Apologetics Session 45 - Catholicism

This, believe it or not, is going to be, I think, the last apologetics session that we're going to have.

And then we're launching directly into... Well, next week is pizza night. Next week is pizza night.

We're going to have a good time just hanging out. But after that, we're going to launch right into the evangelism class, which

I am pretty excited about. So that's going to be a lot of fun. And Philip, the evangelist, as Pastor Jeff likes to say, is going to be up front here doing the teaching.

So I'm pretty excited about that. We went over Islam last time.

We had the congregational meeting, but last time we went over Islam. I realized that I gave you an incomplete answer to one of your questions, though.

So I wanted to settle that here. We talked about Ramadan and what is important about it. What I failed to tell you is that they believe that that week, or that month, is the month that Muhammad got his revelation.

So that's why it's an important time for them to fast and pray and atone and all of that.

But I neglected to mention that, so I wanted to get that off the bat. But today, we're going to go through Catholicism.

Catholicism is a deep well of a topic, so we are not going to dive into a tremendous amount of detail.

We're going to cover kind of the basics, and what I wanted to focus on was really the differences between evangelical

Christians and Catholicism, or Catholics.

How many here were once Catholic?

A lot of them. Wow. Actually got a decent chunk. How many of you knew a lot of the doctrines of the church while you were

Catholics? Knew some of them. And I think that's indicative, certainly, it's actually indicative of a lot of Christian churches as well, just the lack of understanding.

There are some that are very devout and are very in tune with the doctrines of their own belief, and some that are not.

The first thing I wanted to get out of the way is, what does the word Catholic actually mean?

It just means universal. And this is evidenced in the Apostles' Creed, and this actually trips up a lot of Christians.

So it says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our

Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried.

He descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the

Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead, I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy

Catholic Church, the communion of the saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.

Amen. And there's usually a star, just like there is here, next to Catholic Church, because a lot of Christians go, what do you mean the holy

Catholic Church? We're not Catholics! And really, because this is using the term

Catholic in its original context and sense, which is meaning the universal

Christian Church, not the Roman Catholic Church. So when we use the term

Catholic, it's really shorthand for the Roman Catholic Church. So we're generally referring to that, and when we say

Catholics, we're talking about people who are practicing Roman Catholicism. We're not using it, and I think it's been sort of co -opted by the

Roman Catholic Church, and now it's used as shorthand, and so this is why this trips some folks off.

All right, so now that we've got that out of the way, we'll talk about the origin of the Roman Catholic Church.

Now, some Catholic priests will tell this story a little differently. I'm going to tell it the way that the history books would tell it.

So in the early days of the Church, Rome was persecuting and martyring

Christians. They were very angry with Christians, mainly because they were monotheistic, and Rome was a pagan polytheistic environment.

So they persecuted for hundreds of years, they persecuted Christians all throughout the

Roman Empire. But this all changed in 313 A .D. when the

Roman Emperor Constantine, he converted, and I'm air -quoting converted, because he professed to be a

Christian, but he also still practiced certain Roman pagan practices. So he wasn't fully converted,

I guess, is the only way to really say that. So Constantine in 313 issued what's called the

Edict of Milan. And this lifted the ban on Christianity, because Christianity was a banned religion, so this lifted the ban and allowed for more religious tolerance.

And he looked at Christianity as a way to sort of unite the people. He wanted to utilize it to bring all

Romans together, because you can imagine, Rome was comprised of a lot of conquered nations and stuff, and religion can unite people across.

I mean, we talked about this with Islam and the tribes in Arabia, and how Islam was a force for unity amongst the various tribal people in that part of the world.

And how that actually bothered a lot of people, because that monotheistic religion caused people to put less stock in their tribal identity and more stock in their religious identity.

The same thing is true here with the Roman Empire. You would put more stock in your religious identity, and Constantine wanted to use it as sort of almost a political tool in that regard.

What ultimately arose, though, was a Christianity that was mixed with some Roman paganism.

So in all of the stuff that I was reading, it was really hard to say, this is the beginning of the

Catholic Church. You look at church history, and it was really difficult to say that, oh, it started on this day.

With Islam, it was really easy. Muhammad got his revelation, it was a three to six year period or whatever, and he started to preach this monotheistic

Muslim religion, and that was the beginning of Islam.

With Roman Catholicism, it was much harder to pin down, because it really didn't start at any particular point in time, it sort of grew up over a longer period of time, because many of the doctrines that the

Catholic Church holds to have changed drastically over time, and we'll talk about why that is in a bit.

So Roman Catholicism, because the Roman Catholicism of today doesn't actually resemble the

Roman Catholicism of the 300s and 400s AD. It's actually quite different.

I was looking through some materials and found that Dr. James White, I'm sure you guys have heard of Dr.

James White, if you haven't, he is associated with Apologia Church in Arizona.

You've heard me talk about Jeff Durbin, who's an apologist and a pastor at Apologia Church, and Dr.

James White, who's a debater and a scholar and a pastor. Well, Dr. James White has studied

Catholicism in a tremendous amount of detail, and so I go with him on this.

He basically says that, in his estimation, the origin, the real origin of the modern

Catholic Church was actually in 1215 AD at the

Fourth Council of the Lateran. And the reason why he puts the origin of the modern

Catholic Church there is because it was at this ecumenical council that the doctrine of transubstantiation and the mass was introduced.

So when you think of Catholicism and Catholic practice, you generally think of Saturday Mass, right?

They go to Mass, they take communion, they say a lot of stuff, right?

And they go to bingo. And then they go to bingo, yes. And then they go to bingo, right?

So it was in 1215 AD that really the doctrine of transubstantiation and the modern -day

Catholic Mass was introduced. Now, there have been changes to the Catholic Mass over the years, but the Mass still holds, and this was when it was introduced.

But whatever date you put on it, Catholics, and Catholic priests particularly, hold that Peter was the first pope, and that the

Catholic Church actually goes all the way back to Jesus, and that when

Jesus had his apostles, his disciples around him, and he said, Simon, you're now

Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, Catholic priests, and there was actually a really good

Catholic priest that I was watching a bunch of videos of his, Father Mike Schmidt, I think is his name, and he does a really good job of kind of boiling

Catholic theology down to easy, bite -size, and he takes on tough topics and stuff.

While I don't agree with him, I thought he was easily consumable to get really

Catholic ideas. And he goes all the way back to that and says that when

Jesus did that for Peter, that he was essentially making, because Jesus was the king, and he was bringing his kingdom to earth,

Jesus, as the king, was making Peter essentially his prime minister, right? Giving him the authority and saying he was going to build his church on them, and that the rest of the apostles were essentially the bishops of the church, the modern -day bishops that you would see in the

Catholic Church today. And so in modern times, they look at bishops as, you know, it's an apostolic calling, and you're an apostle of the church, right?

