Pints With Aquinas - How a Bible Study Turned These 3 Protestants Catholic!

Episode Date: March 9, 2021

These men were all Protestants when they started a Bible study last year to prove Catholicism false. Now they're Catholic. Cross The Tiber: A community dedicated to supporting those seeking answers about the Catholic Church: https://www.crossthetiber.org/ Join my email list and get my FREE ebook! https://pintswithaquinas.com/understanding-thomas/   SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Catholic Chemistry: https://www.catholicchemistry.com/   GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/PintsWithAquinas Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pints_w_aquinas   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Hello, hello, and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd, and today I'm really excited because I'm going to share with you these three, I say share, we're going to have three young men, three young male college students on the show who I met in Austin just a couple of weeks ago. And when I was there, they said to me that they started a Bible study last year, in part to sort of convince themselves that Catholicism was false. Well, as of today, they are all Catholic. And so we are going to be hearing their story. Now, let me just kind of address a couple of things before we get going.

I have conversion stories like this quite often on the show. And it's been interesting to me of late there's been a number of people who've accused us of sheep stealing. And I think by sheep stealing what they mean is trying to make people Catholic. So if that is what they mean, yep, yeah, that is absolutely what I'm doing. But of course, stealing implies that the other had little or no say in the matter. And obviously, nobody's about forcing people to become Catholic. Even the Catholic Church says you can't force people to become Catholic. How about sheep persuasion? About helping people

outside of the Catholic Church become Catholic. Yeah, that is what this is about. Now, I'm really excited because me and a couple of friends have founded an apostolate called Cross the Tiber. Now, this is a really cool website. I want you guys to go to check it out. I've got a link in the description below. Basically, if you are a Protestant or an atheist or you're outside of the church, but you really do have serious questions about the Catholic church, what do you do? We founded this community so that you can join for free, and you will join a small video chat group of other people who are considering becoming Catholic. You can ask your questions. You can offer your objections. And each group will be headed up by a Catholic that we choose who's knowledgeable

in the faith and charitable. This is not about making anyone feel bad. This is not about being judgmental. This is a charitable exchange between people who are not yet Catholic who want to cross the Tiber. The Tiber, by the way, is that river between Rome and the Vatican. So go check it out, crossthetiber.com, if you are a non-Catholic considering becoming Catholic. And again, there is a link in the description below. Okay, so let's see if we can do this. This is the... Hey, young guys, this is the first time I've had four people on the show. I guess I'm one of those people, but good to have you. Yeah, glad to test out.

Thank you so much for inviting me. You got it. Look, before we delve into the discussion, could I have one of you just sort of sum up what has taken place, I guess, over the last year or so? Sure, yeah. So starting out a little over a year ago, there's a fourth member of the Bible study. He couldn't be here today. His name's Cason, but we all got together after meeting each other in just really interesting ways. Maybe we'll get into that more when we talk about the establishment of our Bible study, but we all started a Bible study in pursuit of truth. That was the goal. We knew that where we were, we did not know what the truth was,

and the church we were at did not have the truth. So that was the mission of the Bible study, and along the way we were going to, you know, disprove Catholicism, because to us it was obvious that they did not have the truth either. And so, yeah, eight months later of studying and reading and having some very lively debates on our faithful Sunday night meeting, very lively debates on our faithful Sunday night meeting, we all consequently converted, all four of us, to Catholicism and were welcomed into the church last Easter. That's wonderful. Jack, was it a Bible study just containing you four? We were essentially the backbone of the Bible study. We had people from our current church come in and out, and then later

on we had people from, you know, Our Lady of Wisdom here in San Marcos, Texas, which is the church we were all welcomed in at. They began to come just to see, oh wow, you know, these Protestants are interested in Catholicism. Let's talk to them. Let's have some more interesting thoughts come into the debate. Okay. Share with me, because it sounds like you were dissatisfied with whatever church it was you were attending. You knew that there was more somewhere else, which is partly why you joined this Bible study. Maybe somebody could tell me what it was that you found unsatisfying in the church you were at, why you knew it wasn't the fullness of the truth, and then just kind of lead us through maybe

this Bible study. Nick, do you want to go ahead and start with the... Yeah. Yeah, so how it started, to answer your first question, really what was bothering us about our former church was, at the the time what we considered lack of biblical truth that we saw being preached from the pulpit. We all come from varying degrees of Protestant belief, but all of us would probably have considered ourselves Baptists. Myself, I would have considered myself a fundamentalist Baptist at the time. And so the church we were all going part of, we just didn't see to have like authentic biblical

teaching. And as Protestants, you know, the Bible is the only thing that we have. And so we want to make sure that it's being faithful to, the teaching is being faithful to the scriptures. And so we didn't find it to be satisfying. And so I very much so was upset and confused at the teachings that while Christ was on earth, that he at a time ceased to be fully God and did most of his miracles mainly in his humanity for the sole reason to prove that we, through our humanity, can do miracles as well. And so we found these teachings to be truly disturbing, and so that pushed us to desire to create some form of a Bible study with two goals. The first goal being, what is truth? We want absolute truth. And then the second goal being, we want an end of sin in our lives. We want to get rid of it.

Excuse me. Okay, if I was in your position, I think I would have just said, okay, there's bound to be a more orthodox Protestant church nearby that can more faithfully expound the Scriptures. Did you look into that? Yeah, so I guess to jump back, how it all started, at least for me, to give like a quick summary of kind of where I was coming from. I was baptized in the Catholic Church when I was an infant, when I was about three months old. But then three months after I was born, my parents decided to, for varying degrees, leave the church, and I was brought up in a non-denominational church. And being brought up in a non-denominational church, a non-denominational church. And being brought up in a non-denominational church,

it was good. I learned much of what the scriptures teach, things like Bible memory verse contests and sword drills, if any of your audience is familiar with those. Yeah, it was very common. And so the Bible was everything for me as a child. And I had just a natural love of theology from a very young age that separated me from a lot of my fellow people my own age. And through that separating, I always felt like somewhat distant from everybody. So growing up, I very much so wanted to do the right thing and to follow the Lord the best way I knew how. The best way I knew how at the time I reasoned was, well, maybe I should become a pastor. Maybe I should go and pursue a pastor. But as I'm reading the scriptures and contemplating their meanings and doing my own survey of church history, I find a sense of pride started to build up within me. You could say almost a religious

pride of saying, you know, I think my interpretation of the scripture might be the only one because I'm looking around at what the scripture says, and I'm looking at what's being taught, and I don't see them matching up. And so very much so from the beginning, when we decided to leave this former church, it was, I think, for at least myself, that old sense of pride that was wanting to come out. And very much so it was just like, I don't know who I can trust. All I can trust is my Bible by myself. Oh, interesting. I see what you mean. sounds like you were so disillusioned at this point from the false teaching that it wasn't enough just to kind of jump into another, say, more orthodox or more conservative, I should say, Protestant church. You wanted to get back to the Bible to see what the Bible actually taught.

Sean, tell us a bit about you. What was your background, and why did you enter this Bible study and all that? So I'm probably the most skewed of joining the group because I grew up Baptist. My dad was actually a Southern Baptist pastor for a time. And I was growing disillusioned as well to Protestantism, just because, like Nick was saying, it was very much so me and my Bible. I didn't know how to properly form exegesis on scripture or know where tradition laid because just like various things weren't lining up with what I believed and what the church fathers believed. And the way that I came into the Bible study was just randomly in passing, only probably talking to Nick a handful of times, he invited me to this Bible study.

