July 23, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Robert Sungenis on “A Conservative Catholic Reflects on Rome’s Most Liberal Pope”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris.

Arntzen. Good afternoon Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 23rd day of July 2015 and today may be the most controversial program that I've ever done since I started hosting Iron Sharpens Iron and may be the most controversial program that I'll ever do, but today I actually have a Roman Catholic guest, a conservative Roman Catholic by the name of Robert St. Genes, and he is the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Incorporated, and we are going to be discussing a conservative Roman Catholic's reflections on the most liberal Pope, on Rome's most liberal Pope.

Of course we're talking about Pope Francis, and I have to right off the bat make some things clear. I am not involved in the modern ecumenical movement. My guest Robert St. Genes knows that. I believe that one of the reasons that the Church of Rome has a different gospel than evangelical Christians do, one of the proofs I should say, is that the Council of Trent anathematized the beliefs that are peculiar or unique to evangelicalism, and of course not everything that was declared at the Council of Trent would be heretical.

There would be, some of it is exactly what evangelical Bible believing Christians adhere to, but there are anathemas that clearly put the Church of Rome at odds with evangelical Christianity. So the purpose of this program today is not to be an ecumenical coffee clutch, although we are both drinking coffee, and it's not a debate either.

We're not adversaries on this particular topic, and we will see why in momentarily what I mean by that, but first of all let me welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first.

Time, Robert St. Genes. Hi, nice to be here, Chris. I'm looking forward to a good.

Program with you. Yeah, I am as well, and let me right off the bat give our email address if you have a question for Robert St. Genes, and please try to stick to the topic at hand, whether it be the liberalism of Pope Francis or something to do with the papacy, and even the liberalism of the Roman Catholic Church that is quite rampant, as even our guest Robert St. Genes fully admits and is concerned by.

Our email address here is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, that's c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com, and please include at least your first name, the city and state you're writing from or where you reside, and also the country where you reside if you are writing outside of the USA.

But first of all, let's hear a brief bit about yourself, Robert. You are a former evangelical who converted to Roman Catholicism, am I correct? I actually was.

A Roman Catholic first, for the first 19 years of my life, and then I had a very dramatic conversion experience with Jesus in my college dormitory, and I went back to my Catholic Church and loved it, but I wasn't very familiar with all the teachings, and I got sidetracked from my point of view into Protestant churches for the next 18 years, and then I came back to the Roman Catholic Church in 1992.

After that, I set up this organization called Catholic Apologetics International, which is an organization that teaches and defends the traditional.

Catholic faith. And many of our listeners may immediately recognize your name from the debates that you participated in with Dr. James R. White, who is a frequent guest on Iron, Sharp, and Zion, and a dear friend of mine.

And that's where I actually first met Robert St. Genes during our debates back in, I believe, they were the 90s or perhaps early 2000s, when we had Robert participate. And many of you also may recognize his name from books that he has written and his former program on EWTN.

What was the name of that program that you hosted?

Well, it was a 18-part series called Not by Scripture Alone, I think it was the title, and there was another one called Not by Faith Alone. That was a 16-part series, and I think that was 1999 and 2000, if I remember correctly.

And let me.

Repeat one more time our email address, chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com. There, before we even start our discussion on Pope Francis and some of the things that you even, as a Roman Catholic, are very concerned about within Catholicism, there, as you know, are people who are trying to refute the eligibility of you speaking about the Roman Catholic Church in a meaningful way because they say you're schismatic.

Many that I've spoken with have immediately jumped to a conclusion that you're a sedevacantist or a sedevacantist. I don't know if I'm mispronouncing that term, and maybe there's more than one way of pronouncing it.

Sedevacantist is, I think, the way that I heard it pronounced by sedevacantists. And phoeniasm and things like that. Are you a schismatic? Are you a sedevacantist? No, I'm neither. What's.

Happening today in the Catholic Church is that there's a group of people who have decided that any critical statements you make against the Pope or a cardinal means that you're a schismatic, that you're not towing the line, so to speak, and because of that you will get labeled.

I, for one, from the beginning of my ministry have not been afraid to point out the good and the bad of the Catholic Church. I don't care if it's the Pope or a cardinal or whoever it is. I've even done the same thing to my Catholic colleagues.

