Pints With Aquinas - The Final Confrontation Between the Church and The Anti-Church w/ Ralph Martin

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

Dr. Ralph Martin of Renewal Ministries and Sacred Heart Major Seminary joins the Show. Show Sponsors: Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Everything Catholic: https://everythingcatholic.com Follow Ralph Martin: https://www.youtube.com/@RenewalMinistries https://www.renewalministries.net

And we're live. I got a question that's sort of probably not what you're expecting, but I really want to ask you. Tell me about your love for Jesus Christ. Well, He really is my Savior, and He's really your Savior. And if anybody ever hopes to be saved and rescued from this body that's tending towards death, he's our only hope. And I just am incredibly grateful that God the Father had mercy on me.

And when I was drifting away from him and the church, a friend invited me to make a curcio, which is a weekend retreat. And at a certain point during the retreat, I just felt like, you know, this Jesus that they're talking about, he's here. Like he's real, like he really has been raised from the dead. And I knew, I knew he was like wanting to communicate to me. I didn't hear any voices or see any visions, but I knew I had to respond to this perception

that he really is the Lord, he really is alive. And I tried to bargain with him for a while, like, Lord, if you let me do this, then I'll come back to the church. But coming back to the church isn't really where it's all about. What it's really all about is unconditional surrender. You know, unconditional surrender to the one who is the Lord, the one through whom everything that has come to be has come to be, the one who's coming again in glory, the judge living the dead, that one. And so it wasn't until the last morning of the Curzio where I kind

of swallowed my pride. I was a philosophy major and had a lot of pride. And swallowed my pride and went through confession and got reconciled to the Lord and the Church. And as much as I was capable of, unconditional surrender. And I don't know if I'd be alive today if I didn't respond to that grace of conversion. Why do you say that? Because I was really desperate to know the truth and I was caught up in the confusion of the 60s.

And I think if I couldn't have found the solid truth, I just don't know what would have happened to me, to tell you the truth. Mason Howell Why were you open to going on the retreat in the first place? Dr. John B. Bolling I really wasn't. Somebody who had helped me a lot in different ways. Like I needed a place to stay, my senior at Notre Dame, and he took me in, in the Curie's apartment above the art gallery. And he just kept after me. He just kept telling me I really needed to do it.

Was it annoying? Very annoying, yes. He was harassing me. And finally he comes up to me and said, oh you've been accepted, you know. I said, what do you mean I've been accepted? I don't want to go. I felt like tears were coming to his eyes, and that kind of shook me up, and I felt like, okay, I'll go, but I warn you, I'm not going to compromise my intellectual integrity. I'm not going to fall for this. I know it's going to be warm human experiences and they're going to call it God, but I'm not going to.

Thanks be to God, I fell for it. Really, I'm so grateful because you'll never find the truth in academic pursuits. You really just won't. There's always another theory, there's always a criticism of the last theory, there's always another... There's always someone smarter than you who can debate out, debate you. Yeah, and there's always somebody who's going to challenge this and that. It never ends.

And so if God somehow doesn't reveal Himself to us, the search never ends, you know? And so if God somehow doesn't reveal himself to us, the search never ends, and there's a danger that you're gonna actually come to love the search more than the finding. And I felt like that was going on in my life in a certain way. I was really, in some real way, wanting to know the truth. But another way, I liked kind of searching

and being in charge and being my own arbiter of good and evil, you know, that type of thing. I did my senior essay on Nietzsche and Plato, partly because both of them were like really about the absolute, you know, Nietzsche was about the absolute unstripping of fake religion and fake philosophy and everything. And Plato was all about seeking the one, the unmoved mover and all that. And Nietzsche kind of deliberated himself from fake religion and declared himself beyond good and evil.

And I was drifting in that way. And then basically, if there's no objective reality, if there's no objective revelation from God, if God really is dead, it's the will to power. It's whoever's got the power can impose their meaning, their reality on things. And I think we're living in that in our culture today. We're living in a place where there's no longer objective

right and wrong, but it's the will to power. It's whoever is in charge decides what's right and what's wrong, and it's a very bad place to live. Other than your philosophical pursuits, were you looking for the truth in other religions or other lifestyles? Well, I would say that the world of flesh and the devil were all active, you know, in my life. And, you know, I had girlfriends and et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, but, you know, really, I wasn't in any condition to be a responsible husband or father at all. You know, I, I wasn't capable of even being a good friend, really, because I was looking for God and human beings aren't God.

And when you find out that the latest human being isn't God, you don't usually act properly towards them type of thing. And so I had to learn that I was a creature, that everybody else was a creature, and that we're like beggars together, looking for bread type of thing. Yeah. You know, and so the Lord rescued me and why do I love him? Because let me count the ways,

you know, like he forgave my sins and he continues to forgive my sins. And the amazing thing is people don't think about this, but the reason why every human being dies, that's punishment for rebelling against God. You know, that was the original command that the Lord gave us in the garden. You know, you can do everything, you can eat of all these trees, just don't do this one thing.

And if you do it, you're gonna die. So death is a punishment for disobeying God. It really, really is. And even though the guilt of the sin is forgiven for those who come to the Lord, the punishment is still there, the penalty is still there. And Jesus is the only one who actually has conquered death. You know, everybody else who got raised from the dead

died again, you know? Mohammed didn't rise from the dead, Buddha didn't rise from the dead, only Jesus rose from the dead. And he promises that he's gonna share that with us, that if we believe in him, if we follow him, if we actually eat his body and drink his blood, if we become part of him, we will participate with him in the glory of his resurrection. And so, hey, you know, there's big tech billionaires, you know, who are spending millions of dollars a year to preserve their youth and keep their health, and they're never going to be able to do it. They're going to die.

The only solution for death is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, wow, you know? I was looking into new Age religions and things. I was agnostic because an atheist didn't seem like something I could buy into. I had no good arguments for God's non-existence, just thought that the reasons Christians had weren't terribly good. I didn't know them that well, honestly. But I liked the idea that there was something more, let's say. Yeah. Because the idea of kind of bare bones,

atheism seemed to be obviously something that would lead to nihilism. Yeah. It all ends. Yeah. Everyone. Depression, despair. For any objective reason. So I started like listening to kind of new age tapes and things like this. And I remember flirting with Buddhism because it gave me this sense of transcendence, but there was no moral obligation, at least that I heard, especially in the realm of sexuality, which I wasn't terribly on board with the church's position. And I even remember as the internet came in, I would look up meditations. And if there was any Christian language,

I was turned off immediately. And it was the most New Age language imaginable, but it would say something like, imagine your mind opening outward, and it's in contact with heaven. And just that word heaven just turned me off. I didn't want anything to do with that. Well, we both have a lot to be grateful for,

that don't mean that. The Lord rescued both of us, didn't he? He did. He gave us a reason to be grateful for that. Don't worry about that. Amen, yeah. The Lord rescued both of us, didn't He? He did. He gave us a reason to live. He rescued us from despair. He gave us purpose, and He gave us a glorious hope for the future. There's that great line from that Hillsong,

praise and worship song that says, the one line is, I am who you say I am. I'm forgiven. I think I'm getting the words wrong, but I'm not forsaken. I am who you say I am. I think there. I think I'm getting the words wrong, but I'm not forsaken. I am who you say I am. I think there is a lot of people though who are kind of caught up on that intellectual carousel where you keep God up on the chalkboard. You keep Christianity up on the chalkboard.

You watch this debate and you're not really sure what to make of it. You kind of stand on the peripheries judging, which is certainly a safer place to be. But I also understand the legitimate concern, which was yours, I don't want to leave my intellect at the door. And Catholicism, of course, is a faith of both faith and reason. What advice do you give to people who are kind of stuck? I don't know how to make the next move. I don't know how to give my life to Jesus Christ.

I don't even know if I should be doing such a thing. You're right. Well, the only answer to that is that the Lord Himself is going to give you a ray of light, which you're going to know isn't just a thought that came to you, but it's something, it's light that's coming from above, and you're going to have to make a decision then, is that really something coming to me from God or not? And if it is something coming from God, it's requiring a response. And so then you're going to have to make a decision, is this really something that the Holy Spirit or however you want to say it, is illumining my mind and letting me know that this is true.

And if so, I just can't kind of add it to my thought collection. There's an authority to it, there's an authenticity to it, there's an urgency to it that's requiring a response. And so that's where you make, quote, the leap of faith, although it's not such a great leap because the Lord is giving us the help we need to make the step from intellectual search to finding. Yeah, I'm gonna use an analogy

which will become clear as I wrap it up. I was playing a virtual reality game with my kids, you know, we were at this trampoline park or something and there was this virtual reality thing. You put the goggles on and I'm shooting zombies and I'm having a great time and, and everything about it felt real. But then I swung my hand around and I think, I think I hit the hand of one of my children. And the comparison I'd like to make is that was like the ray of light to me.

When I encountered Jesus Christ, it was realer than the reality I was living in. There was something, as you say, that demanded a response. It was more factual than the facts that I had previously known about, and it was still obscure, but there was something concrete and tangible to it. It was a different world, it was a different level,

it was a different kind of communication, but it was the most real thing there is, yeah. I just want people to come and love Jesus Christ. So I think what we should do before we go on is, could you offer a prayer to the person watching right now who's searching and help them give their life to Jesus Christ if they want to do that right now. Yes, yes. You know, the words we're speaking aren't just intended to score points or be impressive. The words we're speaking right now are coming from a reality that we know that we're living, that we know is more real than the table that I'm tapping right now. I'd like to tell you that the Lord Himself

is speaking to you. The Lord Himself is making His presence known, just like He made His presence known to me so many years ago. The Lord is making His presence known. Don't be afraid to acknowledge it. Yes, it's radical. Yes, it's scary. Yes, you don't know what the implications are. Yes, you don't know where it will take you, but it's going to take you to a better place than you are right now.

And it may be scary, but it's going to lead you to a place of freedom and joy and love, not without suffering, not without struggle. So I'd just like to encourage you to respond to the light that you're receiving right now, to respond to what really is the love that you're receiving right now, and trust Him who created you, who loves you, who created you for only one reason, God created you and loves you because He wants you to be with Him forever. And that's got to start now before we die or it'll be too late. Could you lead us in a prayer where maybe you offer a few words and the people watching

could respond and make it their own? Sure. If you're wondering what to say, you could say something like this. Lord Jesus Christ, thank you for coming near me. Thank you for giving me light right now by which I can perceive you. right now by which I can perceive you. Thank you for giving me the help I need to take the step of surrender. Lord Jesus Christ, I surrender to you.

I say yes to you. I receive the light that you're giving me. Lead me on. Amen. Amen. Thank you. We got a comment from an atheist viewer of ours recently that that really I almost was brought tears by it. And I'd like to share it with you because I think it'll lead us into an interesting top interesting conversation and.

To this lovely girl carissa i know if you're watching bless you thank you for being a. I've you are watching the show and give us a chance she said hi atheist here. And i have been watching more christian content as a result of transgender being waved through liberal left leaning media. Christian content as a result of transgender being waved through liberal left-leaning media. Your video with Jason Everett was recommended to me. It was the small clip, so I then went to the full conversation for more context. I've been watching a few of your videos since and decided to subscribe. I've never heard the Christian or Catholic stance on many topics and I'm really enjoying hearing it.

