Transcription
Okay, question over here. So, my, my question to you, um, because you're such an inspiration to Catholicism, Mr. NOS, what advice would you give to somebody who's trying to spread the love of the Eucharist to the world?
Okay, well, you know, that's wonderful that you're going to do that. I think it's great. Most of the time, people say, "Michael, I want to start a podcast. What's your advice?" And my advice is, "Don't." Because too many people have them. And I think every white man under the age of 75 has one now, and it's by law or something. So, but this is the first time in memory that someone has proposed some new content project where I've thought, "Great, you should do that. That's really good." And my advice is, you should, uh, recite the St. Thomas Aquinas prayer that he would have before study or writing or speaking, for God to illuminate his darkened mind. Uh, and then what you should do is, uh, you know, pray a little bit more. Praying is the first resort, not the last resort. And then, this is something, Charlie, that, you know, we mackerel snappers, we get, we don't need to, we don't need to, you know, reinvent the wheel every year. We've got 2,000 years of people who are much smarter than you and I, who have thought this out, who have debated these questions. So if you just bring that, if you convey that, this is, I'm, this, I'm trying to sell Charlie on this right now. I know I'm answering you, but I'm really speaking to Charlie. Uh, if you, if you just do that, that's all you're doing. You're just, you're just telling the story. You're telling The Greatest Story Ever Told. And you have the deposit of faith, and you have the magisterium behind you as a, as a hermeneutic of, of interpretation. But, but just do that, you know? And do that in sincerity, and do that with the best of your effort, and I think it'll be wonderful. As, uh, as an Evangelical who loves Catholics, I love that you're doing it. But let me just, let me just edit what you, the butt. Here's the but. No, it's a big, it's a big one. You didn't catch it, Michael, is that your goal should be to bring people to Jesus, not Catholicism.
Why? Hold on. What's the difference? What's the? I don't think. What's the? Hold on, hold on. I'm not saying that they're contradictory, but your goal should not be to be to bring people to a specific sect of Christianity. It is to bring people to the cross.
You're saying to bring people to the fullness of the truth and the universal faith. Yes, but not, not the maxims of every Catholic dogma. No, I mean, for example, am I a Christian if I don't believe in mariology? Uh, well, we're talking about the fullness of the truth. You know, we're talking about. But you, but there's, but you still, you still. Am I a Christian if I don't believe in transubstantiation? You are a little confused if you don't. But you, but you can have sincere. But you can have sincere. No, it's fine. I just, I think that bringing people to Catholicism is fine, of course, great, terrific. But that is hopefully a means to the ultimate end. You exist to bring to people to. Yes. No, of course. And you, and that, that is the goal. I'm just maybe being semantically, you know. But think about this question. What happens when you want to bring people to, to our Lord? And what happens when there are disagreements over important things? I mean, not we schism and say, you guys got it wrong, or we do a Reformation. But, you know, so we're, we're at, uh, we're at Christmas right now. We're at Christmas time. We're talking about, uh, St. Nicholas, you know, Santa Claus, talking about Jesus. And. Well, no, but I'm talking about Santa Claus. There's before we talk about our Lord, the. But, but, you know, there's this story, characters, Jesus, this focus on the main thing. But there's this, this story about St. Nicholas, who, the legend goes, I don't think it's literally true, but the legend goes that St. Nicholas, who Santa Claus is based on, shows up to the Council of Nicaea and he smacks the heresiarch Arius, who denied the divinity of Christ, smacks him in the face. And this has led to a meme that I really like at Christmas, which is an icon of St. Nicholas and it says, "I've come here to give presents to children and to punch heretics in the face, and I'm all out of presents." And, and so I don't, now, I don't think it really happened, and it would have been a corrective slap, all the rest. But, but the, the serious question is, what, what happens when someone has a, a question on something really important, like, is Christ God? You know, the divinity of Christ? There has to be an interpretive hermeneutic to figure it out.
