Pints With Aquinas - The Conversion of Dr. Scott Hahn

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

I chat with Dr. Scott Hahn about his conversion to Catholicism. Learn more about Scott Hahn's NEW study, Parousia: The Bible and the Mass - https://stpaulcenter.com/studies-tools/journey-through-scripture/parousia-the-bible-and-the-mass/?utm_source=vanity_url&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=parousia   FREE E-book "You Can Understand Aquinas": https://pintswithaquinas.com/understanding-thomas   SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Catholic Chemistry: https://catholicchemistry.com   GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/ 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 co-producer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd

Dr. Hahn, lovely to have you on the show. Thanks for being here. Great to be with you, neighbor. Yes, exactly. It's a month and a half now. Nice. I've been in Steubenville. I'm absolutely loving it.

You can't throw a rock without hitting a good Catholic family. You shouldn't throw a rock. But if you did, you would hit a good Catholic family. Well, thanks for the invite. It's great to be here in your studio. Yeah, yeah. Honored to have you on the show. You know, there's a new crop of people out there who are considering Catholicism, who are tempted, they might put it, by Catholicism.

And I thought it's probably been a while since you have shared your story to a large crowd, large audience about your own conversion to Catholicism. Because I know you've written how many books since Rome Sweet Home? Somewhere between 40 and 50. That's beautiful. Yeah, maybe more. I don't know. I don't keep track.

Yeah, I read Rome Sweet Home when I was serving as a missionary in Canada. Oh, wow. And I just remember being really moved by it. There were certain things that really struck me. I'm sure you get told this repeatedly. How's that book of yours, Rome Sweet Home, doing? Again, I don't know. It's sold over a million.

It's in about 25 different languages. It took us three weeks to write. It was really therapy for us as a married couple. We laughed, we cried, we prayed, we apologized and forgave each other. And she promised it would take three days. I was surprised that it took three weeks. But now we're coming up to our 30th anniversary, I think, in 2023 for the book that is. We've been married 41 years. But the book itself just took on a life of its own I've never gone back and reread a single section editing was kind of hard but it originally started with a transcript of A talk that we gave in tandem down in Louisiana

Baton Rouge if memory serves and it went so well that When it was taped we heard later on that somebody had transcribed the whole thing. And so we got a copy of that. And that was the rough, rough draft of Rome's Sweet Home. Because we would go back and forth. And we never thought about writing a book. We never thought about dividing it up into chapters that, you know, his and her, that sort of thing. The grace of God is just, you know, what was once a little trickle, you know, has now become a river of water.

Yeah, I mean, I was just talking to a friend recently about what it was like in 86 to come into the church. Now, Tom Howard had come in in 85 very quietly, and I had known about that. But for about 10 years, it looked more likely that he would go Russian Orthodox than at the last minute. it looked more likely that he would go Russian Orthodox than at the last minute. He was reading Newman and other things, and so he decided to go Catholic. And I didn't actually find out about it until a few months after it happened.

But back then, you know, in the 80s, it was as unthinkable as like the chairman of the GOP defecting to the Soviet Union or something, you know. It was such a, you know, it was not only unthinkable, it was like the reverse because the Catholics were becoming evangelical Protestants back then. This would be 86,

but in the 70s and up until 86, and you could count on one hand the number of apostolates, like EWTN was just getting started. Catholic Answers was still mostly a fledgling group. And I'm not sure what else there was. Ignatius Press had just begun. But there wasn't much else, except if you liked old books as much as I did, you know,

then you could spend hours in used bookstores and read your way almost, you know, all the way to Rome. So would you say that the anti-Catholicism, if we want to use that language, was more prominent in the 70s and 80s? It doesn't feel like that so much today. No, it doesn't. And converting to the Catholic Church is no longer a seismic event that you're picking up on the Protestant Richter scale. Would you have considered yourself an anti-Catholic? And what does that word even mean? Yeah, okay. So in the 70s, I experienced the grace of a young adult conversion when I was almost 14.

I'd already spent about a year and a half in a series of juvenile court hearings for sales and possession, breaking and entering, mail fraud, forgery, and all of the other things that I won't go into for my mother's sake. And then I found Christ, or he found me. And I was living in Pittsburgh, and that was sort of the bastion of evangelical, reformed Calvinist Protestantism. R.C. Sproul was just setting up the Ligiter Valley Study Center there before moving it down to Orlando.

And I was driving out to see him and to hear his Bible study, but he also had this thing called a gab fest. And it was about an hour drive. And I just looked forward to it week after week as a sophomore in high school. And then he introduced me to Dr. Gershner, his mentor, who had a PhD from Harvard and taught at the seminary in Pittsburgh. And I mean, these guys weren't just Protestant. They weren't just non-Catholic. They were as anti-Catholic as you could come. But it wasn't bigotry, prejudice, and hate.

It was just, you know, the sense that the Pope claims to be infallible. You know, the head of the Methodist Church doesn't. Nobody else does. If this guy is not what he claims to be, then there's a spiritual tyranny, a web of deceit. There's a sense in which I could, I mean, first of all, I'm not really sure what we mean by anti-Catholic, because as you say, if somebody looks at the claims of the Catholic Church and thinks they're false, then they should want to help you reject those false

things. Right. So what do we mean by anti-Catholic? Because sometimes I think we throw that around, it's a little unfair. Someone just looks at Catholicism and says, I'm not anti-Catholic. It's just false, and I want you to know the truth. Good question. You know, in looking back on the 70s, I think there were at least three identifiable types of anti-Catholicism. I think mine was the minority report. That was Sproul and Gerstner, which tapped into the majority report of the Protestant Reformation because

Calvin and Luther and Zwingli and Knox disagreed on all kinds of things. But the one thing they all shared in common was this conviction that the Pope is the Antichrist. And not just heretical, but I mean, pretentiously, diabolically heretical. And so likewise, the Eucharist, they don't just celebrate the Eucharist, they worship the Eucharist, they don't just celebrate the Eucharist. They worship the Eucharist. And if that's just a wafer, a profound and sacred symbol, but nothing more, then most forms of idolatry are not as debased as that, worshiping a wafer. And then the Blessed Virgin Mary, and don't even get me started,

because it just seemed like Mariolatry. And so it was the settled conviction that these beliefs were so contrary to scripture, it wasn't even worth talking about. They were so beyond the pale. Right. There was another anti-Catholicism too that stemmed from the 50s and the 60s as American culture was assimilating the Catholic population, but it wasn't altogether clear how Catholics would relate to the pluralistic liberal democracy that America was. And so there was a political form of that. And especially it came to head

when JFK was running for president. Well, he'd take his orders from the Pope. And then there was another type that my parents had, especially my mom, and that was a cultural anti-Catholicism where the Irish need not apply, or the Italians. And so these cultural Catholics that were assimilating into American culture were always viewed by the WASPs, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants,

in condescending and patronizing terms. And so for all of these reasons and more, you don't defect to the Soviet Union if you're an American patriot. You don't even look seriously into the Catholic faith. You're thinking about the unthinkable. Joe, oh yeah, that's good. Thanks for doing that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. All right, so fair enough.

How did you start hearing about Catholicism, and when did you start to change your opinion about it? Yeah, I mean, that was a gradual process. You know, I was never as anti-Catholic as I was pro-Scripture. I loved the Word of God. I wanted to live under the Lordship of Christ. I believed that the Word of God was I wanted to live under the Lordship of Christ. I believe that the Word of God was inspired. It was without error.

It had to be interpreted in a responsible way. But I basically wanted a biblical worldview. And so in high school, I remember writing my senior paper on Martin Luther for an English class. Ten-page requirement. I think mine was 24 pages long. This is in high school, you said? In high school, yeah. And you're supposed to have like three sources.

I think I had almost 30 sources. And I just wanted to evangelize my English professor, Ms. Dengler, and all my friends who might read it. Well, quick question. I mean, you said you had a conversion in your high school years. What did your parents think of this conversion and your intensity for the fact? They were relieved to be out of all of these yeah yeah yeah and if religion will do it for him that's right yeah and my and my mother began to

slowly kind of follow me in the path of conversion wow it was gradual because she had some kind of experience back in high school that she just abandoned she thought she grew out of it just a phase and so when she saw it not only happening, but growing in me, I think that she was sort of drawn to it, but she was also reminiscing about it. And so she would talk about her experience back in high school as I was going through mine. But mine was much more intellectual. I remember reading The Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther in 10th grade, the five points of Calvinism by Steele and Thomas in 10th grade, sharing it with my friends, upperclassmen, you know, just,

not just evangelizing them, but theologizing, you know. And so it was just, it wasn't just a head trip because I had, I mean, Christ filled my heart with not only the Holy Spirit, but I mean, with a love for the truth. And, you know, if I were to trace the trajectory from then until now, I think that I still have that love for the truth that would take me almost anywhere. But now what I've discovered, and it really, I discovered in the process of becoming Catholic after seminary, and that is the truth that I love is the truth of love, not the love of the 60s, what you spelled, L-U-V, peace, love, Woodstock and all of that. Because I must be honest, I despise that word love.

I'm just, you know, love means never having to say you're sorry, love. All of that stuff in the late 60s and 70s. And besides, R.C. Sproul had given a series of talks that just put me in their grip, the holiness of God. And he focused on Isaiah 6. Holy, holy, holy. Not love, love, love. And I'm like, whew, so good. But what you discover, at least what I've discovered, is that the truth that I loved and wanted to read and study and understand much better ultimately led me to to read and study and understand much better ultimately led me to the fact that the trinity is not just true the trinity is truth but the trinity is eternal love this interpersonal communion

of love you know and god is not an eternal creation creator because however old creation is it's not eternal god is eternal so what So what is God eternally? Well, the Trinity is the only God there is, and the Trinity is the only thing God eternally is. And so to discover a communion of love, then suddenly what he does to redeem us, how he fills us with the Spirit, why he divinizes us and all of that, it's like those dominoes eventually fell into place. But boy, when you're looking at them, you're realizing the good news that I believe back as a teenager just keeps getting better. Without rhetorical exaggeration, it's more real, it's more beautiful, it's more powerful. But I'm fast-forwarding. I should go back.

