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

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another.

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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.

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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.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnton. Good afternoon

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth listening via live streaming.

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This is Chris Arnton, 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

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Iron Sharpens Iron and may be the most controversial program that I'll ever do, but today

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I actually have a Roman Catholic guest, a conservative Roman Catholic by the name of Robert St.

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Genes and he is the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Incorporated and we are going to be discussing a conservative

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Roman Catholic's reflections on the most liberal Pope, on Rome's most liberal

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Pope. Of course we're talking about Pope Francis and I have to right off the bat make some things clear.

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I am not involved in the modern ecumenical movement. My guest Robert St.

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Genes knows that. I believe that one of the reasons that the Church of Rome has a different gospel than evangelical

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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

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Council of Trent would be heretical, there would be some of it is exactly what evangelical Bible -believing

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Christians adhere to, but there are anathemas that clearly put the

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Church of Rome at odds with evangelical Christianity. So the purpose of this program today is not to be an ecumenical coffee clotch, although we are both drinking coffee, and it's not a debate either.

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It's not, we're not adversaries on this particular topic, and we will see why momentarily what

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I mean by that, but first of all let me welcome you to Iron Sharpens Iron for the very first time,

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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.

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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

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Roman Catholic Church that is quite rampant, as even our guest Robert St. Genes fully admits and is concerned by.

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Our email address here is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, that's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

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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

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USA. But first of all, let's hear a brief bit about yourself,

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Robert. You are a former Evangelical who converted to Roman Catholicism, am

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I correct? I actually was a Roman Catholic first for the first 19 years of my life, and I had a very dramatic conversion experience with Jesus in my college dormitory, and I went back to my

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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

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I came back to the Roman Catholic Church in 1992. After that I set up this organization called

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Catholic Apologetics International, which is an organization that teaches and defends the traditional

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Catholic faith. And many of our listeners may immediately recognize your name from the debates that you participated in with Dr.

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James R. White, who is a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron and a dear friend of mine, and that's where I actually first met

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Robert St. Genes during our debates back in, I believe, they were the 90s or perhaps early 2000s, when we had

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Robert participate. And many of you also may recognize his name from books that he has written and his former program on EWTN.

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What was the name of that program that you hosted? Well, it was a 18 -part series called

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Not by Scripture Alone, I think that 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.

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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.

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Before we even start our discussion on Pope Francis and some of the things that you even as a

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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

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Roman Catholic Church in a meaningful way because they say you're schismatic. Many that I have spoken with have immediately jumped to a conclusion that you're a sit -of -a -contest or a sit -of -a -contest,

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I don't know if I'm mispronouncing that term, and maybe there's more than one way of pronouncing it, sit -of -a -contest is,

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I think, the way that I heard it pronounced by sit -of -a -contest, and phoeniasm and things like that.

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Are you a schismatic? Are you a sit -of -a -contest? No, I'm neither. What's happening today in the

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Catholic Church is that there's a group of people who have decided that any critical statement you make against the

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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.

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I, for one, from the beginning of my ministry have not been afraid to point out the good and the bad of the

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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

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Catholic colleagues. I've said, what you're saying is wrong or what you're saying is right. It doesn't make any difference to me because the truth is the primary goal of whatever

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I do. I want to teach the truth. So that's going to consequently bring about times where I have to criticize even a high -placed cleric in the

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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.

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You just cannot criticize them, at least publicly. If you want to do it privately, sometimes they'll allow that, sometimes they won't.

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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

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Mass or in any way silenced by a bishop or anything like that?

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No. No, I'm 100 % Catholic Communicant. Great. Well, when

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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.

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One of the reasons that I am doing this program, as you know, is that there has been a very strong or a high level of frustration on my part, and not only evangelicals that I know, conservative evangelicals, but also some conservative

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Roman Catholics that I have spoken with, that it seems that the majority of those in the

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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

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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,

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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.

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But it seems that because of the high view of the Pope, the obvious high view of the

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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

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Catholic media and apologists in general, perhaps it would be good to start with a definition from a

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Roman Catholic perspective of papal infallibility, because you have, I'm sure, a lot of not only

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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.

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In fact, I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school for eight years, and I always thought that the

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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.

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I didn't even realize that. But a lot of people may misunderstand that to mean that the

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Catholic Church has taught and teaches that the Pope never sins or speaks in error at any time.

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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.

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He has to fulfill at least four criterion in order for his statement to be deemed infallible.

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What a lot of people do, however, is they confuse infallibility with impeccability.

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And the impeccability side has this image of the Pope wherein anything he says to speak for the

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Catholic Church is to be understood as error -free. That is an error in itself.

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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

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Catholic has the right to, he will listen respectfully to the Pope because he is a leader of the

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Church and he's required to do that. And he must give his assent to doctrines that the

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Pope may teach that are not deemed infallible but are authoritative. So we have that much respect for the

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Pope, and a Catholic should always have that respect. But when the

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Pope starts talking about issues that are not doctrinal, or he starts talking about issues that are very...

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the language that he uses is very vague and ambiguous, we have to be very careful about how we judge the

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Pope. At the same time, however, we have to be cautious. If the

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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 if what the

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Pope is saying is right or wrong here. And if it's wrong, we don't have to follow it, you see. So did

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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.

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Cecil from Northern Ireland is listening, and he has written, let's see,

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Since many of you do not belong to the Catholic Church, and others are non -believers, from the bottom of my heart,

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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.

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And Cecil is quoting Pope Francis, and his question to you is,

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Do you agree with the Pope that everyone is a child of God, in spite of what the

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Bible clearly teaches in Ephesians and elsewhere? It depends on what the

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

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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.

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And sometimes child of God is used in a very technical, soteriological sense, referring only to those that have been baptized, that have become

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Christians, and these are mentioned in various special contexts in the

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New Testament. 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

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Pope Francis is saying here, that everyone is a child of God, because it's a totally different context.

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And as you know, context is very important when deciding the meaning of something. And going back to the papal infallibility, the only things that are infallible are things that have been defined dogmatically, ex cathedra, is that the way it's pronounced?

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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?

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The last time that happened formally that has no argument is in 1950, when

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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

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Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, whether that was infallible. There was a big discussion in the

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Catholic Church, and it hit all the way to the Vatican, and at that time

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Cardinal Ratzinger, who was then Pope Benedict XVI years later, said that it was an infallible statement by the pope.

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So that may be our second infallible statement in the 20th century by a pope.

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But they're very rare, as you see, and they are worded very, very carefully.

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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.

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Otherwise, it's not considered infallible. Now, why would there even be a debate over what

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John Paul II had said, or whether or not it was 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.

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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.

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Now, it's a judgment call, and Ratzinger made that judgment call for us.

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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.

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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.

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So we have to sit with that. So there you go. I think

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I've answered the question. And since the majority of our program will be a critique of Pope Francis and of liberalism in the

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Church of Rome or the Roman Catholic Church, by the way, I know that some

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Catholic apologists and Catholics object to the term Roman Catholic, which surprised me because as a child growing up in Catholic school,

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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.

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Nowadays there might be because there's a lot of people that use the

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Catholic term but aren't Roman or what we call the

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Latin Church. There's the Orthodox Church, there's the

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Melkite Church, there's this church and that church in the Middle East, all kinds of, and they will use the word

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Catholic, but they're not Roman, they're not Latin. I have a friend, in fact, you know who he is,

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Greg Lloyd, Roman Catholic, who is actually Eastern Rite Catholic. He's not an Eastern Orthodox.

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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

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Francis, what could you say, if anything, that you are pleased about what he is saying or doing as the

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Pope of Rome? Well, there's a lot. In preparing for this program

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I had to read all the controversial quotes from Francis and some of them were quite good.

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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, well, there's a good guy.

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I would feel very comfortable with him. So, like when he talks about the poor, you know, anybody that has a heart is going to feel what

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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.

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I mean, in the United States, for example, we are capitalists and the

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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 going to have a piece of heaven, so to speak.

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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.

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So we have a poor problem in the United States. So, you know, when Francis talks about things like that, they do ring a bell with me because I see the poor exploited here all the time.

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Aren't Catholics always ringing bells? Sorry about that.

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You lose your train of thought. Yes. That was a good try, Chris. Keep your day job.

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This is it. So, yeah, there are things like that he talks.

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But I know where all this is coming from with Francis because this is how liberal theologians think.

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Francis is a Jesuit. The Jesuits are known for being very liberal today.

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When Ignatius of Loyola had founded the Jesuits, they were very conservative.

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And there was one point where the Jesuits were totally heretical and they were condemned by the Pope. So they go back and forth in the spectrum over the centuries.

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

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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

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Christianity by going to battle with people. And John Paul II had condemned that when he first got into his papacy in 1980.

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He had a big, big conflict with the liberation theologians in South America, which is right where Francis is from, you see.

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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.

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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?

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Okay, now that's a big liberal thought. And by the way, that comes from your friendly

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Protestant churches back in the 1700s and 1800s, okay? So don't sit there with a smile on your face.