And the pope, the popes that have gone on are essentially successors to Peter. And we're going to have a whole slide on the pope.

We'll talk more about him. But essentially, this is what Catholics and Catholic priests believe.

They'll say that actually Jesus founded the Catholic Church, and that is why the Catholic Church is the only true church.

And so the problem with that is that the early church was persecuted by Rome.

There's nothing that talks about Peter ever going to Rome, right, being the bishop of Rome. That's what the pope is, the bishop of Rome.

And none of the earliest church fathers ever held to any of the Catholic doctrines that are present today.

And there are actually good reasons for that, not the least of which is it's not in the

Bible, a lot of it. But also, you know, Catholic doctrine has changed significantly over the years.

As we just talked about, transubstantiation wasn't even present until 1215, 1215 years after Christ.

So, you know, that is a difficulty, and much of the

Catholic doctrine is in conflict with various scriptures in the Bible. And this

Catholic priest, this Mike Schmidt guy, he talked about the Bible being the infallible word of God, but the church being the infallible interpreter of the

Bible. And that's what 1215 was. And that's what 1215 is, yes. So that is a difference.

The problem I have is if you have an infallible, perfect document, you don't need an infallible interpreter.

You interpret it the way that you would read it, right? And so that gets into a whole other thing.

All right, so this is somewhat the origin. You could get into—and

Ivan sent me slides and talks about church history. And we could spend the rest of tonight just on church history and going through all that.

We are not going to do that. But this is sort of like the summary version of the origins of the

Roman Catholic Church, and there's a tremendous amount of more detail. And actually, did you already supply those documents with the—

With the first one, but I had to do what you're doing. I had to cut back. I'm just saying I want to make it available to everybody.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you've already made it available in the— Yeah, I made it available for them, but there was even more.

Yeah, yeah. So we'll make sure that you guys have access to all those documents. I don't have all of them in this deck because we'd be all night on it.

But I'll provide that. It gives you sort of a timeline with like call -outs of different points of church history.

And it's not just focused on the Catholic Church. It's focused on a much broader topic of church history.

So we'll move on. What I did want to call out are things that we hold in common with Catholics.

So Catholics and evangelicals. Evangelicals is just the broad term that I'm giving all sort of Reformed believers, although evangelicals could have a broader meaning.

That's my shorthand for tonight. What do Catholics and evangelicals have in common?

Well, we believe that there's one God. So we're monotheists. We believe that God created the universe and all of mankind.

We believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus is, in fact, divine. We believe in the

Trinity. So this is the one being, three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

We believe in heaven, which is an eternal paradise where Christians will receive eternal life.

And we believe in hell, which is a place of eternal punishment where unbelievers are damned. Those are things that we have in common, just in summary form.

If you asked Catholics, are you Christian, they would say yes. If you asked, am

I a Christian, they would probably say yes. There's something we'll talk about called

Vatican II, which sort of tried to bring Protestants or evangelicals and Catholics together.

But we have significant differences in what we believe. These are the things we have in common.

Let's move on to the things we don't. So I wanted to talk about what is the Catholic gospel.

Because this is really the heart of the differences between Catholicism and evangelical belief.

So this is the most important thing I think we disagree on. There are certainly a lot of things we disagree on, but this is,

I think, sort of at the core. Evangelicals believe that Christ imputes his righteousness to us when we accept him, and that our good works are a result, not a requirement, for salvation.

That grace alone, through Christ alone, is how we're saved. This is the solus, the sola scriptura, that's the scripture alone.

Grace alone, Christ alone, through faith alone. These are sort of the things that came out of the

Reformation. Catholics also believe in grace as a means of salvation, but they add to that grace works.

So the Catholic Church believes in seven sacraments, and these seven sacraments are things that believers must do.

Not all of them must do all of them, but they must do the ones that are appropriate for them to be saved.

So the first is baptism. They believe that all Catholics must be baptized. They usually do this as infants.

So you'll have a family who has... We have dedications, right? So we'll bring our children up.

I did this with all of my children. We'll bring them up to the front, and we'll pray, and we'll talk about how we're dedicating them, and that we're going to raise them in the faith, that we're going to teach them to believe in Jesus Christ.

Catholics, too, have this infant ritual where they baptize them, but if you were to convert to Catholicism, you would still need to be baptized, and they generally do this sprinkling -on -the -head type of baptism.

It's not baptism by immersion, which we believe is how you should be baptized because that's the picture of how

Christ was baptized. So Catholics believe that infant baptism brings you into the

Church, so this is how you get into the Church, and forgives original sin. This is why they do it as infants, right?

Because you're born into this world with original sin, totally depraved, as we were talking about earlier, and that this is a way of saying, okay, you're new into this world.

We're going to baptize you, bring you into the Church, and this is going to forgive you of your original sin.

A priest will generally do the baptism. You usually have a godmother or godfather along with your parents, and the role of the godmother -godfather is to, if something were to happen to the parents, that person steps in and can raise them in the faith, in the

Church. The second is called the Eucharist, which is what we call communion.

We're going to talk a bit about transubstantiation and the differences between what we believe and what they believe with regard to communion, but this is another act that you must perform within the

Catholic Church. Generally, this is done in the

Mass, and it's done every Mass. The priest will call for those to come down, and they will deposit the wafer on their tongue and say the

Body of Christ, and then you'll drink the wine, and they'll say the Blood of Christ.

This is the way you do communion. You go down the aisle and you take communion. The third sacrament is

Confirmation. If you have any Catholic friends or yourself are Catholic, you know that when the kids are young, they get to a certain age and they have to go through Confirmation.

Fifth grade. Do they call that Catechism? No, Confirmation. Is that the little book that's called

Catechism? No, the book Missals or Catechism, but you're confirmed when you're in fifth grade.

I was anyway. I don't even know what fifth graders are or how old they are, but when they reach that age, they go through Confirmation.

You'll usually see them also get, so when they're infants, they have these baptism garments, and usually parents will save those, and then

Confirmation, they get all dressed up. The idea behind Confirmation is that this strengthens what you got from your original baptism and enriches you with special strength from the

Holy Spirit. The next sacrament is called

Penance, and this is confession. This is you go to church on some regular basis, some more than others.

You go into one of those little booths with the priest. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.

It's been three weeks since my last confession, and the priest goes, What did you do?

And you're like, Oh, I lusted after a woman. I lied to my parents. I did this. I did that.

