Transcription
Good evening. Uh, it's been a little while. It's been uh a combination of being busy with some home renovations and farming going into early summer and just a little bit of uh lack of inspiration. But I I I had an idea and it was kind of bouncing around in my head for a while based on well, I'll say what it was based on in a minute, but it was basically a way to make Catholicism palatable and understandable to even the most incoherent of thinkers. And what gave me the idea was whenever I was talking to I had talked to multiple ex Catholics who they just seem to have some cognitive disson cognitive dissonance whenever it came to the church and and and why the church and what the church and all all these various questions.
For instance, um I I was somebody was asking me why I was Catholic, somebody who I knew was formerly Catholic, and she kept nodding along every time I made my points. And whenever I said something about it being the original church and them keeping the teachings and passing them down through the bishop, she was like, "Well, yeah." I'm like, "Well, how can you say, "Well, yeah, but then not be Catholic." So, it's like there's a little bit of a disconnect there.
So, for these people who just really do not understand Catholicism, now this probably won't work against somebody who's like aggressive against Catholicism, somebody who absolutely, you know, has their mind made up. This is probably not going to help. uh a a high church Protestant who, you know, pours into the into the Bible and the church fathers trying to find every little piece of everything that sounds Protestant and deny deny deny anything that sounds Catholic. Something like this isn't going to help because they're because these are easy questions that they've already gone over and chosen not to agree with the church on. This is more so for somebody who isn't Catholic, but they're not really sure why. Because in my experience, especially being around a lot of Pentecostals and Methodists, uh especially people with a Wesian background are surprisingly cath Catholic-minded. There's a lot of things that they say that sound shockingly Catholic. They they sound more Catholic than Wesleyan in a lot of cases. And I think this is a great way to open a real conversation and not approach it as a debate or just, you know, ordering them to submit to mother church.
So what this is is this is a a series of five questions followed by an open-ended assertion. These are five easy questions that a Catholic would answer yes to and a Protestant might not. And these are all questions that can be backed by scripture itself. Obviously, history and church fathers really help drive these points home. But these are things that can be found in scripture itself. So the idea is you ask a question and if they say yes, you move on to the next one. And then if they say yes through all five questions, you say, "Well, this is my assertion and why everything you just agreed to is perfectly Catholic." And you know, I I've tried this on a few Protestants already, and actually in every case, they said yes to all five questions. And then when I made my assertion, it was just kind of like, "Oh, hm. Okay." And but they weren't super they weren't super invested because the way in my mind the way it's set up is that once you make that open-ended assertion then it's their turn to start asking questions whereas the people asked were just kind of like oh well yeah that makes sense and then they went on with their day. But even in interactions like that that's an opportunity for to to plant seeds. somebody get to thinking, okay, well, I'm not Catholic, but maybe Catholicism is a little more biblical than I thought it was. Or maybe even if they just say yes and don't hear any of the evidence, they might say maybe Catholicism, Catholicism is a little closer to where I'm at than what I thought it was.
So, here's the first question. Question one, did Christ create a church? And some of these questions might sound kind of obvious, but they're really not. Did Christ create a church or did he establish a church? So, did Christ come on earth to give teachings and establish a single church or did he just come to give teachings of generally how to be Christian and what a church should look like and then, you know, humanity just kind of took it from there? If they say yes, Christ established a church, then great. If they say no, you know, he didn't really establish a church or they start talking about the invisible church or something like that. Like he didn't establish a church on earth. He just he made a church. He made an invisible church and told people how to get there on their own. Then we have all of the then if they deny that then you can take them to the evidence that the church gives. And I plan on making this all in a document that gives the sources in there something because I heard a conversion story that used something kind of similar without the questions. It was just a list of KJV Bible verses with Catholic explanations. And that was like the start of their conversion was, "Oh, wow. Catholics read the Bible. That's kind of crazy." And then they saw all this Catholic stuff in the Bible and they didn't really have a good Protestant explanation. Uh, so I was thinking about making something like that. And if you guys think I should, let me know in the comments. and I'll devote more time to that. But right now, it's just kind of anytime I run across a verse that isn't commonly used in apologetics, I throw it in there for future reference.