And the night that we decided to, or they decided to meet up to talk about the founding of the Bible study, they were going over different Calvinist beliefs at the time. And I had just started getting into this idea of Calvinism and knew where to find them in the scriptures. And so what they thought would be off-putting was actually, I was being sympathetic to their view because of their scripture. Yeah, I mean, Jack, did you want to jump in? Sure, I'd love to. Yeah, this is such a good story. I love telling it, but me and Nick had met at the church we were both tending. All four of us were going to the same very charismatic church,

and all four of us were, you know, going through the motions, but internally, it was just not something that was feeding us. And so me and Nick were the first two to meet, and I actually met Nick. This is a, don't evangelize like this. I don't recommend it, but for me and Nick, this very special circumstance, it worked very well But for me and Nick, this very special circumstance, it worked very well. So me and Nick became best friends over about a six and a half hour conversation where he asked me how I was doing. And I very coyly said, oh, I feel like God's really proud of me right now. And then Nick, being hyper puritanical at the time, And Nick, being hyper puritanical at the time, proceeded to absolutely.

We went through an entire analysis of First John and why there's no possible way God could be proud of me. And after that, we we kept hanging out. We became best friends over over that experience and continuing on, we both just, all four of the Bible study members existed in this place where, you know, we were told we were free from sin and that we should be free from sin, and we weren't. It was like this sense of, you know, everyone acting as if they're already in, you know, let's say if you're trying to drive somewhere and everyone's texting each other and everyone's acting as if they're already there and no one's there. Um, but you feel like you need to be there because you feel like everyone else is there, but you have no gas in your car and you can't get there and you can't find anywhere to get gas. And it was very much that sense of just superficiality when it came to anything spiritual. And so that was my experience.

I remember sitting in a very dark, smoky room with very loud worship music playing. And then all of a sudden, Nick out of the corner of my eye comes up. And this is before I met Nick. He just comes up to me. And for some reason, he knew exactly what I was thinking. And in the most, you know, Darth Vader way, weird way, he goes, it doesn't make any sense, does it? And I looked at him and I was like, how do you know what I'm thinking? No, it doesn't make any sense. I don't know.

You know, this just doesn't, this is not having an impact like it should be having an impact in my life from what, you know, God should be? Am I really experiencing God right now? And so, yeah, that was kind of the fundamental push to start the Bible study was we were not satisfied, you know. And so starting off, it was that that tenet of, man, you know, what what really is the truth? Because we know that, you know, God exists, and we want to have a relationship with him, and we want to have some form of intimacy with him.

But it was just, you know, it was very, it was just desolate where we were. I love how your friendship began. It could be summed up as Jack being like, I'm awesome, and Nick going, you're disgusting, and Jack being like, let's hang out. That's almost exactly what began. Yeah, that's pretty good. Okay, so, I mean, being disillusioned with one's church is one thing. You know, going to the scriptures to seek answers is another thing. Deciding from those scriptures that Catholicism must be the church you go to is, I mean, that's a whole other thing. I know many Protestants who, well, I know some Protestants

who are better Catholics than many Catholics I know, if you know what I mean. They love Jesus Christ. They love the scriptures. They're trying to be faithful to the scriptures. So, I mean, if somebody had told you at the beginning of this Bible study where you guys just felt like unsure, hey, just so you know, you guys are going to be Catholic next year. I want to know what each of you would have said to that. I would have said, you're a false prophet, get out of here. Really?

Sean? I would have laughed at their face and politely said that that was a funny joke. Jack? Yeah, I was raised dogmatically. And like, I wouldn't say anti-Catholic, but pretty, you know what, I will say anti. That's how I was raised. And so if someone said that to me, I would think that they would be playing a joke on me. Because at the time, when I would speak to Catholics, it would be very much so the sense of, oh, yeah, your faith is wrong.

Here's why. Insert 40 ad hominem arguments and a couple strawmans. And yeah, that would have I would have laughed pretty loudly if someone told me that. you know, pretty loudly if someone told me that. All right. Well, let's talk about how you began, you know, opening yourself up to Catholicism. I mean, you guys are studying the scriptures. What was the first domino that fell where you were like, oh, wow, that's something like the Catholic Church, or this is an objection I've had towards the Catholic Church, which I guess I don't have anymore. Somebody help us lead through that, get through that. Yeah, sure. So, for me anyway, the central issue for all theology is soteriology. How is a man saved? How is a man brought into right relationship with God? And if anyone grows up either in the

Calvinist or fundamentalist world, they're very much so going to be taught, like, you must be born again. You must be born again, which is true. It's just John chapter 3. Unless a man be born again, he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. And so from a young age, I was taught kind of just the really popular American gospel. Just pray a prayer, and then you're good to go for the rest of your life. It doesn't matter what sins you commit. God has forgiven your past, present, and future sins. And so while I was a pretty Calvinist, this idea of

you have to be an elect was very present in my mind. But when I went to the scriptures, and I can share a few if you'd like, when I went to the scriptures, I recognized that the scriptures, so it's true, when a man meets Christ, it's not just that he prays a prayer and then he lives however he wants to. A man meets the person of Christ, and he is fundamentally changed. If a man meets God, he's going to be changed one way or the other. And so when I started doing this, looking at the scriptures, I noticed that the scriptures very much so clearly teach that when a man meets God, he either falls away completely, rejects him, or he chooses him. up, and this is how I started really studying what the Catholic Church started to believe, is that when I read through 1 John, as an example, I saw that it clearly talked about signs of salvation, signs that you knew that you were born again. And I would compare my life with them, and I

recognized very quickly, I do not know the Lord. And so just to give a couple brief ones, in the book of 1 John, in chapter 1, it says in verse 3, the apostle tells us that that which we have seen and heard, which we declare unto you, and that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship may be with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And so the apostle very much wants us to have fellowship with God, but when we look at verse 6, it says, if we say us to have fellowship with God. But when we look at verse 6, it says, If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as he also is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,

and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. And so I ask myself, do I walk in the light as he is in the light? Not just attempting to walk in the light as I saw it at the time, but do I walk in the light as God is in the light? That seems like a very high degree of holiness. I also saw that in chapter 2, in verse 3, it says this, And by this we know that we have known him if we keep his commandments. And I asked myself, do I truly keep his commandments? Because if you look down in verse 6 of 1 John 2, it says,

He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also to walk even as he walked. And that was the verse that really convinced me. I clearly do not know the Lord because I don't know anyone who walks like Christ walked with that degree of holiness. And so looking at it from the Calvinist perspective, either I'm going to have this born-again experience where I'm just totally set free from all sin in almost a perfectionistic kind of way, or else, yeah, I'm not going to be born again. I had no concept of the idea that being a process. How do you think a Calvinist might respond to this?

Because I doubt that a Calvinist would agree with your interpretation that if I come to know Jesus Christ, I will be completely sinless. Yeah, no, very much so. And you see, though, as a good example, the Calvinists that I were reading at the time, most of these men were Puritans. And so they would use the language of, if you practice any form of sin, any type of known sin at all, know of assuredly that you do not know the Lord. And so it was very much so, for me anyway, I'm very much a person who, before the Lord freed me from it, struggled with scrupulosity. And so I asked myself, well, how then, if I practice any form of sin, does that include bad thoughts? You know, does that include bad speech or bad intention?