And then usually the priest will say five outfathers, say three

Hail Marys. These are acts of contrition, right? These are acts of contrition, and they're repetition ritualistic prayers where you recite this prayer over and over again for a number of times as an act of contrition.

It reminds me very much of, you know, have you ever seen the movies where somebody does something wrong and they have to go up to the whiteboard and they have to chalkboard and they have to write something multiple times?

It's very akin to that, and it's basically penance, right? You're sorry for your sins, and you're doing this as a way to show

God that you're sorry for your sins. Go ahead. So every week when I used to go, when I was a kid, when I used to go to confession,

I did the whole thing as a contrition. Two Hail Marys, three outfathers. And then he would pray to God.

Apparently, during those years, all years I went there, God didn't know English. He had to do it in Latin.

Yes, yes. He was like, God, I don't want to do it in Latin. So that's... They changed that in 65. Yeah, in Vatican II.

I was about 10 years old when they did it. And so these... And the priest is going to pray for your salvation, right?

He's going to pray for your forgiveness, right? So you go and perform these acts of contrition, and the priest prays that you're forgiven of your sins, right?

And so this is something that all Catholics are expected to do as well. The next thing is the anointing of the sick.

The idea behind this is that it can bring healing or serve as forgiveness if the sick person can't confess.

Is that extremonction? I don't know if it's called that. Is that what that's called, extremonction? I'm not sure if that's...

You probably know more than I do about it. As you do with most things theological.

The next thing is called holy orders. This is... The holy orders is really what priests, someone who's going to commit their life to the church, does.

So this isn't something that all Catholics have to do. Holy orders is really when a prospective priest, whether it's a monastic priest or whether it's what they call a secular priest, will go and they will take their holy orders.

This is supposed to give you sacred power to act in what they call persona Christi, which is essentially to act in place of Christ, which allows you to become a priest, a teacher, or a pastor.

And this is, again, where you move from being... I believe it's called a...

I've forgotten it now. I think it's a disciple. Not a disciple. I forget what they call the priest in training.

But you go from being a priest in training to being an actual priest. And then there are multiple types of priests.

You could be what they call a religious priest, which is where you're committing yourself to some monastic...

Monastic just means you're kind of a monk, right? Versus a secular priest, which is what you normally think of when you think of a

Catholic priest. This is the person that has the white collar and is essentially... Sometimes they call them a diocesan priest.

Diocesan priest. I can't pronounce these words. But basically they're assigned to a diocese, assigned to a parish, to actually serve as a priest over the flock in that parish, versus someone who's going into a monastic order who's essentially going to take a vow of poverty.

So a secular priest assigned to a diocese doesn't take a vow of poverty. They can actually own...

They can have their own wealth and they can own possessions, whereas someone who's going into a monastic order is taking a vow of poverty, which means that anything they get goes back to the church.

So if they're, say, a prolific author, they can write books and then any of the royalties they get for that book go directly back to the church.

The seventh sacrament is matrimony. This one takes very little explanation. It's getting married.

And through this you can help another attain holiness and bring forth children. So these are some of the works that they expect

Catholics to perform. And in the absence of performing these, they are not saved.

So they do not believe in salvation through faith alone. And so this is why

I say this is the most significant difference between Catholicism and evangelical

Christianity because they add something to the doctrine of grace.

And any time you add anything to grace, you have essentially corrupted or created a brand new gospel.

So it is a different gospel than the gospel that we believe. And so the reason

I think it's the most significant is because how you are saved is foundational to Christianity.

It is literally everything. So somebody bring out

James 2 .24. Anyone. You see that a person is justified by words and not by faith alone.

We should all run to the Catholic Church and convert. It says it right there, right?

It says it right there, right? So actually let me, I think

I have this. You guys can see this, right? So right there it says, which one, this is the right one.

James 2 .24. You see, this is the

ESV, you see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.

I mean, it can't get more clear than that, right? We're all justified by works, right? The problem with this particular verse is that I am doing what

I always say. I can do all things through a verse taken out of context. So you have to, just like the three most important things in Realty, right?

Is location, location, location. Three most important things in the Bible are context, context, context.

So what James is talking about here, you have to read in the full context. You can't just read it, that verse by itself.

Because if you take that verse by itself, and a lot of Catholics will argue with folks based on this verse.

They'll say, see, it says it right there that you're saved by works and not faith alone. But the problem is that you have to kind of read this in its entirety.

It's talking about faith without works is dead. So what it's talking about here, it says, what good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?

Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and if one of you says to them, go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things they need for the body, what good is that?

So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works.

Show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one, you do well.

Even the demons believe that and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?

Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar?

You see that faith was active, faith was active along with his works.

So it's saying here that Abraham's faith was already active and that his works were simply the demonstration, the proof of his faith.

It's not saying that his works were the catalyst that saved him.

It was saying that his works were a proof to his faith that was already active.

And it says, you see that faith was active along with his work and that faith was completed by his works.

The scripture was fulfilled that says Abraham believed in God and it was, this is another important one, and it was counted to him as righteousness.

He believed in God and it was counted to him as righteousness. It was imputed to him, as I said earlier.

The faith, the righteousness, was imputed to him because of his faith and then through his works he just was living out that faith, he was proving that faith.

And so again, what I said earlier, our belief in salvation is that we are saved through faith alone and not by works so that no man may boast, but that our works are a proof, they are a demonstration of a legitimate or valid or true belief, true faith.

In the Greek it's vindication. They use that for that. Yeah. It's the same, it's just a more powerful word.

And then all you need to do, right, is go to yet another verse of scripture, right, where it talks about, in Romans 4, it talks about Abraham was justified by faith.

So Romans 4 brings even more clarity to the same story of Abraham. And it says,

What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.

For what does the scripture say? Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

So here it's referring back, right, to what James was saying. So I think Romans 4 helps to clarify what was said in James.

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but is due.

So again here it's saying that if we're saved by our works, then that is not a gift to us.

Salvation isn't a gift to us, it's what we're owed. We're owed salvation because we worked out that salvation.

As opposed to salvation being actually a free gift from God, right?

And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Just as David also speaks the blessing of the one whom God counts righteousness apart from works.

Let me skip down here. It then starts talking about circumcision and uncircumcision. It talks about whether or not someone has to get circumcised before they can be saved or whether they can be saved even without being circumcised.

And this is going back to Abraham and talking about how circumcision really started with him.

And so this is really just demonstrating the differences between a works -based faith.

And Islam is a works -based faith. We talked about that before. You're required to pray five times a day, make a trip once in your life to Mecca, give two and a half percent of your network.

There are a bunch of things that you have to do to work out your salvation. Catholicism, too, adds works to faith in order for you to work out those things it says.

