Let's Talk About the Papacy with Cameron Bertuzzi

And greetings and welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We have a special program today. We are joined on Zoom by Cameron Bertuzzi, better known as Capturing Christianity, though I'm really doubtful that his wife or kids call him Cap.

I hope not, because that would be really weird. Be very strange. I don't hear him at all. Rich, are we good on that? I just unmuted myself. Okay, no problem. No problem. And he's cool enough to wear a backwards cap, which means he's probably young enough to be younger than my youngest.

So back in my days, that meant that you were like at the back of the class or something like that. But now it's just the opposite. So I don't know. I've not figured all these things out. I'm an old man.

But Capturing Christianity, tell us, for those in our audience that aren't familiar with you, uh, what is that all about? And when did you get started?

Yeah, so Capturing Christianity actually sprung as a response. Can you hear me?

Cameron Bertuzzi’s Story and Charismatic Background

Yeah, it's, it's really loud on my end. It's, it's distorting a little bit. So okay, sorry. It's, it sounds like you're screaming. So I'm trying to get Rich to.

Turn those things down. It's great to be here with you, James. I know that you've, you've done some shows about some of the things that I've done. And it's just, it's just great. I appreciate the magnitude of this event.

I think it's really cool that you invited me on and that we're able to do this. So I'll just tell you a little about my ministry Capturing Christianity. So it started as actually as a stem from my brother becoming an atheist about 10 years ago at this point.

And I had a conversation with him when I initially heard about it. And the conversation did not go well. So after that point, I started to look into things a lot deeper. I wanted to really find out is there good evidence for the truth of Christianity.

I came across guys like Wayne Lane Craig, Josh Rasmussen, eventually, but a lot of these guys, they eventually became heroes of mine. And, you know, in the in the sense of like, they have these, well, I'm kind of getting ahead of myself here.

Let me just continue the story here. So sorry, I'm a little bit nervous. It's a little bit nervous to be on here with you, James, even though I can't see you anymore. Yeah, so, so my story is, I eventually found that there's all of this evidence for the truth of Christianity.

And I eventually wanted to share that with people. And that's why I eventually started out capturing Christianity as a blog, I was starting to write little articles and stuff on different apologetics related issues.

And then eventually, it turned into a YouTube channel. And so now we've got a YouTube channel about 125 ,000 subscribers, I think at this point. And that's basically, that's the short story of how this all came about.

Okay, and and tell me, tell me a little bit, if you could, what about your church background,.

Where things like that. Very charismatic, very charismatic. And so that's, that's something that I've kind of been, well, I want to say struggled with, because when I started to learn about philosophy and apologetics and theology, I really realized how far away my background was from that, like, the charismatic church was not, they didn't really appreciate theology at all.

I went back recently, actually, to the church that I once attended. And the stuff that they were saying was crazy, it was crazy. And so that but that's my background is charismatic. And so at this point, I'm just still wading through the different theological issues.

I don't really know where I sit on a lot of these things, as you've actually noted on your program. So.

Okay, so so let me let me ask you, because because I don't, I don't know what the background is. And so most charismatic churches, I know of some exceptions, but the way you described it, doesn't sound like this would be an exception.

Most charismatic churches and a lot of fundamentalist churches, church history goes back to Billy Graham, and with charismatic churches to some other, you know, well known person 50 years ago. But the idea of a connection to the early church, or even to the Reformation, very, very unusual amongst those groups, not, not a lot of self-awareness as to where our church is in relationship to other churches, history, things like that.

Is that where you would, where you would have been, as far as you're.

Okay? Absolutely. 100%. Okay. Yeah. I don't even think I heard the name Augustine until I actually.

Started to look into things. Wow. Okay. All right. So when I don't remember, I don't remember the first thing that I saw with you. I don't remember if it, have you done anything on presuppositionalism?

Had somebody on to talk about that? Richard, Richard Howe. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that, was that, was that before or after the discussion with the Matt fellow, the Roman Catholic fellow by the name of Matt?