Because the Lord will judge me by those things, and unless I'm wiped clean from those things could I be set free so yeah you I think with Calvinists you'd have a mixed bag I think you'd have a lot of them who would say that it could be a process over time of walking and salvation but if you go back and you read the early early Puritans they definitely use much firmer language of yeah if you practice any form of sin, no, assuredly, you're not born again. Sean, what was something, as you were going through this Bible study, that began to kind of open your eyes to Catholicism being less crazy than you had originally thought? Yeah, so I had a more, like, I guess, Zwingli interpretation.

So, like, pretty much, like, no sacramentology, everything's a symbol and faith alone is like was like quite literally what it means, faith alone. And so a few things opened me up was realizing like a man isn't just justified by faith alone. Like you see our Lord say in the gospels, like you'll be, you'll be justified by every word, idle and unidle or, or John, John three, five,

just to give a simple example of baptismal regeneration, where unless a man be born of the spirit and of water, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God. And so those piqued my interest, but I still had a disposition of this being wrong. But luckily for me, Nick is one of my best friends. And so he just has this incessant pursuit of the truth. Whatever he feels is right, he will go headstrong into it, even if it just completely contradicts what he believes. being stubborn in my beliefs, Nick just asked me a simple question one day of, what if Catholicism is true? Like, do you even have the door just cracked open just a little bit? And I had to be honest with myself, and I had to realize my obstinacy in the belief of Catholicism. And so him asking me that simple question of what if it's just true just a little bit made me have to actually take a real evaluation of what the church teaches.

Jack, same question for you. What was it that began to open your mind that Catholicism wasn't as nuts as you first had perhaps thought? Yeah, so growing up, hearing a lot of things, especially here in the Bible Belt, Texas, there's a lot that's talked about of the Catholic Church that isn't really the Catholic Church. I think it's Venerable Fulton Sheen who has the quote of, you know, not many people, maybe a hundred, actually hate the Catholic Church, but thousands of people hate what they think the Catholic Church is. And I was absolutely one of those people. So as we really started learning, okay, well, if we're going to disprove something, we have to first know what they believe. As we started to learn what they believed, something we have to first know what they believe. As we started to learn what they believed,

I started to realize, wow, okay, one, I believe a lot of straw men about the Catholic Church. There's a lot of examples of things that are just not accurate, you know? Like, for example, papal infallibility. I did not have the proper understanding of that, you know? It was very much so me attacking, oh, so, you know, y'all are going to follow someone who, you know, thinks they know everything and gets to make all of the decisions on everything. And if they change their mind willy-nilly, they can just completely make up a new faith and you'll have to follow them because of this doctrine of papal infallibility, which was a straw man belief, you know, and it's sad because many people still believe that about the Catholic Church, and it's just not true.

There are multiple others that we can get into later, but that was the first thing, and then realizing, man, my argument against the Catholic Church is largely ad hominem. It's attacking the least practicing members who don't, you know, arguably you couldn't call them Catholic, or they just don't know the faith, right? But yeah, realizing those two things of, wow, I don't actually understand what Catholicism is, I hate a ghost, and then, two, my argument is a logical fallacy, like 90% of it. Okay. Did you all know any Catholics at the time? Were you speaking with, you know, knowledgeable Catholics at this point, when you're just now beginning to think of Catholicism,

that you could run these things by? I'd say, unfortunately, in my experience, I only met with, by the time I converted, two truly practicing Catholics. The Catholics that I knew growing up, they were the type of people who would, you know, get drunk on Saturday, stumble into confession, and then go to mass the next day. And I'd be like, where's the freedom? You know, where's the walking in the light as he is in the light um but there was one person in high school yeah and i have permission to use his first name uh brian who uh would not stop he was he was an upcoming apologist and he would not stop could not would not i know right and so he would he was very fair with me he He would come back with specifically

Bible verses. He wouldn't bring, because he knew I wouldn't accept it. He wouldn't bring a church document about X, Y, or Z. He would bring just the scriptures and he'd be like, well, what do you think of this scripture or that scripture? And so it very much challenged me to where, you know, I would be like, dang, you know, I've read the scriptures many times, but I just don't think I read that one. I just don't remember it. And then the second person would be whenever I was finally, when I finally got to the point of recognizing that, okay, salvation must be a process. It's 100% by God's grace, but it's not just an instantaneous cleansing from sin. It's a process. It's a relationship with the Lord. When I got to that perspective and recognized that the Catholic

faith taught that, I had a friend who invited me to go to Mass with her. Her name is Maddie. And when I went to Mass that day, you know, I kind of knew what the Mass was, when to sit, when to stand, et cetera. But the gospel reading that day was the story of the prodigal son. And in that moment, being, I guess, in the strictest sense, a revert, since I was baptized as an infant, I definitely felt like the Lord was calling me. He was saying, okay, son, it's time to come home. I definitely felt like he was calling me. He was saying, okay, son, it's time to come home.

And so it was through both of their witnesses that really inspired me to at least give it a chance. Okay, so here's a question. I understand that you began to realize that salvation was a process and not, as you put it, an instantaneous cleansing. I still don't know how you go from that directly to Catholicism. Like I could see, you know, some dear Protestant brothers and sisters watching this on YouTube being like, dude, like, okay, like there are so many other options you could have taken, but you chose the one where you've got these, the sacrifice of the mass and prayers to Mary and purgatory and indulgences, I guess. So I'm still having, I'm still having a tough time understanding how you went from your view of justification changing to Catholicism. Yeah, sure. So two things. So I saw

justification as becoming more and more of a process, and James chapter 2 being very clear that salvation is not by faith alone, but it is by faith and by works done through charity, as Galatians 5, 6 says. So that's one thing that convinced me, okay, at least the Catholics are right when it comes to some form of justification. But what convinced me of the other things were is I'm a history major. And to me, I had to ask myself the stunning question of, why is my faith so young, especially if I'm getting just interpretations from myself? Why is my faith so new? And thinking, you know, if I was logically wanting to trace any type of belief system, I would want to go back to the sources and see if I could at least find a line of documentation

going back to prove something. And so I was just like, okay, I keep hearing about these church fathers up on YouTube that everyone's talking about has converted them, so let me go and read them. And so through reading the church fathers, I came to the realization of, should I not interpret Scripture as the fathers interpreted? Because I have a weird conundrum. Either one, I can continue my hardcore fundamentalist

interpretation and say that all Catholics are not saved, and therefore I can say the guys who knew the Apostle John were heretics, and I'm right, or I can look at myself and say I'm the heretic, and they were right. And so it was going back and reading through their interpretations of the Bible that I was like, wow, they actually did not have a problem when it came to sacred imagery. As I previously, you know, thought sacred imagery was evil. They did not have a problem when it came to the intercession of the saints. And look, they're pointing me to these passages of scripture and revelations where it's talking about like the saints receiving our prayers in heaven as, you know, as incense. And looking at these things, I'm recognizing, okay, I have a choice.

I can either follow this pedigree that seems to be true. I mean, the fathers are literally calling themselves Catholic, or I can stay in my own perspective and just rule everyone out, if that makes sense. It does, yeah. Sean or Jack, and maybe one of you can go first, and then we'll hear from the other. What was your experience? I presume you began also to read the early church fathers, and if so, what was it that you found in them that surprised you?

For me, whenever I started reading the church fathers, what was astounding to me was that the like mystical body of christ wasn't just this uh wasn't just an abstract like mystical body of christ but a physical place um and not just like uh not just something that was like oh okay yeah we have a church building that meets on Sundays, but like a hierarchical bishop-priest-lay people relationship. And so that made me want to inquire more about, well, if the early church is believing that there's this line to the apostles, where does that line take us now? Okay. Jack? Where does that line take us now? Okay. Jack?