I've said what you're saying is wrong or what you're saying is right, you know. It doesn't make any difference to me because the truth is the primary goal of whatever I do. I want to teach the truth. And so that's going to consequently bring about times where I have to criticize even a high-placed cleric in the Catholic Church, and I make no bones about that.

But as I said, there's a group of people out there that don't like that at all. You just cannot criticize them, at least publicly. If you want to do it privately, sometimes they'll allow that, sometimes they won't.

But that's where those labels.

Come from. And you're a communicant in good standing. You haven't been barred from the elements of the Mass or in any way silenced by a bishop or anything.

Like that? No, no. I'm a hundred percent Catholic communicant. Great. Well, when I.

Say great, I obviously mean for your eligibility being a spokesperson, because obviously there are people that, when you disagree with them, they try to discount your even eligibility to speak. And one of the reasons that I am doing this program, as you know, is that there has been a very strong or high level of frustration on my part, and not only evangelicals that I know, conservative evangelicals, but also some conservative Roman Catholics that I have spoken with, that it seems that the majority of those in the Catholic apologetic realm and in the Catholic media that even would describe itself more towards the conservative or traditional end, they seem to be very strangely silent on the issue of the liberalism in the papacy, especially with Francis, but also John Paul II before him.

And it almost seems as if there's some kind of an agreed-upon silence that is frustrating, where, as you know, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, a very good friend of mine, people that I know that I work with in apologetics, when something is happening within evangelicalism, they're very quick to point out the heretical development and denounce a particular book or writing.

But it seems that because of the high view of the Pope, the obvious high view of the Pope in the Catholic Church, there seems to be some timidity in that regard. First of all, before we even get into what your thoughts are on the conservative Catholic media and apologists in general, perhaps it would be good to start with a definition from a Roman Catholic perspective of papal infallibility, because you have, I'm sure, a lot of not only Protestants that are ignorant about what that means, but I'm sure you have a lot of Catholics who are ignorant about what that means.

In fact, I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school for eight years, and I always thought that the Immaculate Conception was talking about the virgin birth of Christ. And I didn't even find out it was referring to Mary's conception until after I was an evangelical.

I didn't even realize that. But a lot of people may misunderstand that to mean that the Catholic Church has taught and teaches that the Pope never sins or speaks in error at any time. Maybe you could clarify what the Catholic Church is actually saying there.

Yeah, that's an easy one. The Pope is infallible only in very limited areas. He has to fulfill at least four criterion in order for his statement to be deemed infallible. What a lot of people do, however, is they confuse infallibility with impeccability.

And the impeccability side has this image of the Pope, excuse me, has this image of the Pope wherein anything he says to speak for the Catholic Church is to be understood as error-free. That is an error in itself.

That is a blatant error. No Catholic who knows his Catholic faith would ever teach that. So when we're dealing with instances where Pope Francis makes certain statements about global warming, whatever it is, each Catholic has the right to...

He will listen respectfully to the Pope because he is the leader of the church and he's required to do that. And he must give his assent to doctrines that the Pope may teach that are not deemed infallible but are authoritative.

Okay? So we have that much respect for the Pope and a Catholic should always have that respect. But when the Pope starts talking about issues that are not doctrinal or he starts talking about issues that are very...

The language that he uses is very vague and ambiguous. We have to be very careful about how we judge the Pope. At the same time, however, we have to be cautious. If the Pope is saying something that sounds like it's wrong, well, we as Catholics have the right to look at it very carefully and decide, is what the Pope's saying right or wrong here?

And if it's wrong, we don't have to follow it, you see. So did I answer your question about infallibility?

Oh, yeah. And you don't have to stop speaking on that for a little bit, but I just wanted to go to one of the audience questions that we have. Cecil from Northern Ireland is listening and he has written, let's see, since many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church and others are non-believers, from the bottom of my heart, I give this silent blessing to each and every one of you, respecting the conscience of each one of you, but knowing that each one of you is a child of God.

And Cecil is quoting Pope Francis and his question to you is, do you agree with the Pope that everyone is a child of God in spite of what the Bible clearly teaches in Ephesians and elsewhere?

It depends on what the Pope means by a child of God. You see, this is a phrase that's sometimes used in a very general sense.

Like creation?