What was it about Catholicism that first struck you? You were anti-Catholic in college. What was the first thing that happened that you began thinking, okay, wow, they got that one right? Yeah, that didn't happen in college. In college, I had an experience my freshman year with Dr. Vandekapeli, who had just come from Princeton, and he gave a course on biblical theology. At the same time, all of my classmates were rushing off to this Pentecostal church to get rebaptized. And I was going to join them too, because I don't remember being baptized as an infant. It didn't mean anything to me then or now. And so my professor challenged me, look into it. I mean, study scripture. Don't just

follow your emotions. And so I worked on the major research paper for his course on circumcision and the old baptism and the new. It's administered to infants then. Is it administered to infants now? And covenant became so obviously the key that would unlock that and answer the question that God would not include infants in the old covenant and suddenly exclude infants. Flesh that out, no pun intended, for those who aren't familiar with this sort of parallel

between circumcision and baptism. Yeah, so the sign of the covenant that was given to Abraham in Genesis 17 was for all of the male children at the age of eight days to be circumcised. And so they would cut off the foreskin of the male generative organ. I'll leave it at that.

And that was the sign of the covenant. It was a sign and seal of faith, as Paul describes it in Romans, Abraham's faith. And anybody who is 99 years old and consents to circumcision must have a lot of faith. Yes. So when you look at how circumcision is practiced, and to this day, if you talk to an Orthodox Jew, the Hebrew word for covenant, berit, or they pronounce it berries, is the word that is basically circumcision. So when you use the Hebrew word

bries or briet, it is synonymous with circumcision. It is not just the entry, it is the whole structure of living out the obligations of the covenant that you accepted when you were circumcised. You know, it's also living up to the family into which you've been born.

Their values. So for 2,000 years, circumcision is practiced. And then Jesus institutes baptism, you know, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in Matthew 28. And so when Peter preaches the very first sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2, which is the very first sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2, repent, believe, and be baptized for the promises to you and your children, to those who are far off. So, you know, if you were bringing your kids up to get baptized at Pentecost in Acts 2, you know, Peter would not have said,

wait, when I said the promises to you and to your children, I didn't mean that they would get baptized. No, in the old covenant, infants were included, but now infants are excluded. You're like, why didn't you say so? Well, if infants were excluded now in the new, you would have to say so. But if infants are included in the new, and they're going to get baptized along with their households,

then, of course, it would go without saying because it's just the continuity of the covenant. The discontinuity is changing from Passover to Eucharist, from circumcision to baptism, from the Sabbath, which comes at the end of the week, to the Lord's Day, which begins the week, the day of resurrection. But as a Calvinist, I mean, Calvinists baptize babies, don't they? They think they're efficacious for the elect. It's all on the basis of covenant.

So this is something you accepted, not even really thinking, well, Catholicism got this one. We're not even near there yet. That's right. So every paper I wrote for the next four years as an undergraduate had something to do with covenant. And they were usually longish. And I was just enthralled by

the research. But in the last year or two, I began to discover what has become so foundational for me. And that is, okay, we use covenant and contract interchangeably. In ancient Israel, you'd never do that because in a contract, this is yours, that is mine. In a covenant, I am yours and you are mine. You exchange promises and then you exchange property and the contract is fulfilled and you might renew it or you might have nothing to do with that party ever again. But in a covenant, you don't just make promises.

You swear the oath. You invoke the name of God. The Latin word for that is sacramentum. And once you discover this as I did, then you realize that a covenant was basically synonymous, not with a transactional exchange, but family communion. And so, okay, if God is not just renewing a contract with us, but a covenant, what does that imply? Well, it implies that he's a father. It implies that his people are a family, that Sinai was not like the constitutional convention. It wasn't a

social contract. It wasn't a sacred contract. It was a sacred covenant. And I mean, that's the difference between marriage and prostitution. I mean, for them, it's like seismic. So I just thought, well, I'll make one adjustment because nowhere in reformed evangelical Calvinist theology was covenant ever clarified in its definition as family bond. And it's not just the nuclear family as it was aboard the ark with Noah and his wife and their three sons who all had three wives. You know, it's a tribe under Abraham, who's the mediator of the covenant. It's 12 tribes that form a national family at Mount Sinai. And so if we're moving from the national in the old to the Catholic,

the international in the new, I mean, this did take me two or three years to think through. It was mostly through teaching Scripture to people who would ask hard questions, and I would try to think up an answer, you know, in the spur of the moment. So you didn't go get baptized with your friends because after this research you realized that your baptism was valid, legitimate as a baby? That's right. Yeah. And it was a funny response because, you know, these guys were classmates. They were good friends. We would have lunch in the cafeteria. But then suddenly it became obvious that they were ostracizing me because, oh, he just

intellectualizes everything. It's theology. Okay. You know, whereas we felt the Holy Spirit, you know, in the river. I was so grateful, but I was also grateful that just as I didn't choose my family, so I didn't choose myself. It was really given to me. Did you go back to this university professor and tell him what you had found?

Oh, yeah. I actually stayed in touch with him over the last 40, 45 years. Okay. Take us from there then. I want to get to the point where you started facing Catholicism. So you got married in college. I'm like the proverbial pole vaulter who backs up too far. That's all right.

I'm exhausted. No, that's okay. But you got married in college or after college? After college. We both graduated in 1979. We were in love working together in Young Life for the last two years of our four-year stint as college students. And she was a dynamo. She was amazing. And so when we entered into marriage as a covenant, I was so conscious of living out my theology and

tracing this. And so we went to seminary. I was still known as not only non-Catholic, but anti-Catholic. And I dare say at our evangelical seminary, nobody would have said, oh, I'm more anti-Catholic than Scott. Quick side note. Did you ever meet Catholics and try to evangelize them? Oh, yeah. I mean, that was my sport.

Besides baseball, football, and guitar. Yeah. I mean, I would target my catholic friends in high school and in college um and just try to calvary any of them knowledgeable about the faith not a single one just kind of cultural right yeah a number of them in fact i would say the majority i've kind of gone back to and if i yeah drew them out i have tried sent them care packages of boxes with books and that sort of thing. That's very good of you, yeah.

Yeah, and one of them in particular, Chris, is now on the board of the St. Paul Center, which Kimberly and I founded. Wow. That's another story for another day. Yeah. So anyway, you got married. Yeah, and so our first year of marriage was our first year in seminary. And so we're living it out.

We're contraceptive, of course. I mean, when my father-in-law, our future father-in-law, was giving us pastoral counseling, because he was the one who married us at College Hill Presbyterian Church, you know, contraception was not an issue. The only question was, what form will you use, you know? Yes. And so it was, I think it was our second year that Kimberly was going full time. Her first year, she was working down in Cambridge near Harvard. And then my second year was her first year.

I got the Master of Divinity. She got the Master of Arts. Mine was three years. Hers was two. But she took a course in Christian ethics. And she describes this in Rome's Sweet Home. Because she chose contraception, which was such a non-issue. I wondered, why waste your time.

And so she dove into it. She read Humanae Vitae and some other sources too and found out that until 1930, all Protestant denominations were in complete lockstep with Catholics on this. And then suddenly in the last 50 years, the sexual revolution. And so she began to question it. And some friends of mine, classmates were saying, you ought to talk to your wife. She's got some pretty persuasive arguments. Well, given the subject matter, I thought it was appropriate to talk about it. So we did. And she gave me a book. Then it was entitled Birth Control and the Marriage Covenant. I thought I owned every book with the word covenant in the title because they were all

by Protestants. This one was by John Kipley, and 30 pages into it, it's making me so uncomfortable. I remember she's in the bedroom. I threw it across the room, and she heard it. And so I just admitted that I'm frustrated by arguments I've never heard before that just so obviously line up with Scripture but also with natural law and a kind of sanctified common sense that I thought we ought to share. And so I finished the book

and I realized Kimberly was right. We were wrong since 1930. And the same denominations that we knew so well that had allowed contraception in the 30s and 40s were now advocating for unrestricted abortion rights for women as well. I'm unfamiliar with the author of that book. Is he a Protestant?

No, John Kipley was a lay... I think he's in his late 80s now. He lives in Cincinnati. He's been a deer friend for many years. His son Chris went to Franciscan back in the 90s. So he was a Catholic. Yeah. So you were reading a book by a Catholic.

And John Kipley was this really paradoxical figure because in the 60s and 70s, there were no lay theologians. If you were a layman, you were a philosopher. If you were a theologian, you were a priest. But there was a second anomaly about Kipley in this book that in the late 60s and early 70s when he wrote it, there were no theologians who defended Humanae Vitae except for Germain Grise, who was a layman, but a philosopher primarily, and John Kipley,

who never got his doctorate, but could really argue persuasively from biblical. But he was arguing on the basis of covenant theology, that when you renew the covenant in receiving Holy Eucharist, you can't spit it out. There really is a sense in which that sign signifies a communion. And even more, in the marital act, when you renew your covenant with your bride, why would you do that and then deliberately prevent that life-giving love from having its consequences. And it wasn't an argument that just pinned me down and counted to 10, and I was beaten and defeated. It was the logic of love that I encountered for the first time,

where it's like, okay, that isn't just abstract philosophical logic, as much as I love that because I was a good Thomist since high school. But it was a logic that I had never encountered before, that the language or the logic of love that is expressed when these two bodies unite to renew a covenant, it just follows that if you're eating food, it's for nutrition and also for fellowship. But if you're eating food and then spitting it out, that's an eating disorder. And so this is a sexual disorder.

You know, and it struck me that this might help me understand why our culture is just so corrupt and so perverse and so, you know, and darkened as it were. So how did you make the choice to stop using contraception? Well, I mean, my first choice was to stop believing that it's morally licit. Yeah. my first choice was to stop believing that it's morally licit. Yeah. And then when Kimberly began to kind of talk about the implications, practical consequences, I'm like, well, let's not rush this.