But the second church, the the second question is, was the Catholic Church originally that church? And they might have problems with this one because it does sound like a bit of a loaded question. I actually changed the wording because the original question that I was using on my test subjects was is the Catholic Church that church and they're kind of like and normally what I would say is well you know you could it's possible to say that the Catholic Church was the original church that Christ established but then it fell away from Christ's teachings. and they're like, "Yeah, yeah, I'd be willing to say that." I think I think the the term was the Catholic Church originally that church is a lot more open-ended and it's more willing to get a yes or uh it's something that can be more quickly explained. So, if they say yes, we're gravy. We get to move on. If they say no, then you can show the biblical evidence that the church has identified for uh for the church being, you know, the pillar um the pillar and bull work of truth of it being an actual body of bishops appointed by the apostles, a real congregation. You know, the word comes from ecclesia, which means gathering. like there's all this biblical evidence for the church being a visible church and then we can give some historical evidence saying you know St. Ignatius called it the Catholic Church in 107 AD. Like very like just less than a decade after the apostle John gave up the ghost, we have it being called the the Catholic Church. Uh then we can say like a really easy question to ask if they deny is you know you go through the scripture and everything and then you say well you know where did the Catholic church start and with all these other churches you can say oh well, you know Martin Luther did this John Calvin did this John Wesley did this Thomas Cranmer did this you could say well, you know, the patriarch of Constantinople did this There's always someone you can say, "Well, somebody started a motion that caused this church." There is no such thing with the Catholic Church. People like to say Constantine, but if you're just well-versed in history, that's so easy to debunk. That's just such a complete myth. He had nothing to do with it really other than calling the council and stopping the persecutions. Not in that order. But I mean, he he had something to do with the direction the church went, but it's so clear with just the his the blatant historic evidence that the church existed before Constantine. And if you just keep pushing it back, well, you know, where did this come from? Well, it started with this guy. Well, where did he get his ideas? Well, he got them from this guy's. And then it eventually goes back in into you know the dedicay and the first century and who was around the apostles making teachings. So you know this is a simple question that they can either say yes to or you can easily defend it without getting into the weeds. That's another point of these questions is it's a way of sorting the discussion to keep it on topic.
So the next question, one I was really surprised to get yeses from from my Protestant friends. Did God's revelation to the church include both scripture and the oral teachings of the apostles to the churches they established? And if somebody says yes, we're golden. We move on. If they say no, well then you can give some reasonable evidence and then some great biblical evidence. So you could say, well, first of all, uh, all of the epistles were letters that were written to churches after they had been established. when they they were established by apostles going there appointing elders uh appointing a a presbbiterate and then they stayed with them for a period of time catechized them taught them the ways of the Christian church and then they left and then later would write letters back and that's where we get the epistles so like there was definitely like there's so much teaching that went on in the months that they were there. That for, you know, a church uh a church that only gets, you know, one short letter probably learned much more than what was in the epistles. They weren't educated by the epistles and they weren't educated by the gospels because in the case of Paul's epistles, they hadn't been written yet. So, it was all oral teaching. Um and then you know, take them to not only did they give them all this oral teaching and then at this point some epistles had been written but Paul you know take them to I believe I I can never remember I I believe it is uh either first or 2 Thessalonians 2:15 right where he says right where he says uh hold fast to the traditions that we taught you both by both by word and epistle. And there there's some different translations depending, but they all say roughly that like they they are speaking to the teachings of the apostles being authoritative, not just scriptural teachings, but also oral teachings from the apostles. And then, you know, it's either 1 or 2 Thessalonians 2:13 is where Paul talks about receiving the oral teachings from the apostles as they are, not the teachings of man, but the teachings of God or the word of God, I think it says. So that's another thing that if they disagree, then you can talk about that issue biblically on its own without getting into the weeds and getting into arguments about authority and all kinds of different stuff.
So then the fourth question is, did Christ promise to send the Holy Spirit to guide the church into all truth? And then obviously, you know, there's some obvious verses there you can go into. If they say yes, then okay, great. We move on. Even though saying yes and then implying that the church lost its way causes some problems, you know, at least we've found the common ground. If they say no, take them to the obvious Bible Bible verses that the various theologians have pointed out. the the uh I mean this is an easy one. The uh the apologists hammer on them, you know. Uh and uh I mean you can get into some epistemological debates with this one, but for the context that this is based on, you pretty much just want to stick with the Bible verses. And the Bible verses are explicit enough. They should do the trick.