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Well, I never hide from the fact, as I even, I believe, opened up the program with it, that there is much in the name of not only

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Protestantism with the mainline, dead, liberal, mainstream Protestantism, but even with an evangelicalism that is frightening and heretical and damnable.

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So I make no bones about speaking out against that when I hear about it or see it.

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But let me go to, unless you want to continue the train of thought, we're just going to go to another listener question.

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

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I think. Okay, we have Ted from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I'm sure you'll get to this first, but just in case,

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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

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College of Cardinals, largely selected by John Paul II and Benedict, taken a hard left turn in a very short time?

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That's a very good question. It is, you know, 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.

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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

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I say as 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.

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And that sounds about right to me. I mean, I wouldn't have too much skeptical thought about that.

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So Ratzinger basically was the last conservative that could hold his own, and had a lot of authority in the church.

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And there were maybe two or three others that could have possibly come up behind him, but I think the liberals in the

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Vatican decided that the best thing to do would be to pick someone that was, how do you say, in neither camp officially, but more toward the liberal end of the spectrum.

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Because if they put somebody that was too liberal in there, it would cause a lot of problems.

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So they got somebody who was sort of semi -liberal, and that accomplished their task.

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And I'm assuming that in spite of his liberalism, Pope Francis' poor life,

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I'm assuming he's opposed to abortion? Yeah, he's made that clear, that he's opposed to abortion.

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I think his bigger problem is with homosexuality. That's been a question.

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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.

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Yeah, he was asked the question, point blank, do you believe homosexuality is wrong?

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The way he answered it, he didn't actually answer the question. He sort of screwed it around it and said something, well, we have to look at the person.

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He said, do you think God would not love a homosexual? And so we have to look at the whole picture here, sort of.

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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.

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We don't see him ever saying that homosexuality is a sin.

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It is a mortal sin. It will send someone to hell if he doesn't repent of that sin.

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Never have we heard that from him. So the question remains is, what is his view?

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

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

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Yeah, that was on an airplane interview. And they asked him about it.

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And he said, if the person seeks after God, now he threw a wrench in there, okay?

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If he seeks after God, who am I to judge? But he said, if he's gay and seeks after God, who am

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I to judge? Well, that's an oxymoron. Because if you're gay, how can you be seeking for God?

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The only way you can really do that is to repent of your homosexuality. Then you can start really coming to God, you see.

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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.

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You know, I, like Francis, 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.

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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.

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You've got to say, so everyone knows, that homosexuality is a sin. If you don't repent, you will be condemned.

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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.

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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

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God, and therefore the pope has put a seal of approval on them and made them feel very comfortable where they are.

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Yeah, I don't think he's put a seal of approval on homosexual marriage, you see, now that's where he, is that what you're saying?

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I meant in their chosen behavior is what I really meant, that he put a seal of approval on that, even if not explicitly.

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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.

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Yeah, yeah, if you're not, like if I'm a father of 11 children, and if I don't want my child to do something,

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I just make it crystal clear to them, do not run into the street, you will get killed.

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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.

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So especially with a topic like this, like homosexuality, that is just ripping our society apart.

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When you have a society that institutionalizes homosexual marriage, this is the first time in recorded history that we have this.

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So it is a volatile issue. So when you're going to be teaching the flock, you have to make it black and white.

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There is no shades of gray in this area, you see. And that's what's missing from what the

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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

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Roman Catholic, a conservative Roman Catholic, and the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, Incorporated.

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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.

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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.

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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

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Pope or the liberalism that has become very prominent in the Catholic Church. chrisarnson at gmail .com,

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chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please include your first name, city and state, and country, if outside the

32:56

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Or visit LindbrookBaptist .org. That's LindbrookBaptist .org. Welcome back.

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This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in, my guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Robert St. Genis, the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Incorporated.

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And he is a conservative Roman Catholic, and our theme today is a conservative

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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.

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ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. This is a live program, so send your emails as soon as you can.

35:26

And please include your first name, city and state, and country if outside of the

35:31

United States. And let me, before we even move on, just to clarify things even further,

35:39

I have stated that I am not a participant in the modern ecumenical movement with the

35:44

Church of Rome and evangelicals. What is your position on that? And I think that you may be softer on it than I am, but I'm not 100 % sure.

35:52

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.

36:08

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.

36:24

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.

36:32

And unfortunately, that's what ecumenism is today, because it's talking about the liberals.

36:39

That's what the liberals have done with it. We've had many experiences with that mentality in Catholicism.

36:46

For example, I wrote my book in 1996 called

36:52

Not by Faith Alone. And as you said at the beginning of the program, that was the topic of the program

36:58

I did on EWTN. No sooner had I published that book that the

37:04

Catholic Church, in their ecumenical efforts with the Lutherans, had what they called the

37:10

Lutheran -Catholic Joint Declaration published in 1998 that said, guess what?

37:16

In Section 2C of the Annex, man is justified by faith alone. So here was a dilution of Catholic doctrine from the

37:25

Council of Trent. And of course there were a lot of Catholic apologists saying, oh, well, they didn't really mean that.

37:32

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.

37:45

So 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.

37:52

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.

38:02

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.

38:10

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.

38:18

And one of the things that, before I go to a listener in Poland who has written us a question, which

38:25

I believe is the first time I've gotten an email from a listener in Poland, although I did, on the old

38:31

Iron Sharpens Iron, get calls even during the show from a

38:37

Polish woman living in Sweden. But this is actually from Poland that we've got an email.

38:43

But before I go to that, and John, I just wanted to ask you a question that has always puzzled me.

38:49

In John 6, 53, so Jesus said to them,

38:55

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.

39:02

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

39:16

Mass, where the elements have been truly changed into His body and blood and are to be adored, how can you view a

39:25

Protestant or anyone else as having life in them if that text is to be taken in reference to the

39:32

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 Shielebakes, who tried to change transubstantiation into transignification, meaning that the bread didn't actually change in substance to the body of Christ.

39:57

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.

40:07

But there was a push at that time. It didn't get too far, but there's a lot of Catholics in the liberal realm that have tried to keep it alive.

40:19

Karl Rahner, Hans Kuhn, you can go down the list. They have been trying to redefine our

40:26

Catholic theology that makes it distinct from other churches and denominations, and have not been successful so far.

40:35

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

40:48

Catholic Church? That non -Catholics don't have life in them?

40:54

In other words, didn't Father Feeney get condemned as a heretic for teaching that only

41:01

Roman Catholics have eternal life, and that all Protestants and others are damned?

41:08

He wasn't condemned, and there's a lot of confusion about this issue. There was a statement put out by the

41:16

Boston bishop that said Father Feeney was wrong, but the

41:21

Vatican itself has never really come out and said that to hold the doctrine that Father Feeney held in general, which was extra ecclesiam nullus salus in Latin, in English it is no salvation outside the

41:38

Church. That was a doctrine that was proclaimed by Eugene IV and Boniface VIII in the 13th and 14th centuries.

41:49

So it is Catholic doctrine. The question is, are there exceptions to that doctrine?

41:55

Are there times where the general teaching still holds, but there is an occasion of the

42:02

Hottentot in Africa who never heard the Gospel, but believes in God and lives a good life.

42:08

Invincible ignorance? And if it is invincible, just how far does that extend?

42:14

That question has never been defined in the Catholic Church, and I don't think it's ever going to be defined.

42:20

So you would not be an ecumenist in regard to the way that that is usually used today when it's addressing relations between Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, whereby, like for instance, the

42:37

Evangelicals and Catholics Together document that you may remember that Chuck Colson, an Evangelical, drafted, and there were

42:43

Catholics and Protestants that signed this, who basically said that we both do have the

42:48

Gospel, we just have different less serious differences on it and interpretations.

42:56

You would not be in agreement with that type of ecumenism that would recognize Protestants as just separated brethren?

43:05

That's a difficult question. I know Protestants that are more faithful to the

43:14

Bible and the traditions of the Church than I do Catholics. I'll be very honest with you.

43:21

Most Catholics out there are nominal Catholics, they don't know their faith, they wouldn't know

43:26

Jesus if they bumped into him. So it's hard for me to say, oh yeah, the

43:34

Catholics are all right, and yet I see Catholics that don't practice their faith, and as a matter of fact, they sin.

43:40

Constantly. And then I see some other Protestants over here that read and pray daily and live a good life and do all the things that are required of a

43:50

Christian, except they're just ignorant about certain doctrines. And I think if I have the opportunity to sit down with them and teach them, that I could persuade them to the

44:01

Catholic. I've seen it many, many times in my life, where I can persuade them to the Catholic side of things if I have the opportunity, if I can get through all the haze that's out there.

44:12

And that's my job as a Catholic apologist. So I am not opposed to Chuck Colson, who's dead now.

44:23

He's been dead how many years? I'm not 100 % sure about that. I met Chuck Colson. I went to a

44:29

Protestant Bible college in between my years at GW, and I met him there and talked to him for a while.