And then it was obvious to me that I was just giving into fear. And so, you know, within a matter of months, we realized that our change of mind had brought about a change in her body. Wow. And so our firstborn was conceived, you know, as a result of that. Are you pastoring a church at this point? No, I'm actually finishing seminary at this point. So what was it like? Did you let other people know that this is something we've decided the Bible would prohibit

contraception? This isn't God's will? She did. Okay. Yeah. I mean, in a certain sense, it was her radical openness to the logic of love, to the Word of God, and to the Christian tradition that Protestants had shared up until about the middle of the 20th century. And I was sort of ashamed because we had just swallowed hook, line, and sinker,

but also because my own covenant theology had been used against me. And why had we as Calvinists not seen this before? And how could Catholics like Pope Paul VI see it so clearly and state it so compellingly? And we had a line in our family. My mom used to say, even the blind hog finds an acorn. And so I just thought, well, if you've been around 2,000 years, you're bound to get something right. That's right. And we've just simply slipped.'d let it out of our grasp. But I think that it was sort of the hole in the dike.

And so it just seemed to be a small adjustment. And really, I was just lining up with Calvin and Luther and Hodge and Warfield and all of the others. So when I graduated in 82 and I began to pastor a church in Fairfax, At the time, it was Trinity Presbyterian Church. I was a fetus while you were doing that. Continue, literally, 82. Thank God for life. So when Michael was born that year, December 4th,

Kimberly had been in labor for over 30 hours and then a cesarean section emergency. And to see love become that sacrificial and to look at my wife's body as she's become a mother, that also was a sort of revolution that starts in the five senses. It reaches the heart and then finally the head. And you realize that's what those body parts are also for. You know, and that's what marriage is all about.

And that's what my covenant theology has been backing me into. And by then, I was already beginning to sense that the water was getting hot. And my last semester, I remember having this experience. Okay, I've just interviewed. They're offering me a position as the associate pastor at Trinity Presbyterian. They're asking me to preach at least 45 minutes each Sunday, to lead at least one, preferably two, Bible studies. Catholics would have a heart attack. 45-minute homily? Oh, yeah.

I mean, you'd be right on our rail. The time that I spent in the library my last semester was spent reading the church fathers because in my interview and conversation with the leaders of the church that was hiring me, I realized they knew Sproul. They knew all of my favorite theologians. And so I couldn't just get up and recycle material. And so I went to the fathers for help to find new things that were really kind of ever ancient, ever new. Now, were Protestants doing that in your circles at the time, going back to the early church fathers? Not even close. Why is that? Why is that? It seems like such an obvious move that if we

want to know what Jesus meant, what the scripture meant when it said this or that, these things we disagree on, what are the earliest Christians thinking? I mean back then we had church history and so we were expected to read some of the primary sources, and I probably had read a few hundred, but you were almost always exposed to the material that, you know, for example, in Augustine, where he sounds like a proto-Protestant, you know, and so free will, predestination, and other matters too. And so it's a selection that is based upon a Protestant principle of selectivity. And so we didn't think, I mean, besides, you know, it's sort of like growing up by a creek and then suddenly encountering the ocean. I mean, the fathers, we're talking about tens of thousands of pages and how do you begin to wrap your mind around that

much? Besides Calvin and Luther, they read the fathers, so let's let it be filtered through them. And I think that's what we did almost subconsciously by default. Some people read the Fathers, but even there, I think it was a highly selective process. Do you think that Catholics also fall into this trap of selecting just the bits that sound Catholic and presenting them while avoiding verses that seem to support elements of Protestantism? Or do you think, no, legitimately, if you read the Fathers, you're going to see a Catholic church? Or do you think, no, legitimately, if you read the Fathers, you're going to see a Catholic church? Well, I mean, that's a yes and no answer.

On the one hand, yes. I think we always look for the sources that will reinforce what we already believe. But no, I mean, in this sense that Newman's famous line, you know, to go deep into history is to cease to be Protestant. To go into the early church fathers, I mean, you can't find a corridor or a hallway anywhere that is really and truly Protestant. It might not be about, you know, adoring the Blessed Virgin or worshiping the Eucharist or invoking the saints. But you can't go that long without encountering that. Yeah. And when you encounter it, what's the most troublesome is not just that they're saying it, but they're not debating it.

Yes. what's the most troublesome is not just that they're saying it, but they're not debating it. I mean, it's more assumed than asserted, and it's more universal than it is a local belief that eventually convinced everybody else. I mean, in a sense, that's the way Protestantism grew and why it becomes like 20, 30, 40,000 denominations because we were the Presbyterian Church in America or the Southern Baptists regional were local or whatever whereas this was universal by the second third and fourth centuries and so that there's an interesting point what you said like you can learn almost as much about what the church believed by what they didn't debate I hadn't really thought of that before I mean I I was surprised by the third fourth and fifth centuries that Marian devotion Marian doctrine is in the hymns.

It's in the prayers. It's in the homilies. But there's no debate. I mean, Jerome fights Helvidius. But I mean, the way he refutes Helvidius is by appealing to the universal belief that Mary was ever virgin and all that follows from it. So these things were disturbing. But I was really looking only for preaching material. And so the series that I was reading from were the Sunday sermons of the early church fathers, four or five volumes that I would sign out, read. And that's

when I began to realize that they interpret the scripture better than we do, better than my favorite professors, preachers, and teachers. That Augustine's line that the new is concealed in the old and the old is revealed in the new isn't just a truism. It was like exactly what they would do every single Sunday. And not just for a paragraph or two for a couple of minutes, it usually shaped their sermons. And they were obviously reading not just their favorite passages from the New Testament. They were reading through the scriptures in a kind of lectionary style that I knew was applicable to the synagogue and the temple in the ancient Israel. But it was not what we did. Yes. And so, you know, I remember compiling in my own journal a series of parallels between Jesus and Moses that I picked up from Ambrose.

Where, you know. Give us some of those. Because there's people who are watching and they're completely unfamiliar that it picked up from Ambrose. Give us some of those, because there's people who are watching, and they're completely unfamiliar that there could be any parallels. So an example of typology would be to compare Jesus in the New to Moses in the Old. So God sends the Savior at long last to save his people, but as soon as the Savior is born, the Savior needed to be saved because of Herod's tyrannical decree that targeted baby Jesus

and all of the Hebrew male children in Bethlehem. Well, Ambrose, and again, Augustine and others just showed that, well, that's not the first round. Round one was with Moses. God sent the deliverer to deliver his people, but the deliverer needed to be delivered because of the imperial decree of this tyrant named Pharaoh who targeted not only the baby Moses, but all of the Hebrew male children. And so you see how God saves the Savior through a man named Joseph. But you also find

Joseph in the Old Testament where he, like St. Joseph, is the son of Jacob. You know, he's the great grandson of Abraham. And Joseph is in the line of Abraham for Matthew in chapter one. But he's also described as righteous. He's also a dreamer, and he also took the holy family of Israel, the family of Israel, down to Egypt for safety, you know? So these parallels were so obvious to the early church fathers. I had taken graduate seminars on Old Testament books and new, but there was never that kind of interpenetration of the old and the new. And again, Ambrose was just getting started. So you see how the Holy Family comes out of Egypt.

Jesus passes through the water of the Jordan, and he goes out into the desert to fast for 40 days. And then likewise, you go back, and Moses leads Israel out of Egypt through the water of the Red Sea, where they go into the desert, and he fasts for 40 days and 40 nights, during which time Israel undergoes the temptations. Jesus passed the tests that Israel failed, but all three times, he didn't just quote the Old Testament. The devil does that in one of the instances. But he quotes from Deuteronomy 6 through 8. You go back, and the Father showed me

that that's precisely where Jesus, you know, that's where Moses had explained to the Israelites, why did you fail? Because man doesn't live by bread alone. Fascinating. Yeah. And these parallels, you know, and there were more. So that after fasting for 40 days, he gets the law on Mount Sinai. He gives it to the 12 tribes. And then after Jesus' 40-day fast and passing the tests, he gives the Sermon on the Mount. And he says, I've not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law and the prophets. And so Moses gives the law, but it's not enough. So he chooses from the 12 tribes, the 12 princes who will help him govern. Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount.

It's the law of the new covenant, not abolishing but fulfilling the old. The next thing he does is to choose the 12 disciples. Well, Moses found he needed more, so he appoints 70 other men, and he anoints them with the Spirit. Jesus says the harvest is plentiful, the labors are few. So he appoints 70 other disciples and anoints them. Wow. And Moses goes up the mountain to spend a time with, a day in prayer with the Lord.

He takes Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu. Jesus goes up the mountain to spend a day in prayer. He takes Peter, James, and John. And the transfiguration occurs to Jesus just like it did to Moses. It's crazy. When his face is aglow, they're like, you've got to put on a veil. We can't even look in your countenance.

And then on the Mount of Transfiguration, who should appear but Moses and Elijah. And that's the law and the prophets. Moses gave the law. Elijah was the greatest of Israel's prophets. They also happened to survive a 40-day fast like our Lord. But what they're talking about, Ambrose points out in Luke 9.31, 31 is jesus departure which was soon to take place in jerusalem only the word for departure in the greek is exodon and so here is jesus talking about a new exodus to moses who's none other than mr exodus himself and so if they had bothered to compare notes ambrose points out in augustine too where you know, Moses performed some signs, you know, the first turning water into blood. The first of Jesus' signs is turning water into wine. You know, Moses is also executing the, well, I mean, he's healing lepers. He's also, what are some of these

other, he's opposed by the leaders and persecuted. And Jesus undergoes all of these parallel experiences. And then, of course, the Passover is the tenth sign. And Jesus, of course, is going to create a new Passover, which is what Ambrose fastened his congregation's attention to. Because that's the Eucharist. That's the fulfillment of the old. That's where Jesus establishes the new. I can just imagine you reading this.