Yeah, totally. I would say the most influential realization that I had was coming out of Exodus. Because my biggest problem, it got to the point, I could even, when it came down it and we were we were understanding the doctrines of the Catholic Church, the last straw to fall for me was the papacy and being able to understand, OK, this is something that is good and not just good, but instituted by Christ. And so I had a friend, actually, a dear friend of all four of the people who started the bible study all four of us um his name's jonah um he sat down with me and he was going through a book i don't know if nick or sean if you guys remember what book it was um jewish roots of the papacy yeah yeah he was going through jewish roots of the papacy at a time. Jonah's a man that we met while being interested in Catholicism

and starting to learn about it. We met him at Olo, Our Lady of Wisdom here in San Marcos, and he sat down with me, and he was like, well, what are your questions about the papacy? I'm confused. Where do you not understand, or why is it not something that you see as correct? And we went together through Exodus with the institution of the priesthood of Aaron, and how that foreshadows, you know, in, I think it's Matthew 16, the institution of the priesthood with Peter. And there were so many just key realizations where I think he asked me a specific question, or he made the specific point of there needs to be a leader of the church, because the problem for me was that you have

thousands upon thousands of Protestant denominations, all who, maybe not all, but most who disagree fundamentally on how you are saved. And so that was a huge red flag in Protestantism. And that's why we were looking for the one church. And so having this idea of, oh, yes, there needs to be a leader of the church so that what happened in the Protestant church doesn't happen, where you just have disagreements and then schisms. Because then truth merely becomes subjective to, you know, whatever that church believes the truth is.

And you lose, you know, the historical continuity of the faith that Christ instituted through the apostles. And realizing that it kind of it was really a conversion at heart that happened, understanding that, wow, it was this kind of just miraculous change in perspective where I just realized the necessity of the papacy and how important it is to the faith. I'd like to ask each of you to tell me what your biggest obstacle was to becoming Catholic, doctrinally, I mean, not relationally. What was your biggest doctrinal hang-up that you had to overcome before becoming Catholic?

I'll give you like two minutes each to talk about that. Nick. Biggest doctrinal position was probably, I'd say, I'd honestly say the teaching on Mary was probably the hardest one for me mainly just because from an exterior perspective when you see

the idea of praying to anyone other than God himself as a full fledged worship that's how it's perceived and so how I really overcame the issue when it came to Mary was other than just studying what the Scripture said about her, looking at the four dogmas of the Church when it comes to Our Lady and comparing them with Scripture. I saw that there was truth in that, but there was always that personal hang-up of,

like, I just feel very uncomfortable doing this. I just don't know if that's right or not. And for me, I actually, you know, praise God, I actually had an experience with Mary that forever changed my life. I was very much so, like, torn, is the Catholic faith the true faith? Because I see the Scriptures testifying it. I see history testifying it, but my heart's not there. So intellectually I'm there, but everywhere else I'm not. And I remember one morning, you know, just being absolutely distraught about this. Whenever I got to the position that Catholicism could even be 1% true, I didn't eat for three days. I was just devastated the fact that what I considered... Okay, I'm sorry you you gotta you gotta tell us up there sorry you you gotta tell us a little bit more about that nick uh you said when you came

to this point where you thought catholicism might not be true might be true you didn't eat for three days i didn't eat for three days now and the reason yeah tell us about that yeah so the reason yeah i don't mean to laugh at your pain sorry sorry. No, no, it's all good. The reason being is that for me, truth is everything. I will lose friends. I will lose family. I will lose a job. I will lose the shirt off my back if I can at least have the truth.

I have to know that I'm right. I have to know that I'm correct when it comes to my place with the Lord. And so for me, growing up believing that the Catholic Church was the whore of Babylon, as depicted in Revelation 17, and that the Pope was the Antichrist, and that each Pope is merely just the continuation of an Antichrist system, when the place came that Catholicism couldn't even be 1% correct, I was like, have I been telling people lies? Have I been abusing Christ's body for so long and just feeling so ashamed and just so torn that I just, the sight of food repulsed me. I couldn't do it. And so I would, I live on a beautiful piece of property. And so I would just wander around in the, in the woods, so to speak, like a sad sack, just being repulsed at myself and everything. It's been confusing. And how Mary delivered me from that was I was so torn. I was so torn. Could this be true and could this not be true? And this story, some could say is somewhat

subjective, but this is just what happened. I was working one morning, and I was working outside, and it was dark, and it was raining, and I was just absolutely—it felt like a hurricane was going on inside of me, a hurricane of emotion. And I thought, okay, if anyone knows if the Catholic Church is the true church, it has to be Mary, because that's the—it has to be. But in order to ask her, I have to accept, you know, intercession of the saints. Exactly, and so I just very much so was thinking in my mind, I have no clue what is going to happen. I have no clue if the Lord is going to damn me in this moment, but I am desperate. I need to ask for someone's prayers, and so I just,

desperate. I need to ask for someone's prayers. And so I just, you know, Mary, I don't know if you can hear me. I don't know if the Lord is going to be mad at me, but I don't know what to do. If Catholicism is the true faith, then you have to show me. And, you know, instantaneously, as I said that prayer, my heart was just baptized in peace to the point where my brain was telling me, it was trying to convince me, no, nothing's going on. You're experiencing something, but it's not Mary. But my heart was telling me, no, you've just experienced something. And after that moment, I recognized, okay, I can either sear my conscience and say that this is not the true faith or I can proceed forward and join the church. Yeah, wow. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. Sean, what was your biggest obstacle doctrinally that you had to overcome and how did you overcome it?

My biggest one was probably the Eucharist because, to put it bluntly, either Catholics are worshiping a piece of bread and we're all going to go to hell, or Catholics are right and Protestants are denying the most beautiful thing Christ has ever given us. And the way that it was overcame was by Nick persistently just asking me what John 6 was. And I tried to symbolically interpret John 6, you know, like, I think, I believe it's Zwingli. He goes, he goes down a few more verses, kind of like, just kind of skims through the bread of life discourse and goes, man should not live on bread alone, but from the everyims through the bread of life discourse and goes um uh man should not live on bread alone but from the every word of the spirit of god and he's like see uh there's more to it but uh but like he's just kind of like you see uh symbol uh no zwingli zwingli's pretty

brutal when it comes to his anti-sacrament tology like in his work, De Baptismo, it's quite stunning. I remember being like legitimately shocked by it that, you know, like for example, you look at John 3, 5, you cannot find a father that interprets it in a way contrary to baptism, you know? And Zwingli says, and in his work he says, when it comes to baptismal regeneration, I can only conclude that all of the fathers and doctors have been in error.

And you're like, really? At least you're honest. At least you're consistent. Yeah, whenever I was looking at the Reformation, because obviously that's like the place to go. I was just like, who's the most like vehemently opposed to Catholicism? And so he was the Reformationist that I took somewhat kindly to, I guess. But yeah, I was reading John 6, I was reading the Church Fathers. I was like, I had already come to the conclusion of like, of taking Paul's word literally,

even as a symbol when he says those who drink it or eat and drink of the body and blood of christ unworthily eat and drink damnation upon themselves as as a symbol i i was like yes let me let me like make sure i prepare myself for this not sacrament of sacrament you know what i mean um uh and so i i honestly think i was disgraced by like God one day to like, realize, realize the extreme, the two extremes, the two absurdums is this, this is God giving us the most beautiful love story, or this is just merely a piece of bread. And for between the scriptures, the fathers, um, there wasn't any way to, uh, to way to get past the Eucharist.