44:36

And I know he's a good guy. Especially now. Where his soul is,

44:43

I don't know. That's not my job. My job is to tell the truth on earth as I see it, as Jesus has given it to me.

44:52

And this whole question of salvation that comes up a lot in the Catholic realms, I think people go out on a limb and try to play

45:01

God by saying, you can't be saved if you believe this. You can be saved if you believe that.

45:09

To a certain extent, yes. But when we get to these really fine areas, like invincible ignorance, for example, and some people try to play

45:17

God and say, well, that person can't be saved, or that person can't be saved. I don't know. And actually,

45:23

Pius IX himself said, look, we can only take this question so far, and then we have to let it rest in God's hands.

45:30

Now, what do you think that the anathemas declared by Trent against those who believe specifically in things that would be deemed uniquely

45:41

Protestant? What does that mean? What is a cursed or anathema?

45:47

What does that mean? Trent had the job of defining the truth. If you disobey that truth that they define, well, of course you're anathema.

45:57

They have no choice. It's a black and white issue. It's not like, well, we're going to lay this doctrine down, and we hope that you believe it, and if you don't believe it and you decide in your heart you know what it says and you totally reject it, well, here's the consequence for that.

46:16

It's anathematism. Okay? They have no choice. That is their job. Now, who it applies to is a totally different story.

46:26

The Church does not have a list of names where it says, this is where this anathema applies to John Smith, Mary Jane, you know,

46:37

John Doe, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't do that. See, that side of things, it leaves with God.

46:44

He is going to be the one that decides. It's the Church's job, however, to lay down what the truth is.

46:50

Alright, let me go to that Polish listener. Lucas from Poland got a short question here.

47:00

What is your take on Catholics who will criticize pretty much anybody within the

47:06

Catholic Church like bishops, cardinals, etc., but will keep a blind eye on anything the

47:12

Pope does wrong with argumentation that criticizing the Pope will do more bad than good.

47:19

Example, Michael Vorhees from Church Militant. That's actually, I think, one of the main reasons we were doing this program is that there is such silence, it seems, and I could be corrected if I'm wrong, because I don't listen to Roman Catholic radio and view

47:37

Roman Catholic television every day, but I do listen and view quite a bit of it, even though I'm an evangelical who is opposed to the gospel of Rome, but there seems to be a deafening silence even from conservative

47:52

Catholics on this, and you and I will address that more specifically in a bit, but if you wanted to respond to Lucas's question.

48:03

Well, let's put it this way. There's a certain amount of higher respect that we need to give the

48:10

Pope, because he is the absolute leader of the Catholic Church, that we may not give to a priest or a bishop.

48:18

It doesn't mean, however, that we don't give respect to a priest or bishop. It just means we give more respect to the

48:25

Pope. So that's one foundation we have to work with. And along those lines, then we have to be very careful if we believe that the

48:37

Pope has said something wrong, we have to be very careful that we know what his intent was, and we know that he has a history of this, and we know that in normal circumstances, what he said would be interpreted as something that's not theologically correct.

48:56

We put all that together, then we have some skepticism about what this

49:03

Pope has said and what he's teaching. And it just so happens with Francis that this has filled a wide spectrum of theological, cultural, and political landscape that now it's becoming, it's rising to a head, and now we have to examine each of these statements that he's made in each of these areas.

49:32

For example, he's now an advocate of global warming, and is rallying the world around dealing with so -called climate change.

49:44

Now, even the most skeptical person who doesn't want to criticize the

49:51

Pope will conclude, wow, here's the Pope talking about a political issue and demanding now that Catholics accept global warming?

50:02

Well, that's really a horse of a different color there. It's outside the area of theology.

50:08

It's dealing just with this world. Not only that, it's dealing with an issue that is so controversial because you have thousands of scientists on the other side, and I've read their works, who say there is no global warming.

50:24

It's all a hoax. And so that part of the discussion has to be entertained, and it wasn't entertained by Pope Francis.

50:33

He just made a unilateral decision that there's global warming. So anybody worth their salt who's in the public eye, they're going to have a problem with that.

50:43

Now, the question comes, do we disagree publicly with this statement the

50:50

Pope made on global warming? Or do we just keep it to ourselves? Now, Mike, Boris, I know

50:56

Mike Boris. Good friend of mine. Okay? Mike has decided that he's going to draw the line there.

51:04

That what he is skeptical about of what the Pope teaches or does is not going to go across his microphone.

51:12

Okay? That's his choice. Quite frankly, I don't agree with that choice. Although I would caution people who cross that line that Mike has not crossed to be very careful once you cross that line about what you say about the

51:28

Pope, because you may think he's saying something, but when you dig a little deeper, it may not be that case, you see.

51:36

So you have to be careful. But I would not take the position that we are now stymied.

51:42

We have this duct tape across our mouth where we can't say anything about the

51:47

Pope. Now, you said you couldn't find anybody or that most conservative Catholics nowadays aren't speaking negatively about the

51:56

Pope. You need to go to the right circles. Well, I'm talking about obviously I meant the ones that are more prominent in the media on like for instance

52:06

I quite often listen to Holy Family Radio which is a local

52:12

Roman Catholic radio network and they have people like Patrick Madrid on and people of that ilk who are well known amongst conservative

52:23

Catholic apologetics. And I don't seem to hear any criticism at all about Pope Francis and I didn't about Pope John Paul II either.

52:35

The only time I heard criticism in any meaningful way was predominantly in social settings and private gatherings with Catholics who were voicing their negative opinions.

52:47

Do you agree with me? A former guest of mine, as I mentioned, Mark Michael Zima who is a conservative

52:55

Catholic and actually wrote a book against the canonization of Mother Teresa. He said that EWTN is doing some criticism of Pope Francis.

53:09

I haven't heard that but I will take his word for it. But what is your opinion on the media in that regard?

53:15

Yeah, well in Catholicism you have 57 varieties of your approach, of what the approach may be to deal with the

53:24

Pope. You have 57 varieties of Catholicism. You have 57 varieties of how to regard the

53:30

Bible, how to regard the saints, how to regard Mary. It's just there's not one monolithic view out there.

53:36

So then the solo scriptura is not the only blueprint for anarchy? Right. So you're admitting that we are not unique to division and disagreement.

53:49

Yeah, all I would say about the solo scriptura issue is that since we've settled that issue that's not going to be a divisive one in our circles.

53:59

We argue about many other things. You guys argue about how to interpret the Bible. We argue about how to interpret church documents.

54:07

Yeah, well that's why even our my friend, I don't know if you call James a friend, but at least your acquaintance and your debating opponent, he has said, we don't have an infallible interpreter for the infallible declarations.

54:24

Yeah, we just feel that we're a lot closer than you are. We're a lot closer to clearing away the confusion than you are.

54:32

At least we have a cart with wheels on it. Let me just get back to this thing about Patrick Madrid.

54:40

I know Patrick Madrid. I've worked with him for many years. He did that program with me on EWTN, not by scripture alone.

54:48

Unfortunately, EWTN took it off the air after I went to the more traditional conservative route, but there's a whole cadre of Catholic apologists out there,

54:59

Patrick Madrid, Scott Hahn, EWTN, Carl Keating, Jimmy Akin, who have decided that they are just not going to go in that direction of criticizing the

55:10

Pope. He may do some really awful things and say some awful things. They will just not say anything publicly.

55:16

Now I respect to a certain extent that respect of the Pope that they have.

55:23

The office. I'm so glad you brought that up. It's hard for a

55:33

Catholic to figure out what is the right formula between the man who occupies the papacy and the office of the papacy.

55:43

Just where do they intermingle? How can you talk about either one without damaging either one?

55:48

It's not an easy thing to do. These guys have decided. I have said no.

55:55

I am not going to... I've based my whole ministry on the truth.

56:01

Whether it's the Pope, as I said from the beginning, it doesn't matter whether it's the Pope or Cardinal or Bishop. It's going to be the truth.

56:07

That's why I've done what I've done. One of the things that frustrates me is that it would seem that an act of utter irresponsibility to not warn people about false statements, especially when

56:25

Catholics globally view him, the Pope, whoever he is, as a faithful guide and shepherd to all manners of faith and morals.

56:35

Can I give you an example? This is where the rubber meets the road. The Pope had given interviews to...

56:44

What's that guy's name? Scarfari? Eugene Scalfari was his name?

56:51

He's an atheist, liberal, in the world, and he has no affiliation with Christianity at all, but he took an interview with the

57:00

Pope and the Pope made some comments about hell not existing and that the people who were not

57:10

Christians were going to be annihilated. Now this is pretty serious stuff.

57:18

You and I both know, whether we're Catholic or Protestant, this is heresy if this is true.

57:24

So what happened was the Catholic apologists, the ones we were just talking about, got a hold of this.

57:33

Jimmy Akin wrote an article saying something to the effect, did he really say that?

57:40

What they did was they went to this website, it was a satirical website about the

57:46

Pope, and the satirical website ... what was the name of it? I forget the name.