Cause I, it's hard for me to, yeah. Yeah. I think it was before. So that one came out in 2019 or early 2020. Okay. All right. Okay. Cause I, I was trying to remember what was the first, first thing that I'd run into from you.

I'm not, I don't spend a whole lot of time on YouTube, to be honest with you. If I see stuff, it's because somebody sends it to me. I, I'm, I'm a pastor of a rather, one of the pastors of a very, very active church.

You've probably heard of Apologia, but all the things that we're doing is just insane and do a lot of traveling and doing the dividing line and everything else. I, I I'm dependent upon other people to send me stuff.

And so maybe the first thing was the thing with, with how, but then when you had the discussion, if I recall correctly, it was primarily, at least I commented primarily on John chapter six. One of the things I said was, this fellow doesn't know his background.

He doesn't know why he is what he is. And one of the, one of the things that, that would prompt that from me is at least in, in my background, in my days, if you're going to be doing a ministry online or whatever it is, we call it today, that it's sort of important that, you know, where you stand, because when I first started dealing, Mormonism is what got me into apologetics in 1982, about six weeks after I got married, I was 19, she was 18.

I met with my first two missionaries in serious discussion, two times in one week, Elders Reed and Reese. And that's what eventually led to Alpha and Omega Ministries and going up to Salt Lake City every six months and debates up there and all the rest of that stuff.

And everything at Alpha Omega has done since then, starting very, very early. And one of the first things that I recognized was, if I'm going to be criticizing where they're coming from, their history of Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith's false prophecies, archaeology into Book of Mormon, false prophecies into Doctrine and Covenants, whatever, then they're going to be asking questions about where I'm coming from.

Now I'm a PK. So I was, I was raised a preacher's kid and my dad went to Moody Bible Institute. And so I had a whole lot more than a lot of people did, but still, it was taking church history in seminary that just lit my fire and really gave me the opportunity of knowing where in the world we are in relationship to everything else.

Thankfully, I had a really good church history professor. If I hadn't, who knows what I would have ended up doing or anything else. But, you know, I've taught church history since 1990 now and I love it.

But I also know that I'm weird for that. Most Protestants have no earthly idea where in the world they're coming from and hence are not Protestants of conviction. They're just Protestants of, well, that's what I am.

That's, I don't know anything else. And so as I've been listening to the conversations that have been taking place, it's just been another example. It's not, there's anything wrong with you. You just are very representative of a lot of people that just, your background has not provided you with a foundation for knowing why you are what you are.

You are what you are by default and therefore when you run into new things, it's like, I've never heard of that before and I have no earthly idea why I have not heard about it before and I really don't know what to think about it.

That's what I was hearing in your first conversation with Matt. Am I wrong? No. Okay. All right. All right. So fast forward, you've now been meeting with people like... Well, can I say.

Something about that? Because I think I have something that's relevant here. So my mission with my channel, with Capturing Christianity, is to have experts like you on the channel, like people who are actually experts on the topics.

So I come at this as a layman and I let my audience know that up front. I'm a layman. I'm not an expert. And that's, but that's the point of the ministry is it's really to, I mean, the ultimate goal, I would love to see my brother come back to Christ, but that's kind of why I do.

What I do is as a layman is I don't have the degrees. I don't have the accolades, but what I can do is I can host an interview with an expert to get their ideas out to the public. So that's the vast majority of what I do on my channel.

And yet you're doing some,.

You're doing, but you do have to have standards. I mean, you're not going to, you're not going to present somebody as an expert who teaches at BYU, are you? I don't even know what BYU is. Brigham Young University, the premier LDS school in Provo, Utah.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So probably not. Well, unless I was hosting a dialogue between someone from that university and like a Christian, that might be a case where I would have someone from that.

Background on. Right. But you, so there is a, you have to have some type of general idea of what defines the Christian faith. And that gives you your guidelines as to who you're going to have on and in what context, whether it's going to be a debate or whether it's, you're going to be presenting someone as, hey, this guy has really good, positive stuff that you can trust and things like that.