I hope you don't mind me here, but either way, I'm grateful for your videos and that they were recommended to me and I'll ensure I will leave comments to help others too. And I've since seen her comment, and I just, I don't mean to call this beautiful person out, and she just represents a lot of people who are watching. She's on the way. She sincerely wants to know what the truth is. It's beautiful. But here's my fear, right, is that you've got people who feel that solidness,

the solid light from heaven, and it's often in response to the unreality of certain ideologies that are being impressed upon us. I don't mean to make this more, to seem more prevalent than it is, but I mean, we've we've got priests and the German bishop, synod and others that seem to be advocating for or cozying up to a demonic ideology. You tell me if that was too strong and what do we do, especially when people like Carissa, they're interested in the church and then maybe the next thing they see is German bishops synod or Macoroy said this or... Yeah. Well, it's true. We've got some really serious problems in the church right now and

I find myself pondering something that Cardinal Wotila said just before he got elected as John Paul II. Radical statements at the time, radical since, but even now they seem to be more applicable than they ever have been, where he said that we're now standing in the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church. Whoa, that's kind of an interesting concept, an anti-church and a confrontation between the gospel and an anti-gospel, and a confrontation between Christ and the anti-Christ. And so unfortunately, I think we're now in a situation where we do have something like an anti-church

and an anti-gospel probably inspired by the Antichrist that's growing up within the Catholic Church. Yeah, I, you know, Pope Benedict, after he resigned, you know, he published his autobiography, and he said that a hundred years ago, people would have thought it was insane to talk about homosexual marriage, but now we're being excluded by from society if we don't go along with it, and the same about abortion and other things as well. Then he says an anti-Christian creed is being developed, and if we don't give our allegiance to it, we're going to be canceled.

And he says that this is the spirit of the antichrist, and we need to resist it, and we need prayer. So there's so much that's packed in there. But yeah, I think unfortunately, we're in a situation where there's a lot of mixed messages, and I would say there's things that are really just contradictory to the church that are happening in the church, some things that are contradicting the gospel

that are happening in the church. And there is the spirit of the Antichrist that wants to turn people away from the real gospel, the real Christ, the real church. So we're just going to have to deal with it. What I like about what you're saying is it felt like a lot of apologetics up until recently amounted to Catholics saying, look at how we've got our stuff together, look at how you don't come over here so you can have your stuff together. Look how unified we are. Look at our Pope, right? But the Pope, say Pope John Paul II's words of there's a church and an anti church. We, I mean,

church militant ought to expect a sort of infiltration into the church. It's not like it's going to be happening everywhere around us while we have everything together. Well, Jesus told us it was going to be like this. He says it's going to be false prophets and false teachers. We don't pay too much attention to that. Right in the early church, Paul's saying the same thing. He's saying these people are making a shipwreck out of the faith. They're misleading people. You know, this person needs to be excluded from the community because he's refusing to obey what Christ teaches in the area of sexual reality.

So this conflict and confusion has been part of the church for its whole history. You know, you even have the situation where, you know, most of the bishops didn't believe in the divinity of Christ during the Aryan heresy. And then you have the situation in the French Revolution where many of the bishops didn't believe in the divinity of Christ during the Aryan heresy. And then you had the situation in the French Revolution, where many of the bishops and priests kind of gave their primary allegiance to the revolutionary government. Then you had the same thing in England with Henry VIII, and all the bishops except one

kind of breaking their ties with Rome in order to acknowledge Henry as the head of the Catholic Church because he wanted to remarry and wasn't free to. So there's just been conflict and confusion. But right now, you know, we've had immorality, we've had cowardness on the part of leadership, you know, throughout the history of the Church. But now we actually have error being taught in a way that hasn't been taught quite this way from the highest levels of the church and even in Rome where you know The Pope is supposed to strengthen the faith of his brothers It almost seems like on the one hand he's strengthening the faith of his brothers on the other hand

He's sort of appointing people that are undermining their faith. Like, so you got to say, will the real Pope Francis please step up, you know, what's really going on here? But I would say that the primary trend is him definitely tilting in the direction of we got to make an accommodation with modern culture in the area of sexual morality and marriage. I think there's no question about it. There's things he's doing that aren't ambiguous, don't require interpretation. What he's done with John Paul II, the Center for Marriage and the Family in Rome, is completely gutting it, bringing in professors who are dissenters to Catholic Church teaching and morality and marriage,

appointing somebody as head of that institution and the Pontifical Council for Life, who just recently, what, two days ago said that, well, we shouldn't have an extreme euthanasia law here in Italy, but we should have one that's the best thing for the common good right now, and you know, in certain circumstances this would be the best thing. And of course, you know, the Catholic Church doesn't have kind of answers from above. It's in dialogue with the culture, the magisterium, doctrine develops, the Pope changed the catechism on capital punishment so things can change. So I almost feel like deja vu,

like we've been here before. This is where I began to address way back in the 80s where I wrote a book called A Crisis of Truth, the attack on faith, morality, and mission at the Catholic Church. And it looked like it got settled under John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, but honestly, the same faulty moral theology,

the same desire to accommodate to the world is here in spades again, and very, very prominent people in very important positions are advocating this. You know, Cardinal Hollerich, the person that Pope Francis appointed to lead the whole synodal process, which is being trumpeted as a new way of being church. Well, what does that mean? What is this new way of being church? Is it like taking a poll from people and seeing what they believe and then saying we're gonna adjust to that? No. I mean, you know, anyway, Cardinal McElroy, you know, a fairly obscure bishop in San Diego being made a cardinal,

overlooking the cardinal of the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the Archbishop of San Francisco, and he's an open dissenter on Catholic teaching. How so for those who aren't aware of him? How is he an open dissenter for those who aren't aware of him, how is he an open descendant? Yes, well he's always been giving signals, but he recently came out with an article in America magazine where he said we really need to break down structures of exclusion in the Catholic Church, and we really need no longer to discriminate between people who are living a chaste life and people who aren't living a chaste life, everybody should be able to come to the Eucharist. And so what this is basically saying is that people who are in a valid first marriage

and have gotten remarried anyway should be able to come to the Eucharist, which, you know, Jesus said if you marry a divorced woman, you know, if the person isn't free to marry, if you really have a valid first marriage, you're committing adultery. So, you know, the message is okay, technically you're committing adultery, but come to the Eucharist anyway. The same thing with the LGBTQ community. He particularly mentioned the need to break down structures of exclusion, and of course, you know, this whole ambiguity about being a welcoming church, being an inclusive church, being an accompanying church, yes, we want to welcome

everybody. We want to include everybody. Even wretches like Matt Fradd. Yes, like us who the Lord rescued, you know, type of thing. So we want to include everybody, we want to welcome everybody, we want to accompany everybody, but we're not just welcoming them to a make it up, you go along club, religious club. We're welcoming people to the Church of Jesus Christ, which has been entrusted by the Lord with revelation about the purpose of human life and the purpose of human sexuality, and what the Eucharist is, and what the Church is supposed to be. And so we're welcoming people to an encounter with Jesus Christ. We're including people on the basis of their

willingness to believe and repent. You know, the only way of entering the kingdom is by believing and repenting and being baptized, and that means turning away from serious sin. You know, so this whole thing about, well, people just don't believe in serious sin anymore, particularly in the area of marriage and sexuality. And I think all those years of terrible scripture scholarship in Germany, all the skeptical scripture scholarship, that's why the German church is leading the way in this, is that they don't really believe the Word of God. They don't really believe it's the inspired and errant Word of God, and so they believe they can

adjust it as they go along and, you know, kind of be in dialogue with the culture and in dialogue with scripture. And it's always the culture that has the tromp. Yeah, the church sometimes seems like a weird stalker girlfriend who just keeps running after her. This guy who's really not interested in her because she's lost all of her dignity anyway by chasing him, something like that. Yeah, and Cardinal Hollerich says, you know, he doesn't believe that our teaching homosexuality is solidly based and

at a press conference somebody said well, didn't the Catholic Church just recently reaffirm that we can't bless same-sex marriages or Relationships. He says well, yes, they did, but I don't think it's a closed issue So what they're doing is they keep trying to open up a door. All they need is the tiniest little loophole. We just had to deal with some mice in our house. And the guy who was helping us saying, these mice can just squeeze through the tiniest little opening. So all the church, all these people want to do is get the tiniest little opening

because you can get everything through there, just like that footnote in Amoris Laetitiae, which seemed to be ambiguous about remarried people receiving communion. Mason Harkness To extend the mice analogy, my understanding is that rat poison, say, is well over 90, 95% percent food just enough poison to kill you. Yeah. And I sometimes think that these words of structures of exclusion. Yeah. That to me sounds like the 90 percent food. But I can tell that this is going to lead to the death of souls.

Yeah. Yeah. And Jesus said, how often I would have gathered you together like a mother hand her chicks, but you would have none of it. The Lord wants to gather everybody. You know, everybody's been created in the image of God. Everybody's alive for only one purpose, to be with the Lord forever, but they have to avail themselves of the medicine for the sickness that's plaguing the human race, the sickness of sin, the sickness of rebellion, the sickness of death. And Jesus is the way that God has appointed by which that medicine can be applied and where we can be healed of our sickness.

If people refuse to come to Jesus, they're refusing healing, they're refusing forgiveness, they're refusing eternal life. And Hebrews chapter four says, Jesus became the source of salvation for those who obey Him. We don't wanna talk about obedience today, but we got to follow the directions, we got to follow the instructions. Jesus has come from the Father, He's going to the Father, He knows

the way, and He's going to tell us how we can go with Him. And if we don't pay attention, if we don't obey Him, we're fools. And there's a lot of foolishness in the world today, isn't there? A lot of foolishness in the church, people who proudly declaring their independence from the word of God. So, uh, two thoughts. One is, it feels like there's a lot of, one of the reasons I like talking about this with you is because, um, we have to look at what's in front of us and not downplay it.

When people downplay it, it just gaslights people and they end up insane, you know? You know that language of gaslighting? Like if I keep saying to my wife, baby, like something's wrong with you. Like eventually she will snap and it makes sense. And I think that there's a lot of people

who are trying to be faithful Catholics and everyone's like, why are you being such a weirdo? Like stop being so scrupulous or rigid or something like this. And I think we're seeing a lot of snappings as it were, which I, to my mind seemed perfectly understandable, but the snappings seem to either look like apostasy. Like we're going to just go to the Orthodox cause this thing's a mess. I'm not realizing that it's a mess everywhere. Or we're going to join some fringe group on the peripheries of Catholicism.

Or maybe the set of accountants were right and Pope Francis isn't the Pope at all. Like I need to say something as loud, namely I've got to become a set of accountants, that matches the loudness of the chaos outside because that seems to be the only response that takes the loudness outside seriously. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And that's why I was really happy when you started the program today with, let's talk about Jesus, because people are snapping into suspicion, anger, hatred, of those who they feel are undermining the church, you know, but that's not the Holy Spirit, the spirit of hatred or the spirit of anger or the spirit

of profound suspicion, you know, or snapping into, well, let's join them, we can't beat them, you know, I guess the church needs to change and that's where we're going, let's go there. And that's why the ministry I'm connected with, Renewal Ministries, we keep saying, we just wanna be in the center. We just wanna be in the center of relationship with the Lord. We just wanna love God and love our neighbor,

and we wanna be faithful to what's revealed to us in the teaching of the church. We wanna be realistic about all the confusion, and we wanna identify it and help people to be freed of it, but we don't want to fall into a fleshly reaction. A reaction of, you know, we don't want to fall into the flesh. Yeah, one way or the other, because you say flesh, and people often associate that with sexual concupiscence, but it also has to do with hatred and... Yeah, just the fallen human nature.

We don't want to fall into our fallen human nature's reaction to things. We want to be formed by the Word of God. We want to be led by the Spirit of God. We want the fruits of the Holy Spirit to be evident in our lives and our relationships. And some of us do have a mission of addressing the confusion, but we need to address it in the right way. And it's a delicate path to tread, but we're asking the Lord to help us address it

in a way that delivers people from the deception. One of the things I found is I wrote this book called The Church in Crisis, Pathways Forward, and people have been writing me and telling me, now that I can name the confusion, now that I can name the deceptions, now that I can freely acknowledge that we've got serious problems, I feel free to preach the gospel. I feel free to carry out my mission as a priest or a bishop.