Because, of course, the Internet doesn't exist, right? You're just reading these books that may not have been very well read by other Protestant friends of yours. Are you sort of looking around being like, does anybody know about this? Right. You know, we had been debating my last year in seminary. We were all involved, my professor and a few of my classmates, in the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. So we had a high view of Scripture. But there was a debate that was dividing all of these scholars and teachers and students. Dare we repeat the hermeneutic of the New Testament writers? In other words, can we possibly read the Old Testament the way that the New Testament writers did? Because they did it in a way that was reminiscent of the early church fathers

who were just simply imitating their example. But we never did it that way. And the vast majority of Protestant evangelical scholars, even the narratists like Richard Longnecker would say, no, I mean, they had the Holy Spirit. They were apostles. They had a kind of interpretive license to, you know, they could even misinterpret the scriptures,

but come up with the right teachings anyway. Whereas the minority report was based upon Patrick Faribrand and this, a small number of Protestants who said, of course, you know, Paul didn't say imitate me as I imitate Christ, except when it comes to interpreting the Old Testament. That's where I alone get to do what I do, you know? And so just imitating Christ who taught the scriptures this way, imitating Paul who taught his congregations, I'm still absorbing this. I'm about seven or eight weeks into the study of the fathers.

When I unpack the U-Haul, I have to preach my first sermon, and I'm going through the Gospels. And afterwards, for the first three or four weeks, people are in the back shaking my hand as they're leaving saying, where did you come up with this? Oh, through serious personal research and study, a lot of intellectual initiative. You know, I should have been using quotation marks behind the pulpit the whole time because, you know, I was plundering the patristic sources. And after a few months, I began to let them in on that and invite them to read it with me. And a number of them began going down a trail,

which we wouldn't know exactly where it would lead. But in less than two years, I had studied and prayed myself into a crisis of faith because I also discovered besides these ancient fathers from the second, third, fourth, 4th, and 5th centuries, but Donya Lou and DeLubeck, both were Catholic cardinals, and then also Congar and a number of, especially this guy named Ratzinger. I found in them the same way of doing theology biblically that you found in the early church fathers. Okay, so you're reading Ratzinger as a Protestant now, as a pastor of this church. That's right. them the same way of doing theology biblically that you found in the early church fathers. Okay, so you're reading Ratzinger as a Protestant now, as a pastor of this church.

That's right. Okay, what was that like? Because, I mean, you've read this book about contraception. You've changed your mind on that. But as you say, a broken clock is still right twice a day. How did you start reading Catholic sources? What was that like for you as someone who was anti-Catholic? Yeah, I mean, it's hard to summarize it.

It was even hard to explain it then, but the sense that they're not just right on contraception. They're not just right on reading the old and the new together. They're applying that to the Eucharist. We call it the Lord's Supper. It's just a meal. But wait a minute. For them, universally, it was a sacrifice. It would make more sense if it was a sacrifice because it's the Passover of the new covenant, but how can it be a sacrifice? So these questions that were rising in my mind were being answered by the patristic sources. And so the first thing I did as a pastor was to implement weekly communion. We did it four times a year and they thought, well, that's just ritualism. And I said, well, that's just ritualism.

And I said, well, it's the renewal of the covenant. So I said to my elders, you know, who formed a session of the congregation, you know, it is the liturgical counterpart to renewing your marriage covenant, you know? And so four times a year, otherwise, you know, familiarity breeds contempt. It's just ritualism. And so I got a unanimous vote eventually. Let's do it weekly. And so when we changed to weekly communion, it really changed the way we were experiencing God's word as a congregation, the sacraments too. And so, I mean, I was saying that we are reformed Protestant Catholics, that the Roman Catholics get it wrong, but there's still so much that they have right. We can no longer just make this the syllogism. If it's Roman, it's wrong.

That's right. Now, we've got to look and see if they might be right every once in a while because the blind hog gets the acorn. But who put Ratzinger in your hand? How did you end up with him? Well, I spent a lot of time in used bookstores then and now. I mean, it's like a second home. I love it too of time in used bookstores then and now. I mean, it's like a second home. I love it. I love used bookstores. You get lost in there. Yeah. You know, when we were reading Gary Smalley's book, The Languages of Love, we figured out all of our kids.

We figured out mom, but they couldn't figure out dad until my daughter, you know, the love language is books. That's my love language. But I would spend a lot of time in used bookstores. And I had found Donya Lou's The Bible and the Liturgy from Shadow to Reality. I read to Lubach. And so I stumbled upon, it was a box of books for a dime. And there was a battered copy of Introduction to Christianity by Ratzinger. I didn't know who he was. Seabury published it.

So it might be Methodist or Episcopalian. I'm reading it in 30 or 40 pages. It still isn't obvious that he's Catholic. Oh, I get it. Right, right, right. And I'm like, this guy thinks like me only more and better. It's the covenant. It is communion. It is family. It is God as Father. And then I kept reading, and I'm like, I'm getting deeper and deeper and more in trouble, you know? And he recasts soteriology so that it's no longer the case that God the Father is looking down on Jesus, hanging on the cross, and he can't see his beloved son. He can only see our sin, and so he's only bearing the wrath

that is being vented by the Father that was really deserved by us. That always bothered me. I always defended it because that was the gospel according to Luther and Calvin. And that always bothered me. I always defended it because that was the gospel according to Luther and Calvin. And I thought for Paul, and Ratzinger was explaining the deep logic of the atonement through Jesus' suffering in a way that was not substitutionary, but representative, as he put it. And I'm like, yeah, that's the new Adam. And so by now I realize that my integrity requires me to resign from the church. I'd also been teaching at a local Presbyterian seminary.

Now, why did you have to resign? I mean, why couldn't you just adopt certain elements? Yeah, I mean, I was so flexible. I was so adaptable. I was adapting every element to the Protestant world, thinking if I am out in front and I am moving towards Small C Catholic things I can take them and so I did Week after week for months and months, but as I approached my first year and beyond I began to realize I am Hiding secrets from them and you know the adage you don't keep secrets secrets Keep you and so I was also hearing applause, you know, oh, your teaching, your preaching is so good. So I was invited to teach some courses

at the local Presbyterian seminary. And those went even better than the sermons. And so they invited me to consider being the dean of the seminary. So I met with the chairman of the board one day for lunch to kind of show him, I don't have my doctorate. This makes no sense at all. And he said, we've discussed it. We voted. It's unanimous. We want to offer you the job to be the dean. You could teach the courses you want, redesign the curriculum. I'm like, I would need a doctorate. Well, we'll pay for that. You know, you'll go to Catholic U. And it was at that moment I realized, okay, I'm being duplicitous. And I said to Steve, I can't tell you why. I must say no, but I must say no. Oh, my goodness.

Because this must have been your dream job. It was the dream of a lifetime that I thought I might have when I'm 50, and I'm barely 30 at this point, not even. And so I go home. Kimberly has been fasting and praying for me, thinking that I might be fired. Good wife. Yeah.

And when I told her what he offered me, she was jubilant. When I told her what I said to, she was jubilant. When I told her what I said to him, I thought she was going to slug me. And then she asked me, why would you say no? And all I could say, it just came out sideways, was, you know, someday I'm going to have to stand before our Lord and give an account for what I taught the people he died for. And I used to know what it was. Now I'm not so sure. And I will not be able to hide behind my favorite professors and say, Lord, I just taught what I heard them teach me. And at this point, I don't know. And so she hugged me and she said, oh, I respect your integrity.

And I'm thinking, well, that will not put food on the table, you know, because I could sense that this was the end of my career as a seminary professor, never becoming a dean, as a pastor as well for a growing congregation that was getting more and more excited. And so she asked me, what does this mean? And I'm like, I'm going to have to resign. And she looked at me like, okay, so much for integrity. I mean, okay, you have to, but what are we going to do? You know? Yeah. Now just a question here, because, you, because sometimes we can mischaracterize Protestants as not believing in the real presence, whereas we do. Obviously, Protestantism or Protestantisms is a broad range. So why get so scared at this point?

Why not just think, well, Catholicism has some true beliefs, but there are Protestant denominations that also hold those beliefs, so I just need to find the Protestant denominations. I was trying to prove to myself, to my seminarians, and to my parishioners that the overlap between Catholic and Protestant is not 5 or 10, but more like 45, 50, 60, 65, 70%. And when we were doing the weekly communion, we were still calling it the Lord's Supper.

I would refer to it as the Eucharist because the early church fathers did. But when I would explain real presence, I could actually quote Calvin. And I'd used Wallace's book, Calvin and the Sacraments, as my text for teaching the seminary course on the sacraments. But whenever it came to Calvin explaining what he means by real presence, he would always default to spiritual presence. Yes. But it's real presence. And I'm thinking, okay, what does that mean? How do you flesh it out?

I mean, no pun intended. But I mean, is there more Holy Spirit packed per square inch there at the Eucharist than everywhere else? You know, it just doesn't make sense to reduce real presence to spiritual presence when the early patristic sources are unanimous about it being his body, his blood, soul, and divinity, his resurrected body, but his body. And so I realized, you know,

you can only play that game up to a point, and now you're just playing games. In fact, I felt like I even told Kimberly, I feel like I'm playing church. I am pretending to be able to confect the Eucharist when it's obvious from Scripture and the Fathers that I am playing church, that I am not really confecting

what they would have identified as the Eucharist. There's no laying out of hands through the bishop. These elders had laid their hands upon me using the Orthodox Presbyterian Church black book. But it just, it began to feel like a close counterfeit to the real Catholic faith. And so, you know, I told Kimberly, I'm going to go in search of a church that fits what I'm finding in sacred scripture and in the early church fathers, because it's not only exciting as my congregation would acknowledge, it's true.

And I didn't think at that point that meant becoming Catholic. Episcopalian, perhaps, probably Orthodox. So I began to look at the Eastern and the Russian Orthodox churches and all. And I came away, I can't go into this, I promise, but I came away convinced that the arguments against the filioque being added, the arguments against the filioque being true, the filioque clause is just that part of the Nicene Creed where the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And this is really a kind of article of division for East and West. And so the Orthodox deny it.