57:54

Anyway, they did a report in the National Catholic Reporter on this website and they said, you know, look, see it's just a satirical website because they had the statements that the

58:07

Pope made to Scalfari about annihilation and no hell existing.

58:14

And they said, oh, well, obviously this is a satirical website, we don't have to pay attention to this, and obviously the

58:19

Pope didn't say these things. Well, two years later the Pope says that the statements that were in that interview he did with Scalfari were to be placed in a book published by the

58:32

Vatican. Wow. And it exists today. Hmm. Okay? So here we have this attempt to cover up what the

58:39

Pope did and to make it go away, sweep it under the rug, and yet the Pope himself puts it in publication.

58:47

So there you have an anecdote of the kind of pressure these guys are under.

58:52

How do we keep the lid on this Pope? How do we keep our jobs? Well, that could be one thing, too.

58:58

Say there's a ... you're in this for 20 years, 25 years, and your job could be gone in a second if you say the wrong thing.

59:08

So there's a lot of pressure there. But when the Pope himself now comes out as his own apologist and wants these things printed in his book, well, you know, how do you deal with that?

59:20

That's the question we're dealing with right now. We're going to go to a break right now and we are two hours long.

59:26

For those of you who are unaware that Iron Sharpens Iron as of this past Monday became a daily two -hour broadcast, so we are going to be on the air with Robert St.

59:38

Genes for another full hour. Please send in your e -mails at ChrisArnsen at gmail .com.

59:45

If you have a question, please keep it focused on the subject of the liberalism of Pope Francis or on the papacy in general or on liberalism in the

59:53

Catholic Church in general. And our e -mail address is ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. That's ChrisArnsen at gmail .com.

01:00:00

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01:02:48

This is Chris Arns. And if you've just tuned us in, this is now the second hour of our two -hour interview with Robert Syngenta.

01:02:56

Robert Syngenta is a Roman Catholic, a conservative Roman Catholic, and the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Incorporated.

01:03:06

I have received some opposition from both Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants on having an interview like this.

01:03:16

Some, obviously, who were more liberal in the Catholic realm were offended by any public criticism of Pope Francis.

01:03:27

Some who were my fellow conservative Evangelicals thought that I may be misunderstood as being a modern ecumenist, and I am not.

01:03:36

I made that clear several times during the broadcast, and I will continue to on occasion.

01:03:41

But the purpose of the program, coming from my warped mind, was to just give from the view of a conservative

01:03:53

Catholic, who is a published writer and apologist and debater, somebody who knows what they're talking about, a conservative view of a liberal pope.

01:04:05

And it's because of the fact that it's something that you hardly ever see or hear in the

01:04:11

Catholic media, even the Catholic media that is self -described as conservative. So I hope that this will be used of God to bless people and enlighten them and educate them in some shape or form.

01:04:24

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. You know, it's interesting,

01:04:30

Robert, that it used to be said in a light -hearted and rhetorical way if somebody were to ask you something like Do you like pizza?

01:04:43

Is the Pope Catholic? would be the answer. Well, now it's not such a rhetorical question. Is the

01:04:48

Pope Catholic? People are even wondering about it. Do you have any more evidence that this

01:04:55

Pope is liberal and why you would oppose many of his positions and statements?

01:05:00

Do you have any other quotes that he has made or anything to that nature? Yeah, I do, but let me deal with this.

01:05:06

Is the Pope Catholic issue? I think that's a good place to jump off of. Um, that question certainly would arise by some of the things that Francis has said in the mind of an intelligent person.

01:05:22

Because if what he's saying is not Catholic doctrine, obviously, it begs the question, is he

01:05:29

Catholic? But then again, on the other side of the story, you have to be very careful with that kind of leading question because it's so rhetorical that it loses some of the respect that we have to give to the papacy and the

01:05:48

Pope. Um, the Pope is Catholic, okay? So I can safely say

01:05:55

I like pizza, and the Pope is Catholic. So, uh, there's no problem there.

01:06:04

The only one that could say that the Pope is not Catholic is another

01:06:09

Pope. And that would only occur if this Pope dies, and another

01:06:14

Pope replaces him, and goes over what this previous Pope said, and says,

01:06:21

Huh? I'm sorry, this is heretical. And he can anathematize the Pope for making a heretical statement, and that has happened in Catholic history.

01:06:30

Pope Honorius made a mistake, theological mistake. A Sermon in Creed or something like that?

01:06:36

No, in his letter to Sergius about the wills of Christ, and he said he only had one will.

01:06:42

And the Orthodox position is he had two wills, okay? He was just blasted by the

01:06:49

Church in centuries following for making that statement. I mean, all the way up into the 14th century book, what's it called?

01:07:00

Libra Diurna? I forget the name of it. But anyway, anathematizing him every century for what he said in the 4th century.

01:07:11

And so the Church took their doctrine very seriously, okay? Formosa, Pope Formosa was basically resurrected from his grave and anathematized by the following Pope for doing something wrong, okay?

01:07:26

That could happen to Pope Francis, okay? But until if and when that happens, he's

01:07:31

Catholic. He is Catholic in every sense of the word, okay? We may have our questions about him, but he is

01:07:37

Catholic. I don't know what your particular or personal view of a personal

01:07:44

Antichrist is. You have some fundamentalists and Protestants who view all

01:07:50

Popes as the Antichrist, or the Pope papal office as the Antichrist, or that a future figure will be the

01:07:58

Antichrist. As a Roman Catholic, could a Pope be an Antichrist? Sure. Yeah, okay.

01:08:03

And we've had many anti -Popes in the Catholic history.

01:08:09

That is Popes who have assumed the reign of the papacy, who were false Popes, and weren't found out as false

01:08:16

Popes until several years afterwards, and they were then deposed. They couldn't be deposed because they actually didn't have the office.

01:08:24

But they were found out, and they were taken away from the papacy, and the rightful Pope was put in place.

01:08:30

That's happened probably about 40 times. And as our mutual acquaintance

01:08:38

Mitch Pacwa, the Jesuit priest, apologist, author, debater, TV host, years ago back in the 80s, when he said during a debate with Walter Martin, the late

01:08:51

Dr. Walter Martin, well actually it's been 26 years since he passed away, so I don't know if the late is still applicable, but when he debated

01:08:57

Walter Martin, Mitch Pacwa said that I believe that there will be

01:09:03

Popes in hell. You, I guess, would agree with that statement. Sure, we've had a lot of bad Popes. There's actually a book written called

01:09:11

The Bad Popes. Yeah, I think that one of my Protestant friends wrote one, but it's all of the

01:09:18

Popes. Yeah. But if you want to start reading the quotes that you said that you'd like to bring up, because some of our listeners may not be convinced that Pope Francis is truly liberal.

01:09:32

In fact, I've seen a lot of debate over this on the internet, people defending him as just a revolutionary and a breath of fresh air and that kind of thing, but what do you have to say about that?

01:09:45

Well, it's interesting that many of the Popes in the 20th century have been a breath of fresh air in the sense that they have changed the climate of the

01:09:54

Papacy to at least 90 degrees, if not 180 degrees.

01:09:59

John Paul II did the same thing. He brought a whole new understanding of the

01:10:05

Papacy to Catholicism that we didn't have before. And you're saying in a good way or a bad way?

01:10:12

Well, good and bad. And you take the good with the bad, and that's the way it's going to be on this

01:10:18

Earth. And because of the fact that you said I could bring up anything, you were actually personally penalized by a

01:10:26

Roman Catholic television network for being critical of John Paul II, weren't you? Yes, I was.

01:10:31

I got fired from EWTN. Okay, you got fired from EWTN. Yeah. They considered me an employee because I had done many shows with them.

01:10:41

I probably did about, I don't know, half a dozen or so. Plus those two series that I did. And I got a letter from Colin Donovan, the

01:10:49

Vice President of Theology, in 2002 right after I criticized John Paul II for his

01:10:54

Assisi meetings. I don't know if you know anything about that. No, you can tell us about that. Okay. John Paul, his legacy is the

01:11:03

Assisi Interreligious Prayer Gatherings, which started in 1986 in Assisi, Italy.

01:11:12

And what this was was an invitation by Rome to all the religions of the world.

01:11:20

And we're talking about Buddhists, and Shintoists, and Zaoists, and Zoroastrians, and blah, blah, blah, you name it.

01:11:28

And Presbyterians, or Protestants, and Baptists, and all those too, they were invited to come. All the religions were invited to come to pray in Assisi to their own gods for world peace.

01:11:41

Okay? This is in 1986. Kind of like the National Cathedral after 9 -11, when

01:11:47

Billy Graham and a whole bunch of other weird religions showed up. Yeah, okay. Now, anybody who's sensitive to his religion knows there's something wrong with this, okay?

01:11:59

You're asking religions of the world, of Buddhists, to go pray to Buddha for world peace? And there was no, and what really bothered me about this was there was no attempt after the prayer was given to introduce the

01:12:15

Buddhists to Jesus Christ, and to say to him, Jesus Christ is your Savior, this is the one whom you should be praying to for your salvation.