I've gotten letters from bishops and priests saying, this has given me power to actually carry out my ministry. Now I kind of know what we're dealing with. I know what the truth is, and I just feel so encouraged now to help other people be delivered from this deception. And quite honestly, man, I just have to say I've never been tempted to leave the Catholic Church. Honestly, it's definitely the Church founded by Christ, and for all its problems, where else can we go? You know, only the Catholic Church has all the means of salvation available, has all the truth that Christ has

revealed to us. It's on the books. It doesn't get off the books a lot of times. It doesn't get out of the documents a lot of times, but it's there. And anybody who wants the fullness of the means of salvation, the fullness of revelation, that's where it is. And we've had, you know, popes can be bad leaders, popes can be bad people, you know, bishops can be jerks, you know. I mean, all those things are true, but it doesn't take away from it being the Church that Christ founded. And one of the biggest arguments for the Church being the Church of Christ is that it's still here. Really,

honestly, that's a very serious argument. It's still here. When I was in the Vatican recently and you see the history that's involved there, I went into the, what do they call it? The Scavi tour. And I saw where Peter's bones were and you think of the succession of Popes down throughout the ages. You talked a moment ago about being in the radical center. What's the difference between being in the radical center and the mere middle? Yeah. Well, the radical center isn't triangulating between positions.

Nice. Very well put. It isn't trying to get like a neutral position that doesn't offend anybody or nobody's going to attack you for. The radical center is the radicalness of Christ and the radicalness of what he's asking us to do and the radicalness of what the church actually teaches. And it's a challenging place to be. It's the very center, I think, of the gospel message, you know?

And you know, Peter Crave wrote a book years ago called Jesus Shock, and quite honestly, if you are not shocked by what Jesus says, you're not paying attention. I don't think a lot of people are paying attention to that. That happened to me this morning. I was at Holy Mass, right, and the gospel was read about Christ walking on the water, just briefly, right? I think it's in John's gospel. And then the homily was given, and he talked about that. And I'm like, I don't think that was in the Gospel when I went back. Oh no, it was. I missed it. How do you miss that? I miss so much.

Yeah. No, honestly, almost every day when I'm reading the readings, when I'm not able to go to Mass, and even when I go to Mass I read the readings in my morning prayer time. I'm struck by something that I haven't noticed before, haven't noticed the relevance of before, haven't noticed the profound insight that's contained there or the profound challenge that's there or really the strong thing that's being said. And quite honestly, there's tremendous pressure on priests and bishops and laypeople today to not notice that stuff and to not talk about it. What do you mean? Well, say there's three readings on Sunday Mass, and one of them talks about the eternal

consequences of rejecting Jesus and gnashing of teeth and the worm that never dies, eternal consequences. I'd say there's a particular allergy today against really paying attention to the eternal consequences. It's part of the culture. Everybody gets a trophy, nobody's responsible, everybody's a winner, that type of thing. Even the bad guys in modern movies you end up sympathizing with. Yeah, yeah, so it's sort of like, I wrote a chapter in The Church in Crisis, chapter 6, called Is Anybody Responsible? Turns out there isn't. There's no one responsible. Yeah, it's very amorphous, it's institutional, it's structural, it's whatever.

It's not me. And so I tried to take a close look at what the Catechism of the Catholic Church really talks about, about copability, because in one of my summer classes with priests, I was doing a course on stages of spiritual growth, we were talking about serious sin and the conditions for mortal sin, and serious matters, sufficient reflection, full consent of the will. And one of the priests got up and he said, you know what guys, and he's talking to his fellow priests, I guess he forgot that I was a lay person. And he said, you know, sometimes we use those three conditions for mortal sin as an excuse for excusing ourselves.

He says sometimes because we feel like this passion involved or you know this pressure involved that we don't really, we're not really consenting fully and you know and so it's okay you know. And he said let's face it sometimes you can consent in a split second, you can really know what you're doing is wrong and decide to do it anyway and then cover up and pretend that you didn't really do it you know. So this is a pretty brave thing for this priest to say, but it got me interested in actually taking a look at what the Catechism says, and it says a number of what I think are fairly

radical but true things. It says that nobody should be considered to be ignorant of the natural law. Everybody should know that to kill somebody is bad, to steal something is bad, to tell a lie is bad. You know, like there's something that deep within us that the Lord has put in us that we can't deny is there. Then it also says is that when it's talking about consent, it says sufficient consent. Sufficient consent can happen in a split second, you know, because you can really know what you're doing and do it. And then it also says that people who claim to be ignorant about the morality or immorality of something

actually have a responsibility to seek to know what the truth is. And if they're not trying to find out what the moral truth is about something in particular, they're culpable. You know, so not to be actively seeking to know what the truth is about something in particular, they're culpable. So not to be actively seeking to know what the truth is and to form your conscience according to this culpability. So there's a lot of stuff in Scripture, too. But I'd say the overwhelming approach of Scripture is not trying to determine culpability, but to say, stop doing these objectively wrong things, because you may be not very culpable,

you may be limitantly culpable, you may be fully culpable, but we don't know. Only God can judge culpability. But what you're doing is seriously wrong, and it's going to hurt you, and it's going to hurt other people. So you got to kind of start the journey out of it. And of course, a lot of people are slaves to sin,

particularly sexual sin, or lying, or compulsive this or compulsive that. And we have a patron saint, you know, St. Augustine, you know, who really is a great patron saint for people who are slaves to sin, whatever the sin is. His own sin was, you know, sexual sin. And he said, by the time I wanted to get free, I couldn't get free, I really was a slave. But he says, I was time I wanted to get free, I couldn't get free, I really was a slave. But he says, I was responsible for having gotten to that point by a whole series of free decisions I made earlier in my life that built the chains

of addiction in me type of thing. So all I could do at this point was kind of say, Lord have mercy on me, I can't stop doing this, help me get out of it. And then there's about 25 things that the Lord did to weaken the chains of sin and help me get out of it. And then there's about 25 things that the Lord did to weaken the chains of sin and he finally got out of it. But quite honestly, a lot of people go to confession now just to feel better.

They wanna feel better, but they don't really have an intention to stop sinning. And a lot of times confessors now are giving people advice like, well, you're not really probably fully culpable here and don't worry about it too much. A lot of people are being told that serious sin is not serious sin. Unfortunately, this is all penetrated into the sacramental practice of the Church. And you know, what the Catholic Church teaches about the sacrament of penance is that if you don't

really want to stop doing what you're confessing, you don't really have sufficient contrition. That you really need to want to stop doing what you're doing, and you need to be willing to take the steps needed to do that. That's right. And you know, Thomas Aquinas makes a distinction between wishful thinking and actually willing something. And he says, if you just say, I want to, I wish I could stop doing this, but don't have actually practical steps that you're willing to take to actually stop doing it. You're not serious. You know, I, I agree with everything you're saying.

I want to add some nuance and you too, what you think about this, because I also encounter people who love the Lord and desperately want to follow him and are struggling with script velocity. So what I would say is you have to make a firm purpose of amendment. You have to want, just like you said, to never fall into this sin again. That's different to realizing that due to my own weakness, I foresee this likely happening again. Those two things aren't at odds, are they?

I want to stop, I'm going to do everything in my power to stop. I just don't want people hearing you and then feeling? I wanna stop, I'm gonna do everything in my power to stop, but I just don't want people hearing you and then feeling like, oh gosh, I have to do everything in my power to stop, even the things I haven't even considered, and therefore my confession is invalid, and this is what I'm also encountering with people. So I'm encountering the hard-heartedness

and the kind of wimpy cowardice that justifies my own wretchedness and tries to put lipstick on the pig of that, as it were. But then I'm also seeing people who are plagued by, I'd say, demonic attack in some instances. Scrupulosity, there's a difference between tender conscience and scrupulosity. Scrupulosity is not a cross we're being called to embrace, I would say. It's more likely to be a scourge we're called to renounce. How do these two go together? No, no, no, no, I absolutely agree with you, Matt.

Yeah, scopulosity is another issue that needs to be handled differently. But I would wanna say that for everybody, whether they're inclined towards the permissive, careless, presuming in God's grace or scopulosity, the key thing, I think, is taking the concrete steps and continuing to persevere and taking the concrete steps. Such like, hey, if drinking causes you to fall into sin,

stop drinking. You gotta cut it out. Yeah, golly. If you need the help of a 12-step group, get into a 12-step group. If you need an accountability partner, do that. If your computer's causing you to sin, get rid of it. Basically, Jesus says, if your right hand is causing you to sin, cut it off. If your right foot is causing you to sin, cut it off. If your right eye's

causing you to sin, pluck it out. So Jesus is basically saying, take whatever measures you have to take to get free from serious sin, because serious sin will kill you. He says, don't be afraid of those who can kill the body, but rather be afraid of the death of body and soul and hell. So Jesus is giving strong medicine, saying He doesn't really want us to cut off our hand or pluck out our eye, but He wants us to get serious about taking the practical steps that we can take. And if somebody's suffering from scrupulosity, even if they're not, following the guidance of a spiritual director or a confessor, okay, well look, you made this kind of progress, you got more progress to make, two steps forward, one step backward, but let's keep working on this and

let's keep asking God to deliver you from this because you can't do it without the grace of God. Yeah, the best line I keep coming back to from that wonderful book I always recommend with, This go on the points of the Quants bingo card. I believe in love where he says, I'm not telling you, you believe too much in your own wretchedness. We're far more wretched than we could ever hope to imagine. I'm telling you, you don't believe enough in merciful love. Right? So at the end of the day, it's the merciful love that saves me, not my own efforts.

How do we say the two things together? This is what's so difficult because it's not like our Lord said, if your hand causes your sin, cut it off. Then someone said, I'm just afraid that those are the scrupulous consciences. But I understand you like it seems like a completely inappropriate thing to say to our Lord during that time. But then we also don't have any instance that I can think of where the Lord condemns a repentant sinner.

No, can you think of one? No, no. Like, he's condemning those who refuse to see their sin. No, no, absolutely not. In fact, but on the other hand, every time the Lord reaches out to a sinner and extends mercy that confounds the legalist of his day, like the woman caught in adultery in John chapter 8, He says, is anybody left to condemn you? And she says, no Lord, nobody's left to condemn me. And then Jesus, well neither do I condemn you, but go and sin no more.

So when the Lord extends mercy to people, he expects them to repent. He expects them to stop sinning. Same with John chapter 5, the guy who for 38 years never could be the first one down into the pool to get healed and what a powerful. Yeah. Our Lord says to him Do you want to be well? Yeah, and he heals them. Yeah, but what a question like how many of us are just making excuses for our own Serious sins. Yeah, and we give a half-hearted. No, I want to be well. Oh, that's what I'm addressing because the Lord's saying, do you? Half-hearted is not, is not what I'm asking. I think he's a good thought experiment. Let's say your sin is with, let's say, self-abuse.

If you knew without a doubt that the next time you committed self-abuse, like, I don't know, like you would literally go blind or someone close to you would be killed or someone would photograph what you were doing. And like you'd probably find it within you. Maybe not, but probably to resist the temptation. And so I think that's just like, okay, well, if you're willing to resist temptation for the sake of that, you should be willing to resist temptation for the sake of that, you should be willing to resist temptation for the love of Christ. Yeah, but also self-love.

I mean, do you love yourself? I mean, do you want to end up in heaven rather than hell? I mean, do you want to have a life of eternal bliss or do you want a life of eternal misery? Yeah, talk about self-love, right? That's self-love. I've heard you say sin never helps. Yeah. Sin always hurts.

