 40 full-time coworkers. It's really exciting. And so stpaulcenter.com and we have the Word of the Lord. We also have Letters from Home and Breaking the Bread and that sort of thing. But I just want to say, Cameron, again, 10,000 thanks for your integrity, your honesty, and your transparency, which bespeaks humility. And may the Lord bless you on your journey, and thank you for allowing me to be a part of it.

And thank you, man. Amen. Thanks for being here. All right. Thanks a lot. All right.