01:12:24

Not a word. Okay? That was in 1986. Then he had five more of them between late 1980s and early 1990s, and then he had the finale in 2002.

01:12:36

It was called Assisi No. 2. This was an even bigger invitation to the world's religions, and they all did the same thing.

01:12:44

As a matter of fact, the Buddhist was told to bring his altar and his incense and all that stuff.

01:12:49

You know, so, and John Paul was noted for going to different countries and praying with pagans and African animists, okay, to be very specific about it, snake charmers and things like that.

01:13:09

And he said, one of his statements was, for the first time in my life, I prayed with an animist.

01:13:16

Now, I just totally reject that. I totally reject it.

01:13:21

That is wrong. Absolutely. Especially when you don't give the gospel to these people after you've had this orgy of prayer with them to their various gods.

01:13:32

And, so that was the problem with Assisi. And I wrote papers about it, against it, and I said that, for this very reason, this man should not be canonized as a saint for doing this.

01:13:46

And EWTN wouldn't have any of it, and just cut me off totally. So that was the last time

01:13:52

I was on that show. Well, that brings up a good question. What if somebody that you deem to be a heretic, along with other fellow

01:14:00

Roman Catholics, is canonized, such as John Paul, what do you do about that?

01:14:06

Are you bound now to recognize him as a valid saint to pray or for prayers to or etc.?

01:14:13

As far as the Catholic Church teaches, yeah, I would have to say that's what they teach.

01:14:19

I have no right to say that is wrong, except that the

01:14:26

Church has never said that the canonization of a saint is infallible. They still argue about it, whether it is or isn't, but there's never been an official statement by the

01:14:37

Catholic Church that said a canonization is infallible. Yeah, Michael Zima, the one that I mentioned earlier, who wrote a book against the canonization of Mother Teresa said that, and she was never canonized, was she?

01:14:49

Mother Teresa. I think she was. I thought she was, but I think he told me that she wasn't.

01:14:55

You know, I need to check up on that. But it was pretty startling information about her, not only heretical in the perspective of an evangelical, but even from a

01:15:08

Roman Catholic view. Yeah, and she was one of these ones that had an idea that all the religions of the world were okay, because they were all searching for this god.

01:15:19

Nobody defined what this god was or who he was, and yet, just because they were searching for him, well, that's okay.

01:15:27

And you have a lot of this in liberal theology and Catholicism today. John Paul II was a liberal, okay?

01:15:35

Mother Teresa was a liberal. She was very kind to people on Earth and in her social gospel, and she was noted for that, and we don't take that away from her.

01:15:45

There are kind atheists. Well, I wouldn't call her an atheist. No, I'm not saying that she was an atheist.

01:15:50

There are kind atheists. There are kind people of all different bizarre religions or lack thereof.

01:15:56

Yeah, and this gets back to the point I mentioned earlier that's very important to understand how all this comes about.

01:16:02

To the liberal theologian, there's no need to go out and preach the gospel and say, you know,

01:16:08

Jesus Christ died for your sins, and you need to repent, and if you do, you're bound for heaven.

01:16:15

There's no need to do that. Why? Well, because they believe everybody's saved. You say, Jesus came, and it's called universal salvation.

01:16:23

This is taught by all the liberals in the Catholic Church. Hans Urs von

01:16:29

Balthasar, he was a cardinal, wrote a book called Dare We Hope? in the late 80s, and that's what this teaches.

01:16:37

It says that it's most likely the case that everybody in the world is saved and we can hope that that's the case, even though we see a lot of evil in the world.

01:16:48

So if that's already been taken care of, if the salvation issue has already been taken care of and everybody's saved, well, what's left?

01:16:56

Well, what's left is dealing with this earth, you see. All the poor people, all the exploited people, all the climate change, you see, and all this kind of stuff, and this is the typical liberal.

01:17:07

You have these in your own churches. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was noted for being against Adolf Hitler and the

01:17:15

Nazi regime and talking about the poor, and he used the same words that you and I use.

01:17:22

The gospel, Jesus rising from the dead, discipleship. He had a book,

01:17:28

The Cost of Discipleship, if you remember. But the fact is, the bare fact is, he didn't mean the same things that you and I do.

01:17:37

When he talked about a resurrection of Jesus, it was a spiritual resurrection. It wasn't a physical resurrection from a grave.

01:17:45

He denied the inerrancy of the Bible. He denied that Jesus was going to come back the second time.

01:17:51

See, this was all spiritualized now, and as a matter of fact, when I talk about the liberal

01:17:57

Catholics today in the church, where did they come from? Well, they learned their lessons from the

01:18:02

Protestant liberals, from the 1700s and the 1800s and the 1900s.

01:18:08

When Protestantism got into the liberal universities of Europe, it totally changed

01:18:13

Protestantism to a total liberal theology. We have names like Booster, Barth, Bonhoeffer.

01:18:22

You go down the list. They were the ones that started all this liberalism. It wasn't the Catholics. I want to make that very clear.

01:18:30

Well, there's another debate that's an excellent topic for a debate, I think. It's ironic, because I think

01:18:37

Neo -Orthodoxy was a response to liberalism, but it wasn't Orthodox, really.

01:18:44

You were going to come up with some quotes that bring attention to why are we even concerned, or especially you as a

01:18:53

Catholic, why you are concerned about the liberalism of Pope Francis, and is that even a reality?

01:19:00

Let me see. While you're looking, I'm going to repeat our email address.

01:19:05

It's chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. We do have some emails waiting for us.

01:19:13

If you could be patient, Mike in Fort Myers, Florida, and others of you who have written to us, we will get to your emails

01:19:20

God willing as soon as possible. chrisarnson at gmail dot com. When you email, please include your first name, at least, and your city and state and your country of residence if you are outside the

01:19:31

USA. All right. Here we go. All right. He said that proselytism is solemn nonsense.

01:19:40

It makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other, and improve our knowledge of the world around us.

01:19:50

That's an interesting little quote there, because that is part and parcel with liberalism.

01:19:58

We don't need to preach the gospel, you see, because God has a plan for everybody.

01:20:03

If they're not saved, then they're going to be annihilated. There's nothing to worry about in that regard.

01:20:10

What are you guys wasting time for trying to make somebody a member of your religion? All religions are good, you see.

01:20:19

That's a problem here. A lot of people are very upset at that kind of thing. That's been the bread and butter of the ecumenical movement.

01:20:28

Stop proselytizing. That was the foundation of why the

01:20:34

Evangelicals and Catholics Together document that Chuck Colson drafted came into existence.

01:20:39

They wanted Catholics and Protestants to aim our guns at the liberals corrupting the culture, rather than having in -house, which they considered in -house, theological debates and opposition toward one another.

01:20:56

I obviously believe that those things are even more important than even the social issues. Remember I talked about the

01:21:02

Catholics having the wheels on the cart? Right. As good as Chuck was, and as much as he wanted to see the world change, he was on the wrong track.

01:21:15

The reason is this, and I want to get into this for about five minutes or so, if you don't mind. In the

01:21:21

Catholic Church in the 20th century, we believe that the

01:21:29

Blessed Virgin Mary came to give a message at Fatima to the world, that unless Russia is consecrated to the

01:21:38

Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the world repents of its sin, she said this in 1917, then there will this war will end, but there will be another war that will come as a chastisement for failure to do this.

01:21:52

And lo and behold, World War II came. In 1929, she came again, and she said that I want

01:21:59

Russia consecrated to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Pope Pius XI was the

01:22:05

Pope at that time. He failed to do it. Pope Pius XII was the next Pope.

01:22:10

He failed to do it, although he tried twice. He did it wrong twice, in 1942 and 1952.

01:22:18

John XXIII said he wasn't going to do it. Paul VI, instead of consecrating

01:22:23

Russia, consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. John XXII tried four times to do the consecration, and if he did, that means obviously he thought that Pius XII's attempt in 1942 and 1952 were wrong.

01:22:38

And he never did it. He never said the words, I consecrate Russia to the

01:22:44

Immaculate Heart of Mary. He four times said, I consecrate the world. Our Lady promised that if the consecration was done, there would be a period of peace on the earth.

01:22:58

So, have we seen peace on the earth at all since the 20th century? No. We've had two of the worst wars this world has ever known.

01:23:06

We had the Korean War, the Vietnam War. We had the explosion of the 60s of immorality into the 70s and 80s.

01:23:13

We had corruption in the political scene, the financial scene. Everywhere is corruption. Everywhere. And there's still wars.

01:23:19

As a matter of fact, in John Paul II's pontificate, 26 years, do you know how many wars there were in the world during that time?

01:23:25

Take a guess. I couldn't even right now. Fifty -two. Fifty -two wars and conflicts throughout the world.

01:23:34

So, if he did a consecration in 1984, like he was supposed to, then why are we seeing all this war in the world today?

01:23:44

That's the reason why, from a Catholic perspective, we are in the mess that we're in.