And we're gonna get to some of the canons that came out of, I think it was

Trent. We'll get to it in a second where it talks about anathematizing Reformed believers.

So this is a huge difference. This is the main thing that we want to talk about tonight because this is really where the rubber meets the road with the difference between Catholicism and Evangelicals.

Go ahead. It also points out that what Christ did, it makes it seem like in the

Catholic belief that what Christ did alone wasn't sufficient enough.

That we almost are putting ourselves on the same level that there's something incomplete as what

Christ has done. Christ's death on the cross only gets you part of the way. Right. Your belief in that only gets you part of the way.

Right, and that we have to put it over the top. And that's an insult to God. And it really is, what

Rich is saying. So that's the way I think of the difference is like, we're really saying that what he did was insufficient.

Yes, 100%. So at 35, I became a

Christian and was a Catholic. And I was amazed to find out in my research, because I didn't even know what my own belief was.

But we talk about the incompleteness of Jesus' work on the cross. Until the last decade or so,

I forget when exactly it was, they actually believed that each time a priest performed the sacrament of the

Eucharist, that they were... Transubstantiation. No, no, they were killing Jesus again. Yes, yes.

That's it. Yes. Unbelievable. Yes, so we talk about a once -for -all sacrifice.

In Catholicism, the sacrifice is continual. Every Mass. Every Mass, yes. You're 100 % right.

So we could go through this entire Romans 4. Romans 4 is great. You should read Romans 4. Go home and read

Romans 4. It's not that long. Romans 4 is great. It really brings a lot of clarity to salvation.

Read James 2 as well. But yeah, this is important stuff.

And it's also against Arminianism too. Yes. Romans 4. Yes. So let me go back to sharing this.

Alright, so this kind of gets you to the meat of this particular difference.

And again, the most important difference. This is just something I threw in there that Ivan gave me, which just goes through, it's an image that talks about the seven sacraments, and it talks a little bit more detail, a little bit of different detail.

I just tried to put one -liners. But this will give you some information as well.

Alright. Now, we've been saying, one of the questions is, are

Catholics Christians? If you ask a Catholic, they'll say yes. If you ask a

Catholic if we're Christians, most of them would say yes. But we obviously believe that our gospel is the true gospel, and that their gospel is not the true gospel.

So the question becomes, are Catholics Christians? And I would say, first of all,

I am not God, so it is not for me to say who is and who isn't a Christian. But second of all,

I think it depends on what you mean when you say, are Catholics Christians? Because just like I talked about earlier, what if somebody hasn't heard about the

Trinity before? And so they're not sure they believe it. Can they still be a Christian? Because you have to sort of differentiate between the theologically literate and the theologically illiterate.

There are many Catholics who believe that Jesus Christ is

God, who believe they did it out on the cross to save them from their sins, who could be believing

Christians, have a true, genuine faith. And there are some that believe all of the doctrines of Catholicism and probably believe a different gospel than we believe.

And they're not Christians. What do they say about being born again? I don't know.

What do they say about being born again? I don't know. What do they say about the doctrine of marriage? Oh, yes.

We're going to get into the way they pray and so forth in a minute. So to answer that, there is a split within the

Catholic Church of true Bible -believing Catholics that believe

Jesus Christ died for their sins, and they actually believe that. The other grouping is they believe that, but they believe that the

Church has total authority still and not Jesus or that they are dwelled with the

Holy Spirit. They feel the Church is still the one in charge. And that's kind of split. That's the main, main, main split.

So let's dive into that a little bit. So the Council of Trent, it really makes the differentiation clear, right?

This, I think, was out of the Reformation. This was essentially a Catholic rebuttal to Reformed evangelicalism.

And so they had a bunch of different canons. I picked four canons to highlight here out of the

Council of Trent. The first is Canon 9, where it says, if anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema.

Let him be anathema is let him be damned to hell, right? He is accursed, right?

So they are saying that anyone that believes this is accursed. Guess who they're talking about? Right?

Yeah, they're talking about Martin Luther, right? They're also talking about us. So someone who believes this, who believes this as doctrine, because this is a canon.

It cannot be reversed. It is doctrine in the Catholic Church.

We'll talk about Vatican II in a minute, but it's doctrine in the Catholic Church that anyone who believes that the sinner is justified by faith alone is accursed.

Canon 11. If anyone says that men are justified either by sole imputation of the justice of Christ or by the sole remission of sins to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts from the

Holy Spirit, this is works, and remain in them, or also that the grace by which we are justified is only the good will of God, let him be anathema.

All right? Again, you're accursed if you believe that Christ's righteousness is credited to us.

Right? This is what we believe. We believe that Christ, dying on the cross, the minute that we believe in Christ, which is all we have to do, we talk about this in the soteriology class, the sole requirement is belief in Jesus Christ.

Right? That belief, if we say that through that belief that Christ's righteousness is imputed to us, is credited to our account, he has paid the penalty for us, if we say that, we are cursed according to the

Catholic doctrine. Right? So they don't believe in substitutionary atonement or anything like that?

They believe in partial substitutionary atonement. In other words, Christ's righteousness is not imputed to us unless we both believe in him and perform works.

It says here, the charity which is poured forth from their hearts, in their hearts, from the

Holy Spirit. So the works that we do over and above that belief.

So again, it's grace plus. Grace plus. Grace plus. It's Canon 30.

If anyone says that after the reception of the grace of justification, the guilt is so remitted and the debt of eternal punishment so blotted out to every repentant sinner that no debt of temporal punishment remains to be discharged either in this world or in purgatory, which we'll talk about purgatory later, before the gates of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema.

So again, if the receipt of grace after belief in Christ, if we say that that justifies us so that there's no debt left for us to pay, we're cursed.

This is Catholic doctrine, guys. I guess they don't sing Blessed Assurance. No, they don't. No, not on the internet either.

Canon 33. If anyone says that the Catholic doctrine of justification is set forth by the

Holy Council in the present decree derogates in some respect from the glory of God or the mercies of our

Lord Jesus Christ and does not rather illustrate the truth of our faith and no less the glory of God and of Jesus Christ, let him be anathema.

If you don't take our word for it, you're cursed. So how can these canons be doctrine?

What authority says that this is true rather than the plain reading of Scripture?

You were going to say something? I was just going to say 9 out of 10 Catholics have no idea. Oh, of course.