And then this is the big one. This is where it goes. This is where it goes from things that they might have already believed or things that they've maybe believed but not quite heard framed in the Catholic mindset. This goes to something that if they're not Catholic, they probably haven't considered this before. But based on the the previous questions, this one is set up to be understood. So the question question five is the final question. If the Catholic Church does something that you think is unbiblical, the only way to prove that would be to show how the practice is strictly unbiblical and that the church has not always been doing this thing from the beginning. Yes. And then that's probably a question they'll have to think about and you can discuss it. And this isn't this isn't necessarily a uh biblical question as much as you know you can go back this is kind of a general question that covers the other questions. You can go back to um well if if the bishops uh if the bishops I if Paul ordered the bishops to pass down the teaching and I I think it's second Timothy I believe is when he specifically says it but then it's implied in other places but if they gave oral teaching and then the whole tradition including the oral teaching and the uh scriptural teaching was all supposed to be handed down by the bishops and by you know the previous question the Holy Spirit was overseeing this whole thing and guiding the church into all truth and we're going to prevail over the gates of hell and there's all these promises uh then you know It stands to reason that the only way that it could be proven that this system isn't functioning as it always has and as it was intended to would be to show how it is contradicted itself or contradicted scripture or just invented something out of thin air like something like prayer to saints or something like that. And you know they might confidently answer this question saying well yeah obviously but that's easy to do you know prayer to saints was invented you know all the Mary stuff that was all invented uh the eukarist that was made up by the church because of super the medieval stu superstition you know all that stuff's just made up so yeah I can confidently say yes to that question.
Then comes the assertion which is I assert that everything the church does can be defended biblically and that the church has always been doing these things. If you disagree, we can talk about it. So that is where it at at that point I think that this really opens up the discussion to be actually inquisitive and actually get somewhere because at this point we've laid down the groundworks for the function of Catholicism. This is what Catholicism is. These are the this is like the main idea of Catholicism that it is biblical that the church was established. God preserved the church and appointed the church to pass it down among itself for all time. And that we've done that successfully. So then they say, "Okay, well that makes sense. you know, we're we have an understanding about that. I agree that in practice that makes a lot of sense or I agree that in theory that makes a lot of sense, but in practice that's not true because, you know, we see, you know, the Eucharist. We see guys saying that's the body and blood of Christ, but you know, that's just that's just not true. And then you can go, you know, give them the biblical evidence and then give them the church fathers and say, you know, this is what everyone taught until the until the reformation. You know, everyone believed this. Everyone taught this. This wasn't just invented by medieval superstition. This has always been the case. Well, what about the Marian dogmas? Well, then you could talk about all the biblical evidence. Revelation 12 is my favorite. It's the most obvious. Um, but you know, all of the little bits of scripture if they really want to get into it. You know, again, this is kind of we're talking to people who kind of haven't thought about it. So, this really gives you the freedom to explore as deeply as they want to. Prayer to saints is a great one. That's one a lot of people have problem with, and it's one that's really easy to defend. you know, we see it happening in Revelation. So, you give them you give them that. You give them the angels offering up prayers to God in Revelation. And then you say, "Well, there is evidence and I can show you if you want me to, but if you're willing to take my word, there's evidence that prayer to saints goes all the way back to the beginning, all the way back to the first century. You have inscriptions on tomb walls saying saints Peter and Paul pray for us. Not tomb walls in the uh before they were sent out to the I don't know that it was the coliseum. I actually don't think the coliseum had been built yet, but the um as the Christians were being sent out to be martyed, there were in there was inscriptions. You know, they've been asking uh glorified saints to pray for saints on earth since the beginning. Purgatory, another great one. Mcabes, whether they believe it's scriptural or not, that's still evidence that that was something in the minds of Jews before Christ. And then it just carried straight through. And then you can go in into all the uh church father evidence as well as the biblical evidence that being that John says no one is without sin. And then in Revelation, he says uh no sinful thing can enter heaven. And then Paul says that the uh that I I don't remember the exact quotes, but uh 1 Corinthians 3:13 uh oh, it's escaped me. But basically it says something about you know the works of people being made manifest and the means by which is fire which is how we get the idea of well you die with sin and you can't enter into heaven that way but you're still in friendship with God. So you're you're going to go to heaven but you have to be cleansed. So there's a cleanse of fire like Paul talks about that cleans you before you get there. My Pentecostal mother believes that. She just doesn't believe in all the indulgences and all of the there is a bit of medieval superstition that stacked on. There was a Spanish priest, I don't remember when, but during the medieval period that says on average, you know, it's estimated that everybody's in purgatory for at least 2,000 years. Personally, I don't