Thanks, Sean. Jack, what about you? Sure. Yeah, I already got to talk a little bit about it. It was most certainly the papacy. That was the largest and final domino to fall for me. But yeah, the papacy was something I had a really hard time with because I was very much so only the priesthood of believers, that we don't need anyone else on earth to reach God. It's all

internal. And I would cite scripture verses know, when you pray, go in your room and lock the door and pray to your God who's in heaven. And yeah, like, it was just so difficult for me to accept the possibility of, it was really a pride and a very American disposition. Because here in America, it's very much so, I think we probably have a more prolific difficulty with the sin of ungodly self-reliance than most other countries. And that's an opinion, but it's definitely something that we struggle with as Americans and myself included. It was kind of the essence of who I was. And so accepting any kind of leadership was very, very hard. And so that was underneath and motivating my argument against the papacy. Realizing that and how that's just a terrible argument against the papacy because that's just my own issues with leadership,

then, yeah, it was a pretty swift domino to fall after I understood the foreshadowing of the institution of the priesthood in the Old Testament in Exodus with the priesthood of Aaron, and then after I understood what the churchathers would say about Matthew 16 and when Christ instituted the priesthood with Peter, because I would hear a lot of different modern interpretations, you know, the whole bit about, oh well, if you go back in the Greek, I love it when people say that, that always, everyone's a Greek scholar nowadays, you know you know people say oh if you go back in the greek it means um small rock not big cliff and yada yada i'm not i'm not sure if you've heard

that argument yes of course um yeah all right yeah and so i would have a lot of these half-baked um very uh modern curated arguments against the papacy and to to have won the realization that it's necessary after i realized that it's most certainly you know motivated my hatred towards the the priesthood is motivated by my own sin and my own pride it was a quick domino to it was a quick domino to, it was a heavy domino to fall, but it was a quick one to fall. Okay, well, thanks. Yeah. Could we, sorry, Jack, whenever he came to the conclusion of the papacy, he went to a focused Bible study the next day and had an experience in adoration. And it's just, it's literally the most beautiful story. I think we'd be remiss not to say it before. I would love us to do that. I want to do one thing before we get to this story of your experience in

adoration. I'm excited about that. And then after that, I'm going to ask the guys whether or not Pope Francis and the sort of sexual abuse that's been prominent in the media over the last years was in any way an obstacle for them to become Catholic. Before I do, I need to say thank you to Halo. Halo is an excellent app that will help you pray. It is 100% Catholic and it's very well produced. You can check it out. You can download it right now. They've got sleep stories that lead you through different prayer experiences, like different Lectio Divinas, nightly examines, and things like this. If you have trouble kind of keeping your brain on track

as you're trying to engage with daily prayer, you're going to love Halo. There's a link in the description below. Go to halo.com slash Matt Fradd right now, And it's free, right? The app is free. But if you sign up on their website using halo.com slash Matt Fradd and use Matt Fradd in the promo code, you can get three months free every single thing on the app. So you can try it out. If you don't like it, obviously you don't have to pay. But go check it out because it is a really good app. It's nice to see Catholics making really great media. So again, H-A-L-L-O-W, hallo.com slash Matt Fradd.

Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Again, that link is in the description below. So be sure to go check that out. Yeah, okay. Jack, tell us about this experience in adoration. Sure. So once the domino fell for the papacy, it was like a really powerful chain reaction.

Because like Nick said earlier, I think we were all very much so, it's just me and my Bible. You know, we haven't found the church that is God's church that the gates of hell will not prevail against. It must exist, but we haven't found it. And so until then, it's just going to be me and my Bible. That was my disposition. And so I had never really been truly fed by a church. It was very much so just me hearing anything and going, making its way through every filter in my brain, going, you know, is this good? What do I think about this? Is this true? Is this crap? Does this person just want my money? You know, what's going

on here? And so it was a very, very skeptical perspective I had on anything anyone said. And so to have this internal piece about understanding the necessity of the papacy, I was able to trust that, you know, the Catholic doctrine is true and that that truth persisted in, you know, being true until now. And so I went to my first Catholic Bible study the next morning at 6 a.m., and it was a great Bible study. The Bible study leader actually ended up being my confirmation sponsor, which is another good story. I was sitting in that Bible study and I just had this internal experience of not feeling as if I had to put my guard up because I was listening to what he was saying and I knew where he was coming from because he was coming from the same place that I had been studying and reading about, you know, for the past, I think it was seven months at this point.

about, you know, for the past, I think it was seven months at this point. And I saw the historical continuity with, you know, the points that he was trying to make. And I just realized that, wow, I can really let my guard down and experience the mystical body of Christ and experience being fed by a church, by an administration. And it brought me to tears in the middle of the Bible study. I had never felt that before. And so to experience that within a church, it was like I had finally found what I was looking for. And then immediately after that, after that Bible study, they had adoration at Our Lady of Wisdom, which is so wonderful. They do that every single morning. I sat in adoration because, you know, coming off of that experience that I just had, I was 85% sure, you know, that, wow, yeah, this is, it was, the chain reaction was happening.

And I could tell it was happening, and I wasn't converted internally yet, but I knew that it was making its way from my head to my heart. And so I sat down in adoration, just in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, for a while. It felt maybe like 20 minutes. Do y'all remember how long it was? It was like two hours. I think it was, it was insane time. It was, it was something like that, but I was sitting in there for a good bit of time and internally I felt like I was literally being ripped in half because I had this past self that was so obstinate to the Catholic faith and that held all of these, you know, anger,

all of this anger and hatred and pain from the Catholic church. And on the other half, I had this part of me that was understanding the beauty and being fed by the Catholic church and experiencing peace. And it was very, I was, I was brought to tears again in adoration, and I am not the type of person who cries very often. You can ask the knicker, Sean. At that point, it was a very rare experience to see me cry. That's not the case anymore. I'm a big sob story now, but sitting in adoration for that time period, for that time period, just fighting to be with God and not knowing which side of myself I was fighting against to, you know, escape sin. I didn't have this experience until I got up. I knew it was time to leave adoration. I got up, I left adoration, and on my way out,

leave adoration. I got up, I left adoration, and on my way out, I don't even remember leaving adoration. I just remember experiencing this internal perspective on myself and on my situation where on one hand, I could, you know, remain obstinate and continue to say, oh, I have questions. I just need to be a little bit more sure if I'm going to convert. And on the other hand, it was God saying, Jack, I've shown you enough light. It's time to either accept me or deny me because you know what the truth is. And I remember experiencing that. And with what I would have argued retribution was, at the time, I was very scared of that experience because it felt as if, you know, it was choose me or deny me. But in that moment, I said, wow, yeah, it's been a long time. What else is there for me to understand? I have no valid oppositions against

the Catholic Church. And it's not, you know, it's not good to just keep spouting ad hominem arguments, which I guess we'll get to in a second. But I chose Christ in that moment. And immediately called my dad and told him that I was converting to Catholicism, who was the one who brought me up very anti-Catholic. I want to get to that in a second. I want to thank you very much for sharing such a personal experience with us, Jack. I want to get some questions from those who are watching. We've got over 500 people watching right now,

and so I want to take their questions here in the live stream. But I want to just ask each of you, maybe try to be as brief as you can. You know, there's been a lot of scandal in the Church, and I think Catholics used to, and perhaps still, like point to the unity we have in opposition to our Protestant brothers and sisters. But really, there's a lot of division within the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has said things that at least, at the very least, seem really confusing and done things that do as well. You've got, you know, clerical abuse scandals popping up all over the place. How did this play in your conversion to Catholicism? How was that in facing that and overcoming it, maybe? Yeah, sure.