Just like when you're witnessing to them, they're not going to know this stuff at all. No, no. And because it contradicts all the stuff they might have seen on TV with the recent

Pope, they'll say, well, that doesn't make any sense because if you're a sincere, sincere believing

Muslim, you can be saved. That's universalism, yes. Francis says that. And there's a lot of people that believe that the current

Pope is a universalist. And that there's no hell. Yeah. And this is going to take us to the next slide, which is

Catholic modernism. And so between 1962 and 1965 was the second ecumenical council of the

Vatican, or what they shorthand call Vatican II. And in this council, it started out as Pope John XXIII, but he died halfway through, and then

Pope Paul VI finished it off. And this was really the

Catholic Church's attempt in the 60s to modernize the Catholic Church. Because the Catholic Church was very kind of,

I want to say esoteric. A lot of the masses were in Latin. People weren't encouraged to read the

Bible. It was really for the priests and the monsignors and all the rest to read the Bible and tell you what you should be believing.

But people were falling away from the Church. And so they wanted to bring the Church into the 21st century.

And so there were a number of things that came out of Vatican II, but the ones I wanted to highlight were they wanted to get

Catholics more involved in the mass. So a lot of the recitations you hear today weren't done in mass prior to Vatican II.

It was mainly the priests reciting things in Latin that nobody understood. And the parishioners were just sitting there kind of just listening.

They were just observers. And they wanted to get Catholics more involved. So if you go to a modern

Catholic church or Catholic mass, I've been to baptisms and such, and you'll hear a lot of things.

People, it's sort of, you do things on cue, right? You kneel on cue, you sit on cue, the priest says something, you say something back.

This is kind of what kind of came out of that was this sort of more involved, you know, congregation.

The next thing was, they actually started encouraging Catholics to read the Bible, which was new.

But, you know, if you go all the way back to the Dark Ages, the Bible was only written in Latin. It wasn't even in the common tongue.

And then the other thing, and this is important, the other thing that came out of Vatican II was a reunification and cooperation with non -Catholic

Christians. Prior to Vatican II, it was forbidden, right? I just read you a bunch of anathemas, right?

They said that anyone who didn't believe the stuff that we believe is accursed.

Well, these guys are like, those evangelicals, they're not so bad. They're not so bad.

They may not believe all the stuff we believe, but they're not so bad. You know, there are imperfect brethren, right?

They got it wrong, but they got it mostly right, so they believe in Jesus, they believe in the Trinity, they believe in one

God. They got it mostly right. They got this whole, some of the doctrines wrong, but, you know, they're our brothers, as it were.

But one key difference with Vatican II, right? I just told you that the canons out of the Council of Trent could not be reversed, and they can't.

They're doctrine for the Catholic Church. But Pope John XXIII expressed his wish in Vatican II that no dogmatic definitions or anathemas come out of Vatican II, and so they didn't.

And previous councils generally would have some sort of canons, like doctrine. They would define doctrine.

And this is why the Catholic Church has shifted over time, right, to believe different things.

And so those canons, right, those anathemas, those are considered infallible.

They're coming from the Holy See, right? They're coming from the seat of the Catholic Church and are doctrine, right?

Whereas the stuff that came out of Vatican II is not. And there's actually some controversy about whether Vatican II was even a valid ecumenical council as a result of that.

So a lot of the stuff that came out of Vatican II contradicted the previous stuff that came out of the other ecumenical councils.

But since they're canon and it's not, who's to say what's what?

So I still hold, my opinion, and I'm sure others agree, I still hold that those canons are actual

Catholic doctrine, right? The anathemas that say if we believe in grace alone, we're a curse, that's what real

Catholicism believes. That's not what the everyday Catholic necessarily believes, but that's what real Catholicism believes.

Magisterium? Yeah, they talk about the magisterium, which is, there's a lot of it.

It's like all the history. It's the historical decrees. There's a lot of terminology.

Or proclamations Proclamations by the Pope ex cathedra. Ex cathedra, right. Yeah, the

Pope can say a lot of things, and I've got a slide on him. The Pope can say a lot of things. Some things he just says.

Other things are said in his official capacity as the vicar of Christ. He's infallible in faith and morals.

Right, so he can be both fallible and infallible. So he's fallible sometimes, he's infallible other times. Very confusing, but we'll get to that in a second.

Transubstantiation. This is what you were just talking about. So transubstantiation, this is the belief that came out of 1215.

In the, what did I say, the fourth council, the Lateran? Fourth Lateran council.

Yeah, the fourth Lateran council. This is where the mass was established and where transubstantiation, which communion is a key part, a core part of the mass.

There's the homily, that's the sermon, but there's also this communion that is done every mass.

Now transubstantiation is now a core belief of the Catholic Church. Most Catholics do believe it,

I believe. Transubstantiation was declared dogma in 1551 at the

Council of Trent. And I talked about 1215 where it was first introduced, but it was considered dogma in 1551.

Meaning it became canonized? Yes, it was canonized, yep. It was declared to be the true propitiatory sacrifice as well as a sacrament.

This is what you were just referring to. It is not only a sacrament, it is not a memorial meal.

When I got up the beginning of this month and talked about the memorial meal, this is the difference.

It's not a memorial meal to Catholics. It is a propitiatory sacrifice. Christ is dying all over again.

And what they state is, and for those of you who don't know what transubstantiation is, it just means that the wafer actually becomes the body of Christ.

It changes its state when it goes in you.

And that the wine or juice or whatever becomes the blood of Christ. It actually turns into Christ's blood when it goes in you.

And a man can do that at every mass. Yes. Go ahead. Yeah, it's also interesting to note that when

Christ was given the communion out to his disciples, he was still alive.

Yes. And so even there, it's a stretch that they have to go to even bring that out.

Yes, 100%. Go ahead. I was just going to say, when I was a kid, I remember stories in Catholic catechism class about priests running into burning buildings to grab the

Eucharist and pull it out of the building. And wartime stories of priests giving their life to save the

Eucharist. They believe that Christ is physically present on the altar.

They believe he's physically present there. This is why, if you ever look at a mass, you'll see them turn, bow, cross themselves to the box that they have the elements in, because they believe that Christ is present in the

Eucharist. Right? And so it says here, it's stated in 1551, By the consecration of the bread and wine, there takes place a change of the whole substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ our

Lord, and of the whole substance of the wine into the substance of his blood. This change, the

Holy Catholic Church has fittingly and properly called transubstantiation. So this is what transubstantiation means.

I think Catholics believe it. I'm not sure how many of them actually know about transubstantiation, but I don't think this is like a hidden thing.

So this turns the practice of communion into a re -perpetuatory event where Christ is sacrificed over and over again.

So Christ is sacrificed every mass. Every single mass. All over the world. All over the world.

Right. Millions of times, right? So Catholics believe that Christ is actually present in the elements, and this totally contradicts our belief in a one for all sacrifice.