Yeah, like, you know, we're all children of Adam, we could say. We're all children of God because we were created by God. And sometimes child of God is used in a very technical, soteriological sense, referring only to those that have been baptized, that have become Christians in a special...and these are mentioned in various special contexts in the New Testament, okay?

And so I would agree with Cecil. In that context of Ephesians, yeah, there's a very particular definition put on the child of God there, that we should not apply to what Pope Francis is saying here, that everyone is a child of God because it's a totally different context.

And as you know, context is very important when deciding the meaning of something.

And going back to the papal infallibility and that the only things that are infallible are things that have been defined dogmatically in ex cathedra, is that the way it's pronounced?

Ex cathedra, yes. That's from the Latin.

Now, how often has that happened in history, and when was the last time that that happened?

The last time that happened formally that has no argument is in 1950, when Pius XII defined the doctrine of the Assumption of Mary. Now, there is some discussion about whether the letter that Pope John Paul wrote in 1994 barring women from the priesthood, and that encyclical was called Ordinatio Saussure Totalis, whether that was infallible.

There was a big discussion in the Catholic Church, and it hit all the way to the Vatican. And at that time, Cardinal Ratzinger, who was then Pope Benedict XVI years later, said that it was an infallible statement by the pope.

So that may be our second infallible statement in the 20th century by a pope. But they're very rare, as you see, okay? And they are worded very, very carefully. They're usually just maybe two or three paragraphs long and very technical language.

And as I said, they have to fulfill that four criteria that was established in Vatican I in 1870. Otherwise, it's not considered infallible.

Now, why would there even be a debate over what John Paul II had said, whether or not it was an infallible?

Unfortunately, with the popes, and I wish they had done otherwise, if they had said in their letter, this statement that I am making fulfills all four criteria from 1870 definition at Vatican I, we wouldn't have any problem deciding whether the statement the pope made was infallible or not.

Unfortunately, they don't use that kind of language. They don't say I'm fulfilling the criteria. They just make their statement. And it sounds, if we look at the language the pope is using, he's using language that was formerly associated with the pope saying something infallible, okay?

Now, it's a judgment call, and Ratzinger made that judgment call for us. He says, yes, the language the pope used in this letter, ordinatio sacerdotalis, has the ring of infallibility. And so we accepted it as that.

Now, of course, someone who's a critic is going to come along and say, yeah, but the pope didn't tell you it was infallible, you see? And that's true, okay? So we have to sit with that. So there you go.

I think I've answered the question.

And since the majority of our program will be a critique of Pope Francis and of liberalism in the Church of Rome or the Roman Catholic Church, by the way, I know that some Catholic apologists and Catholics object to the term Roman Catholic, which surprised me because as a child growing up in Catholic school, I don't remember anybody complaining about being called Roman Catholic.

There seems to be a desire to be considered more universal than that or something.

Nowadays, there might be because there's a lot of people that use the Catholic term but aren't Roman, or what we call the Latin Church. There's the Orthodox Church, there's the Melkite Church, there's this church and that church in the Middle East, all kinds of...

And they will use the word Catholic, but they're not Roman, they're not Latin.

Okay. Yeah, and I have a friend, in fact, you know who he is, Greg Lloyd, Roman Catholic, who is actually Eastern Rite Catholic. He's not an Eastern Orthodox.

That's what I meant, by the way, I didn't mean Orthodox, I meant Eastern Rite.

Right, right, okay. Well, since we are going to be predominantly critiquing Francis, what could you say, if anything, that you are pleased about what he is saying or doing as the Pope of Rome?

Well, there's a lot. In preparing for this program, I had to read all the controversial quotes from Francis. And some of them were quite good. I mean, if I had met Francis on the street and he came up to me and said some of these statements, I would say, wow, there's a good guy.

I would feel very comfortable with him. So, like when he talks about the poor, anybody that has a heart is going to feel what Francis is saying about the poor. I mean, they are exploited, they've been exploited for centuries.

And it's even more so in our day. I mean, in the United States, for example, we are capitalists. And the United States was the land of opportunity for everybody to come from Europe and strike out your property and go dig for your gold and everybody was gonna have a piece of heaven, so to speak.

But what we found out is that capitalism has a tendency to separate the poor from the rich at a much faster rate than many other economies do, you see. So we have a poor problem in the United States. So when Francis talks about things like that, they do ring a bell with me, cuz I see the poor exploited here all the time.