Right. So that is an important aspect of things. And I sort of assumed that when, you know, I could be wrong in assuming that, I mean, YouTube has produced, you got to understand when I did my first debate with Jerry Matitix at St. Cyprian's Catholic Church in Long Beach in August of 1990, there was no internet, despite what certain democratic runners for the presidency may say.

There was no internet and there was no social media. There was something called BBSs. I'm sure you've never heard of that before, a bulletin board system. It would take three days for your messages to get back and forth between people, but I was part of it.

I was, it was there. And it was, it was interesting. And I put a lot of time into it, but anyway, there wasn't any of those types of things. And so if you were going to get out there and say something, you sort of had to build a foundation upon which to be able to do so.

And now anybody, you know, can, can throw things out there. And so YouTube has changed everything. And so going back to the important aspect of these things. So I listened to what you were saying in that first conversation and I'm functioning.

I knew which, which, the one with Matt on John six and stuff like that. And right, well, yeah. And I'm, and I'm like, okay, so the standard historically from the reformation and even beforehand stuff about this is not being brought up and it's frustrating to me.

And so that's why I, that's why someone sent it to me and said, you need to listen to this. And it's like, okay, well, it wasn't brought up then. So we'll bring it up because we've got a pretty decent audience.

And so let's, let's respond to it. Let's let's talk about these things because I've been doing debates with Roman Catholics and we've been discussing John six since, since the nineties. And of course, we're just the current generation doing it as this, this has been going on.

For example, have you ever read Calvin's correspondence with Cardinal Sataletto? No. Highly recommended to you. It is right at the time of the reformation, Sataletto was the Bishop of Geneva and got kicked.

Repeating that real quick. I'm already done. Yeah. Bishop Sataletto S I think it's S A D O L E T O. I could be wrong about that, but Bishop Sataletto it's classic back and forth right at the raw time when people are dying on both sides of the reformation.

And is this related to the Eucharist? It covers a bunch of stuff. Um, and the point is that these conversations that we're having have been had over and over and over again, but the vast majority of both Protestants and Catholics today were not connected enough with our history to know what resources are already there.

So we're reinventing the wheel over and over again. So I think I mentioned, uh, in my review, uh, and I'm not sure if you, I, I assume you, you have listened to... You may have watched the video more recently than I have.

Well, no, I'm sorry. I'm talking about, uh, now I'm talking about when I responded, uh, to you last week and, uh, when you were on Trinity radio. Okay. I mentioned a bunch of resources, uh, classic Protestant, uh, works, uh, such as Good, Whitaker, Salmon.

Uh, these are in-depth scholarly historical sources that deal with the claims of Rome, the papacy, the, the early succession lists, just all sorts of stuff like the Cheminettes, the, the, the Lutheran version of that.

What is that? Three volumes, something like that. They're, they're huge, massive resources. And yet, um, you, you, you probably wouldn't have found them in a Christian bookstore when there were Christian bookstores, which was a really nice day when we had Christian bookstores.

We don't have any more, but, um, but there's still, they're, they're difficult to find even online and, and, and things like that. And so these conversations have happened before. And when we try to rebuild the wheel every generation, we don't necessarily do as well as the people before us, to be perfectly honest with you.

And so there's a, that if there, if you've sensed any frustration, it's because man, there's so much out there. And I'm not sure that you're hearing all the, all the sides and getting all the information and even the direction that you're going with it, with the Bayesian analysis and so on and so forth.

We need to get into that. Um, when you listened to my response last week, um, did you, to be fair, I'll just say I didn't.

Listen to the whole thing. I listened to most of it. So I actually, I missed the resource. Did you,.

The resources list? Did you mention, well, I mentioned, well, one of the things I said was, I was sort of speaking to you and I, and I said, so if, if, if this is how we're doing things, cause did you, did you hear the discussion of Isaiah 22?

Yeah. Okay. Um, one of the things I said was, okay, if, if this is functioning in this major way for you, um, have you looked at these multi-volume historical resources from the other side, such as Whitaker, Good, Cheminettes, Salmon, uh, are, are any of those names even familiar to you?