That Christ as the Lamb of God died as the fulfillment of what was symbolized in the law.

So the law, Israel would have to sacrifice a spotless lamb, and that would be a temporary covering of sin.

And Christ came as the fulfillment of the law, and actually died as a once for all sacrifice.

Once for all. Once for all. He did it one time. It was sufficient, and I talked about in communion earlier this month, that it was sufficient to cover sins, to cover all our sins.

For all time. For all time. Alright. I gotta speed it up.

So the role of the Bible. Alright. There's a difference in the role of the Bible. I've only got a few more slides,

I think. Yes. The role of the Bible, this is another big difference. So I just went through transubstantiation,

I just went through the gospel. I still think that is like, that is the major, major, major difference.

If we wanted to say, what is the most important difference between us and Catholics, I say that's the most important difference between us and Catholics.

But the role of the Bible is a pretty close second. So we evangelicals believe in the supremacy and infallibility of God's word.

That's the difference. Catholics also believe in the infallibility of God's word. But they don't necessarily believe in the supremacy of God's word.

So we believe in sola scriptura. We believe in scripture alone. So we believe that the

Bible is the authority on all matters of faith and practice. So you hear that term faith and practice a lot. You hear it in different covenantal statements that various denominations will have.

And all that means is that in what we believe and how we live it out. That's all faith and practice means. So we believe there's no other book, no other book that was inspired by God and that we should put our trust in.

Catholics, on the other hand, believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but that the church and the pope are on the same level as the

Bible. So this is why those canons that I was talking about before are considered doctrine.

It is because either the church, the ecumenical councils, the pope, spoke them and have the same authority as God's word.

So they can tell you what is or is not doctrine. So whatever the

Catholic church says is authoritative. Whatever the pope says is authoritative. And it can even supersede the

Bible in certain circumstances. Catholics also believe in another book.

It's actually a collection of books called the Apocrypha. I'm not going to go into detail on the

Apocrypha. I went into detail on the Apocrypha when we went through the veracity of the Bible class.

I went into a lot more detail there. You can go back and watch that on YouTube. But it's an additional 14 books that actually contradict the

Bible. They have tons of errors in them. Even some sections where it says forgive any errors.

Now if a book is authoritative and infallible, the preface shouldn't say forgive any errors in this book.

That's a no -no. But there's certain things that are chronological errors.

I mentioned something about Tobit where it said that Tobit was alive over like a 160 -year period or something.

He was alive during two events that he couldn't possibly have been alive during. So there's chronological errors. There's tons of other errors in it.

But they believe that these books are also inspired. And one of the main reasons for that is because some of these books, like Maccabees and so forth, they actually bolster some of the doctrines of the

Church, like almsgiving and so forth, prayer to the dead, prayer for the dead, things like that.

So in truth, Catholics have rejected the idea of sola scriptura because their doctrines and traditions hinge on new revelations from the

Pope and the Church. So there's new revelations. Now, what does Revelation say? Do not add.

Do not add. Do not add to this book. This book is complete. What are they doing?

Adding. They're adding. I believe they changed one of the Ten Commandments. Did they? Yeah. Thou shalt be nice?

No, they removed you should not make for yourself a graven image and then they added you shall not covet your neighbor's wife specifically.

So, whatever. Like I said, this is topical. This is not going to get you all the way in deep.

This could be a really long thing. Do you know when they encouraged

Catholics to read the Bible? Because I remember back in the 1930s,

Pope Pius XII put it on the list of forbidden books. It was in the 60s at Vatican II when they really started encouraging.

What they actually encouraged was Catholic Bible studies. And there was a Catholic Bible study.

Douay version. So, that in turn means that Catholics wanted to have a

Bible study and had to kind of get them into the Bible. And that's when the Catholic Mass stopped being as much in Latin and more in common tongue.

So, a lot of that was just to make the church not this sort of esoteric sort of distant thing that you just kind of went to because you felt guilty and had to go to hell.

Was that their seeker -sensitive movement? Yes. That would be their seeker -sensitive movement. All right,

Purgatory. We talked about Purgatory briefly. I'm just going to run through this. Purgatory is a holding place between heaven and hell.

We don't believe in it. It's a place where people who are believers, because again, you have this grace plus.

So, your sins aren't totally forgiven unless you commit works. But you can sin between the time that you last confessed and when you die.

So, you've got this sort of race condition. If I died in my sin, and I'm not even going to get into venial versus mortal sins.

That's a whole other thing. Mortal sins, you can't be forgiven. They're like unforgivable sins. And then venial sins are just like lying and shoplifting and stuff like that.

But this is a holding place where people who have committed venial sins but died have to purge, that's the term,

Purgatory, have to purge those sins through a temporal punishment. Yeah, Matt, that's part of what

Martin Luther said, Matt, was when John Tetzel was telling indulgences to lessen people's time in Purgatory.

Because, yeah, there were lots of ways that the church allowed for you to basically level up your dead relatives in Purgatory.

One was prayer for the dead. Another, as you're talking about, is almsgiving. Give to the church, level up your dead relative so they get out of Purgatory faster.

One quick thing. That's why babies are wanted to be baptized quickly, so the real sin is not on their bodies.

Right. So they would go to Purgatory. Yeah, because infant mortality, right, if they die, you don't want them hanging out there.

So the funny thing is, Purgatory was originally defined in the

Second Council of Lyon in 1274 A .D. So it was 1 ,200 years before they even talked about Purgatory.

It's nowhere in the Bible. And in this council they stated,

Some souls are purified after death. Such souls benefit from the prayers and pious duties that the living do for them.

Right, so this again, almsgiving, prayer, etc. The council declared, If they die truly repentant in charity before they have made satisfaction by worthy fruits of penance for sins, committed and omitted, their souls are cleansed after death by purgatorical or purifying punishment, as Brother John has explained to us.

And to relieve punishment of this kind, the offerings of the living faithful are of advantage to these, namely the sacrifices of masses, prayers, alms, and other duties of piety, which have customarily been performed by the faithful for other faithful according to the regulations of the church.

Another gospel. Another gospel. And can I add, what we went back to before, anathema?

Yes. Because it's real clear in Galatians, if we, or an angel from heaven, come and preach another gospel, let him be anathema.

Let him be accursed, anathema. As we have said, I say it again, if any man preaches to you another gospel contrary to what you have received, let him be anathema, let him be accursed.

Yes. That's what the Bible says. Clearly. Which is why they don't hold the

Bible as the ultimate authority. And actually I heard a Catholic say, the idea of sola scriptura is ridiculous, it's garbage.