Yeah, because it's a distortion of God's plan for human life. And so what do we do? Like, because I think Catholics want to be faithful Catholics. They also see leaders faltering at their posts or just saying outright insanity. They don't want to end up like the Protestant who says, well, we just have to go with the real church, which is somehow not associated with the hierarchical church. I mean, we've swung by this,

but I just feel like this is- There's only one church, and it's a hierarchical church. So what do you do? What do you do in a diocese if you're like, these priests are heretics and the bishop said this and... Yeah. You need to take responsibility for knowing what the faith is.

Amen. You need to take responsibility for knowing the Word of God, knowing how the Catholic Church has understood it through the centuries, knowing how it's really contained today in the catechism of the Catholic Church. I think the number one priority for Catholics today is recovering our confidence in the inspiration and inerrancy of sacred scripture, because that's where it all kind of flows from that. And honestly, I think the reason why these major church leaders are so weak and so ambivalent

and so unable to give a clear sound from the trumpet is because they've lost their confidence in the inspiration and iner the emergency of sacred scripture. And a lot of Catholics don't even know what the Catholic Church teaches about it. There's a whole document in Vatican II, and that's another whole issue, isn't it, Vatican II? There's a whole document in Vatican II on sacred revelation, and it says the primary author of sacred scripture is God. And it says, the primary author of Sacred Scripture is God. Well, that's kind of a radical thing to say. You mean this book, the primary author is God.

He works through human instruments in their own culture, in their own language, in their own psychology. But what he inspires them to assert that's there for our salvation is asserted by the Holy Spirit. And then in section 11 of the document it says, everything asserted by the sacred writers should be considered to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, to teach faithfully, firmly, and without error those truths that God wished to consign to the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation. Honestly, people need to know that, and they need to know then what's been put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation. They need to read the Word of God, you know, fancy word,

luxio divina, but we need to prayerfully read the Word of God and ask God to let it speak to us and meditate on it, chew on it, think about it, spend time with those parts of the scripture that kind of like trigger something in you, either a reaction or a shock or love, whatever it is, kind of stay with it and let it really form you, let it really get into your mind and heart. And so I just think that's the key.

How do you do that personally? Yeah. Well. Do you like, do you read through a book of the Bible at a time? Do you try to do like, Sio Divina on the daily mass readings? Yeah. Well, I think you really need to connect prayer and meditate on the word of God together. So I try to take a time each morning, a prayer time.

And I mentioned my saying yes to the Lord moment, which was really the most important decision in my life. I think the second most important decision in my life was taking some time each day for personal prayer. I know it's going to sound like, really? Yes, really. But I knew I was going to not always experience the strength of God's love or His presence, but I knew that what He had shown me about Himself was the most real

thing I could ever know, and I needed to build into my life paying attention to Him in some kind of way. And so taking some time each day for personal prayer. So I've been doing that for, you know, more than 50 years now, and I have to tell you, you know, I've had my share of sleepy prayer times and distracted prayer times and, you know, shortened prayer times and skipped prayer times, but despite the imperfection of my prayer times, it's kept me in contact with the Lord. And what I do is I start off in the morning,

I get a cup of coffee. First thing I do, I don't check my email first, I don't have breakfast first. I'll get a cup of coffee. That's probably a weakness, I don't know. I could probably do without it if I needed to, but as long as I don't need to, it's okay. And then I'll start by praying like the angel taught the children of

Fatima to pray. I think we talked about this previously. Tell us again though. Yeah. So the angel of Portugal appeared to the children of Fatima a year before Mary appeared to them to get them ready for what was coming. And the first time he appeared to them, he said, pray like this. And he knelt down with his forehead towards the ground. Oh, they said he looked like about a 15-year-old boy, but he was like shimmering and radiant and everything.

He says, pray like this. I believe in you. I adore you. I hope in you. And I love you. And I ask your pardon for those who don't believe in you and don't adore you and don't hope in you and don't love you." And he repeated it three times. So I try to start off by kneeling down on my floor and putting my forehead down and praying that and it's just a way of me expressing something to the Lord of adoration,

of obedience, of acknowledging my creatureliness and the appropriateness of bowing before Him. You know, it reminds me of something Catherine of Siena said where she began her prayer time by saying, you are the one who is, and I am the one who is not. Getting clear who God is, and I am the one who is not. I'm getting clear who God is, getting clear the stance of a creature before God,

you know, type of thing. So then I'll sit in my comfortable chair, and I'll just kind of try to pay attention to the Lord, just try to be in his presence. I've got this icon of Jesus, people who watch our YouTube channel see it behind me, and I'll look over at the icon of Jesus, people who watch our YouTube channel see it behind me, and I'll look over at the icon of Jesus, and I don't know, it just kind of like,

it just makes him real. It just reminds me of how personal he is and how real he is, and I'm not worshiping a piece of wood, but honestly, the icon really is doing what icons are supposed to do. You know, it's really drawing doing what icons are supposed to do. It's really drawing me to the person

that it's depicting type of thing. And I'll do that for a fair amount of time. And then when I start to drift away, I'll pick up my Magnificat, my little... I've actually got it here with me today. I read it on the airplane because I had to get up early. So where is my Magnificat? So anyway, it's in here somewhere.

And I'll get that out and I'll do the short little morning prayer and the psalm. And then there's like a little place where you can put it in intercessions. And I've got a little yellow sticky note with kind of urgent for now prayer intentions, you know, people who are dying or people who are sick or people are going through crises. And then I've got two pages of long-term prayer requests that only occasionally I actually go through all those, you know, type of thing. And then I'll get to the readings of Mass, and I expect to find something there, you know? Yes, I like that, that holy expectation, the Lord will meet me in this.

Yeah, I expect to find something there that's a word from the Lord, because it is a word from the Lord, but I expect to find something there that's a word of the Lord for me today, that kind of is going to underline a truth or confirm something or show me something new, or this is sometimes where I get ideas for YouTube videos. I'll say, wow, you know, I never noticed that before. I've got to tell people about that, you know, type of thing, you know. And then I'll go on to this meditation. Sometimes they're very inspiring, sometimes they're not. And then there's the saint of the day, which I really like.

I look forward to the saint of the day because I had no idea about most of these saints. I'd never heard of them, you know, fourth century, eighth century, all kinds of, you know, radical things that they do, you know, and but no matter what their external circumstances of their life are, I'm inspired by the love of God. You know, what's in common to all the saints is they love God with their whole heart, mind, soul, and strength, and their neighbors themselves.

They're obeying God. They're carrying out the mission that the Lord's given them. So I find that encouraging. And, you know, I'm not a guy inclined to sit on a pole in the Egyptian desert, but I am inclined to try to love God and love my neighbor in my marriage, in my family, in my neighborhood, in my job type of thing, you know. And then I'll just put it down again and I'll just kind of be with the Lord again some more, just kind of being quiet and being in His presence. And you know, sometimes I have a strong sense of His presence, sometimes not, you know, but it doesn't matter. You know, I'm just kind of paying attention to Him, kind of dragging my weak body there and trying

to pay attention. It's just God does something by, it enables him to keep a hold of you. It enables you to kind of keep him in your mind and heart, you know? So that's what I do. Something I've been learning lately and I've said it before, but I'll say it again because I think it really is blessing many families and that is better to be consistent than perfect. And I say that in particular in regards to the Holy Rosary. You've never seen a less impressive rosary than if you come to the frat house. And the reason it's unimpressive in one way is so that Dad doesn't

have to be frustrated throughout it. When I first got married and had kids I had an idea of what family rosaries ought to look like and they were very rigorous and there was definitely Candles and kneeling and all of that's terrific and people who are better than me are praying that way but because I Couldn't seem to be able to keep that up or my children couldn't keep it up But I did not getting frustrated at the children because my own self-love my children couldn't keep it up. And I ended up getting frustrated at the children because my own self love. So now our rosaries look like,

all right, come on, go on, just come in. Or don't, like, I don't really care. Like come in, one kid's drawing, one kid's coughing, just go to bed if you're sick. Another kid's making a fort out of pillows on the couch. And dad isn't on his knees. Dad's like in the recliner, you know, sometimes his son snuggling up with

him. And so in some ways it's just completely unremarkable. But it's the way I know how to do it with regularity. And so our rosary has become more like a warm fire that invites the children around the hearth and less like a hail, why aren't you saying it? Say the hail Mary, pick up the bloody rosary, how dare you! Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but you know what I'm saying? No, no, no, no, speak to that if you agree with it. Imperfect prayer is valuable, is precious, it's so much better than no prayer. And I experienced that with the rosary too, you know, I prayed the rosary over the years, but never on a daily basis until a number of years ago. You know,

Mary of Adam, I said, pray the rosary every day, particularly for world peace, you know. And you know, I do think the world is in grave danger today. And you know, if it was in danger between World War I and World War II and there wasn't repentant World War II came I think we're in grave danger today in many many ways so I've been saying the rosary every day and I have hardly missed and when I do miss I say two rosaries the next day but there there's generally imperfect rosaries. There was that one time. Yeah, yeah they're generally imperfect rosaries and I'll say them while I'm walking, I'll

say them while I'm in the car. My most devout rosaries are when I'm just sitting there on our front porch and I'm not rushing, I'm not hurrying, got a little statue of Mary in the garden there, but those are few and far between. It feels like anything in life. If I was to wait till I was to be the perfect husband before proposing, I wouldn't be married yet. And if I was to wait until this rosary would be perfect,

I wouldn't have said it yet. I like how Peterson, Jordan Peterson puts it, what's something you could do that even you would actually do that would make your life better? And so I was like, hey, well, maybe right now you can't be praying the way you envision these wonderful, holy people praying. Well, how could a slo't be praying the way you envision these wonderful holy people praying.

Well, how could a slob like you get through it? Yeah. And start with that. Let's encourage everybody who's listening right now, Matt, if they aren't trying to take a daily prayer time to take a daily prayer time, if they're not seeing the rosary, see the rosary. Let's say there's something people can take away from the program today that could really make a difference in their life. Just choose something.

Yes. And do it. Just choose something. Yes. Do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like exercise, isn't it? Like New Year's comes around and we know exactly how our next year is going to look in regards to exercise, but it's those small little things. But I love what you said about just trying to keep the presence of the Lord. Because, I mean, we know what it's like to live with a spouse who we're in danger of no longer seeing.

Right. No longer being attentive to. I mean, how many times have I had one of my children been in, I don't know, in a place where I wasn't able to perceive where they were in order to respond because I was just oblivious. Right. If I can do that with flesh and blood people walking about my house and leaving a mess. Right.

That's what my kids do. I love them. Yeah. But I can do that with a little... Hey, look, I found it. You found it. Now, I really want to tell people that I really find this helpful, you know. I find it helpful. I have a little structure. You know, when I'm getting distracted, something I can turn to to kind of help me focus on the Word of God. So I don't get any commission for this. They don't even know that I promoted it as much as I do. But you could go to Magnificat.com and order this. And once a month it comes and it's got readings for every day. And it's a really helpful way of kind of nurturing a little daily prayer time for yourself. And again, I'm gonna respond to the

objections some people might have, which is, that doesn't seem nearly as rigorous enough. Like I should be praying the Liturgy of the Hours, and not just the Liturgy of the Hours, but the Liturgy of the Hours prior to the change. It's like, well maybe, but look at you, you're pathetic. And whatever you do, don't neglect the Office of Readings. Yeah, no, do what you can. This is like the poor man's brief. That's right. Really, before they had it online, I was very ribbon challenged. People would give me the four volumes

and I wouldn't really know where to do the ribbons and what the right antiphon was and what year we were in and stuff like this. So this is like the poor man's kind of way of- Appropriate for a poor people like me. Yes. Yeah, well, yeah, what's that? This is like the poor man's kind of, you know, appropriate for a poor person like me. Yes. Yeah.

Well, yeah. What's that? Oh, sorry. Since we're talking about the little prayer aids, do you have Dr. Martin, an opinion on, I think it's called the Benedictus. It's the same thing, but for like, oh, there's a Latin mass. Yes. Do you have an opinion on that one?