Are Catholics always ringing bells? Sorry about that, I lost, you lose your train of thought.

Yes, that was a good try, Chris. Keep your day job.

This is it.

So yeah, there's things like that he talks. But I know where all this is coming from with Francis, because this is how liberal theologians think. Francis is a Jesuit. The Jesuits are known for being very liberal today.

When Ignatius of Loyola had founded the Jesuits, they were very conservative. And there was a one point where the Jesuits were totally heretical, and they were condemned by the Pope, okay? So they go back and forth in the spectrum over the centuries.

So now, where are they now? Well, they're pretty liberal now, okay? So I know that his emphasis on the poor comes from a theology that has basically given soteriology a backseat.

Like liberation theology?

Yeah, and that even gets more extreme now, because now we're talking about Christians who have machetes and guns and go and protect what they think is Christianity by going to battle with people. And so there's a whole, and John Paul II had condemned that when he first got into his papacy in 1980, he had a big, big conflict with the liberation theologians in South America, which is right where Francis is from, you see.

So knowing where this emphasis on the poor is coming from in his theology gets me a little skeptical about what is the real message he's giving us here. Is it really a concern for the poor? Or is it because his theology has emphasized this earth and our plight on this earth because they already feel that everybody is saved?

Okay, now that's a big liberal thought. And by the way, that comes from your friendly Protestant churches back in the 1700s and 1800s, okay? So don't sit there with a smile on your face now.

Well, I never hide from the fact, as I even, I believe, opened up the program, with that there is much in the name of not only Protestantism, with the mainline, dead, liberal, mainstream Protestantism, but even with an evangelicalism that is frightening and heretical and damnable.

So I make no bones about speaking out against that when I hear about it or see it. But let me go to, unless you wanna continue the train of thought, we're just gonna go to another listener question.

Yeah, I think I'd answer that. I'm a little skeptical about where these things are coming from. So it's gonna take a lot more study, I think.

Okay, we have Ted from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I'm sure you'll get to this first, but just in case, I'd like to ask Mr. St. Genes, how did this pope get elected? Were his left-wing leanings not well known, or has the College of Cardinals, largely selected by John Paul II and Benedict, taken a hard left turn in a very short time?

That's a very good question.

It is, it opens up a whole new can of worms here, and I don't have all the answers to it, but I do know some things. I do know that Pope Benedict XVI, Joseph Ratzinger, was in a real battle with liberals in the conclave.

And I do know from, no, it probably is hearsay, so don't take everything. It's fact, but I did hear this from some higher-ups, that he was in quite a battle, and basically maneuvered himself to be the prominent choice for pope back in 2005, in order to keep the liberals out of the papacy, okay?

And that sounds about right to me. I mean, I wouldn't have too much skeptical thought about that. So, Ratzinger basically was the last conservative that could hold his own, and had a lot of authority in the church.

And there were maybe two or three others that could have possibly come up behind him. But I think the liberals in the Vatican decided that the best thing to do would be to pick someone that was, how do you say, neither camp officially, but more toward the liberal end of the spectrum.

Because if they put somebody that was too liberal in there, it would cause a lot of problems. So they got somebody who was sort of semi-liberal, and that accomplished their task.

And I'm assuming that in spite of his liberalism, Pope Francis's pro-life, I'm assuming he's opposed to abortion?

Yeah, he's made that clear, that he's opposed to abortion. I think his bigger problem is with homosexuality. That's been a question.

Why don't we go into some of those things right now, as far as statements that you've heard, that you know he has actually made, and that it's not rumor or something, that would concern you about his concept of homosexuality and his message to homosexuals.

Yeah, he was asked the question, point blank, do you believe homosexuality is wrong? The way he answered it, he didn't actually answer the question. He sort of squirted around it and said something, we have to look at the person.

You say, do you think God would not love a homosexual? And so we have to look at the whole picture here, sort of. But that wasn't the answer to the question. The question was, is it right or wrong? And that's what we don't see coming from Francis.

We don't see him ever saying that homosexuality is a sin. It is a mortal sin. It will send someone to hell if he doesn't repent of that sin. Never have we heard that from him. So the question remains is, what is his view?

And why didn't he answer that question directly, you see? So that's where I have some very great thoughts about that.

So where did that quote that I've heard, who am I to judge, is that in the same context?