So for me, anyway, God graced me with, honestly, much grace in just not avoiding it intentionally, but being able to come to terms with the sex abuse scandals, recognizing the horrific evils that they are, but also trying to apply them to people versus to an institution. And the things, though, that really bugged me is what you just alluded to, which were the current pontificate's ambiguity in its language. And for me, this was about November of 2019, I believe it was, that I was considering becoming Catholic. As soon as I was starting to consider becoming Catholic, they had the, you know, the hotly debated Amazonian Synod. And just seeing for the first time Catholic news

and the whole Pachamama incidents, I was completely scandalized because I was just like, man, I'm already struggling enough with the idea of sacred imagery, but it looks like you're clearly bowing down and worshiping idols. And so for me, it was a real struggle, but I had to recognize, okay, you know, Christ's church will go through hard times and will go through abuses. But it's like, I believe it's Pope Clement himself said in his epistle to the Corinthians, he said, to divide, to create schism, you do violence to the body of Christ. And so I recognize, you know, the church will go through hard times. You know, Christ says that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. He didn't

say that the boat wouldn't get rocky. But at the end of the day i was like okay if this is still the truth this may be a very sucky situation but i gotta hold on tight yeah sean what about you yeah um i wasn't necessarily uh i i knew of the sex scandals, but the Amazonian Synod, I was a little bit, I had my head in the ground, I guess, so to speak. But I realized that with God, there could only be one truth that proceeds from that God. And so with that objectivity, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't, it wouldn't wash one way or another. There couldn't be relativity in this instance. And so through realizing that, I, I decided to take people out of the equation, to take people out of the equation because it's not holy because of the of the current

situation that the church might be going through but it's holy because it was instituted by Christ and produces holy sacraments and gives you the means to become a saint and so I'd say that it definitely scandalized me. And that was a part of the straw man that I had to burn down for myself. But I knew at the end of the day, I had to look at it from an outsider's perspective and not from what was currently happening. Jack. Yeah, sure. I think Sean and Nick will both agree that I don't think it was as much as the church in the modern day that converted us as it was the church as seen in the perspective of looking at, you know, from now all the way back to when Christ instituted the church through Peter and the apostles. And so initially, looking at the church in the modern day, this was the reason we all had written off the Catholic Church. And, you know, on one hand, you can't judge a faith by the worst practices of the least practicing members. But when it comes to different priests and people who are supposed to be leaders in the faith,

yeah, it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking, and it was a serious problem, and it was a large portion of why I had such an obstinacy towards the priesthood. That being said... You know, not Uyghur. Yeah, it's internally a struggle for each Catholic to see, one, schism, not schism,

but just opposition between members within the church, and then, two, just to see different things that the church does wrong. But it's really easy to be someone who points out all of the errors in someone else. And it's hard to see the good. And so like Sean was saying, once you take the argument of, oh, the argument of attacking the church based on errors of people and people who are sinful, and you look at the dogma and the truth, you're really arguing about, you're talking about two completely different arguments, you know? And if you're going to convert to Catholicism, you need to understand the dogma and the truth. And so

regardless of the church and what it's doing, or maybe some examples of bad practices, that's not church dogma, and that's not what the church is. That's a difficult thing that's happening, but that's also being dealt with in the church. And so no church is without sin and without error within its members. But when you get into Catholic dogma and the teachings of the faith, just, I think all of us can personally attest that, you know, it's like that analogy I gave when we were all in a Protestant church, analogy I gave when we were all in a Protestant church and it felt as if everyone was at this nebulous location and we all were supposed to pretend like we were there and no one had the gas to put in the car to get there. In reality, the Catholic church has the gas. Through the sacraments,

we are infused with grace. I just got to say, I loved Nick when I asked you that question about how you dealt with modern scandals. To your point, Jack, Nick points to Clement. So it is, I mean, Cardinal John Henry Newman, he perhaps meant this, of course, in a different sense, but to be deep in history, not only is it to cease to be Protestant, but it'll also enable you to make sense of the scandals of course, in a different sense, but to be deep in history, not only is it to cease to be Protestant, but it'll also enable you to make sense of the scandals and the abuses within the church today, because at the end of the day, you're not going to find a communion of Christians in which there

isn't abuses. I mean, when you have a church as big as the Catholic Church, it's all the more easy to find them, of course, but God rest him, God rest him, but, you know, Ravi Zacharias and the scandal that just came out regarding him, I think, is just one among many examples we could point to that would put to bed this idea that celibacy is somehow something that, you know, leads to abusing people and things like this, you know. All right, look, I wanna get to some questions. This is so fantastic. Also, I wanna say thanks to everybody who's watching. We have 328 thumbs up.

Here's the deal. If we get 1000 thumbs up before tonight, I will send each of these men a pint with Aquinas beer, Stein. Don't you want them to be happy? Yes. So click that thumbs up button. And then also before we get into these

questions, I got to let you know that a couple of friends of mine and myself have founded a new apostolate called Cross the Tiber, Ben and Noah. As you can see down here, they're often in the chat. In fact, Ben's here today. This is a great place if you are a Protestant considering Catholicism. As soon as you join, we will put you into a small video chat, a small group video chat, and you and several other Protestants and a Catholic who is faithful to the teachings of the Magisterium will help answer your questions, and it's 100% free. So we're not trying to make money from this. It's just so you guys can have some guidance. So go check it out. It's a kind of non-judgmental place where you can ask questions.

And yeah, crossthetiber.com, crossthetiber.com. Go check it out. There's a link in the description below. All right, let's see here what we've got. Man, lots of people asking questions. We've got almost like 600 people. So my goodness gracious let's see what we got okay frankophone thanks for the super chat he says how did your people

react to your conversions yeah so talk talk to us a little bit about your family and your friends how do they react uh let maybe just go one at a time obviously sure so to give you so to give you an idea there was a scale that we made of how people would react to when we told them we were becoming Catholic one was the indifferentist they didn't care and then Tim was Martin Luther so you know honestly I was very nervous telling my parents I you know because I didn't know how they react. I knew that my parents definitely didn't necessarily like the church, but I definitely had comments over the years that were very much anti-Catholic.

And so when I phoned my parents, they were actually in Rome of all places. And when I told them, they very much so understood my reasonings, mainly the intellectual reasonings. They weren't necessarily thrilled or happy, but they basically said, at the end of the day, as long as you're serving Christ, that's good for us. And since then, it's been very good because they've definitely warmed up to me, trying to present my faith to them even to the point of coming to mass with me which has been a huge blessing and so overall I've been very very blessed and graced to have a great reaction. Sholon with Jack you want to respond?