And would you recommend it to people who are more old world or more old? No, I don't have an opinion on that. Okay Okay, that's all I wanted to ask you since we were talking about it Yeah, that is an option for those who attend the traditional Latin mass. There's something similar for them. Okay, and There's no ribbon holding so those who are really challenged like us might might benefit from that Okay, what I want to do now is take a quick break. And then when we come back, I'd love to take questions from our local supporters over at matphred.locals.com. We'll take some super chats as well. And, uh, and that'll be that.

So if you haven't yet got the app, hello, what are you doing? If you have a smart system, go and download hello, but first go to hello.com slash Matt. Fred. Hello is the number one On your kidding and it's fantastic and it actually be ticked off recently as far as in the episode, you know that It's actually cause you call hello dot com slash Matt Brad go over there sign up You'll get three months for free if at the end of the three months you don't want it anymore You can quit you don't have to pay a cent. They have sleep stories. No, no, I don't want to be there. Really, thanks for bringing it up.

It's one of those things. We don't know. I know. No, say nada. Hello. H a L. Taka Carlson. Wow.

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Everything Catholic dot com. You're back. All right. I want to point out that the microphones were apparently still on and we were discussing Tucker Carlson being fired fire to Fox News apparently. But given that Dr. Ralph Martin and I have very little opinion or knowledge on this subject, we're not going to comment on it, but I apologize for that. All right. Well, let's see. I asked people a moment ago if they had questions for you and they are filing in. When's your hard out time? Do you have a time where you need to? No, no, I'm fine. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to make sure.

No, the next flight out is until five. So, but I've got stuff I brought with me to read and stuff like that. So, okay. And whenever you feel like. That's right. We won't go to four then. Yeah. We'll have mercy on you. Drew the Catholic says, how can we best approach renewing our parishes and dealing with the conflict when it arises, especially conflict with those who like the new ways, which are literally contrary

to the germ and the faith itself? Well, I would say if there's something going on in our parish that is not true, if falsehood is being taught, if the liturgy is not being celebrated reverently, we should have a friendly, respectful conversation with the pastor or the priest and just say, gee, Father, I, you know, I felt like, you know, the catechism says something different on

this point, you know, and I was just wondering if I understood you correctly. So we shouldn't presume that we've caught somebody in heresy. Yeah. We should go and try to understand what they were trying to say and if indeed they were trying to say something that is wrong. So you're probably like, I think that, you know, that shouldn't really be taught, you know. Now on liturgical things, I think we need to be careful there because if somebody doesn't do the proper number of genuflections or doesn't hold their fingers right, quite honestly, I think we should let that go. You know, I think we should really focus on the main things, you know, and is there faith

there, is there reverence there, is there basic conformity to the liturgical instructions there. So that would be my opinion on that. I think we shouldn't become liturgical police trying to police liturgical irregularities unless there's something really wrong going on. Yeah, the difference between holding your fingers a certain way and then liturgical dancing. Right, right, right, right. And if there's something seriously wrong going on,

and we don't get an adequate response from the pastor, we should go to the bishop. We definitely should. You know, if it's a serious matter that's misleading people or undermining people's faith or teaching error or abusing the Eucharist, we should definitely go to the bishop. And we should talk to them, we should ask them,

you know, what's going on, and just tell them what our experience has been. And then we need to kind of leave it there. You know, it would be okay to go back to the bishop, say, you know, have you done anything about this? You know, probably the bishop will say, I'll look into it, or I'll get back to you, and he may not look into it, he might not get back to you, and so that's frustrating. But after we've kind of pursued it to a certain

point, we need to let go of it, you know, and he's going to have to answer to God. I think too though, you vote with where you go. Yeah. Like schools are like that. I think a lot of parents are waking up to the fact that the Catholic school, not all of them, but some of the Catholic schools are just train wrecks and deserve to be shut down and you sending little Johnny there isn't helping him and it's not helping anybody. And so let's pull him out and let's go to this little co-op over here. Let's homeschool him.

Let's send him to this faithful Catholic school. Yeah, and some parishes I think are like that. Yeah, and again I'm not saying all parishes but this is there's definitely parishes out there Like this is a train wreck like this. Yeah, I'm not gonna bring my children here to be scandalized here And if I have another option, I'm gonna just take that and no no no question about it You know if we don't feel like we're called to fight and we can make a difference, yeah, and we think that this isn't feeding our family or good for our family, definitely looking for another parish would be the thing to do for sure. Flipplin says, I read Martin's book, The Fulfillment of Old Desire.

In the book, he references many works written by saints. I'd like to start reading works by some of these saints. Would Martin have a recommendation for what to start reading for someone who is a beginner, or a particular saint who isn't difficult to read? Kind of like a gateway drug to reading the works of the saints. Yeah. Well, honestly, almost every saint that's a doctor of the church that you can read, you need some orientation to, and some understanding about how they're going about what they're doing, what they're actually doing. So that's why I wrote The Fulfillment of All Desires. So I would really recommend that you

pay careful attention to how I unfold the teachings of the saints in that book. If after that you really feel like you want to get into one of the saints yourself, book. If after that you really feel like you want to get into one of the saints yourself, I'd probably recommend Francis de Sales, who wrote the first book of spirituality for Catholic lay people. Unbelievably beautiful book. Yeah, and the True Devote, what is it? It's called the Introduction to the Divine Life. So very practical, very easy to understand, flowery language sometimes, elaborate metaphor sometimes about bees seeking for honey

and stuff like that. But very solid, very good practical advice in all different kinds of areas of Christian life. I would second that. I would say that's the best book, the best gateway drug as it were to get into the writings of these great saints. The next one I'd probably recommend would be

Teresa of L'Azoo, but at the same time, for some people she's an acquired taste. She was for me. Yeah, some people immediately get the depth of what's going on with her. Other people feel it's a little flowery and a little feminine, you know, type of thing. Yeah. I personally can't read it to the end without crying, but it's an acquired

taste in a certain way. Another one would be Teresa of Avila, but she needs a little orientation. She says herself, you know, I'm so scatterbrained, you know, I forgot where I was writing the last time I took off, you know, I forget where I was, but I'll just kind of dive in and go on. So it's sort of like a little stream of consciousness, certain places. And then in other places, it's like technical language, you know, what's the difference between, you know, infused contemplation, prayer of union, prayer of recollection, and so it gets kind of a little technical. So that's why I try to sort out in my book, you know, giving some orientation to that.

She talks about the seven mansions and she uses imagery. So you know, yeah, I'm not discouraging anybody from reading this, but I just want to say that it does take sometimes a little orientation to really understand what's going on. You must be gratified that your book, for many, has been the, as it were, gateway drug to these excellent saints. No, I'm very, very grateful. These saints have made such a difference in my own life, and I just really felt like the

Lord wanted me to really understand them and was giving me the grace to do that. As I did that I felt like He was asking me to try to put together a picture of the whole thing in a way that people could understand that was orderly but wasn't kind of watering them down at all but was assisting them to talk to people. Kind of thing. This is a good question from Kyle Whittington, just to set it up. You know, you often hear Catholics say that Christ said that the gates of hell will not overcome the church. Therefore we should expect weeds within the field. We should expect sinners, but the church will remain. Well,

for some people they're like, really? Is this remaining? So the question is what would it look like for the church to have failed? I understand as a Catholic, you think that's an impossibility. But I mean, what would that look like if you were wrong? Christ didn't establish the Catholic Church. What would it look like for it to have failed? Well, I would say that nowhere on the face of the earth could you find the church. I mean, short of that, the Church is still there, you know.

But I mean, the Church... What about her failing her teaching mission? I mean, you could have the Catholic Church, quote-unquote, on every land, but what if she's teaching heresy and has abandoned it? Well, that would be the anti-Church. That would be the false Church. That wouldn't be the true Catholic Church, you know. So, unfortunately, we're going to have to decide who we can trust and who we can believe and who we can follow.

But we have to do it on the basis of a sound knowledge of what the faith is. And we have to be able to say, this is the faith, that isn't the faith. This bishop's teaching the truth, this bishop isn't. This parish is teaching the truth, this parish isn't, you know, this parish is teaching truth, this parish isn't. I'm afraid that we're morphing into the Anglican Church, you know, that we're going to have conservative dioceses and liberal dioceses, and it's really going to be a different gospel, a different faith, different morality. So it looks like we're moving in that direction, and unless there's an intervention from the Lord, I don't see the German bishops or all the others that are coming forward now declaring that they don't believe what

the Church teaches changing that. Even if the final sin and process kind of papers things over, ends up reaffirming the faith with little loopholes, I don't see how these bishops and cardinals that have declared themselves as not believing what the church teaches are going to change their belief. I think they're just going to go on. They're going to say, no, we're not breaking from Rome, you know, we're not teaching against the faith, but we're

talking about pastoral application, pastoral compassion, and so they're going to end up affirming people in serious sin without actually declaring that they're doing that. So I think that's clearly where we're heading short of an intervention. But to say that the Catholic Church may be morphing into the Anglican Church, isn't that just to say that the Catholic Church is failing or will fail? Well, parts of the Catholic Church are going to fail. And is it?

Like they have, like the Church of North Africa disappearing. It used to be strong, that's the Church of Augustine, the Church of Cyprian, the Church of, you know. So the Church can disappear in sections of the world. The Church can be unfaithful to its mission in parts and disappear. Jesus didn't promise that the church in this city, in this state, will endure to the end, you know. And actually the picture we get, Matt, and this is one of the radical things that Scripture reveals to us, the Catechism the Catholic Church also teaches, 2 Thessalonians chapter, Paul says, don't be alarmed by so-called prophecies

saying Jesus has already come or is just about to come because two things need to happen before the Lord returns. These two things are very shocking. One is the great apostasy. So what's an apostasy? It isn't something that pagans do, it's something that Christians do, and it's the turning away from faith on the part of those who once had it. So when Jesus says, when the Son of Man returns, is he going to find

any faith on the earth? That sounds pretty bleak. Yes it does. Yes it does. And 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 kind of unfolds that, the great apostasy. We're certainly living in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. And so Paul says there's two things that need to happen. One is the great apostasy, and we're certainly seeing a great apostasy. We really are. We're seeing huge sections of traditional Catholicism and Christianity depart from the faith. Nations that once were proudly Catholic are now

anti-Catholic. Yeah, think of Quebec, think of Ireland. Yes, yes, think of France, think of Italy, think of Germany, think of the Scandinavian countries, think of traditional, think of Canada, you know, like so. And that battle's going on here in the United States too. But, you know, fortunately, one of the blessings that God has given us is uppity lay people like you, you know, who know the faith

and are actually proclaiming it and actually being a voice of clarity for people. You know, we have an educated laity here that has a freedom and a courage to preach and teach the truth that I think is really almost unique in the world right now, which is very special. So the great apostasy. The second thing Paul says is that there's something restraining evil.

There's something that's holding back evil, but it's going to be removed. And then we're going to see unrestrained lawlessness. So I don't know if there's any restraints that haven't been yet removed in our culture, you know. Chapter 2 isn't that long. Could we read through it? Sure. And we can pause and you can interject whenever you like. Yeah, I mean, this is a lot more shocking things than 2.

I mean, it's already shocking enough, the great apostasy and removal of the restrainer on evil, but go ahead. Would you like to finish the point before I read it or? Well, there's several more points. Yeah, feel free, feel free. Okay, well. Yeah. We're now living in a place where the Ten Commandments have been taken away from our culture. People are fighting to bring them back.