I was like, whoa, that's... And Martin Luther was a devil. Yeah. Alright, moving along, moving along.

Prayer. So getting more into prayer, it says Catholics believe that you have to approach God through an intermediary.

So we believe you go directly to God, right? They believe that you can pray to God, you can pray to saints, you can pray for the dead, but that salvation, or if you come repentant, the priest prays for you.

This is pretty similar to Judaism when you talk about the priests who had to offer sacrifices for the nation of Israel once per year in the

Holy of Holies. But what happened when Jesus died on the cross? The veil was ripped in two.

What does that symbolize? Top to bottom. Access. That symbolizes access.

That means that we no longer have to have a priest. Why? Because Jesus is our high priest, right?

Alright. Hebrews 4, 14 through 16 clearly states that Jesus is our great high priest and we can approach

God through no intermediary. In the interest of time, we won't read it. Catholics also believe in prayer for the dead.

This was what we were talking about. I used the term here, even level up, right? They can pray for your dead relatives to level them up, get them out of purgatory faster.

Catholics believe in praying to dead people as well. Mary is a prime example of this. In many cases, you pray to Mary after confessing to a priest in order to obtain forgiveness.

And this whole Marianism, which is what they call it, we could spend an entire night just on Marianism.

So I'm not going to, though. You can look it up. Just look up Marianism, Catholic belief in Mary. They believe that she is not just a special woman who was chosen by God, but that she's actually the mother of God, which is a distinction.

She was the mother of Christ, but that's not what they mean when they're talking about that.

She is another level from us. She is not the same as we mere mortals.

And when you're praying and you don't get an answer, Jesus can be very strict.

So pray to Mary, and she'll talk to him for you. Because she has that special relationship as his mother.

And so, you know, it's not in the Bible. Through Jesus through Mary. And she's born sinless.

The Immaculate Conception now. There's a whole... Like I said, we could spend all night just on Marianism.

You can also pray to saints. Saints are considered to have a special connection to God. So it's kind of like, you know, you work for a company.

Your uncle is kind of a boss man in the company. You go to your uncle to get special favors. Same thing with praying to saints.

They've got a special connection to God. Although you'll find them praying to Mary a lot, but they will pray to saints as well.

Go ahead. Maybe you should do another, a whole thing on Mary. We could. Because it's so important to the

Catholics. We could. We could later. I can tell you, when I'm witnessing to Catholics, one of the main things we talk about is the whole praying to saints.

And I go to Deuteronomy, and I show them what God said about praying to the dead and all that.

And that seems to open up... People don't believe that it's actually there, the Catholics for the most part.

And they're shocked when they see it. That you can't do that. And so... And it's a...

That's one of the most greedous sins, is praying to the dead. Yes. And so...

Anyway. All right. Last slide. The Pope. Oh. That word isn't even in the

Bible. No. But... So, I mean, Peter was the Pope, right? Yeah. Or as they called him, they considered him the

Al -Habait. Allegedly. So that's like the prime minister. The Pope can be married to that. Yeah.

So the Pope is the head of the Catholic Church. There's a church governmental structure. We have church governmental structures.

It's totally fine. There's nothing wrong with a governmental structure in a church. We believe that the church is...

That pastors and elders are shepherds. But that the church is the body.

Right? Is the congregation. So we're a congregational church. But in Catholicism... And we'll just talk about the

Pope. There's a lot of ranks in Catholicism. But we'll just talk about the Pope here.

Now, many Catholics would protest the statement that says Christ is the head, but the Pope is representatives.

Because they don't believe that he's just his representative. They believe that the

Pope is the vicar of Christ. And this actually has a different meaning more than just a representative.

The moniker claims that the Pope literally stands in place of Jesus here on earth.

Which means that he not only is a representative, but has authority. Has divine authority to speak from his seat.

This is what I was saying earlier about how the Pope can speak. And sometimes he's just speaking. Right? And then he's sometimes speaking in his representative role as the vicar of Christ.

And what he says then is infallible, authoritative, and is gospel.

Right? To use the shorthand version of gospel. It's what is to be believed.

Right? So he, like Muhammad in Islam, had this... Was able to speak the words of God to the rest of us.

This means that a fallible human can be infallible when speaking in his capacity as the vicar of Christ.

So he is both fallible and infallible. And all you have to do to know that Popes are fallible is look at the history of what some of the

Popes did with that power. So, you know. Enough said about that.

You can go through a whole thing around that. And even if the

Pope were to say something that completely contradicted the Bible, which they have in certain instances, that is still considered authoritative.

This is what I was saying earlier where Pope actually has the authority to supersede the Bible. Or they believe he does.

He doesn't actually. But they believe he does. And this is very problematic because fallible men have used this position to teach questionable and heretical theology.

And this includes modern days, bowing to social pressures. Think about the current day, you know, some of the current day stuff that's going on where the

Pope is saying things that are contrary to clear prohibitions in the

Bible. Right? This also in the past, though, included political corruption, you know, greed.

I mean, what is the saying? You know, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And when you're literally the divine and fallible representative of the

God of the universe, how much more power, absolute power do you need? And in the past, the

Pope wasn't just the head of the church, but was a head of state. And so you could, you know, just look at politicians, right?

Like some of the most corrupt people. And so you can imagine what they did with that kind of power.

So Catholics believe that Jesus established the papacy when he renamed Simon to Peter. And that Peter is the first Pope and the other apostles were the first bishops.

And the current day bishops are considered apostles. And the Pope is considered the successor of Peter.

Now, you can go watch some Catholic priests. Father Mike Schmidt is a good one to read on this.

He's got one of the best descriptions of why they believe this. I totally disagree with it, but it's actually good to listen to what a

Catholic priest actually believes about these things. He's a good one to listen to if you really want to understand

Catholicism. Might as well hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were, right? They say when, you know,

Jesus said to Peter, you are the rock, and upon this rock I will build my church. The thing is, he used two different words.

He used Petras for Peter and Petra for rock. It was referring back to what Peter said, you are the

Christ, son of the living God. That was the rock. And he's saying he's a pebble. Peter was a pebble.

And Jesus is the rock. And the thing is, what is the

Pope? He is the Bishop of? Rome. Where did Peter go? Not Rome.

It's just really weird. I think he went to Cabo. Yeah, he went to Cabo. That always struck me.

It's like, that always struck me. Alright, so that's the

World Wooden Tour of the differences between evangelicals and Catholics. Pray for your

Catholic brothers. Witness to your Catholic brothers. Don't condemn them outright. They might, in fact, be

Christians. You don't know. But they need to be saved from some of the doctrines and teachings.