Yeah whenever my parents found out they were not the they're probably the same boat as as nick they were worried that um i had jumped the gun it was uh like a very like quick thing they like presented with me a bunch of straw men um but as uh as we like begin to build up like dialogue and stuff they've realized it's more it there's more grounds to to my conversion than just oh all my friends were doing it and they also are not the most thrilled but the same boat as as Nick're like, as long as they're serving God. Jack? Sure. Between my family, there were two polar opposite reactions. So my mother and my sister could not have been more excited for me just to be happy about something. So they were infinitely supportive of me, my mother and my sister. They always have seemed to have my

back in any situation. It doesn't really seem what the context is. In total opposition to that, my dad could not accept it. This was something that what he saw as a fundamental separation from us that inhibited us to have a relationship. And so I think he still struggles with seeing it to that direction. It's hard. I very much so see two people and my dad, on one hand, his bringing up of having such animosity and hatred towards the Catholic Church. And on the other hand, the fact that, you know, he's my father and he loves me. And I know that he loves me, um, despite his hatred for what I believe in the church that I'm a part of. So when I called him, he was, he was very, very upset, uh, that I had made the decision to become Catholic. Um, I think it was out of the blue for him, uh, despite our,

us having, uh, constant debates about it. It was something that came up every single time we talked on the phone, the fact that I was reading about Catholicism and the history of Catholicism. And that was problematic for him. However, yeah, he had initially a very poor reaction. Months later, he was more so able to accept the fact that we are different. Uh, but he very much so would explain my conversion as, uh, the manifested problem from what he saw his, like his failures as a father in my life. And so, um, yeah, it's a very tough thing that he's dealing with.

And it's only gotten worse since my recent application to seminary. No, we didn't even touch upon that yet. Yeah. Yeah. God bless him. You know, I mean, for those who are watching who might be unsympathetic, you know, to how your dad reacted, you just have to ask, you know, I just asked myself the question. Like, imagine if my son cooled up one day and said he was becoming a Mormon, you know, like, would I be like, that's great, son. No, like, if I thought Mormonism was false, you better believe I'd be upset about that.

And I'd do whatever I could to help him see the light. And that's a place your dad's in. And, you know, the fact he's hurt by this because he loves you because he cares about you like if if some other random protestant becomes catholic he might shrug his shoulders but but not care of course you know exactly yeah yeah god bless him all right oh here's a question and you don't all have to answer because we do have a lot of questions coming in you can if want, but let's try to keep it relatively short. This comes from Mango Bango. Great name. Have you guys looked into orthodoxy? If so, why Catholicism and not orthodoxy? Yeah, so for me, I looked into orthodoxy a little bit because anyone who reads the Fathers is going to see

the insane similarity between the two faiths. But for me, the idea in the four signs of the Church, the idea in Catholic in the sense of it being universal, I did not see being played out as well in the Orthodox Church as I did in the Catholic Church. And the small example would be the fact, two things. One, the fact that all of the churches seem to be based on some form of a nationality, so Russian Orthodox, Antiochian, right, etc. And so for me, I just thought it would be weird for, you know, someone from Texas just to kind of walk into a Greek Orthodox church that was mainly focused on Greeks. And so for me, I was just like, that doesn't seem to encapsulate the universality of the church as well as the Catholic church. And then the second thing being, at the end of the day, as someone who just needs to know and wants to know the truth,

with the Orthodox church's current problem on them trying to figure out through internal debates things like, is contraception a sin? Is divorce and remarriage a sin? Questions like that. For me, I was just, it seemed too ambiguous. And so for me, that was very much so a turning point where I recognized, okay, well, I need an ancient faith. So the Catholic Church, it has answers. Catholic Church, it's for all people in a more visible way therefore it makes more logical sense to follow that show no jack uh pretty much the same boat as uh nick i just add to the fact like i i feel the almost necessity of a monarch of like of like a monarchical a monarchical rule in the church, because if all four of us are bishops and we all disagree, who has the say that, like me and Jack agree, and then you and Nick agree,

who has the say to come and dispute it. And obviously they'd say that there's higher premises of bishops. But at some point, somebody has to give the final rule on faith and morals. And so just that third stool of the magisterium is what attracted me. Thanks. Jack, did you want to add something? Sure, just a little thing. We actually have a good friend who comes to our Bible study and comes to Mass with us who's converting from Protestantism.

I think Nick was the first to meet him. He walked into Our Lady of Wisdom. And I think Nick introduced himself and he said, Hi, I'm Jacob. I'm looking for the apostolic church. And he said, oh, well, you've come to the right place. Who did he say that to? Nick. Oh, little did he know who he was saying that to.

I could see Nick looking over this man's shoulder and saying to somebody out of sight, lock the doors. That sounds exactly like something he would say. But yeah, just on his own testament, I'll just state one point. This is the only thing I really have to add, what's already been said, is that he very much so wanted to experience both of the churches. And so he would go to a Catholic church one Sunday and an Orthodox church one, another Sunday. And on one hand, it's extremely hard to actually find an Orthodox church close to him.

When he goes to that Orthodox church, there's a very small amount of people. It's not, you know, I think he said maybe there were 50 people there or so for like the primary service on Sunday. And to be fair, all of them were adamant about their faith, which is so wonderful. But just like Nick was saying, it doesn't have the universality because it was a, I think it was a Russian Orthodox church. And so it was very much so, upon his description,

saying he felt as if when people looked at him, he wasn't very welcomed. They were more so, oh, why are you here? Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, Decluse Views, by the way, this guy's got a fantastic YouTube channel, which I highly recommend.

And go check it out. But he said, do any of these fellows have experience with Eastern rites and or the traditional Latin mass before or after their conversions? Oh, do we? So, yeah, so during November of 2019, during the whole incidence with reading the Council of Trent, trying to understand, like, okay, I just want very clear Catholic teaching in the face of Protestantism historically. So I'm just reading this, and then I go to a Novus Ordo parish. And obviously not every Novus Ordo parish is like this, but I was just very confused at what I saw, things along the lines of guitars and drums being used during Mass,

and people going up to the communion line in sports jerseys. And for me, I was thinking, aesthetically, I know doctrinally you believe this is God, but aesthetically, I don't see it. And so I questioned for a long time based off of the aesthetics alone. Like, is this true? Because these guys don't act like this is the Lord at all. And so for me, I knew about the traditional Mass, and I decided one, it was on All Souls Day, to go to an early Requiem Mass at like 7.30 in the morning. It was a sung Mass, and I sat in the very back pew because I was like, I don't know

what's going to happen, and I don't want to be embarrassed or anything. And so whenever the intro had started, I literally thought, this has to be a recording. The skola can't be this good. And I witnessed through the mass everything that I was reading about in the faith just come to life very much so. And so it was very much the traditional Mass that converted me and is what kept me in the faith. And so all three of us regularly attend on Sundays up in Austin, St. Mary's Cathedral for the Latin Mass. Yeah.

All right. We have a question over at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Thanks for being a patron, Adam. Adam says, have you had to explain to your Christian families that they can't receive the Eucharist? And if so, how did you do that in a charitable way? Sean or Jack? Okay, I know the answer.

Jack, your mom's been to mass Sean has any of your parents been to mass with you yeah my my my uh dad had catholic friends back in college and so he knew better than uh to receive yeah okay I just told my parents very quickly and they accepted it with charity yeah um for me my mom and sister have both come with me to Mass, and I don't think it was something that, you know, when, first of all, as a Protestant, when you go into a Catholic Mass, it's kind of intimidating, because there's a lot of things that everyone knows to do that they don't know what to do, and so there's this air of, I have no idea what's going on. And so

oftentimes, in my experience, bringing someone who is Protestant to Mass, they're looking for someone, i.e. you who brought them, to tell them what to do and inform them on how they should act. Because most people, if they're willing to come to a Mass, they want to be, you know, understanding and, you know, of the culture and not go against the grain. And so I've never had an experience where it's been someone's, you know, been told that they could that they couldn't receive the Eucharist and they've been offended. However, as long as you stress what the Eucharist is and why they can't receive it, then I think, yeah, I think you're good to go. Yeah, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of a Protestant or non-Catholic approaching Holy Communion. I think it's like, you know, you're out of your comfort zone. You're going

to this thing. You hope that you'll be welcomed. You hope that nobody's going to corner you and, you know, tell you you're going to hell or something like that. So I think you're already kind of coming and you're a little anxious about the experience. And to be told that you must refrain from this thing, I can understand why somebody would be put out by that. I think telling them, look, this is for Catholics who are in a state of grace. And so not only are we asking Protestants and non-Catholics to refrain, we're also asking Catholics to refrain who don't think they're in a state of grace. And I think most Protestants would. Just like if I was going to a Protestant church,