We'll see if they're successful or not. Restraints on euthanasia and abortion and infanticide are all being removed in different ways. The country splitting into different parts, the red states and the blue states, it's a little bit like the Catholic Church splitting along some of those same issues. And then we have openly demonic manifestations of,

I don't want to reason with you, I don't want to dialogue with you, I don't want to dialogue with you, I don't care what the truth is, I just want to destroy you, I want to silence you, I want to cancel you, you don't have a right to speak. The rejection of being able to listen to reason or evidence, or the lack of concern for reason and evidence, who would have thought that the Catholic Church would emerge as one of the few voices of reason and logic and evidence in the culture today, because people are getting away with it. I mean, speakers come to speak at universities and they're shouted down.

They say, you don't have a right to speak. Academic freedom is kind of like under siege, shall we say. But anyway, then Paul goes on to say, then the man of lawlessness will be revealed, most people feel like that's the Antichrist, and then it says, with every deception available to him, false signs and wonders, which is why true signs and wonders are, we need to distinguish between true signs and wonders and false signs and wonders. False signs and wonders don't bring people to conversion, they don't bring people to faith. They bring people to marvel at what's just happened or at the person who's caused them to

happen. True signs and wonders are given for the purpose of revealing Jesus and bringing people to Jesus. Then it goes on to say, with every deception available to Him. So it's going to be false signs and wonders, it's going to be deception. That's why recovering our confidence in the sacred scripture and the teaching of the church and knowing it is absolutely important. The only way we're not going to be deceived is two things. One is Jesus says, my own, know my voice and I know mine. So we need to know the voice of the Lord. That comes from prayer, that comes from holiness, that comes from growing in union with Him, that comes from being accustomed to being in His presence.

But it also comes from knowing what He says, the objective Word of God, because there's still a lot of sympathy for Jesus in our culture, but it's a sentimental sympathy. Oh, Jesus is a kind person. He's so inclusive. He's so merciful. But people will never have the real Jesus if they separate Jesus from His teaching. So we need to really know the real Jesus. And the only way we can know the real Jesus is not just through our experience in prayer, but for paying attention to the Word of God, paying attention to what He says about Himself, paying attention to what He says about the world, paying attention to what he says about himself, paying attention to what he says about the world, paying attention to what he says about sin, paying attention to what he says about the consequences of not believing and not

obeying. So that's it. But then it goes on to say, those who will be deceived, who are destined to perish... Now, there's different translations there, but destined to perish. Who's destined to perish? Who's destined to be lost? Well, God doesn't destined anybody to perish. You know, 2 Timothy chapter 2, he wills the whole human race become to a knowledge of salvation. He wills that the whole human race be saved. So who's destined to perish? Well, if you keep on reading, it says, because they refuse to open their hearts to the truth and be saved. Another translation says they refuse to love the truth and be saved.

Therefore there's even more. Yeah, he who does not believe is condemned already. Yes. And that's what I was talking about earlier in the program. We're leaving out the consequences. We're leaving out the whole truth of the gospel. I know this is going to sound radical, but it's very, very rare to hear the whole truth of the gospel. I know this is going to sound radical, but it's very, very rare to hear the whole gospel preached in the Catholic Church today because we're editing the gospel, we're softening it, we're adjusting it to the culture,

we're adjusting it to our own parishioners. We know that half the people that come to church on Sunday don't believe half of what the Catholic Church teaches, so we don't want to teach it. We know that some of our main donors wouldn't like to hear what we're going to say. So unfortunately there's been a terrible pressure to edit the Gospel and not speak the whole Word of God. But then it goes on to say, this is the last thing I'll say about 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, therefore God sends a deeper delusion upon them so so that they may be condemned."

Now, that sounds really shocking, but it's sort of like saying, once you close yourself off to the truth, you can only go into deeper darkness from which it's almost impossible to return. I don't think we should ever make that judgment that somebody's reached that point. I think as long as somebody's alive, there's hope. But this does say that you can commit the sin

against the Holy Spirit. You can totally block yourself off from hearing the truth that will save you and fall into a deep deception. Now, I think we're seeing signs of that in our culture. I really do. I think what we were just talking about is people not wanting to hear certain things said and hating you and wanting to destroy you because I love my darkness. My darkness is my supreme value and I don't wanna hear anything that would challenge me because I love it so much and believe it so much.

It's like an idol I'm clinging to. And that's a very, very risky situation to be in, and you're closing yourself off from the light. But Scripture tells us that this is going to be the case. Yeah, this is an excellent response to the question that was asked, right, about how does it look like for the church to fail? It's like, well, our Lord said, will there be faith when I return? So this idea that we might have that we're on the up and up in the Catholic Church is going to keep growing, keep growing more faithful. The scriptures say the opposite. It doesn't say it's going to get better and

better. It says it's going to get worse and worse. It's going to be a test. It's going to be a test of faith. We're going to be tested. So we need to know we're going to be tested, and we need to know that God's going to give us the strength to pass the test, but we have to pass the test. And the test is not denying Jesus. The test is not being ashamed of the gospel. Amen. Let's, I want to read through this. Before you do that, sorry, could I just, could you just talk right in the front of the microphone, please? Oh yeah, you're kind of talking to the side.

Yeah, try to speak right into the, thank you, thanks, thanks, Thursday. We'll fix it, fix it up in post-production. It's all right, there is talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side.

Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side.

Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you're talking to the side. Yeah, you and sisters not to become easily unsettled or alarmed by the teaching allegedly from us, whether by a prophecy or by word of mouth or by letter asserting that the day of the Lord has already come. Don't let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion

occurs and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the man doomed to destruction. He will oppose and will exalt himself over everything that is called God or is worshipped so that he sets himself up in God's temple, proclaiming himself to be God." I missed that last time I read it. Any extra insights here? I mean, you've commented a lot. Well, I think the rebellion that we're seeing right now is characterized by the creature rebelling against the Creator and saying, as a matter of fact, we'll be God. We can

control things. We can solve the problem of death. We can solve the problem of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We can take things that we can form a society that to our mind is more just. And every time that human beings think that they can create heaven and earth without God, they end up trying to get away from God, get God out of here, because He's an obstacle. He's the opiate of the people, or He's whatever, you know, type of thing. So right now our culture is really declaring themselves independent from God, no longer needing to obey Him, no longer needing to believe Him, no longer needing to act in harmony with the Ten Commandments, which is the natural law. So I do think that the human race in rebellion

is declaring itself to be God, you know, just like the temptation in the garden. You know, the devil says, you know, no, you're not going to die if you disobey God, you'll be God yourself. Yeah. Oh, okay. So I think that we're falling for that. We're declaring ourselves to be God. Maybe it's not as shocking as we'd think.

Who would proclaim themselves to be the omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent one? You're like, well, it might not mean that, but it might mean someone declaring themselves to have authority over the natural order or authority over the moral law, perhaps. Or having the intelligence or the elite qualifications needed to rule the world. Who would do that? Verse five, don't you remember that when I was with you, I used to tell you these things. What a wonderful line. Don't you remember the implication being you don't and therefore need to be reminded, which is why we need to keep reading the scriptures because we keep forgetting. Yeah.

It also means that Paul's actually talked about these things before we just hasn't been recorded. Exactly. And now, you know, what is holding him back so that he may be revealed at the proper time. For the secret power of lawlessness is already at work, but the one who now holds it back will continue to do so till he is taken out of the way. Till who is taken out of the way? Well, the one who's holding back unrestrained evil. And who's that?

We don't know. Different fathers of the church speculate it's a decree of God. It's the church itself. I see. It's angels appointed to that, you know. Yeah. We don't know. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will overthrow with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the splendor of his coming." This is remarkable. I mean, it's like, you think, where did Paul get this? The Holy Spirit.

The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways the wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved." How's that? God, we need to be saved. We need to love the truth so we can be saved. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and be saved. For this to love the truth so we can be saved. They perish because they refuse to love the truth and be saved. For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie. What is this the lie? Is

this a submission to the Antichrist? Well, I think it's the lie that you shall be like God so you could separate yourself from God and be God yourself. Okay, so God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness. God have mercy on me.

Yeah, and this is so consistent with so many other things said by Jesus and the apostles, but we don't pay attention to it. You know, even that famous passage, John 3.16, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish. Here's the word perish again. People will perish if they don't come to Jesus.

People will perish. Or John chapter one, he came to his own, his own received them not, but those who did receive him gave the power to become sons and daughters of God. He was the light that came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light. Here people are loving their delusion, loving their idolatry, loving the darkness they've embraced more than truth, and it's causing them to perish. We certainly see, I mean that sounds so applicable to what we're seeing today. Should we be careful of trying to compare this to our time in a special way?

I mean I imagine people have read this scripture for 2,000 years and have applied it rightly to what was taking place around them. Should we be careful to avoid trying to draw the conclusion that we're in the end times right now? Yes, I think we should, but I don't think we should rule it out either. And priests are telling me, I just came from a priest conference, priests are saying people are asking us, is this the end time? You know, but we've had times like that throughout history where people think that things are shaping up to be the end times. Quite honestly, we'll only know whether this is the final confrontation or not that John Paul II is talking about.

We'll only know if this is the final apostasy and the final removal of restraints on evil if the Lord comes again. Yeah. We really can't call it on the basis of what we see. And when the Lord comes again, you won't want to have to write a best-selling book at that point. No, there won't be time to give the day or the hour. This is a good question from Michelle. With all these challenges against the Church's teachings, do you think this strengthens the Church, weakens the Church, or both, and why? Do I think what? These challenges against the Church's teachings, and you might even talk about the kind of,

the way parts of the Church seem to be rotting from within, not just attacked from without. Do you think this strengthens the Church, weakens the Church, or both? It's supposed to strengthen those who love the truth. It's supposed to strengthen those who have sincere hearts towards God and the Church. And I think actually it's a wake-up call. I think people have another chapter in Church in Christ, is we need to stop straddling the issue. There's a lot of Catholics in the lukewarm middle. They're Catholics and they're kind of sort of glad to be Catholics,

but they haven't really kind of thought through what it really means to be a disciple of Christ. And a lot of times they've taken a lot of stuff from the world into their soul, even though they still want to send their kids to Catholic school, or they want to drop their kids off a confirmation class, but, you know, don't go to mass themselves and things like that. So there's a lot of practicing Catholics who are in the lukewarm middle, and I think the only way people are going to be able to persevere as Catholics today is to up their game, is to really get more intentional about who they are, what they believe, why they believe it, and who they're going to trust and who they're going to follow. I think it means coming to grips with the person of Jesus and

his revelation and how he communicates that today through the church in its authentic ministry. So yeah, I think it will make stronger people who take it as a challenge to up their game, but it also will shake loose people who aren't interested in upping their game. And when push comes to shove, would rather not be a Catholic than to be a Catholic. I think we're seeing something like that with the post-COVID phenomena.

How so? I think we're seeing, it depends on the diocese, it depends on the parish, but in the diocese of Lansing, which is a fairly healthy diocese, good priest, a good bishop, by and large, some parishes are missing 40% of their people post-COVID. Many are missing 20% of their people. Only seven out of the 100 parishes

have recovered their pre-pandemic participation. So we've already shaken loose a lot of people who maybe got used to not going to church and don't miss it, you know, type of thing. You know, what was it adding to my life and you know, that type of thing. Yeah. I see people speaking very clearly on say sexual sins

or on the importance of rigorous fasting or like you're doing with the importance of daily scripture reading in a way that I don't remember hearing even 15, 20 years ago. How many popular Catholics were out there being like Sodom is a sin and we'll send you to hell. Don't fornicate. Stop calling it masturbation. It's self-abuse. Like repent and like you were doing it, but how many other people? Yeah, no, the numbers have grown, no question about it. It's very encouraging to me that more and more people

are noticing what scripture says and noticing what the church teaches and gaining conviction about it and stepping up, upping their game. Yeah. It's like the line has been drawn in the sand. And maybe back in the 80s and 90s, it felt less so. It felt like there was this general belief

that there's a God and he wants to send you at a happy place and you have to be basically a good person and you shouldn't tell lies. I don't know, maybe that was more prevalent. Maybe it wasn't. And of course, the closer you come to Christ, the more desperate the situation around you seems, in your own heart, as well as in the culture.