01:23:49

That's why we have liberals today. Because if we aren't going to obey God, he's going to unleash these things.

01:23:56

He's not neutral in this. He is an active participant, and he unleashes the devil on us if we don't obey.

01:24:04

One of the forms of this is liberalism. And it's still parading around today. Why? Because the consecration hasn't been done.

01:24:12

Now, I know you can't relate to this as a Protestant. You just think this is from outer space. But from a

01:24:17

Catholic perspective, this is the foundation for the 20th and 21st century.

01:24:25

Well, one of the things that I always wondered about is, how do you know in your... why do you even think with certainty that that was

01:24:32

Mary, just because things were predicted accurately? For instance, I know that many traditionalist

01:24:37

Catholics oppose the Medjugorje apparitions. I don't know if you do or not. Do you oppose those? Yeah, I do.

01:24:43

Okay. Well, why would you embrace something like Fatima and oppose

01:24:48

Medjugorje? Well, because you have three Fatima children that were very poor and didn't make any money off of it like they're doing in Medjugorje, okay?

01:24:55

Number one. Number two, you had the miracle of the sun that was reported in O Seculo, the

01:25:00

Portuguese newspaper, that 70 ,000 people saw the sun dance in the sky, okay?

01:25:06

So you have a miracle, one of the greatest miracles ever performed, even above some of those recorded in the

01:25:11

Bible, witnessed by 70 ,000 people and written by a secular newspaper that occurred, okay?

01:25:18

So we have verification. That's what miracles are given to us as attestation to a truth that is to be given at the same time.

01:25:26

Right. Well, obviously, I don't want to... we could do another interview on that, because obviously, I would believe that there are false miracles, and there are even...

01:25:33

as you know, there are Charismatics and Pentecostal Protestants that profess these types of things, maybe not to that magnitude.

01:25:41

But you said that you had also a couple more quotes. Yeah, okay, let me give you some more. Here's another one. Pope Francis said,

01:25:48

We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage, and the use of contraceptive methods.

01:25:54

The teaching of the Church is clear, and I am a son of the Church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time.

01:26:02

Some people were upset about this, because, you know, I mean, can you think of an issue that's more serious than killing a baby in the womb?

01:26:10

You know? Right. The poor, as Jesus said, you're going to have with you always, and you can do what you want to help them, but killing people is a top priority, and until, if and when it is taken away, we need to talk about it, and make it a top priority.

01:26:27

Okay? So, these are statements that a wise man would be very careful not to say.

01:26:33

Right, and then, of course, somebody who's doing a spin on that, like one of the more neoconservative

01:26:39

Catholics might say, Well, do you talk about abortion all the time? Obviously, no, but obviously that was lessening the severity in the minds of many.

01:26:48

Yeah, you've got to be very careful, especially if you're the leader of the religious world, being the

01:26:54

Pope, when you say things like that, okay? All right. Well, let's pick up on some more, because we're going to go to one more break.

01:27:01

In fact, this will be the last break that we have for the entire remainder of the hour.

01:27:09

If you have any questions that you would like to email to us, please email them to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:27:19

Even though it's my name on the email, the question will be for Robert St. Genesis, obviously, my guest. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:27:25

Please include your first name, city, and state of residence and your country of residence, if outside the

01:27:31

USA, and please make it a question and please try to somewhat stick to the topic at hand.

01:27:37

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We were made to thrive. Welcome back.

01:29:26

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, this is our interview today with Robert St.

01:29:32

Genes, the founder and director of Catholic Apologetics International Publishing Inc.,

01:29:37

which is a conservative Catholic apologetics organization. And as I have repeated throughout this program,

01:29:43

I am not a modern -day ecumenist. I do believe that the Church of Rome has a different gospel than I do as a

01:29:50

Bible -believing evangelical. But our purpose for doing this today is to have an honest, open, public critique of Pope Francis and of the liberalism within the

01:30:01

Catholic Church from a communicant member in good standing of the

01:30:06

Roman Catholic Church. And as we have repeated also, our guest Robert St. Genes has denied accusations that he is a schismatic, that he is a sativacantist, and you're not a lefeverite either,

01:30:20

I guess. Alright. And you had some more quotes, and I will get to some of our emails in a bit, but you had some more quotes about or by Pope Francis.

01:30:32

Yes. We've gone through some of the worse ones, and there's a lot of actually good ones here, but I want to pick some that are a little bit more controversial so that we can deal with those.

01:30:47

He said this, We have to find a new balance. Otherwise, even the moral edifice of the

01:30:54

Church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the

01:30:59

Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant.

01:31:06

It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow. A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation.

01:31:18

There is nothing more solid, deep, and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis.

01:31:25

Then you can draw even a moral consequence. Now, Chris, let me play interviewer here for a minute.

01:31:32

You heard that statement. Does that sound good or bad? It seems like it's pretty bad to me, but like in what's the word

01:31:43

I'm looking for? It sounds like it's purposely said to hide some ulterior motive.

01:31:52

Really? Now what makes you say that? Well, read the statement again because I was dealing with some technical issues there.

01:32:02

Now listen up. The proposal of the Gospel must be more simple, profound, radiant.

01:32:09

It is from this proposition that the moral consequences then flow. A beautiful homily, a genuine sermon must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation.

01:32:21

There is nothing more solid, deep, and sure than this proclamation. Then you have to do catechesis.

01:32:27

Then you can even draw even a moral consequence." Obviously, I would agree that salvation is the primary purpose of the

01:32:36

Gospel, and it is the good news, and believing in the perpiscuity of Scripture as a

01:32:42

Protestant, I believe it should be a simple truth that is proclaimed.

01:32:48

So there are things that are elements of that that are obviously true, yes. Okay, so you would say that what

01:32:54

Pope Francis said here is good? For the most part, yeah. Do you see any ulterior motives here at all?

01:33:02

No, I am importing, I guess, presuppositions into that idea. Well, here is a presupposition that I will import for you.

01:33:15

Okay, so he says here, a beautiful homily, a genuine sermon, must begin with the first proclamation, with the proclamation of salvation.

01:33:23

Now, to a liberal, what most of them mean by that, now that is a thing that Francis does here, but this is a case where we really need to go into.

01:33:32

Do you mean this, Francis? Poverty and being persecuted, and that kind of thing?

01:33:38

Salvation from that? Well, no. Yeah, in the second phase. The first phase is spiritually you are already saved.

01:33:45

That is why I can give you a proclamation of salvation. Okay, there you go. Yeah, right.

01:33:51

Then the next phase is we want to save you from your poverty, real poverty. We want to save you from whatever else is in the culture that is bad for you, you see.

01:34:01

So there is always a double entendre with these liberals, and it has been going on for 100 years or so.

01:34:08

So you have got to be very careful when you read stuff like this. It sounds good, like I told you about Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

01:34:14

He used the same word, salvation, but he did not believe the same salvation that you and James White believe in.

01:34:21

It was something totally different. So that is what we are fighting here. Let me go to one of our listener questions.

01:34:29

We have Mike in Fort Myers, Florida. Hello, Robert. How would you handle a situation, say, if your

01:34:35

Pope Francis is consulting with the Roman bishops and with affirmation from them proclaim the doctrine, say, for instance, that Mary is officially the spouse of the

01:34:47

Holy Spirit, that is clearly opposed to what God's Word teaches and to what no early church council held in the affirmative.

01:34:59

Well, even to broaden that question rather than the specific details that he gives, do you all of a sudden put a

01:35:09

Calvinist hat on and do you believe that somehow God sovereignly controls the infallible declarations of a

01:35:18

Pope? I mean, since you believe in free will and you have Popes that have wills that are free, what is preventing

01:35:28

Pope Francis from defining his dogma as something that you think is damning? Let me deal with John Calvin first.

01:35:35

How did John Calvin know that the Bible that we have is the Bible? John Calvin's answer to that is, somehow the

01:35:43

Spirit of God lets us know what it is. Now, the Catholics take that to the next step.

01:35:50

If the Spirit is talking to us so that he gives us information outside of Scripture that is correct, and the canon is outside of Scripture because Scripture does not tell us what the canon is.

01:36:04

It does not give us a list of books. So the Catholic takes that to the next level and says, okay, the

01:36:11

Spirit does talk to us and gives us truth outside of Scripture and tradition to the

01:36:17

Pope in special circumstances. And this is actually even better than Calvin's because Calvin's is sort of open -ended.

01:36:24

Well, the Spirit just talks to us and lets us know, and somehow this ethereal presence of the

01:36:30

Spirit is going to give everybody the same information, blah, blah, blah. We're saying, no, no, no, no, no. It's confined to the

01:36:36

Pope, to one man who has been put in charge by Jesus Christ of the Roman Catholic Church to receive this information infallibly from the

01:36:45

Holy Spirit. And thereby we can know whether the doctrine that's being discussed is true or false when he is in that realm of infallibility that I told you had four criteria.