And in the Eastern Rite churches, you don't deny it, but you don't have to profess it. And so I realized, okay, and in the eastern right churches you don't deny it but you don't have to profess it yeah and so i realized okay you know i'm not going to be able to go orthodox even though their grasp of the liturgy encompassing heaven and earth matches what i'm finding in the fathers but so did jerome and others as well in the west so at this point i'm just in the desert cameron and i moved back to the college town where we first met and fell in just in the desert. Kimberly and I moved back to the college town where we first met and fell in love. I am applying for a job at Kroger's, the local grocery

store, filling out an application to be a box boy. I just have to make some money. And so I see the president of the college where both of us had graduated. He asked me what I'm doing. Oh, I'm just here, you know, at the grocery store. And he says, you know, I can't believe, I heard you were back in town. I've got an opening. Would you consider applying to be the assistant to the president? It would mean fundraising, part-time teaching. And I'm like, twist my arm, please. I would love to.

And so within a 24-hour period, I had filled out the application to be a box boy at Kroger's grocery store and ended up being for two years the assistant to the president. I got a part-time job at the two Presbyterian churches doing youth ministry, which I thought was safe because I wouldn't be going into doctrine. I wouldn't be doing sermons. Although I ended up teaching them all about the covenant as family, pointing to the church, which is international and Catholic. And, you know, so I think about 14 or 15 out of the 20 high school kids I was teaching ended up becoming Catholics within the next 10 or 15 years, which made me persona non grata at those congregations. And after two years, it became

clear to me that I had to dive into this for a doctoral program to really make certain that I knew what I was doing. And so reluctantly, Kimberly agreed that we could move to Marquette, Milwaukee, where Marquette had offered me a full ride of scholarship. And I'd gotten to offer a full scholarship at Notre Dame as well, but they didn't have the people that I found at Marquette, Father Keefe, who was an expert on covenant theology, and this other material that I love so much. So that summer of 85, we moved out to Milwaukee from Grove City, Pennsylvania, but not before she had extracted a pledge from me that I would wait at least five years to become a Catholic. And so I thought, well, that will make it look

intellectually respectable to all of my peers, you know. And so my first semester near the end, we had been reading through, I think, Justin Martyr and his description of second century worship. And there were like eight or ten elements that he had enumerated. I wondered, what if any of that is left in a mass? I don't, I never got to a mass. I never wanted to go to a mass, but I just wondered, is there any residue, any remaining element? And so I found out that there was a mass on a weekday at noon in a basement chapel that just sounded safe to me. So I skipped lunch and went there

with my notebook, my Bible, sat in the back pew. I'm just going to be like a journalist, observing and writing. And almost from the first minute, I am looking at the pew. I'm just going to be like a journalist, observing and writing. And almost from the first minute, you know, I am looking at the list and I'm checking off every box from Justin Martyr. It isn't some residue. I mean, the whole thing is residual. The whole Mass, as Justin described it, is what I was experiencing. That's amazing because most people go to Holy Mass and later on down the line, they hear about St. Justin Martyr and what he had to say. And they're like, oh wow, that's just like Mass, whereas you had it in reverse. You read it and then went looking for it.

For those who aren't familiar with it, maybe quickly share with us what Justin said. The Catechism has a paragraph. I don't remember the exact number, but I think there are nine or ten elements in terms of the opening rite, the penitential rite, the prayers, the reading of the scriptures, you know, and the preaching as well, and then the Eucharist. And I'm missing a few of the elements, but I had them, I had been reading them in a doctoral seminar.

And so to have each and every element line up, every single part of the checklist checked off. It was prepping me for the eureka moment because I'm not kneeling. I wasn't standing. I was just sitting, jotting observations. And when I heard the words of consecration for the first time in my life, and I mean, as soon as he finished that line, you know, take this and eat of this as my body. I mean, as soon as he finished that line, you know, take this and eat of this as my body. I mean, I'm looking straight ahead and feeling like all of my doubt is just draining out of my head, my heart. And I'm like, my Lord and my God, that is you. And I felt like doubting Thomas,

like that is not bread. That is your body. What's going on here? And then when he consecrated the chalice, I found myself literally drooling with this holy thirst for the precious blood. And I'm trying to sift through these thoughts, these emotions, and then everybody began to chant, Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. By the time they said it three times, they dropped to their knees and he elevated the host and he says, behold the Lamb of God. Suddenly I have this eureka moment, an aha, you know, I'm going to the back of the Bible, looking at the book of Revelation, where I knew from translating all 22 chapters that Lamb of God is the title used for Jesus there more than all of the other titles put together, and no other New Testament writer uses the technical liturgical

term for the Lamb of God. And so I'm seeing it, then I'm seeing holy, holy, holy, the glory, the amen, the hallelujah. And I'm seeing in John's description of the heavenly vision, this liturgy that includes the angels and the saints. By the time everybody's back from having received holy communion, they're kneeling, silence, giving thanks. I'm looking down, I flipped through about 15 pages and I'm seeing for the first time in the apocalypse, what I just saw for the first time in the mass. And I'm like, where have I been? You know, this is just a basement chapel, a weekday mass, but it's the heavenly worship of the angels and the saints. And so everybody leaves after the benediction. An hour later, I haven't budged.

I'm sitting there somewhat stunned, trying to figure out, okay, I went downstairs to a basement chapel for a Monday mass. I went up. Went through the wardrobe denarnia. Yeah. I mean, I lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. I was lifted up to heaven. The songs, the prayers, the sacrifice of the lamb, it was a perfect match. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the library. I checked out about a dozen books I was gonna tell Kimberly but I thought better of it and so I Read the book revelation that night with the Greek there in the English translation and by around 3 a.m I closed the books. I thought you know Kimberly's a night owl if she's still awake

I I deserve she deserves an explanation. She was fast asleep So I didn't tell her. And I went back the next day. And for the next two weeks, I was attending daily mass. And Matt, I got to tell you, it felt like 10th grade when I found myself reading scripture, falling in love with our Lord, the pages of the gospels, and especially Paul. Only now it's the Eucharist. And so I get there early. I stay afterwards. I am kneeling before the tabernacle and I, and I realized I got to tell her. So when I finally came clean and I told her, the first thing she reminded me of was you still have four and a half years.

You promised. Yeah. And so eventually after, you know, getting spiritual direction from a priest and meeting with Monsignor Bruskowitz, the pastor who eventually received me into the church, I told her one night, I need you to pray. I need to pray about this because delaying obedience to what I know is true is feeling more like disobedience every day. I had written that into my prayer journal.

I had practiced the line before dinner. And when it came out, she looked at me and she said, that's clever. And I thought so too. But I mean, she knew I was sincere. I was just being rhetorically sly, or so I thought. So she came to me later that night

and she admitted that she had prayed and she knew what she had to do and that was to let me. And she said, how long will it be? Well, it was less than five weeks, so much for five years. And so she told me, I want to come when you're received to that Easter Vigil Mass, whatever it is. And so for the next few weeks, I tried to show her that you'll hear more of the Bible in the Mass

than you've ever heard in our Bible services. You'll also experience the power of the real presence. And finally, it got just too tense. I was trying to debate her into submission. And slowly you discover you're not the third person of the Holy Trinity. So we went on a date the week before that fateful night. And then we were sitting in total darkness. And she asked me to explain that I couldn't because no mass had been like the Easter vigil before.

Then we had candles. Then they were lit. She said, can you explain? I said, you'll see. You'll see. And I didn't know what I was going. I just wanted to come off like the expert. And what happens, you know, with the exultet and then the Easter Vigil liturgy,

it's so beautiful. She was stunned and amazed as I was, you know. And then when the Old Testament readings are finished, we had gone through seven Old Testament readings with a psalm in between every one. You weren't kidding. You know, I'm like, yeah, I told you. I had no idea.

And then when we stood for the gospel and we read about the resurrection, she was squeezing my hand so tight. I wasn't sure if she was upset. Is everything all right? This is glorious. I told you, you know. And then after the creed, after the homily, the creed,

but the homily, Monsignor just brought all of these texts together, tied them to the Eucharist, and even she was really impressed by the homily. Was he leading you through RCIA? Because you said five weeks. That's a short time. Yeah, I mean, he said to me, I said, do I have to go through a whole year of RCIA? He laughed and he said, you could teach the RCIA at this point after our conversations. And so he said, I could receive you. I'll give you instruction. So he had me reading a lot of Newman, Cyril of Jerusalem. I can't remember all of the others, but it was mostly stuff that I had read before.

And he knew that, but he also knew that I was pretty well prepared for it. And so that night, it was like the heavenly Jerusalem opening up and welcoming me home. And then when I got home, it was tension, stress, and all the rest. And so the next four years are some of the most painful, anguished reading in the Rome Sweet Home book. Because it really took me a long time to live out, okay, I'm not the Holy Spirit. I can't set her straight. You know, I can love her better with the help of the sacraments than I can without them.

But I'm going to have to let her hear her Father in heaven. And that's what happened. About four years later on Ash Wednesday, she shocked me in a phone call when I was out in California. She was here in Steubenville looking for housing. and the rest, as we say, is history. That is amazing. I want to delve into other things. Sure.