Whereas today it just seems like okay this is really on the nose we've got like satanic displays in these different award ceremonies. We have one of the most popular brands of water being a clearly demonic thing. I don't know if you've seen this. What's it called? They just had a satanic ceremony. Liquid death. Yeah, so liquid death. Everybody thought, because I won't say everybody, but a lot of people thought it was just kind of like an aesthetic with the skull and this stuff because they were kind of going for

a skater aesthetic. I had it on the show at one point. I thought it was kind of cool. It was kind of a cool aesthetic to go for like the, like the goth skater vibe, but it's become clear recently that they're not just going for like the goth skater aesthetic. They actually had like an ad where they got a real witch to like do a spell or a curse or something

over some of their stuff. And like, they started mocking religion. So, which is really disappointing. If you go to their website you When you have websites ask for your email, they say put in your email to sell your soul. Oh So I'm sorry that I ever had it on the show. I had it once as a can here I don't know that of course you've gotten rid of it. But yeah, we're just making this right Yeah, it's just that like the Satanic has infiltrated the culture in an unabashed on-the-nose way. Yeah, so it feels like today it's like alright Decide today who you will serve. Yeah, but as for me in my house, you know, I think the abortion thing

You know demonstrates that to people are just doubling down. Yeah on abortion, you know, not just tolerating to celebrating it Let's take away the shame. Let's take away the abortion should be safe and rare. Let's totally take away any aspect of shame to it. Let's just celebrate it. Yeah, and then the hatred that goes along with that. Yeah, so, yeah. But it is really interesting to point out

that the scripture doesn't give us a picture of things getting better and better and more and more successful. Just the opposite, but that Jesus says the same thing. And then the Church teaches the same thing in the Catechism of the Catholic Church in sections 656, 657, 658. It talks about the final trial that the Church has to go through. It talks about all this stuff in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. It's something that the church teaches. It's something that's in the catechism. People don't realize that.

I'd like to reiterate what I heard Dr. Ed Faizer say recently when he was asked about the apparent, if not actual, failures of the pope and bishops and priests. He says, okay, if the pope and the bishops and the priests and leaders are failing, have failed, aren't condemning sin, right, they will have to stand before Almighty God. But that doesn't alleviate you and I of the duty to proclaim the truth we know and which has been given to us. I love that. Right, no, absolutely. Yeah, no. I tell people all the time, look, when all is said and done, this is above our pay grade, we need to understand it

in order to resist it appropriately and so on and so forth, but we got to get up each day and say Lord how can I love you, how can I love people, how can I fulfill the responsibility you've given in my state in life, and not be distracted, but to kind of get on with our mission, with our call, you know, our responsibility. We have an anonymous question here. Dr. Martin, what is one essential piece of advice you would give a man whose wife of 18 years has recently left the faith?

My lovely wife has had her heart broken by life, by suffering and by the sins of the church. Since she left two years ago, I have been bringing our five beautiful children before the Lord in the Eucharist without her support and participation. I don't know how to reach her and draw her back to the sacraments."

Yeah. Will, not really understanding the whole situation, it's hard to really give advice. I would say, make sure you examine your own conscience in life and see if there's any way that you've contributed to this and take responsibility for any way in which you've contributed to this, you know, by not being the husband or father that you should be, and repenting for that, and sincerely asking God to help you to change. But then on the other hand, you can't bring your wife

back. You've got to pray for her, you got to fast for her, honestly. You've got to really intercede. It's a very, very special responsibility you have to never stop loving your wife and never stop praying and fasting for her. I don't know what the wounds are, I don't know what the sins of the church are, I don't know the details of the situation, but you in humility need to take responsibility

for anything you contribute to it and you in your great love for your wife need to never stop praying for her, never stop letting her know you love her and prepare to stand with her and help her in any way. Yeah. I don't know if this is any comfort, and it may not be at all. I don't know the man of the situation, as you said, but from the studies I've seen,

your children are in a better place with you as the head of the household, you as the man leading your family in faith, than if your wife had remained in the faith and you had apostatized or abandoned the faith. So it takes some comfort in that that your children are looking to you as their leader, just as you are the leader of your wife. And yeah, I'm really sorry for the pain that you're experiencing to your point, Ralph, about you can't do it. I thought immediately of first Corinthians 3, verse 6,

Paul says, I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants, nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. Mm-hmm. Also, I would say, don't speak negatively to your children about your wife. You know, honor her, respect her,

don't expose whatever weakness is there. Yeah, but I mean if they're going to Mass every week without her and they have questions, how should he perhaps ask, how should he address that? He needs to say that something's happened, you know, your mom's wrestling with issues and I'm really sorry that she's not here with us and I hope she can return someday, but in the meantime we need to go on loving her, but we need to also go on with our lives following the Lord together as a family. Okay, thank you. Okay, this is a great question. I'm glad it was asked. Esau the warrior says, what is the best means to show support to our Orthodox bishops?

And what is the best way to express concern? Excuse me, frustration to bishops who are leading their flock down the wrong path. The reason I think this is a good question, this is something I've tried to do more and more is that rather than calling out particular bishops who I have no right necessarily to rebuke putting a spotlight on them, what I want to do is find those bishops who I have no right necessarily to rebuke, putting a spotlight on them. What I want to do is find those bishops that are being courageous and put a spotlight on them. Yeah, no, absolutely. And when Bishop Paprocki came out with his addressing of

the horrendous things that Cardinal McElroy was saying, I actually wrote to him and told him, thanking him for that. And I also did a YouTube video saying, thank God for Bishop Pabrocki, where I say, let's pray for him, because he's had the courage. And one of the things he said, I think is important, he said, if this poison isn't directly confronted,

it's just gonna keep spreading. And I think the reason why the poison has spread so far is that it hasn't been confronted by church people like it should be confronted. Bishops are really into pretending they're united, but it's pretty clear that they're not. It's pretty clear that the bishops and cardinals of the church are not united.

They're openly contradicting each other, and we need to not be afraid of exposing the disunity that's there and asking God to deal with it. But in the meantime, we should be supporting bishops who have the courage to speak the truth in love. Same with Archbishop Aquila. I've written to him and thanked him for what he's done. And Archbishop Shepu, when he was speaking out.

So yes, we should definitely encourage and support and pray for those bishops that are emerging with courage and clarity to address the evil that's unfolding in the church. I wonder what we could do, practically speaking, to put more of a spotlight on bishops, because I have this basic, cynical view of humanity, namely we're all cowards,

and we all work really well on incentives. So, and that includes the bishops and me and, and so I wonder what we could do. Maybe there's a website we could create where when a bishop does something courageous, regardless of whatever issues you've had with him in the past, just this one thing, maybe we could like write up a letter and have people sign it to thank him. Maybe there's ways we could have people share the bold thing he did online, because my hope is that those bishops and priests and people who are on the fence will see this praise and even their kind of pride. Yeah, give them a little courage. Yeah. Maybe we could do something like that. If people

have any idea on how to do that below, let me know in the comments section, because I think that could be really cool if we Catholics who so often bemoan the abuses in the church would be willing to share and praise and, you know, like when Cordiglione told Nancy Pelosi that you can't be celebrating abortion, receive Eucharist. It's like, okay, no matter your opinion on Cordiglione, no matter what your opinion is of the things he's done prior to this, can we just get around him now and say thank you for loving her enough and us enough? We definitely should do that, you know, and I think that some small group of bishops are trying to stand with their fellow bishops when they do this, but it's a small number, you know,

a lot of bishops are hiding in the middle, not wanting to... Maybe we could, maybe we could. Maybe you can help me. We can get in touch with some of these bishops kind of off air and say, like, how can we support you? We love you anyway. Well, I think you and I have opportunities to do that all the time. Yeah. I mean, you can have them on the program. You can highlight the good thing that they've done and talk about it.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. I'd like to do that more. Do me a favor. If you start hearing of a great story, text me and I'll done and talk about it. That's right. Yeah. That's right. I'd like to do that more. Do me a favor, if you start hearing of a great story, text me and I'll do a show on it just so we can just thank God for our good faithful bishops. Bran Bob says, what is your best advice to deepen your prayer life? What works for you and what would you recommend to others?

So in addition to what you've already shared. Well, I would say that one of the things that's important to know is that there's always more and not settle for where you are, but the degree of union that the Lord wants to draw each one of us into is pretty deep and pretty comprehensive and pretty all-encompassing, and I would just say don't settle for where you are, but ask God to help you love him more, desire more of the Holy Spirit in your life.

One of the reasons why I did write the book, Fulfillment of All Desire, is it kind of shows you that progress is possible, that there's different levels of union with the Lord, and rather than being like a mechanical scale or something like that, we don't even have to know exactly where we are on the journey, and rather than being like a mechanical scale or something like that, we don't even have to know exactly where we are in the journey, but we need to know that there's more

and desire the more. And you know, so that's- And reading the lives of the saints can show us that the more is attainable. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We have a super chat here from Michael Bomer who says, thank you, Michael, what are some signs of optimism for Dr. Martin?

I see many conversions to the faith. Also, though I see some bishops dissenting loudly, others are rising up and speaking more authoritatively. Yeah, well some of the signs for hope is this program. Bites with quietness, you know. We have our own YouTube channel, Renewal Ministries, where we're trying to speak the truth in love, and that seems to be helping a lot of people. Then you can name all the renewal movements in the church. Everybody mentions focus, and then there's Christ Life, and there's divine renovation, there's all these ministries trying to help parishes

and priests become more effective leaders and things like that. So a lot of good things going on. And of course, the church in Africa is many, many positive things in Africa. The African bishops are resisting the incredible pressure the American government is putting on them to accept the corruption that we're exporting

to the world today and they're standing strong against it. And that means that they're being bludgeoned saying, you're not gonna to get foreign aid unless you accept the LGBTQ agenda, things like that. So the African church is a bright spot. I mean, when I was in Uganda and recently in Namibia, I was seeing signs for abortion, contraception, things like this, and I was deeply ashamed. But are you in personal contact with the bishops or priests in Africa who are?

Yeah, we work in about ten different African countries, renewal ministries. And I'd say in Uganda, particularly, almost every seminarian for the last ten years that's become a priest has gone through renewal programs that we've sponsored there. And a number of now are bishops and things like that. So we've had a pretty big impact in the country of Uganda. We've done mission work in about more than half of the Tanzanian dioceses and things like that. So we're just, we're doing a lot of stuff in Africa. We'll put a link to renewal ministries in the, thank you, in the description and then also your YouTube channel, which is what? What's that called?

Well, renewal ministries, YouTube channel, renewal is what? What's that called? Well, renewal ministry's YouTube channel, renewalministries.net is our website address. You know, that type of thing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So if people want to learn more from Dr. Ralph Martin, please check those things out. Seethi C, and you may not know the answer to this,

he says, or she, can you please ask him if he has read Philip Bloss's recent book on the nature of the gift of tongues? Yes, you have. No, is that what you want to say? You know, dr. Mary Healy has could you be and tell me what it is to I've no idea well, the dr. Bloss is very skeptical about the phenomena of speaking in tongues, you know, and He's devoting quite a bit of time and attention and multi volumes to addressing it. I've read his first book, but it isn't an issue that I feel like I'm supposed to really get

involved in. But Dr. Mary Healy, who's a colleague of mine at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, she's a member of the Pontifical Biblical Mission, she's a consultant to the Congregation for Worship. The Vatican, she's very, very good. She's a co-editor of a whole Catholic commentary series on the New Testament. She's done an extensive kind of response to Dr. Blosser, so. Is it a book or articles?