Yeah, that was on an airplane interview. And they asked him about it. And he said, if the person seeks after God, now that's, he threw a wrench in there, okay? If he seeks after God, who am I to judge?

But he said, if he's gay and seeks after God, who am I to judge? Well, that's an oxymoron. Because if you're gay, how can you be seeking for God? The only way you can really do that is to repent of your homosexuality.

Then you can start really coming to God, you see. Because for God, you have to get the sin out of the way. That's the first step. But if you haven't admitted that being gay is a sin, and that you can actually be gay and be searching for God, well, we've got a problem there.

You know, I like, for instance, I don't want to judge people in the sense that I judge their heart and say, well, you're just a big hypocrite or things like this without really knowing the person, you see.

But when the question at the forefront is, he's gay and still searching for God, so I can't judge him, come on, as a pope, you need to be clear, crystal clear on this issue. You've got to say, so everyone knows that homosexuality is a sin.

If you don't repent, you will be condemned. But God does love you, and he loves you so much that he sent a savior to get you out of that lifestyle and to become a normal masculine man, okay? And then begin your life anew.

Right, obviously, since homosexuals today are being married in churches by self-professed ministers, these people would think of themselves as seeking God, and therefore, the pope has put a seal of approval on them and made them feel very comfortable where they are.

Yeah, I don't think he's put a seal of approval on homosexual marriage. You see, now that's where he, and is. What was that?

Well, actually, I meant in their chosen behavior is what I really meant, that he put a seal of approval on that, even if not explicitly. If somebody hearing what you just said, that as long as they're seeking God, I'm assuming that they would take that as a bomb to their conscience.

Yeah, yeah. I'm a father of 11 children, and if I don't want my child to do something, I just make it crystal clear to them, do not run into the street. You will get killed, okay? That's clear. I wouldn't say something like, well, if your ball goes into the street, you may want to avoid running this way or that way, because that's vague and ambiguous, you see.

So especially with a topic like this, like homosexuality, that is just ripping our society apart. When you have a society that institutionalizes homosexual marriage, this is the first time in recorded history that we have this.

So it is a volatile issue. So when you're going to be teaching the flock, you have to make it black and white. There is no shades of gray in this area, you see. And that's what's missing from what the Pope is saying.

We're going to be going to a break right now, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Robertson Jenis, who is a Roman Catholic, a conservative Roman Catholic, and the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Incorporated.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. And I have to repeat that this is not intended to be an expression of modern ecumenism. I am not involved in the modern ecumenical movement.

I do believe that Rome has a different gospel than I personally embrace, but I think that a scholarly and polite and informative conversation on a talk show can be completely helpful to further educate listeners, no matter what side of the issue you may be on.

In fact, we invite listeners who are Roman Catholic or evangelical or atheist or Jewish or Swedenborgianist to send an email with your question. And I would ask you to restrict it to questions and not comments.

And please try to keep to the issue of the liberalism of the Pope or the liberalism that has become very prominent in the Catholic Church. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please include your first name, city and state and country if outside the USA.

We'll be right back.

It's easy to put off saving for retirement, but it's just as easy to start. Once you do, you'll feel more confident about your future. So where to begin? Start with Thriving Financial. They'll help you define your financial goals and take realistic steps to help you reach them.

It comes down to making wise choices about money because even small steps add up. Contact me, Mike Gallagher at 717 -254 -6433. Licensed Agent Producer of Thriving Financial. Marketing Name Thriving Financial.

Registered Representative of Thriving Investment Management Incorporated. Thriving .com.

Lending faith, finances, and generosity. That's the Thriving story.

Linbrook Baptist Church on 225 Earl Avenue in Linbrook, Long Island, is teaching God's timeless truths in the 21st century. Our church is far more than a Sunday worship service.

It's a place of learning where the scriptures are studied and the preaching of the gospel is clear and relevant.

It's like a gym where one can exercise their faith through community involvement.

It's like a hospital for wounded souls where one can find compassionate people and healing. We're a diverse family of all ages.

Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ.

In fellowship, play, and together.

Hi, I'm Pastor Bob Walderman and I invite you to come and join us here at Linbrook Baptist Church and see all that a church can be.

Call Linbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402 or visit linbrookbaptist .org. That's linbrookbaptist .org.

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in, my guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron is Robert St. Genes, the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Incorporated.