Of course. Yeah. And look, to be very clear, like nine out of 10 of Catholic dogmas, Evangelicals hold nine out of 10. Right. And that, that is why I believe Catholics are Christian, even though you don't give me that same sort of. I would. Would. No, I'm giving you a hard time, and I, I mean that. It's, it, again, if you are Catholic who loves Jesus, therefore, and I know that. And just, I believe that there are personally some fundamental issues with, like I say, mariology, trans, trans, transubstantiation, which we're not going to get into. But the biggest one is the papacy. I, I can't get over the idea of this Marxist who calls himself the head of your church being a representation of Christ, Our Lord. I just, and I, I mean that as someone who loves the Catholic impact on the world. That says it openly, and by the fruit will know it. And you have very Marxist fruit. But what, I guess my, my sort of last question on, uh, is it evangelization or evangelism? Or evangelization? But both. Okay. What, uh, what happens when we get the next Pope? Can we pull you over then? You know, what if we get like, decided that John Paul II was amazing? I just think that there is, there is a question to be asked of why is that specific process, that mechanism, given more merit than, let's just say, the local church and or the word of God? And you'd say, "Okay, interpretation, you know, the final resolution to question." That's fine. I just, that, I would, I asked the question, if you are all in on, you know, the papacy and the Vatican, no practicing Catholic can look and say, "This is the best that my religion has to offer."
Charlie, you're thinking too much about it. You got to have the Italian spirit. Now, the Italian spirit is when you know someone asks, "Hey, in this newspaper, the Pope said something." Where you say, "Oh, well, maybe the Pope was misinterpreted." You know, "It's no big deal. Forget about it." That's the. You're too Anglo to understand that. That attitude. I, I have to just, I have to just hope, you know. Oh, no, he doesn't mean that. You know, homosexuality is bad. You know, okay, we should just. No, he said God can't bless sin. But I know sometimes it's. No, no, I'm not going to give you that one. He's been way more open on that topic. Or the climate change thing. Climate change and all this sort of stuff. We just have to kind of hope that he's saying that we want what want him to say. You just kind of, it's like, I, my grandmother sometimes when she, uh, when one of her grandchildren says something that she doesn't like, she, she kind of turns down the hearing aid a little bit. And so sometimes, you know, if you turn down the hearing aid on certain issues, it all. And I, I mean this like non-sarcastically, but like, why should I care at all what that guy from Argentina has to say? Well, because you care what your pastor has to say. Yes, but if my pastor starts saying crazy things, I find a new pastor. So if your Pope starts saying crazy things, maybe he's not the Pope. And like, maybe that's a bad representation.
Well, well, I guess if your pastor says crazy things, you go to a new pastor, and then you have division in the church. It used to be in the old days, it used to be if the pastors disagreed, they'd go to to an elder or a bishop or someone. Right. You go up to Bishop, corrupted. And then you take it up higher. Yeah. And then maybe the Pope is corrupted. And we write 95 points of complaints and hammer them to a door and get back to the word.
Well, the, the, the issue is that one of the marks of the church is unity. So you, you can't have constant, you know, schism. And, and so I'm not, I'm not disagreeing about difficulties in the prelature at all. But, but there's a line from Hilaire Belloc, and he says, he says, he has to take on faith that the Catholic Church is really what it says it is. But for those who don't believe that, one mark of its divine institution is that no other institution conducted with such navish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight. And I think there's actually a lot of truth to that. That, you know, when one points to the corruption of individuals or bad Popes or what, there've been plenty of them, that that actually, that's kind of an evidence of the, because so many other ecclesial communities, you know, they appear and then, you know, you leave this past.
Yeah, I just, I think that's fine. I guess. I mean, I think that if you have the Bible as any sort of semblance of a bedrock, you're going to, you're going to last. But who, who, uh, canonizes the Bible?
Well, who canonized it when we, uh, what was like, where did we get it from? Our Lord didn't leave us a Bible. He left us a church.
And the church that's sort of true. I mean, I think our Lord, as part of Godship, God is the author of all 66 books, right? Of course. And we, we had.
Wait, oh, you slipped that in. Hey, come on. You can't do that to me. Oh, no, this is interesting though. What, why is it that Catholics acknowledge divine books that Jews themselves don't think are divine? The keepers of the Torah don't even agree with your canon.