It's articles, yeah, and videos, I think. All right, so if people want to see a response to that, in addition to what he's said, you could check that out. Catholic Cat says, is there a place in the new evangelization for those who struggle with chronic mental illness disability? What would you say to someone who deals with a low level of emotional instability but loves the Lord

and desires to bring him to others? Well, do what you can when you can. Just in your humility, acknowledging your weakness, ask God to show you opportunities where you can reveal him in the ways that would be unique to you. And, you know, so everybody has a mission.

And there's certainly a mission in suffering that people with mental illness have, but there may be a mission beyond that, just in how you bear your illness and how you respond to your illness and just the witness that you give of your humility and your dependence on the Lord and your love for Him.

We've sort of addressed this, but take another shot at it. Matthew Cantrell says, "'Ralph, I am so thankful for how humble you are in your engagement with the most difficult problems facing the church. My question is this. How have you seen the Holy Spirit moving and guiding the church through these crisis moments? God makes good out of the evil he permits. So I would be interested in your take on how you see this happening

in some of these crises. It's too soon to see. Hmm. Where we're really going, I love the modesty in that response. How the Lord how the Lord is going to handle this. Some of the things we've already mentioned is that people are beginning to step up, getting clearer, showing more courage and defending the truth and knowing it, but we're still at the beginnings of the crisis. It reminds me very much of what Father Ratzinger wrote way back in 1969 or 70 where he said most people don't

realize it yet, but the church is going to go through an incredibly difficult, painful purification. It's going to lose a lot of what it has. It's going to lose its standing in society. It's going to lose its prestige. It's going to lose buildings and money. It's going to lose numbers. It's going to lose people.

But out of this, it's going to become a purified church that's more able to carry out what the real mission of the church is. And the real mission of the church isn't saving the church, but it's going to be a long, bloody process that appears unless the Lord does something to accelerate it. And then He's also doing something to allow maybe evil to ripen in those who have rejected Him, hopefully to the point where people will say, you know what, this was a wrong turning we took. We need to come back. This has not been well for human beings.

Some people will be so wedded to their darkness that they won't want to be confused by the facts, you know, or the bad fruits. They'll double down on the bad fruits because they love the ideology. So we're gonna have to see, you know, We could be getting prepared for a terrible judgment on the wickedness of humanity, a really excruciating, painful purification of the church, but I think we're still at the early stages, and so I can't tell you how the Lord's going to pull us off, but people sometimes ask,

aren't you discouraged by what's happening? And I'm not, you know. It's because I know it's happening under the providence of God. There's nothing that's happening in the world or the church, as horrible as it may be, that the Lord isn't permitting human freedom to choose. And he's got a plan to bring good out of it.

And the fact is, is that Jesus really is the Lord. He's not intimidated, he's not confused, he's not depressed. He's gloriously reigning and carrying out his plan. And we on earth have to go through the painful process of it, but I think the key thing for us is to kind of come through the test ourselves and it, but I think the key thing for us is to kind of come through the test ourselves and not falter in the faith, but to grow deeper to the Lord and use the crisis as an opportunity to follow surrender, follow faithfulness, follow obedience, follow courage.

You often quote John Paul II, a speech he gave in America in 1978, shortly after he became Pope. I want to read it. R. Yeah, just before he became Pope. A. Is it just before? R. Yeah. A. Okay, thank you. We are now standing in the face of the greatest historical confrontation humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide circles of the American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church of

the gospel versus the anti-gospel. This confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It is a trial which the whole church, and the Polish church in particular, must take up. It is a trial of not only our nation and the church, but in a sense, a test of 2000 years of culture and Christian civilization, which with all of its consequence for human dignity, individual rights, human rights, and the rights of nations. He probably had more to say, but that's the best what I found there.

That's really powerful. And it's, it's but that's what I found there. That's really powerful. That's the authority I think we got used to the Pope speaking with. And that's why what Pope Francis does is so underwhelming, especially when we are so confused. When you're confused, you need a man speaking like that. Yeah, well, the scripture says when the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who's gonna come for battle? And there's a lot of Catholics that aren't showing up for battle because they're not getting a clear sound from the trumpet gives an uncertain sound, who's going to come for battle? And there's a lot of Catholics that aren't showing up for battle

because they're not getting a clear sound from the trumpet. Yeah. Yeah. OK. Savannah asks, the reason I said asks is sometimes I notice that the questions are really personal and I feel like I shouldn't be saying their names. So I'm going to ask a few other questions questions and then I'll give this person a fake name Tim Bryant says what is Ralph's take on the Anglican mass quote-unquote that was celebrated at st. John Latterin Basilica Well, the person in charge of the silica said that was a mistake was was a communication problem, it shouldn't have happened, it happened.

Good. No need to pile on when it's unnecessary, is it? No, or to kind of propose a Masonic conspiracy behind it or anything like that. Yeah. Edward says, is there any credence behind the idea that pagan deities are returning and are behind the evil movements that are happening in the culture today. This is the idea behind James Kahn's return of the gods. Not sure if that is a reliable book. I've only seen him on YouTube.

Well, I think there's something to that. You know, a couple of years ago, in preparation for some special year that maybe ecology or something that Vatican was celebrating, they had this light show on the facade of St. Peter's Basilica. And the person who was charged with creating it was from New York, and he invoked pagan deities to inspire him and in the original version that he played in New York he actually had demons you know in the in the

light show. The demons were taking out of the Vatican light show but it was very weird and the demonic inspiration of it was still there even though the demons weren't being worshiped at the time. So strange things are happening. At the same time, a giant statue of Malik, you know, the pagan god that they fed animals of baby sacrifice to in the Old Testament, a great giant statue that was created at the Colosseum at the same time. Then of course we had Pachamama appear in the Vatican during the Synod on the Family. So there's some cracks in, well like St. Paul VI said, there's some fissures, there's some cracks in the fabric of the church that the fumes of Satan are coming through. So yes, there's

some strange openings now for pagan gods and goddesses sort of being invoked, being acknowledged, being present in some kind of way. And of course, what St. Augustine says in the traditional teaching of the church is that the pagan gods and goddesses are actually demons. That's what they are. Bernadette says, what practice or devotion has been the largest contributor to your faith throughout discouraging times? What particularly devotion? Yeah.

So during discouraging times, what have you leaned on that you feel has stabilized you or given you the most encouragement? Well, what I've leaned on is the person of Christ, the love of the Father, the grace of the Holy Spirit. I've leaned on God. I've leaned on His revealed Word and Scripture. I leaned on the sacraments of the church. So it was no particular devotion, but the devotion to the faith, devotion to God. Amen. Yeah. Okay. Sarah says, advice for those living

in an unequally yoked marriage whose spouse doesn't want to use NFP. Talk to your local parish priest about that. No, you know, it's a tough issue, you know? Yeah. Tough issue. It's hard to know what it is difficult to kind of give specific responses to questions that can only be general given the fact that we don't know you, uh, dear Sarah.

Um, so in all seriousness, we do believe that contraception is seriously wrong, but I don't know how to say how you handle a particular situation. Hannah Brown says, how do we charitably admonish the sinners in our lives, especially close family members? How do we remind family or friends who aren't practicing Catholics, those who don't go to Mass or confession, that they can't receive the Eucharist? Yeah, we do it under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, motivated by love. So we need to be praying for these people

to come out of their deception, out of their darkness, into the light. And we need to submit our desire for that to happen to the Holy Spirit, so that it isn't just our will that is willing this, but that we really need to know that only God can bring them out of it. But we should be asking God for wisdom to know when to say something, when not to say something,

how to say it. And usually there'll be opportunities in all these situations at certain points to say something. We should say, like, speak the truth in love. We shouldn't say it in condemnation, but we should say, you know, I am concerned about you, and I don't think this is going to really be a good direction for your life, and I think you really ought to consider, you know, what some of the secular studies are showing about living together before marriage,

and particularly, I think, you know, the Lord tells us that this can endanger our salvation, you know, you know, not living in harmony with God's will for human life can endanger our salvation. So then there's books we can give them, but we shouldn't harass them, we shouldn't badger them. We should be sensitive to loving them, being a good brother or sister to them, being a good friend to them, but at the same time, not being pulled into by emotional manipulation and to approving what they're doing that we can't approve. So we have to say, look, I love you, but I can't agree with you living together

with your boyfriend or whatever it is, is really a good thing to do. And we've certainly had that experience before where we bring family members to Holy Mass and having to have that conversation is always awkward. I don't know what you think about this, but my my thought is have the awkward conversation with a smile. Yeah, don't belabor the point. But then it's really not up to you.

To prevent whatever decision your friend makes, makes. You can say to them, listen, because you're away from the church, they would ask you not to receive Eucharist. Well, suppose they look at you and go, well, screw you, buddy, I'm going to do it. Okay, well, that's your church. I don't have to tackle you in the communion line. So just sort of gently and as lovingly as we can say these things. And Rachel still sent in a super chat. Thank you, Rachel. Is it possible that some of the people that didn't come back to the church after COVID passed away? I'm sure some just didn't go back. If you answered, sorry, I just missed a little bit, she said. All right. So we talked about.

Well, some of them they have passed away, but not 40% of them are 20% of them. Yeah. Yeah. And then it, I mean, it also might be our, it's, I mean, hindsight's 2020, but it's also likely that I think our failure as a church to support and love and provide for people, especially when we could have been doing it, when we had enough information. May have. Right. Well, Ralph, we are crushing it today. This is terrific. Thank you so much for being on the show

and thanks for all that you do. Well, thank you, Matt. I appreciate you. I always enjoy talking with you. I feel like we're in the same ballpark, playing for the same team and in tune, basically, with each other. and so I appreciate the chance to Share these truths with with people who watch yeah listen to place with Aquinas

Yeah, and I want to reiterate that people should consider buying two of your books that I've read The the last one you a church in crisis. Yeah, I read that in a weekend and I was so encouraged by that and I thought to myself, how is it that I'm encouraged by such a depressing book? But it was, as you say, it clarifies the problem. It would be like walking around all day and not realizing you had a pebble in your shoe and wondering why you felt so lousy and then removing it and going, okay, that's what it is. Yeah, that's what people are saying. They're saying, hey, now that I could name it, I feel free from it. Yeah. Yeah. So you do a great job of like pointing to the sin

and the chaos and the failure. But it's almost like you point past it to Christ. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. This is the deception. Here's the wonderful truth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lovely. Yeah, lovely. Did I miss any super chats Thursday or anything that I should have got?

There was, I mean, we don't have to go through all of them, but there was one that I thought was good because it's kind of a specific question, but it's a specific question that's not pastoral advice. Okay. So when I sent you in Slack, it was Sarah Romero. I think she just got confused with how the chat system works. She donated and then chatted.

Bless her. So let's see, this is, did you send it as Thursday or as Matt? I sent it as you to you. Dear Heavenly Father, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. As me, me. Sorry, I'll just read it.

Yep. I was in a church in Michigan that had the congregation all raise their hands during the prayer of the consecration. It didn't seem correct, any thoughts. So I figured that was... Well, you know, it's incorrect, but I wouldn't consider it a mortal sin. You know what I mean?

Probably the priest is encouraging people to honor the Eucharist that way, even though it's not in the rubrics, you know. I think what happens is like when you've been so hurt by priests turning the holy liturgy, which is not theirs, into their own little plaything, then you just become sensitive to when that happens. And so I think the fault is really on those priests that have abused the liturgy, not on... I'd put the blame there before I would put it on the laity who are just a little too sensitive to innovations. Yeah.

That would be very much... Yeah, again, if the priest is intending to increase reverence and faith by encouraging people to do that, that's one thing. If it's rebellious and irreverent, that's another thing. Yeah. All right. God bless. Check out Ralph's stuff below his books, his YouTube channel, his excellent ministry, renewal ministries. I've benefited greatly from his stuff and I know you all will too. Thanks so much.