Absolutely, and we've got some people in the live stream. We have around 800 people watching right now. What? Yeah, nuts. Don't you have something to do with your Saturday? No, welcome. I'm so happy to have so many here. But before we do that, I have to say a thanks to our sponsors over at catholicchemistry.com. Catholic Chemistry is the fastest growing dating site and app. It's modern and beautifully designed. So if you are

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That's awesome. Yeah, it's actually really good. I'm glad I didn't need it. Yeah, I think back in the day, Catholic dating sites seemed a little weirder than they do today. Whereas I think now today, people realize that a lot of people are online and they even make you kind of say,

like, are you a traditional Catholic? And do you pray the rosary? You got to choose all these things. So there you go. But all right. Okay. Glory to God. So you got brought into the rosary. You've got to choose all these things. So there you go. But alright, okay. Glory to God. So you got brought into the Catholic Church. Let me ask you this. What would your advice be to somebody who's watching right now and they do feel sort of drawn to the Catholic Church

but they're nervous or they're afraid? What would you say? I mean, I would say get back to the basics, and that is remind yourself and our Lord that you, Jesus Christ, are my Savior, but you're also the Lord of Lords. And so I want you to exercise your lordship in my life more, not less, more than ever before. Second, the Word of God inspired in sacred Scripture

is just that. It's the Word of God. It's powerful. And so just because sola scriptura might be wrong doesn't mean that the primacy of Scripture in your life isn't really a useful instrument

to follow our Lord and to live out His Lordship. And so keep reading Scripture prayerfully, carefully. You know, And the third thing, obviously, would be to read the church fathers. Come a little closer. Yeah. Read the church fathers. Juergen's three volumes works, The Faith of the Early Fathers, is such a great source. But I would also say that if you think you might be mostly convinced, make this more

than an intellectual head trip. Supernaturalize this by going to the saints or especially the Blessed Virgin Mary. You know, I got to the point where I felt like 99 out of 100 Catholic teachings were true, but that last 100th element was Marian doctrine, Marian devotion. It just seemed so foreign to me. And so I remember just kind of feeling uncomfortable with my own pride and reluctance. And so somebody had given me a rosary. I picked up the beads and alone in my office at work, I just said, Lord, if this offends you, I apologize in advance. But honestly, I don't think it will because you gave your mother to be my mother and you've empowered her like I could never empower my

mother, but I'd like to, you know, so I'm going to pray this and I'm going to entrust to her some intention that has felt like it's impossible. And I did finish the rosary. And that is what really flipped a switch because it didn't occur to me suddenly, but months later, I realized that not only had she heard my prayer and answered it after I had almost given up, but she had also manifested other kinds of things that you would associate with a mother who loves you more than you realize. And, you know, I was saying this a few minutes ago at the top of our conversation that these two guys who drove all the way down from Orlando to Palm Beach prayed a rosary together as brothers, as Protestants,

slowly. And when I asked them if they'd ever prayed and they mentioned that they just finished, they looked at each other and you could almost sense that their fraternity had become supernatural, you know, not just in Christ, but also in the Blessed Virgin. And so I would say, you know, that the rosary has become my favorite prayer for 36 or 37 years. It's made the Gospels come alive. She's blessed my research, my scholarship, my marriage, my family.

And then here, the year of St. Joseph, as Pope Francis announced it, you know, you suddenly begin to see Marian art and the beauty of Our Lady through his eyes. That's what he woke up to. That's what he went to sleep with. And there's just a sense that I would say, make it so that it travels from the head to the heart. All right. Here's another question from Eric Holmberg, who's one of our patrons. Thank you, Eric. He asks this, what would you say to a Protestant

who is hungry for tradition, liturgy, and the Eucharist, but is considering Orthodoxy? To put it another way, what is the single best refutation of the Orthodox claim to be the true church Jesus founded? Well, I hadn't encountered the writings of James Locutus yet, but I would recommend him. James Locutus was Orthodox. He became Catholic, and then he became the president of Catholic United for the Faith and a dear friend of 30 years we plan to reprint his books they're available

at bookfinder.com and maybe Amazon but bookfinder.com gives you the widest and the cheapest choices I would also say this I wanted to go Orthodox I was drawn to the you don't have the Pope the stumbling block of the Pope at least I was ord to the religion. Tell us why. I mean, you don't have the Pope, the stumbling block of the Pope, at least.

Yeah, I mean, I was ordained a pastor, and I could be ordained as a married man, a priest in the Orthodox Church. And so I wouldn't have to commit professional suicide like I would if I became a Catholic. And so what I did was I traveled around, and I visited some Orthodox Christians, and I also visited a few Orthodox churches. And I realized very early that orthodoxy is ethnic. There's Greek, there's Ukrainian, there is Estonian, there's Serbian, there's Russian. And, you know, I always sort of, no, I didn't always. I had recently become suspicious of denominations, you know, and just the proliferation of denominations. And then when I realized there were more than a dozen autocephalous Orthodox bodies that are all defined by their ethnicity, I coined a term back then called denominationalism. That if there's

one thing the new covenant isn't, that the old covenant was, was ethnic and nationalistic, it was Israel first. And it just struck me that when I went to a Greek Orthodox church, it was more Greek than I could be. And I felt like an outsider. And so the other thing too, is the filioque. And we can't get into this, but it's one of my favorite discoveries. Just for people at home, the filioque was something inserted by the church after the Council of Nicaea. That's right.

The Orthodox are right on that. But your point is that the Orthodox are wrong to deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. That's right. I mean, in the 7th century and beyond, you have a semi-Aryan heresy spreading in the West, mostly in Spain, that the church in the West has to respond to. And so the Bishop of Rome does by inserting the

filioque so that the full divinity of the Holy Spirit is affirmed more explicitly. But there's also more to it than that, because there was already tension between East and West, and so the East didn't accept that decision and began to controvert it over the course of the next few centuries until finally in 1054 they have the mutual excommunications. And so more calmly and dispassionately, I went and looked at the filioque, kind of wanting to find that the Orthodox were right. But by common consent, the only way we know

the so-called eternal processions of the Son from the Father and the Holy Spirit from the Father and through the Son or from the Father and the Son, the only way we know the eternal processions are through the temporal missions. And nobody disputes that in the temporal missions, the Father sends the Son to become man. And according to the farewell discourse in John 15 and 16, the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit. And so if the missions reveal these eternal processions, and there's no way to know the processions apart from the missions, then if everybody is affirming that the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit, then how can the Holy Spirit proceed from the Father and not from the Son?

And there are other things, too. It's one of my favorite topics, but it's so esoteric that nobody really gets it. Do you think that Eastern Catholics, that it would be good if they began adding the filioque? Because sometimes I'll encounter Eastern Catholics who almost essentially want to be Orthodox and begin to adopt beliefs that the Orthodox Church holds or deny beliefs that the Catholic Church teaches. I met a Christian, Eastern Catholic, and he really didn't want to have to accept the Immaculate Conception, for example. And for him, I think he was thinking, well, if I go to this church,

maybe I don't have to accept the Immaculate Conception because it's basically Orthodoxy but sort of with the Pope. Do you see what I mean? We need another hour on this. Oh, I'd love it. I would love it too. Okay, we can do another day maybe. But I feel like once I start down this road, it's like a San Francisco street.

That's fair. I won't be able to stop. Longboarding down a San Francisco. Okay, let's do that another time. Here's a question from our patron, David Barr. Actually, it's a comment. He says, Two years ago I started reading the Apostolic Fathers

to prove my brother wrong, who was considering Catholicism at the time. As of this Easter, two of my brothers, my wife and myself, are all coming into the church. Scott Hahn's testimony and scholarly work and Pints with Aquinas contributed significantly to my journey. God bless.

Wow. You must love. They must never get old hearing things like that. Well, you too, Pints. Yeah, yeah. Glory to God. I once met a priest who said, Lord, use my, and he used a different word,

dung as manure for their growth. It's like, use it all. Use the things I say that are good. Chris says, thank you for your super chat. He says, Dr. Hahn, are you able to put into words how you read scripture differently as a Catholic, which may help other Protestants in how to read the Bible? You know, this again is a tip

of an iceberg type of question and answer. So, I mean, yes. What I would pinpoint is this, a liturgical hermeneutic, that Scripture was written to be read in the liturgy for the purpose of illuminating the mystery that is about to happen. And then the Eucharistic mystery is exactly what fulfills the Word of God in Scripture. And the fact that Jesus only uses the phrase the New Testament one time in Luke 22, 20, and the earliest reference to the New Testament in the New Testament is in 1 Corinthians 11, 25. In both instances, it's referring to the institution narrative. Paul says, on the night he was betrayed, he takes the chalice and he says, this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the New Testament.

Jesus doesn't go on to say, write this in remembrance of me. He says, do this. And most of the 12 never ended up contributing a single book to the collection of 27 that we call the New Testament, but not because they were lazy or disobedient, but because he said, do this. And they did this. Jesus never wrote anything. He never commanded them to write anything. I'm glad that some of them did. Most of them didn't.

But what they all did was this, Eucharist, that he calls the New Testament. And so for me, one of the biggest breakthroughs was that the New Testament was the sacrament before it became a document, according to the document. And it doesn't devalue the New Testament as a document. In fact, it invests it with a sacramentality to draw from Pope Benedict's language in Verbum Domini, that Scripture itself is sacramental. And so when you see that the canonization of the New Testament occurs roughly around 380 with Pope Damasus,

but that same year, that same pope in the same city of Rome also canonized what we call the Roman canon. Well, what a coincidence. Well, no, the New Testament was canonized as a liturgical enactment. And the Roman canon was canonized because this is the first half of the Mass of the Catechumens. This is the liturgy of the Eucharist. And so one hand washes the other.

You get so much more out of the Bible, not only connecting the old to the new, but connecting sacred scripture with the sacred liturgy. And from there, it isn't like, well, you end up having to kind of forget about a biblical worldview. Now, suddenly you have a sacramental cosmology, a sacramental liturgical anthropology that we were made for worship. And I mean, I have Letter and Spirit, the book. I also have Consuming the Word. So many of my books show what difference it makes to read the Bible liturgically. Well, here's a question from my sister, Emma Fradd. We were speaking last night and she said she was reading the New Testament Ignatius Study Bible,

which you helped put together and write. Emma says this, Thank you for your time and effort you put into the Ignatius New Testament Study Bible. I'm up to revelation and it is so beautiful. I am learning so much. Will you ever do an Old Testament Study Bible? If so, do you have an ETA? Yes, we do.