It's a. Well, it's like the Wisdom of Ben Sira, first and second Maccabees. According to rabbinical teaching, those are not divinely inspired books. Yet Catholics say, "We like those." Why? Yeah. Well, so for there are a few reasons. One, that the Deuterocanonicals, which is the Catholic Bible, is based on the Septuagint. The Masoretic texts, which come later, are the ones that the Protestant Bible and the more recent Catholic Bibles are based on. And there's, there is, uh, some discrepancy, at least in numbering of certain things. But also, I mean, you say, "Well, if rabbinical Jews think one thing, why don't you think that?" And I'd say, "I don't know, because we're we're a different religion."
Hold on a second. No, no, no. But no, but we, we're the inheritors of the Torah as referenced by people that were schooled in that. And, and the Tanakh. So Protestantism has an identical mirrored image of the Torah and the Tanakh. And they, again, in traditional rabbinical teaching, they do not believe those books are divinely inspired. Any. I, I know the answer, and you're not going to like it, but that's fine. It's because in, in those books, it allows for a lot of the practices of the Catholic Church and gives justification for a lot of that stuff. However, I don't want to get too deep in this. I actually think the world is a better place because of faithful Catholics. I've spoken out with great criticism of how Evangelicals remained quiet here in Arizona on Prop 139, while the Catholic diocese was so courageous on the fight for life, while Evangelicals were silent. Um, my, I want a better Catholic Church. And, and I, I personally would not be able to be part of an institution with the head, the figurehead, with a worldview that is so corrupted and opposite of what I think the Bible teaches. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt. I'd be like, "No, I'm actually not part of this. I'm leaving."
But today, you're part of the United States. But the head of the United States is one president. You don't leave the country. I don't take. I don't take religious orders from Joe Biden. No, but you take political orders, or you at least follow the law. Not really. I mean, I follow the law. But you don't. No political orders from Joe Biden. No. I guess it would mean like, we all rebel against corrupt institutions we don't like. But an unjust law is no law at all. It's not. It's a. An unjust Pope is not a Pope.
Yeah, but what, but what's un, what's there's nothing unjust about the Pope talking about like climate change. You just don't pay attention to it. You know? Okay, so you just, like, you pick, you pick and choose. It's like a buffet line. No, like, I like what he says about this, but not about that. But yes, he is the inheritor of St. Peter. Sounds like. No, no, no. The papal authority is that he speaks infallibly when speaking ex cathedra on faith and morals. Doesn't talk about climate change at all. So the Pope can say things that are crazy.
Yeah. So this is perfect. Then, then why have one? If what he says, in order to speak infallibly, ex cathedra, on faith. Okay. So that has not happened since what? Vatican II? No, it's a little bit. When was the last time the Pope spoke? Two is part of the. When was the last time, like, 50, 60 years? The, the last probably ex cathedra infallible teachings from a Pope were probably Pius the Ninth, you know, like 150 years ago.
Okay. So then therefore, there really is no functional use for a Pope for 150 years. No, no. He's the, he's the, he's the leader of the church, you know, he's the. Exactly. Your figurehead, your top leader, is not good.
What? No, I don't know about. Well, none is good, but God, I guess, you know. Well, no, I would say Pope John Paul II was objectively a good person. What would you, would you say none is good but God? That's what Our Lord tells us. Well, of course, yeah. We all fall short of the glory of God. But I think that there is a, I mean, Catholic, Catholic moral teaching will tell you that there are gradations of sin. Yeah. I'm using your own morality, and I agree with it, right? That like, there's Pope John, John Paul II is totally different than, you know, Ted. I don't know what. I mean, what sin are you accusing Pope Francis? I can't believe I'm, I'm defending Pope Francis. What, what, how about the sin of like, heresy of the word of God? Like believing in what heresy? Okay, without getting into like the specific things that he said, but like, in the Latin, he was the climate change stuff is insane. Way too relaxed. Way too relaxed on the homosexuality stuff. He says God can't bless sin. He says that it's, he, he called gay marriage a. Of the father of lies and confuse the. If I had the full body of work in front of me, what his his teachings on communism are insane. He comes from liberation. He says he's not a communist. No, no. He, you know, he said it. He said he's not a communist. Okay. So wait, so does Obama? I want. So, so Michael, let me say this. If I had every quote here, which of course I don't, you would be able to defend them that he said. I would at least be able to make the point that he's not speaking infallibly. I think. But I wouldn't, I wouldn't defend every, every report.
We'll get to the next question. Yeah. Yeah.
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