01:36:58

Ours is a very, very technical and very, I would say, magnificent way to confine this

01:37:08

Spirit knowledge that even Calvin believed in to the funnel of the

01:37:13

Pope himself. And that's why we as Catholics have all the confidence in the world that all the doctrines we believe in that have been infallibly endorsed by the

01:37:22

Pope or the Council are true. So, going back to my original question, and forgive me if you answered it clearer than I thought you did.

01:37:33

I tried to confuse you there. Can a Pope declare something ex cathedra that you believe is damning and will not recognize as dogma?

01:37:47

No, no, obviously that's the logical inclusion to what I said, was that the Pope will be protected.

01:37:53

And that's the definition. By God sovereignly somehow. Right, right. And John Calvin can't argue with that, you see, because he already opened the door up for the

01:38:01

Spirit talking to us. Okay, we do have Keith in Oxnard, California.

01:38:07

Some of this you already clearly spoke of, so maybe Keith is tuning in late.

01:38:13

Do you think his belief, I'm assuming he means

01:38:19

Pope Francis, in aliens, global warming, and other liberal oddities stems from the

01:38:25

Catholic Church's inverted stance on the science and faith?

01:38:32

Now, does he believe in aliens living on other planets, and what is your opinion on that? I don't know specifically if he does believe there's aliens, but if he did,

01:38:42

I would say yes to Keith, that this stems from the cosmogony and cosmology that is taught in the liberal universities of Catholicism across the world.

01:38:53

Namely, evolution, relativity, Copernicanism, all those kinds of things.

01:39:00

That leads to a mentality that starts looking for life on other planets, okay? Now, we did have a

01:39:05

Pope, Pius II, in his bull, who said there are no human beings living on other planets.

01:39:15

And somebody the other day said to me, well, that doesn't mean that aliens can't be living on other planets. And I said, actually,

01:39:22

Pius II said there is no life on other planets, and in particular, human beings.

01:39:29

So he basically clarified that. But today, not only is

01:39:35

Catholicism liberal in its theology, it's liberal in its science. And they go after every fad that is spoken by Carl Sagan or Albert Einstein, whoever it is.

01:39:48

That is fascinating. As I've mentioned to you, I was raised Roman Catholic, eight years of parochial school,

01:39:56

St. Martin of Tours in Amityville, and I was taught in the science class that evolution was a fact.

01:40:03

And I have rarely met even a very conservative Catholic that is not a theistic evolutionist.

01:40:12

Now, do you think that that is absolute heresy, or what's your opinion on that? Well, I'm not the one to judge heresy, but I am the one to judge whether their view is correct or not.

01:40:20

I have that ability as a baptized Catholic, according to the Catechism, to make a judgment on that.

01:40:26

Not only for the salvation of myself, but for my children and my wife and everybody else I come in contact with. So, I can go that far.

01:40:33

And I would say, yeah, from a layman's point of view, it's heretical.

01:40:38

The Church never taught that. The Fathers never taught it. Lateran Council 4 and Vatican Council 1 gave no indication whatsoever that evolution was allowed.

01:40:48

They made clear statements that the world was created in fiat by God, ex nihilo, and many of the

01:40:58

Fathers talk about 6 days, and some of them even talk about 24 hours to those 6 days. So, that's the consensus that we have from the patristics, from the medievals, and the burden of proof is on anyone who wants to change that.

01:41:10

And I can tell you this, by studying the evolutionary schema, no one has any proof whatsoever that evolution exists.

01:41:18

Well, that's one thing that we definitely agree on, and, in fact, as a sidebar, very quickly, a lot of people are totally unaware of the fact that Darwin's original title for Origin of the

01:41:30

Species was, the subtitle included in that title was, and the struggle for the preservation of favored races.

01:41:39

And he was clearly a racist who believed that non -whites were closer on the chain of evolution to the apes than white individuals are.

01:41:48

But, anyway, just a sidebar there. Do you have any other quotes that would confirm that Pope Francis is a liberal for our audience?

01:41:57

Here's one. I just picked this at random, okay, so it doesn't give any indication of liberalism or conservatism.

01:42:05

The Holy Middle Class. There is a holy middle class which we can all be a part of.

01:42:13

I see the holiness in the patience of the people of God. A woman who is raising children, a man who works to bring home the bread, the sick, the elderly priests who have so many wounds but have a smile on their faces because they serve the

01:42:28

Lord. The sisters who work hard and live a hidden sanctity. This is for me the common sanctity.

01:42:36

You know, and it's hard to disagree with that kind of statement. And the only way that I could possibly find a hole in it is to say, what's the theological foundation for this statement?

01:42:48

And since I know it comes from a liberal heart, I'm a little more skeptical than if you said this,

01:42:54

Chris. If you said the Holy Middle Class, you know, because I know if you had said it, it would be a sympathy for the poor.

01:43:02

As a matter of fact, I think you're poor, aren't you? Yes, I am. As you can see in the surroundings that you're sitting in.

01:43:10

I never told him that, he just made the logical assumption that I was. Here's another one. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.

01:43:19

You know what I think about this? Heads of the church often have been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers.

01:43:28

The court is the leprosy of the papacy. Now this is a man who, for all the negative things that we've said this afternoon, sees the

01:43:38

Vatican for what it is. It's filled with I'll be careful, but it's filled with homosexuals, it's filled with liberals, it's filled with people who are there just to be at the

01:43:52

Vatican. It's filled with people who don't give a whit about you or me. There's a lot of that there at the

01:43:59

Vatican. There's a lot of people, a lot of pomp and circumstance. There's a lot of ritual. There's a lot of people that are in it for the money.

01:44:07

He sees this there and it stinks. It's been stinking for decades.

01:44:13

So you think that he's actually upset that there's a lot of homosexuals in the Vatican, even though he's so soft? Well, this is the problem, as I said in the beginning of the program.

01:44:21

He's soft on this issue. He needs to come out as the Pope if he wants to be our leader in this moral area and say homosexuality is a sin.

01:44:31

No questions asked. We'll love them, we'll lead them to Christ, and we'll help them any way we can.

01:44:38

But it is a sin. That's where you start. Now, is it just fundamentalist,

01:44:44

Baptist, or evangelical propaganda that the Catholic priesthood is just saturated with homosexuals?

01:44:54

No. I wrote a 52 -page report on this about, what, 10 years ago when it exploded in the media.

01:45:00

Because I wanted to find out for myself. I was a Catholic apologist, so what am I going to tell my patrons who give me money to give them information about the

01:45:08

Church? Well, I did this in -depth report, and I found probably a dozen. Half of them were

01:45:14

Catholic reporters telling how bad it was. Some had percentages of 30 % of the priesthood is homosexual.

01:45:23

Some had as high as 50%. Some had as high as 30 % for the bishopric.

01:45:29

And I know this is true, because I've run into them. I've had to deal with them.

01:45:35

And it's not just something that's hidden in a corner somewhere. It's out there. And I've seen kids' lives ruined by this stuff.

01:45:44

Okay? So no, it's there. And it's not subsiding, either. Are you talking about people with the proclivity or desire for homosexuality, or active homosexuals that are participating in the sin?

01:45:57

Well, that's a good question. Because they give them anonymous opportunity to write out what they've experienced.

01:46:06

And some will tell the truth, some won't. When they're before ordination, you mean? Yeah. Now, there was a document.

01:46:13

It was so bad in the early 1960s that there was a document put out by the Vatican that said anybody who did have the tendency toward homosexuality should not be a priest.

01:46:24

Somehow, that was just sort of swept under the rug. And as the 60s went by, which you know were turbulent, that became more relaxed, and so homosexuals were allowed into the priesthood.

01:46:36

As a matter of fact, it was the perfect occupation for them, as far as they could see. All they had to do was do the ritual, and the money would flow in, and they decided to put on the act that they were the good guy.

01:46:48

And behind the scenes, they were Mr. Hyde. This was going on in parish after parish all over the world.

01:46:54

Now, when you say that it was the perfect type of position for them, do you mean by that that a celibate male that lives his entire life without seeking a spouse could hide his homosexuality by becoming a priest?

01:47:13

Is that what you mean by that? Yeah. They don't like manual labor, number one. Well, I can't say that with all of them.

01:47:22

Well, a great majority of them. They have a particular lifestyle. We get three meals a day served to us by a maid, and we have our rooms cleaned.

01:47:31

Hey, let's not forget that one of the village people was a construction worker. There are exceptions, yes.

01:47:37

But by and large... Sorry about that. I don't know why. I've been in directories. I've seen it. I've seen it firsthand.

01:47:44

I've seen it. Now, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that?

01:47:50

You've seen them discuss this? Yes, they've discussed it. I've seen the paraphernalia.

01:47:59

I've seen... Yeah, I don't want to go into it any more than that. Now, how do you respond to the evangelical or fundamentalist

01:48:09

Protestant who says, well, because of the fact that your religion has restricted the priesthood, which obviously evangelicals don't really believe in a

01:48:23

New Testament priesthood other than the priesthood of the believers, but if you restrict your ministers to a celibate life, that that is going to be a natural product of that, that you are going to be enticing a lot more applicants or people interested in that kind of calling in life who are prone towards homosexuality.