I didn't even get into the Stations of the Cross and all the prayers that you do, memorializing

Christ's final day on earth. There's so much you can go into in Catholicism. Or how many people,

Christians, were killed by the Catholic Church because they didn't follow what they believed.

And burnt at the stake. And that's really significant, a man being killed.

It is. I just have a question. I've always noticed, just like on your slide there, if you go into a

Catholic Church, they always depict Christ still on the cross. And if you go into a regular evangelical

Christian church, like we have, the cross is empty of Jesus. And even the jewelry that they wear, if you notice, it's the crucifix versus the cross.

The cross is the instrument, the implement. And we look at that cross, it has no power.

It is a, like communion, it is a symbol. It is a memorial. We are remembering what

Christ did through that. The crucifix has Christ on the cross. And think about transubstantiation and the communion that you take in the

Mass. What is happening there? Christ is dying all over again. Christ is always on that cross.

He's forever on that cross. Right. And I know they concentrate on suffering heavily in the

Catholic Church. And I always thought, well maybe they keep Him on the cross because they just want perpetual suffering.

You know, whereas we have Him resurrected so He's off the cross because He's risen from the dead.

That's the way I always thought about it, but I could be wrong about that. Yeah, I don't think about it that way.

This is not something I read, but the way I think about it is it directly relates to how they view the

Eucharist. It is that Christ is constantly being re -sacrificed, the re -perpetuatory sacrifice of Christ at every

Mass. So Christ is literally always on that cross, dying over and over and over again.

As opposed to us with Christ off the cross, that was just a symbol of the sacrifice that He did once for all and doesn't have to do again.

You can tell you're talking to a Catholic person because when they have their cross and Christ is still alive.

It's a crucifix. Yeah, and they have Christ still on the cross. You can tell you're talking to a

Catholic person. Yes, it's a crucifix. Yes. Didn't they omit some of the books out of the Bible? So the

Catholic Bible is different, like portions where it says in the end times you'll be forbidden to marry and forbidden to eat certain foods and sort of things?

Well, they changed parts of the Bible. They didn't omit complete books? I'm not sure that they omitted complete books, but they added books with the

Apocalypse. Right, they added. They added 14. Say that again,

Russell? Five books to four

Genesis? Yeah. Do you know there's a whole sub -level of priests that are married?

Yeah. I didn't know that, actually. If you're married, before you can decide to become a priest.

Now, you just stole my thunder. Which is the encyclopedia. Encyclopedia.

And he has to let everybody know it. Encyclopedia Theologica. One thing that's interesting is that the

Jesuits originally were formed as part of the Counter -Reformation.

And Ignatius Loyola formed the Jesuit Order. They were referred to as the Gestapo of the

Pope. And this is the first Pope, Pope Francis, that is a Jesuit. We never had a

Jesuit Pope before this. The other thing, too, is interesting.

In the building of these Catholic churches, they did the crucifix. They tried to affix the crucifix so that when the light comes down, it shines on it.

While they're always reminding people about the glory or something like that.

That's what they want to try to do in the churches. I hear good trivia. What are the two Latin words they use during transubstantiation that everybody knows?

Anonymopoetry. Hocus -pocus. Hocus -pocus. Abracadabra.

The one thing that they, when I've talked to many

Catholics, the one thing they say that they like about Catholicism versus Protestantism or Christianism is the fact that there's a certain level of reverence within the church compared to Protestants.

We don't practice that part of it. Although it's like a light switch for them.

They only have reverence when they go to Mass. There is some allure to that. Yeah, there is something.

I even have, I have a propensity to be allured by that. An example, when I visited

St. Peter's down in Florida. St.

Andrew's. St. Andrew's, sorry. St. Andrew's. St. Andrew's. Yeah, St. Andrew's.

I've got it stuck in my head now. St. Andrew's, the stained glass, the ornate nature of it.

Now, that was a Protestant church, so it didn't have a lot of the sort of graven images, the images of Mary and Jesus.

But that sort of, kind of... Tenth Press in Philadelphia too. Yeah, Tenth Press has it as well. Presbyterian churches are very much,

Presbyterian churches are very much like that. they call it. Yeah, smells of the bells. The allure of the smells of the bells. And there is something to be said about reverence before God.

That's something I don't have really an issue with. It's really doctrinal. I think, though, the emphasis on asceticism really is huge and it's part of the feminist movement and the feminization of the church in both

Protestant and Catholic churches. And the way a lot of Catholics will look at those sacraments, they don't realize that you've got to get these...

They kind of do. Everybody puts their kids through, get all the sacraments and then we don't have to send them anywhere.

We're done. It's an insurance policy. But a lot of people, when the priests talk about it, it's like the beauty of it.

They're so into the asceticism. They don't want to talk about whether or not scripture is logical and God's logical here and there.

I think I'll trade being people of the book. Reading the

Word of God and interpreting it as written over some of the traditions or symbology.

Those things are alluring. They have their own allure, but at the end of the day, knowing that your faith is true and genuine and from God, I think is far more important.

Here's a fun trivial piece here. Most of the gangsters that were arrested in New York City were arrested in the churches.

Believe it or not, they were arrested. They knew they would kill and they would steal and they would do everything, but they knew they were going to go to mass and they would grab them there.

They were good Catholic boys. They were good Catholic boys. Is that a contradiction? Good and Catholic?

I know you said that Peter never went to Rome, but they profess that if you go to visit the

Vatican, they have a finger in the middle under glass and they claim that that is

Peter's finger. I didn't get into the relics. I think they have an arm or an ear too, but I know they have a finger.

I don't know if it's real or not. I didn't get into the relics. I haven't been there.

You see this in some of the postmodern Christian stuff where the soul seeping stuff where you lay on the graves of dead saints as it were.

This sort of infusion. I didn't get into any of that or the relics or any of that stuff. There's some hyper charismatic stuff that does that.

All right. We are 21 minutes over. Ivan, I'm going to ask you to close this out.

Sure. Father, thank you so much for this wonderful presentation, Lord. Thank you,

Lord, for your salvation, your grace, that we don't have to go through this process of reproving our belief in you,

Lord, that you died once and that was it. Lord, we thank you, Lord, for that, for your salvation there. We pray for our

Catholic brothers and sisters there that some of them are very much looking for you and if those opportunities come up,

Lord, equip us to go ahead and witness to them, Lord. I pray for my brothers and sisters here tonight,

Lord, that Bible studies be with all of us, Lord, with different things that are going on there.

Pray for the men's retreat this weekend, Lord, for they were going there. Just bless us as we're there and we're sharing these things because they also are going through a lot of changes of just different beliefs,