And yes, we have. Okay, so it was in 1997 that Father Fessu asked me if I would help. And I said, yes, but only if you hire this grad student who just graduated. He's living with my family, Curtis Mitch. For 22 years, Curtis Mitch has been doing all the heavy lifting. I am so glad to be the general editor, but I have really needed to guide him very little. We basically can finish each other's sentences. But in December of 2020, we finished the last book of the Old Testament, Zechariah.

And so thanks be to God and thanks be to Curtis Mitch that this labor of love that has spanned more than two decades should be out, I suspect. I don't think by the end of 2021, there's just too much editing still to be done. But I think there'll be a one-volume edition of the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. You might say, well, the New Testament is just too thick. Those used thick pages will probably end up using onion skin, but hopefully not the kind that your marker bleeds through. So just like the Protestants have 30 or 40 study Bibles, we're gonna have this one and I'm just so grateful. And Emma, thank you for reading through the whole New Testament.

That makes my day. And she also asks, what is your number one recommendation for an Old Testament study Bible for someone with a short attention span? In other words, she doesn't want something too academic. But until your book gets here, what would you recommend as an Old Testament study Bible? Well, I would say so many of the individual Old Testament books are now out from Ignatius Press. Genesis is a standalone. Exodus is as well. I believe Deuteronomy, certainly the Psalms, the wisdom literature, the prophets. And so by the time Emma gets through all of the ones that are out, we'll certainly the Psalms, the wisdom literature, the prophets. And so

by the time Emma gets through all of the ones that are out, the whole thing will be there. Excellent. Let's see here. Based Byzantine, thank you for your super chat, says, Dr. Hahn, I have been a huge fan of you since I was a kid and reading Rome Sweet Home really, oh sorry, and reading Rome Sweet Home. I was wondering why he was reading Rome Street Home as a kid, and reading Rome Street Home really solidified his faith as a teenager. Just because we've mentioned this book, Rome Street Home, a few times, where can people get that book? Well, it's available from Ignatius Press. I'll put a link in the description shortly. And obviously from Jeff Bezos at Amazon. You can go to bookfinder.com, my favorite

spot, and find it more cheaply, a used version, and you can get something that is fair or good or like new. But I also just communicated with Mark Brumley, who Father Festio was put in charge of Ignatius. And Mark invited Kimberly and me to do a recorded version. We've never done an audio version. Some other person did. And so within the next year or so, we are really eager to go back. You know, I think of... That'll be excellent.

Yeah. And we also are thinking about approaching Ignatius about possibly doing like a 30th edition. You know, it came out in 93. So in 2023, we could kind of add an afterward and reflect upon three decades of what it's like to live this. And, you know, we have six kids and now 20 grandkids just from the first three oldest.

The next two, Jeremiah and Joseph, are actually in the seminary studying for the priesthood for the diocese. And so May 21st, please remember our Jeremiah in prayer. That's when he's going to be ordained a priest. And then Joe will follow a year later to the transitional diaconate and then to the priesthood. But I must say that I knew that the Catholic faith was true when I came in, you know, 35 years ago. I just had no idea how true it is, how beautiful the truths are, how powerful the beauty of the Catholic faith is, it's like the good news wasn't subtracting the gospel from as a Protestant. It was adding, but now I just feel as though it's more like multiplying the good news exponentially without exaggerating. It's like too good to be true unless it's the truth.

This is something I keep encountering with Protestant converts. They don't think they had to shed any of their old beliefs necessarily, obviously some. They're entering something much larger and more grand. I want to ask you about sola scriptura. How would you define it? Because we don't want to straw man our Protestant brothers and sisters as they would define it. And then why is it false? Okay, so there are two ways to approach sola scriptura, like there are two ways to approach sola fide, you know, faith alone. I mean, Aquinas puts in his Eucharistic hymn, sola fide sufficit,

only faith suffices when it comes to the mystery of the Eucharist. And so I would say that a Catholic could affirm sola fide, only faith will justify us adverbially. It's only, but not faith alone, adjectivally. If faith is alone, then it's dead without love. And likewise, I would say that the Dominicans already in the 13th and 14th centuries were affirming not sola scriptura, but prima scriptura, as Brian Tierney and other historians have shown. And that is only scripture, technically speaking, is inspired word of God. The magisterium is protected by the spirit so

that it only teaches infallible truth and faith and morals when it is teaching in a definitive way. Likewise, the sacred tradition is efficacious, that when you celebrate the sacraments, they effect grace, whether the priest is holy or in mortal sin. But there's something unique about inspiration. Inspiratio in our tradition means dual authorship. It's not 50-50 human and divine. It's more like Christ. It's 100% human, but it's 100% divine. So Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John aren't stenographers or amanuenses. They're full writers. They're authors.

But the Holy Spirit is the principal author. And so I would say that you end up discovering in the Catholic tradition a higher view of Scripture than you'll find among the Southern Baptists. But it's always subordinated to the incarnated Word. But the incarnated Word is precisely what you find in the Eucharist. And so Scripture is always subordinated to that. But the cut, you know, the cut to the chase, the short answer is that when I read Scripture, I discovered in Scripture that Scripture is not the only authority. That's the conventional and Protestant way of thinking of sola scriptura, that Scripture alone is the authoritative source for the Word of God.

When in fact, Scripture tells us in 2 Thessalonians 2.15, hold fast to all that you've received from us, either in writing or by word of mouth. Hold fast to the tradition, the parodicis. And so Paul is reminding the Thessalonians and all of us that what we have to hold fast to is the tradition. And there are two forms, written and oral tradition. Written is obviously scripture. Oral tradition aren't the whispered secrets in the convents

and the monasteries, but what you have in the liturgy, the prayers of the Eucharist that go back to Holy Thursday in the upper room and much, much more. The fact that we do worship on Sunday, not the Sabbath. We do baptize infants and not circumcise them. All of the oral tradition is what Scripture points to as being uniquely authoritative alongside of Scripture. But once you realize Jesus said, do this, not write this, then you're grateful for the writings, but you realize that the writings began

25, 30, 40 years after the death and resurrection. And so how could the church flourish and spread? Well, because they were doing this. And what is this? We call it the Eucharist. Jesus called it the New Testament. So the New Testament church was spreading the New Testament faith before the New Testament books were even begun. And so just 2 Thessalonians 2.15, likewise, 1 Timothy 3.15, where you have Scripture telling us that the pillar and foundation of truth is the church, the household of God. Now, I would have preferred if Paul had said that the pillar and foundation of truth is Scripture. But if Scripture is pointing to the church as well as to tradition, then you realize that sola scriptura is nowhere taught in Scripture.

But in fact, what Scripture does teach subverts the notion of sola scriptura as though that is our only authority. No, I remember even calling Dr. J.I. Packer and Dr. R.C. Sproul and asking these guys, you know, where does scripture teach sola scriptura? You know, and they would point to 2 Timothy 3.16, only scripture inspired, but, you know, scripture's inspired, but it doesn't say only scripture's authoritative. And so Packer was really honest with me. He said, you know, it really is for us, the presupposition of our faith is evangelicals. I'm like, wait a second. If our presupposition is not demonstrated from Scripture,

how could we say that you can't believe anything unless it's really found in Scripture? The sola scriptura plus this axiom. That's right. I found it helpful when speaking to Protestants to say that tradition makes explicit what's implicit in Scripture. Although that's not always the case because you have the books of the Bible that aren't implicit in Scripture. I don't think it's either implicit or explicit that God won't inspire further apostles either. That's right. Or that the revelation ended with the death of the last apostle.

I don't see that in there either. If Jesus is establishing a new covenant, and that's a kind of family. In most households, more is caught than taught. You don't write down all the rules. You just live the life. I would say that the liturgical tradition of the church is prior and that scripture is finally written and canonized for the liturgy to be read and proclaimed and all. You know, I remember asking Father Joseph Leinhart at Marquette. He was a Jesuit. He's a patristic expert. How would you respond to sola scriptura? He was a Jesuit. I was still a Protestant. And he looked at me and he knowingly said,

okay, if you recognize 2 Thessalonians 2.15 and you're reading Augustine for this doctoral seminar on Augustine, I think Augustine would say that really what Scripture teaches is solo traditio, tradition alone, and that there's oral tradition, but there's also written tradition. But the transmission of the truth and the life, that's what Scripture teaches. That's what Augustine teaches, and that's also what Dei Verbum chapter 2 teaches. And that sent me scurrying to read Dei Verbum chapter 2. And I'm like, it nails it. I can hardly think of a single person I've ever talked to who read Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation, one of the 16 documents of Vatican II, and arguably the most authoritative and the most formative or transformative. You read the first three chapters

and you realize they don't have a lower view of scripture than anybody, but they recognize that the overarching category that is drawn from the New Testament is the tradition. That is the transmission of the truth of the life of Christ that comes from the spirit to the apostles through the sacraments and the proclamation of the word and all the rest. And once you just adjust your lenses that way, suddenly it's like three-dimensional. It's scripture, liturgy, and the magisterium. But the magisterium is not like the Supreme Court. The magisterium is like an apostolic organism.

They're proclaiming scripture, they're celebrating the sacraments, and they're empowered by the Spirit to teach infallibly what you need to know to avoid the toxin of heresy and that sort of thing. Decluse Views, who's got an excellent YouTube channel that people should check out, says, like you, I love St. Thomas and the Communio theologians. Many think they are, I think he's about, here we go.

Let's see here. Sorry, that just got, I think he's saying many of them are being criticized today. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. They're somehow, here it is, sorry. Many think they are incompatible, even label the Communio thinkers as modernists. What would you say?

Another hour, please. Let me try to give bullet points. You know, my favorite theologian in the 20th century is the Dominican Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange by far. He is the best expositor of St. Thomas, who's the best expositor of Augustine, who was the best expositor of the Old and New Testament. My second favorite is Ratzinger, who I think is the best of the Nouvelle Théologie, the best of the race-source Mont theologians. I think that de Lubach is

brilliant. I have learned so much from him. But when it comes to nature and grace, I think that de Lubac is brilliant. I have learned so much from him. But when it comes to nature and grace, I think that he's wrong. But for all the right reasons, because he wants to re-historicize with the old and the new, so much of what would have become abstract categories of nature grace. Likewise, Donya Liu and Kongar, I would say what Matt Levering is doing, he's a dear friend and a great scholar and a very prolific writer. He's doing ressourcement tomism. Tomism is the noun. Ressourcement is the modifier. There is so much truth that is rediscovered by going back to the sources, although if you go back to the 1800s, you'll discover that the Thomists like Franzilien and others were doing the same thing that the Lubach and Congar and Daniel were doing, only better. But I don't think it's an either-or.