I would want to know what are the rules because obviously I don't want to offend anybody. I think that's probably how I'd take it. Funny story, Nick, because you said maybe you come from a fundamentalist Baptist background. I was in Baltimore. I think it was in Baltimore at an independent fundamentalist baptist background i was i was in where was i um but baltimore i think it was in baltimore at an independent fundamentalist baptist church and it was unreal man they they handed out chick tracks as we entered um you know it was it was something else man and i appreciated the zeal uh and their lack of drums uh but afterwards we we went out to this pancake place, right? And I said to my friend, who was an independent fundamentalist Baptist,

I said, so who's in charge? And they went, well, no one's in charge. Like, really, we are a brotherhood. And I'm like, okay, cool. But who's in charge? And she's like, that guy. You can't get away from that darn hierarchy, can you? No, it's the man of God.

You got to listen to him. Yeah. Hey, it's the man of God. You've got to listen to him. Yeah. Hey, here's a question. You guys were part of a Bible study that included more than just the four of you you referenced earlier, the man who's not with us today, who also became Catholic. How did they take your conversion to Catholicism? Yeah, so, you know, from the beginning, it was definitely us four,

and there was two or three people that would kind of hang around with us at the beginning. And when we initially started, so the way our Bible study is formatted, it's very much so I'll present a lecture, and, you know, afterward we'll discuss it a little bit. and, you know, afterward we'll discuss it a little bit. And I, as I was getting closer to Catholicism, would kind of start to test the waters, so to speak, just to see how they would react. And so, you know, I would talk about, like,

the more central ideas of the Trinity in a more doctrinal understanding, and then I would throw out baptismal regeneration. And for the most part, people took it well. It was really people outside of our Bible studies who had never gone that really started to at least be somewhat have animosity towards what we were teaching. for a time, even though we weren't teaching explicit Catholic truths or even had been totally convinced of the Catholic truths themselves, we definitely for a time had the, for lack of better terms, the hierarchy of our old church telling people to stay away from what we were doing. And so unfortunately, everyone that was kind of there in the beginning of the Bible study dried up and packed up and left.

And so it was just us that remained. Yeah, yeah, okay. Hey, so, you know, we've talked about how different dominoes began to fall. It sounded like each of you had different hang-ups that were preventing you from wanting to become Catholic. Obviously, there were multiple, but you've talked about the Eucharist, you've talked about Mary, you've talked about the papacy. When, I mean, was it something like the three of you or the four of you got together and were like, okay, I guess we're all going to do this?

Or were some of you further along the road to Catholicism than others? How did that work? Very cool if I take it. Yeah, go for it. Sorry. Nick was probably the first one to be convinced, just because he was very principlist in his views. And so he was being belligerent to me.

And around the time that he was being belligerent, I had to come up with answers for his answers, which then came back Catholic, in which then we went and became belligerent to Jack, and then all three of us were belligerent to

Cason. Jack, who mistakenly thought that God was proud of him. Jerk. Oh, yeah. That's still kind of how Nick and I's relationship is. It's pretty good. Let's just hope that Nick marries a woman with a good self-esteem or becomes a priest.

Amen. Yeah. So I just want to remind everybody everybody we have 476 likes if we get a thousand thumbs up i'm going to send this pints with aquinas beer stein to these guys uh and i also want to encourage people who are watching right now to consider becoming a patron this is the only way you get this uh pints with aquinas beer stein also send you a copy of my book you get stickers you know all this work believe it or not does cost money um we put about thirty thousand dollars into the new studio into the lights the cameras i'm paying people to fly out to be on the show and things

like this and so it would mean the world to me if you're enjoying this content go over to patreon.com slash matt frad there's a link in the description below. Give five, 10, 20 bucks a month and you'll join this amazingly vibrant community of other Catholics all around the world. We do all sorts of studies, you know, on Thomas Aquinas and other things. And yeah, it would really mean a lot. Pintswithaquinas.com. You can give to me there

or just go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. All right, guys. Well, what else should we maybe touch upon before we begin to wrap up um oh the the nail in the coffin for me uh i really like to share this one the nail in the coffin for me uh what was uh my experience with mary at mass so the so the readings we had them a few weeks back, or in Luke chapter two, whenever she's presenting Jesus in the temple, and the prophet comes up to her and says that you will be pierced with the sword. And so the subsequent homily was over how Mary suffered during the Passion. And it was in that time that Mary had just, I guess,

like, gave me an abundance of grace. And I started to weep just of how beautiful she was, because it clicked in my head that the, like, outside of, like, agape love love like god's love on this earth all we have is familial love and the strongest love within that familial love is a mother and her son knowing that and realizing that it's a christological heresy to not know the two wills of christ at all times are present within uh the hypostatic union that mary could not have loved god or yeah could not have loved god and only loved her the person of jesus christ um and so between first john he who who loves light is in the light and cannot walk in darkness. Knowing that when the angel appeared to Mary, Hail Mary, full of grace,

or to meme off of Jack as a Greek scholar, you know, kikiri tomine, just being the best translation, being full of grace, really hit me. And realizing that Mary, by her office of being the mother of God, it wouldn't have been befitting that she would have ever been a slave to sin because she was too whole or too, for the heavens that could not contain one womb bear you know and and uh yeah oh i was just gonna say after mass i was like i was like i cleaned myself up like was like was finishing prayer. I told my, I told one of my friends who was Catholic, he was like, well, Mary's got you. So I think you

have to convert now. What was it like learning to pray the rosary? Do you pray the rosary? And what was that like? Oh, you got to pray the rosary. Learning to pray the rosary was very beautiful because I don't think I've, I never really did any Lectios as a Protestant and learning to just like truly know what it means to meditate over and over and over again on just one part of the Bible or the mysteries of the gospel. It's been truly beautiful. My favorite thing was learning the rosary in Latin because we had made a deal to learn it in Latin, and just one day everybody else had learned it. And I was like, well, we still do it in English sometimes. And Jack decided to just only do it in Latin. And so that had pushed me to finally make the jump. Very good. Well, brothers, it is a pleasure to hear from you. Jack, all the best with entering seminary, and Nick and Sean.

Thank you so much. Welcome to the church. Everything is on fire. It's great to have you. I'm joking, of course, but it's really lovely to have you. Do you all post or write or podcast anywhere that people should be aware of? This is where we plug the Thomistic Institute. Yes, do it.

All three of us are part of the Thomistic Institute. I'm the president. Nick is a vice president, and Jack's a part of it here at Texas State. Do you make people call you Mr. President? Because I would. I mean, I hope so. No, I'm just kidding. president because i would i mean i hope so no i'm just kidding um uh and so and so yeah i think that it's a great place to learn um the uh catholic intellectual tradition absolutely yeah yeah yeah

yeah i would say yeah if you're in the if you're in the you know san marcos hayes county area definitely check us out at texas state um also there's a wonderful chapter it's up at ut um if you're more in the austin area definitely check them out all right god bless your brothers thank you so much for being on the show and uh yeah i hope we bump into each other again thank you matt thank you so much bye I'm going to make a I'm going to make a Thank you.