And he is a conservative Roman Catholic and our theme today is a conservative Catholic's assessment or reflections on Rome's most liberal pope. If you have questions for us, send them off to chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Chrisarnzen at gmail .com. This is a live program, so send your emails as soon as you can. And please include your first name, city and state, and country if outside of the United States. And let me, before we even move on, just to clarify things even further, I have stated that I am not a participant in the modern ecumenical movement with the Church of Rome and evangelicals.

What is your position on that? I think that you may be softer on it than I am, but I'm not 100 sure.

On ecumenism?

Yeah.

Well, I'm all in favor of people of different faiths getting together and discussing their differences and seeing if they can iron them out and get back to where we were from the beginning. I don't think that should ever stop.

And that's what Vatican II actually taught, was that if we are going to be ecumenical, that's defined by conversation toward the truth. It's not defined by, well, I'll dilute my doctrine, and you dilute your doctrine, and we'll come up with some happy medium.

And unfortunately, that's what ecumenism is today, because it's talking about the liberals. That's what the liberals have done with it. We've had many experiences with that mentality in Catholicism. For example, I wrote my book in 1996 called Not by Faith Alone, and as you said at the beginning of the program, that was the topic of the program I did on EWTN.

No sooner had I published that book that the Catholic Church in their ecumenical efforts with the Lutherans had what they called the Lutheran-Catholic Joint Declaration, published in 1998, that said, guess what?

In Section 2C of the Annex, man is justified by faith alone. So here was a dilution of Catholic doctrine from the Council of Trent, and of course, there were a lot of Catholic apologists saying, oh, well, they didn't really mean that.

But they did. They said what they said. So that's the problem with ecumenism, is it tends to dilute the doctrine of both sides so there can be a happy medium. That I do not believe in at all. I do believe in conversing with different faiths, even as I'm here on your radio station.

Well, obviously, I wouldn't be opposed to that either. But interestingly enough, there are people that I know that are even opposed to the debates that I've organized, both on the left and right. You have those on the left saying that, oh, come on, can't we just show love to each other, as if that's not a loving thing, trying to correct error.

And also on the extreme right of it, how dare you give a platform to a person who opposes the gospel, that kind of thing. And one of the things that, before I go to a listener in Poland who has written us a question, which I believe is the first time I've gotten an email from a listener in Poland, although I did, on the old Iron Sharpens Iron, get calls even during the show from a Polish woman living in Sweden.

But this is actually from Poland that we've got an email. But before I go to that, and John, I just wanted to ask you a question that has always puzzled me. In John 6, 53, so Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves.

And I always wondered how a Roman Catholic could be an ecumenist if they take that to specifically mean that unless you are actually eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ from the Mass, where the elements have been truly changed into his body and blood in order to be adored.

How can you view a Protestant or anyone else as having life in them if that text is to be taken in reference to the Mass?

Well, you take that text and you liberalize it. And that was tried in the 1960s by a group of Catholic liberal theologians headed by Edward Sheila Bakes, who tried to change transubstantiation into transignification.

Meaning that the bread didn't actually change in substance to the body of Christ. It was just a signification, a trans, you know, they try all these kinds of words to try to make it fit in their liberal theology.

But there was a push at that time. It didn't get too far, okay, but there's a lot of Catholics in the liberal realm that have tried to keep it alive. Karl Rahner, Hans Kuhn, you can go down the list. They have been trying to redefine our Catholic theology that makes it distinct from other churches and denominations and have not been successful so far.

But that's where you would go if you wanted to do that.

Now, wouldn't, though, if you were to say that non-Catholics do not have life in them, wouldn't that be considered today the heresy of Fenianism within the Catholic Church?

That non-Catholics don't have life in them, would you say that again now?

In other words, didn't Father Feni get condemned as a heretic for teaching that only Roman Catholics have eternal life and that all Protestants and others are damned?

He wasn't condemned, and there's a lot of confusion about this issue. Okay, there was a statement put out by the Boston bishop that said Father Feni was wrong, but the Vatican itself has never really come out and said that to hold the doctrine that Father Feni held in general, which was extra ecclesiam nullus salus in Latin, in English it is no salvation outside the church, that was a doctrine that was proclaimed by Eugene IV and Boniface VIII in the 13th and 14th centuries.