I think if you subordinate Reysorsmont theology to the perennial philosophy of Aquinas, you're going to end up with the happiest and most fruitful intellectual marriage you can have. Okay. Thank you. Dennis Vu says, Dr. Hahn, hi from one of your former students. Hello to Dennis. We text almost every week. Oh, really?

He says, Can you comment on what attending the Latin Mass has done for you? I attend daily. How has this changed your prayer life and perspective of the sacred liturgy? All right. First of all, every valid Mass is heaven on earth. It's inexhaustible. Every valid Mass, Novus Ordo or the traditional Latin Mass.

I am more at home in the Novus Ordo because for so many years that's all I knew. That's all my parishes did. But I must admit that going to the traditional Latin Mass at our parish at noon on Sunday has been transformative. And I have a preferential option for that which has been around for more than 1,500 years. We're doing something that is a valid experiment, concocting Eucharistic prayers in the 60s, canonizing them in the 70s. And, you know, but I can't help but wonder if Lex Orundi, Lex Credendi is true. Lex Orundi, the law of prayer, the law of worship is the basis for Lex Credendi, the law of belief. But also Lex Vivendi, that is the law of life. You know, if you can just tinker with this and change it,

you're going to set an emotion, expectations that will conclude, well, we can change the doctrine. We can change the morals as well. That seems to be what's happened. Yeah, and so I would say we've got to affirm the validity of the Novus Ordo Mass and recognize it is inexhaustible. I think we can also recognize the objective superiority of the Latin Mass without becoming mad trads.

Most of the rad trads I've known over the years are angry. I describe myself as a glad trad, as a Trentocostal, as a tradismatic. I'm a Catholic, and so it's- You've got to write a new book with all of these puns. Well, it's all of the above. We don't have to give in to the sectarian impulse to say that this one movement is going to save the church. No, the mass will save the church, however it's celebrated validly in the Eastern rites or in the Dominican rite. I wanted to ask you, what do you see as positive in this new movement of young

people desiring the heritage that was never given them? And then what should we be careful of? And I think you're already alluding to it in becoming angry. Well, I think they're rightly saying to the older generation, look, you ended up rejecting something, and that is the traditional Latin mass and all of that went with it. We don't have the choice. I mean, in a certain sense, you abandoned something that you felt perhaps was inferior or whatever, outmoded. But I think the next generation is coming up and saying,

you know, give us a chance. Let us be exposed to that. And when they are, I think all of the fads of the 60s, the 70s, the 80s, into the 90s, I mean, fad is just an acronym for a day. And so I think there have been a lot of liturgical fads. You know, I was hearing about one priest was describing a marijuana mass in 69 after Woodstock. Yeah.

And we heard about clown masses and other things too. And so I just feel like let the experimentation die out, you know, and let the Novus Ordo continue and let us prepare for it at our mass, 10 a.m. at St. Peter's. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's ad orientum. We have the Latin.

The altar rails. Yes. And we receive on our knees at the altar rail as well. And so to me, there really is a glorious convergence that can be done and that should be done. I think it will take the next generation of priests because I can't speak for my two seminarian sons, but I get a sense that they and their classmates are open, if not eager, to sort of appropriate both streams

and make it, you know, I grew up in Pittsburgh, Three Rivers Stadium, the Monongahela, the Allegheny becomes the Ohio River. Now I live alongside of the Ohio River. And I feel as though I live where the confluence of the Novus Ordo and the Latin come together in a beautiful, life-giving way. Thank you, Dennis. Yeah, there's a lot of people who are like, glad trads, rise. In a sense, there's an awkwardness

in reclaiming a tradition that was never yours because you weren't given it. It's almost like going to an antique store and buying something beautiful, but it's not really yours. It's somebody else's. And so I think that awkwardness that we're seeing among younger Catholics, myself included, who are super excited about tradition, is just that. It's going to be nice to see when it becomes second nature. It's a good analogy. Thank you. Yeah, because, you know, growing up... I thought I thought of it. I wish I had it, you know? I wish somebody had exposed me to the rosary, to the incense. I wish they didn't try to be... And I know I had it. I wish somebody had exposed me to the rosary, to the incense. I wish they didn't try to be... I'm not making a false dichotomy here.

I'm not saying you can either have a sloppy Novus Ordo or a beautiful Tridentine Mass. Of course, you can have both of each. But I wish somebody had exposed that to me. Everywhere else I see irreverence. It would be nice to see deep reverence in the liturgy. Here's a question we can never answer, and that is, what would it have been like if all of these rad trads had grown up only with the Latin and only with the family rosary? I mean, would they have gone through an adolescent phase where they too would have preferred the fads of whatever decade they were raised in, you know?

And so I don't think that the blame game is something that either side will win. I just think that what we have to do is say yes and yes. Yes, both and is the Latin, is the Catholic phrase. Here's another question for you. I think there are a lot of people who, and I was one of these for a while, felt like a bit of a refugee. I lived in Atlanta, and many of the parishes around me, the Holy Mass wasn't celebrated with a great deal of reverence. And so I ended up going to a Byzantine church because it was there that I found reverence. But I think maybe there's a danger there too, and I'm not sure.

I wonder if natural piety should lead us to want to be a part of our own heritage and not to quickly set it aside and adopt some sort of Ruthenian traditions or something like that. Do you have any concerns about that or not really? Who's the Australian saint again? That is St. Mary MacKillop. And you were telling me before we started

that she was, what was her relationship with the bishop like? My understanding, I've got to look this up to get all the details right, so I apologize if I'm getting it wrong, but I believe St. Mary MacKillop was excommunicated by the Bishop of Adelaide, who may himself have been an alcoholic. She never spoke up or criticized him, and eventually she was sort of brought back into the church. I think there's something profoundly Catholic about that, especially if we want to become saints, where we, it's not like a cover-up a la Watergate, but it is like, you know, Shem and Japheth walking in backwards to cover the

nakedness of Noah, as St. Josemaria points out. And I must admit, I mean, Opus Dei has been my tribe in Israel. And so when they do this Novus Ordo, because I've never seen them do the traditional Latin Mass, it is so beautiful. It is so sacred. It is so reverent and transcendent that I wasn't. But on the other hand, I must admit that when I was in Milwaukee becoming a Catholic, you know, you could go and it was ring around the altar. I remember in the chapel of St. Joan of Arc, where we were commanded by the priest to stand around the altar. You know, I quietly slipped out, but I remember just those few awkward moments where let's just kind of wing it. And so I've been in many liturgies in the 80s where all of the experimentation was still going

on. And I'm just thinking, you know, if you had to give up your career for this, I don't think you would feel so comfortable just kind of dabbling. I don't want to judge their hearts, but at the same time, the objective reality of the Mass, when it's celebrated according to the rubrics, with reverence, you know, it just is so amazing. One last thought, I was just talking to a dear friend, a former student, who's been celebrating the traditional Latin Mass for the last two years, and he was describing the first time. And he went back into the sacristy after it was done, sang it for some Carmelites. And the mother superior came back and he just said, this is the single most joyful day of my life because I have never been at mass where I

disappeared. Where I was joined with you, all of the sisters, and I was able to worship our Lord. It wasn't my personality. It wasn't our Lord. It wasn't my personality, it wasn't my accent, it wasn't anything that was me. I disappeared and this is the single most joyful day of my life. Do you have any advice though for a Catholic who might say I just want to go to a Byzantine Catholic Church and maybe kind of abandon the Western heritage as it were? Well I mean the quick advice was the what was given to me when I was thinking about that myself going Byzantine Catholic. You know my my priest, look, you are a Westerner, German and English,

and so is Kimberly. It's not fair for you to impose that on her. I mean, it's one thing to change faith. It's another thing to change cultures. You're already becoming Catholic. You will do, yeah. But he also pointed out that to shop around, to do church shopping, is such a vestige of your Protestantism.

Yeah, and so to find the most exotic blend of coffee, that's understandable. But to find the most exotic blend of liturgy, that is the subjectivism of your own background, your Protestantism. And so I just think that you bloom where you're planted. You are who you are. And so if you're in America, you're part of the West, for better or worse, and the Occidental is not like inferior to the Oriental. You know, no matter what you hear, there really is a sense in which

breathing with both lungs doesn't privilege the right over the left, you know. Okay, that's helpful. Dr. Hahn, this has been an absolute pleasure, and I cannot wait to have you back on the show, especially because you're up the road now, so it'll be very easy. Tell folks how they can learn more about you, the St. Paul Biblical Center, for example. Sure.

Well, 20 years ago, Kimberly and I founded the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. It's available at ststpaulcenter.com. And we really had this mission of teaching Catholics to read the Bible from the heart of the church. Biblical literacy for lay people, biblical fluency for our clergy and for our educators as well, but just falling in love with our Lord and also reading the

scripture liturgically to experience the liturgy in biblical terms, that there is really a kind of one hand washing the other. And when that happens, what we find is just like on the road to Emmaus, did not our hearts burn within us as the scriptures were opened, but always ordered to the opening of the eyes of faith to the real presence of Christ in the breaking of the Eucharistic bread. And so I've done a number of books. I won't go into those. But nowadays, I'm really working almost exclusively with Emmaus Road Publishing

and Emmaus Academic, which are the two publishing arms of the St. Paul Center. And there are so many good books that I see lining your shelves. And I just signed a contract with Emmaus Road for that Aquinas book. So thank you. Thanks be to God. All right. Well, thanks so much for being here. Oh, what a joy. so សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្� Thank you. Bye.