01:48:49

Yeah, let me first deal with that question by saying this. You know, you Protestants have it a lot easier than we do as Catholics.

01:48:57

We have one church. When you have a problem like this in your church, you just say, okay,

01:49:03

I'm taking my bat and ball. I'm going to go create another church. Goodbye. And then about 20 years later, 40 years later, you guys have the same problem in your church and then somebody stands up and says,

01:49:15

I'm not going to stand for this anymore. I'm going to start my own church. And so they leave. And so the progression continues.

01:49:20

Not so in the Catholic church. We're stuck with one church. Everybody's Catholic.

01:49:27

Now, the accusation, I think, would normally come that because we have a strict doctrine of celibacy, well, this may lead to homosexuality.

01:49:39

Don't you think? And the answer to that is absolutely not. Go read the New Testament. Well, actually,

01:49:46

I didn't mean that. I'm certain there are some people that say that the remaining celibate causes homosexuality.

01:49:53

I didn't mean that. What I meant was, just as you were saying before, it's more of an enticing role or calling for somebody to choose to follow if they are going to be making a vow of chastity with a woman, you know, a celibate restriction in their life.

01:50:14

Are you saying that because they take the vow of celibacy, that leads to...

01:50:19

No, that is attracting homosexuals or people that are interested in that behavior in a higher percentage because they know they won't be looked upon with suspicion for never having a female partner.

01:50:30

Yes, apparently that's the case. It does invite them to take this profession, as they would call it, as a place where they could practice their trade, so to speak, and still maintain the money that they need and the social networking that goes on, as a matter of fact, with these priests and bishops who are in this lifestyle.

01:50:54

A lot of social networking, and they protect each other. And the seminaries, as a matter of fact, there's one in Baltimore they used to call the

01:51:02

Pink Palace, would screen candidates to the seminary to make sure that they were open to homosexuality.

01:51:09

Wow. My son went through this when he wanted to be a priest.

01:51:15

He no longer wants to be a priest, and we're counseling him about that, but he had that experience where they would screen him just to make sure.

01:51:23

Of course, being my son, it's not going to give any indication that he's going to allow this mentality in his life, and so he was apparently let go with some excuses attached that he was this or that or the other thing.

01:51:38

Now, because I've heard, and I'm pretty certain I'm correct, that celibacy is a discipline and not dogma, that that can change.

01:51:51

What do you think is the best thing for a priest? Do you think it should be married males, as even the scriptures talk about a bishop should be the husband of one wife and so on, ruling his household well?

01:52:03

What is your opinion on that? My opinion is that first of all, we have to realize that celibacy is not the cause for sin.

01:52:11

Celibacy was originally manifested in order to stop sin, and that's what

01:52:18

St. Paul was. Now, St. Peter was married, so we had this, but we had to make a decision with what

01:52:26

Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 7. He said, yes, it's good to be married, but it's better to be single if you're going to be working in the gospel.

01:52:33

How do you take that? Well, the church said, okay, well, we think that's a good way to go. That was made in the 2nd century, and we've had that ever since.

01:52:41

So, the tradition is so long and steep, I really don't think it's ever going to change, but like you said, it could change.

01:52:48

Now, some Catholic friends of mine, whenever I would object to teachings of a particular

01:52:57

Catholic leader or Pope affirming the

01:53:03

Muslims and others, even the Jewish people who reject

01:53:08

Christ, I'm not talking about Messianic Jews or Jewish believers, but Jews that reject Christ and others that reject

01:53:15

Christ, that they would say that they are in good standing with the

01:53:21

Catholic Church because the Catechism teaches that. It says in the Catechism, as you know very well, that the

01:53:27

Muslims, for instance, adore the same one true God as the

01:53:34

Catholics do. Now, some will say that if you oppose that, you are being schismatic because you are defying what the

01:53:43

Catholic Catechism says. So, how do you respond to that? Well, I respond in two ways. One is, yes, if you want to get the least common denominator between Muslims and Catholics and Protestants, we all believe there's one

01:53:58

God. Yeah, we'll go that far. And that's basically as far as the

01:54:03

Catechism wants to go. The problem with the Catechism, whoever wrote that Catechism, we actually know the name of who wrote the

01:54:10

Catechism. It wasn't the Pope, by the way. Why don't you want to say the name? I won't say it right now. Do I know this person?

01:54:19

No, you don't know him. The problem is the same problem we had with Francis on homosexuality.

01:54:26

You can talk about the gay person being loved by God. Yes.

01:54:33

God loves everyone. Right? He wants everyone to be saved. So in that sense, yeah, he does love the gay person.

01:54:40

But what is Francis not saying? He's not saying that homosexuality is a sin and you will be condemned to hell for that sin.

01:54:48

Point blank. No questions asked. Same with the Catechism on the

01:54:53

Muslims. What is it not saying? It's not saying how we define who this one

01:54:59

God is. In Catholicism and in your denomination, you define it as a Trinity with the

01:55:05

Son of God being the second person of the Trinity. And any person who opposes that definition of the one

01:55:12

God was anathematized by the Council of Constantinople, the Council of Chalcedon, the

01:55:18

Council of Ephesus, and all those previous councils. And you can't play games with this stuff.

01:55:25

This is a definition of who God is. And the Catechism left it out.

01:55:31

But it also, in a positive sense, when I say positive, I don't mean in a good way. What I mean is it actually says, though, it's more than just not saying specific things against it.

01:55:45

It's also saying that together with us they adore the one true God. Yeah, I know. It's wrong to go in that direction.

01:55:52

And it's not even the same God. I mean, I even asked a Muslim who was involved in a debate on my program, do you agree with the

01:55:59

Catholic Catechism? Do you adore the same God as the Catholics do or as Evangelicals or Christians?

01:56:05

Absolutely not. Well, this is what happens when you try to please everybody, you please no one. You see. Except the people who want to be ecumenical.

01:56:12

That's who you please. And the way you do that is by just diluting all the definitions so everybody can be happy and slap everybody on the back.

01:56:20

Okay? Is that the kind of religion we have? I'm sorry to say that is the kind of religion we have. Now, I have to give credit to the

01:56:26

Catechism, though, when it does talk about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, it does define them properly in other contexts.

01:56:35

So we can tell that whoever wrote this Muslim paragraph had an agenda not to get into what else the

01:56:41

Catechism talks about with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you see. And know this also.

01:56:46

The Catechism has had many errors pointed out. There was a French theologian about 15 years ago who pointed out that there were 40 errors in the present

01:56:55

Catechism. And the Vatican actually accepted a lot of what he had to say and had another edition put out.

01:57:02

Because it's not infallible. It's a Catechism that teaches from the mind of man what he understands the faith to be.

01:57:10

And in the climate we have in the Vatican today, with the liberalism, there's some dangerous things being said.

01:57:16

In fact, I jokingly, as you may fully remember, during one of the debates, or should

01:57:22

I say the beginning of one of the debates you had with Dr. James R. White, I introduced you jokingly as the

01:57:27

Papal Bull Robertson -Genis when I was doing the introductions as a wrestling announcer.

01:57:34

The Papal Bull Robertson -Genis. And somebody asked me, I wonder if Robert would be happy about that introduction today.

01:57:42

I would. As I said before, you have to make a balance between the officiation of the papacy and the person in the papacy.

01:57:51

Now, would you say that Pope Francis is a safe guide and shepherd to trust?

01:57:59

Well, that's a loaded question. Well, I can't think of any other way to say it more simply.

01:58:08

Okay, I think Pope Francis is totally wrong on climate change. Now, that opens the door to ask the question, well, what else do you believe that the

01:58:17

Pope is saying is wrong? I believe he's wrong on not coming down hard on homosexuality.

01:58:22

As I said several times here. So, I would have to answer your question honestly and say, on some things, more so than any other

01:58:31

Pope that I've had to deal with, yes, Francis causes that problem. So, a person has to really be a

01:58:37

Berean, even as a Roman Catholic, then. Yeah, but he has to be a Berean not only into the

01:58:42

Scriptures but into the tradition of the Church. Well, it has been a really wonderful privilege to have you in the studio today.

01:58:52

Actually, Robert is our second guest ever to be inside the studio. Walt Chantry was our first to be inside the studio, and I had a lot of fun.

01:59:03

I think it was informative. I learned some things, and again, I did not intend this to be a platform for modern ecumenism.

01:59:10

I think that people who listen to my program know that that's not my agenda, and I know that there will no doubt be many criticisms coming down the pike from both

01:59:20

Catholics and Evangelicals and neither of the two, but that's life in radio.

01:59:28

And I hope that you were blessed in some way, those of you who are listening to the program, and looking forward to some creative way we can have you back on Iron, Sharp, and Zarn again,

01:59:40

Bob. I'd be happy to come back, Chris, anytime. And Jesus Christ is a far, far greater Savior than you are a sinner.