believe that. You know, it might be true. I don't know. You know, I could be in purgatory for a billion years. I don't know. It could just, you know, it could be a very quick thing. I don't know that the purge of fire hurts. It's a holy fire, you know. Uh Ezekiel, I believe it was Ezekiel. Um forgive me of my ignorance, but it is very late. Uh, and and I will admit I'm not as I'm not as clear on the Old Testament as I am the New Testament, or I'm not as uh fluent. But I believe it was Ezekiel who had his lips purified by the cool. You know, the angel took the hot cool and purified his lips. That's the same idea as purgatory. And there's no indication that that was painful. a hot cold to the lips. You know, that'd be that's a terrible form of torture in a lot of settings, but there was no indication that it was even painful for him. So, I'm not afraid of purgatory. I plan on skipping it just in case it is bad. So, you know, I'm going to confess absolutely everything I can think of, veno or not. Like, I'm going to try my best to skip purgatory, but I personally don't fear it. Um, and you know, here I am, you know, I wouldn't say getting into the weeds, but this is kind of what I I want to come from this. I want it to be a discussion. I want to get all the epis the all the epistemological arguments out of the way so that they're not so that they're not asking questions about Catholicism in their mind saying I don't even know why I'm asking about prayer to saints when the whole system is rigged when the whole system is evil the whole system is unbiblical why am I arguing, you know, little issues but if you start with the polist uh the epistemological arguments and kind of show how the idea of Catholicism isn't unbiblical, then they can start saying, "Okay, well, maybe this isn't as unbiblical as I thought it was." So, I can start exploring the individual ideas to see, okay, well, what is it about Catholicism that makes this fall apart? Because obviously, Catholicism isn't true. So, this system makes too much sense. for everyone to not be Catholic for every I think I said that right. Basically what I'm saying is this system seems true. So if it's true everybody should be Catholic, right? So like now I have to start asking questions to this apologist and figuring out why it is that uh this system actually falls apart and why it's actually phony. And then the more questions they ask, assuming you're a decent apologist and you have decent and plentiful answers, eventually they're just going to run out of questions and, you know, they won't they more than likely will not convert on the spot, but they'll go home and think about it. As a convert, uh, it's very similar to how I was converted. I got the epistemological stuff kind of, it made sense to me. the the epistemological arguments were made to me very clearly and it made a lot of sense. But in my mind, Catholicism was obviously false. So then my goal was to ask all the questions I could to figure out, okay, this system makes a lot of sense, but where does it fall apart? And eventually I just ran out of questions. I ran out of arguments against the system and I said, "Well, looks like the system just works. So, this is a great conversation starter, I think. And like I said, if you guys want me to keep building the document to actually have, you know, like a a PDF that if you want to get into apologetics, if you want to just talk to people, uh if you want to approach people with this, because I think Catholics should be much more into evangelism than most Catholics are. If you want help getting into apologetics and you want me to continue compiling every verse, every church father quote, everything I can find into building these particular questions as well as, you know, some other miscellaneous stuff for the after conversation. Let me know in the comments. And I I'm just going to be honest with you, that will give me encouragement to keep going because right now I don't really see it going anywhere other than my personal use. And maybe a few people I print it out to and hand it to, you know, maybe, you know, maybe put it in a PDF and offer it somewhere and two or three people might use it, which if two or three people use it and one person gets saved, it's worth it. So I should just, you know, shut up and do it. But I'm also human and I have a lot of things that demand my time and I get discouraged when I put time into things and they don't go anywhere. that I think that's just that's just realistic for anyone trying to create anything is whenever you put time into something and no one seems to care, it makes you not want to put time into things. And that's honestly kind of where I'm at and kind of where I'm at with the channel. having not posted for like two months, I think. Uh I just wasn't getting anywhere and I ran out of ideas, so I put it on the back burner for for a while. But I had an idea. Now I'm posting it. And if you want me to keep working on this, please let me know in the comments. like the video, subscribe if you're not because I haven't been posting as much, but I want to be posting more, and just, you know, show me that I'm not shouting into the void with this stuff and that people are actually wanting to hear these things. And, you know, the more engagement I see, the more I'll post. Absolutely. Like, 100%. If I feel like people are being engaged by what I'm posting and what I'm saying and what I'm writing and putting online for people to use, I'm absolutely going to work towards that. But if you're still here, we're uh 30 minutes. That's a that's a decent length for this type of video, I hope. Uh if you're still here, thank you. Especially the rambling at the end. Thanks for sitting through that. Thank you for giving me your time and I hope that you are able to even just from the video maybe get your own ideas from it or use these set of questions to start conversations with people and I I just I pray for anyone who watches this that some good comes out of my work and I pray that God bless you and you all have a good evening or whatever time of your day, whatever time of day you're watching this. Good Sunday if it's Sunday. Uh, you know, merry Christmas if you're watching this like seven months from now. But regardless, God bless you all and good night.