Um, most of them, no. Okay. Um,.

So I can, I am familiar though with the objections that you gave in the show. Okay. But so, or at least I've, I've, I heard those from a guy named Gavin Ortland. Have you heard of him? Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. He's, he's been the guy who's like the, well, him and another guy have been the two main people that I've been leaning from in terms of their objections to this.

Typological argument. Right. And so basically what I had said was, what if there, and I had, I had held, uh, I'd held this bunch of photocopies that I had bound years and years ago, uh, patristic sources, stuff out of means and stuff like that in regards to, uh, papacy, Eucharistic subjects, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And basically I had said, what if there's three pages in here that completely change all the calculations, but you've never seen them and was raising the issue of, you know, these are the, the issue of the papacy is an issue of ultimate authority.

Once you accept the validity of the, of the papacy, all your calculations have to go from 92 to 100%. You, you, you understand that? I think that's false. Okay. So, so when the, the Bishop of Rome, when, when the second Vatican council identifies as perverse opinions, anything other than what they say, and that is that the Bishop of Rome is the infallible Vicar of Christ on earth and everything else is a perverse opinion.

So you can only be 92%. And then they anathematize even thinking opposite to that. Now that now again, you'll find, trust me, Roman Catholics today, especially in the United States. Um, uh, and especially with the Pope that we have today, I, I, I personally don't think that Francis believes what Vatican one said.

So that that's a, that's a whole other issue that does need to be discussed. But when you read what was being written in 1870 by the people who define these things, it's very clear exactly what they meant and exactly what the anathema meant.

And I know today it's sort of like, well, you know, it just means you don't get to be in our club. That's not what it meant to them. And that's one of the issues is, is I don't even know how you could start plugging this kind of stuff into any kind of formula so as to have any meaningful impact upon making a decision about the claims of Rome, because history, history doesn't work that way.

And it would require you personally to have more knowledge than any human being could ever possess in this life. Because there's, there's tons of stuff that I've read and then there's tons of stuff I haven't read.

So, so Bayes, there may.

Be a misunderstanding about what, what Bayes is. It's not like you don't have to consider everything in order to get a final analysis in the same way. That, I mean, your objection to my methodology, what I would apply to any methodology that you use, because I think in every case, there's always going to be something that you could have read that would impact your probabilistic judgments.

Even if you don't use Bayes, if you use just abductive reasoning more generally, I think that you're still going to run into that issue. So I'm not exactly sure, like, what is your objection here? Is it, is it to Bayes or is it to like anyone coming to a final assessment.

Of the papacy? It's a recognition that the claim of the papacy is absolutely ultimate and therefore it cannot be a matter of, eh, okay, 92 is good enough. Rome doesn't say 92 is good enough. That's not what Vatican I says.

Now you'll find, you'll find lots of folks who are saying, come on over. No, no, you don't have to, you can have disagreements. It's okay. Look at all the people that disagree today and they don't get kicked out and so on and so forth.

I get it. But that's, that's, that's not what the people who wrote those words originally intended. And the point is, once you accept that ultimate epistemological commitment, then all the other stuff is now going to follow through with that.

So, bodily assumption of Mary. Now it's, are you going to do a, you can't, once you accept the papacy, you can't do an analysis of the historical evidence of the bodily assumption of Mary because that's now a given, given what you did before, right?

Well, no, I think that's false because I don't think, and I used to think this, I used to think that once you had the papacy, Catholicism just fell out of it. But it was actually a Protestant friend of mine that, that showed me actually Catholicism doesn't necessarily follow if the papacy is true because it doesn't even entail that Linus was like the second Pope.

So it could be the case that the papacy is true, but then no one just fulfilled that role. And that, I think that actually depends on the way that we define the papacy, because if we define the papacy in a way that it doesn't entail that Linus is the second Pope, then we don't actually get that line from Linus into the other Popes.

So I don't, I just don't think that the papacy entails Catholicism. I think that you can have, so what I would do is I would, I still think that that's like, you need to assess the probability of the assumption of Mary in your overall calculation of the probability of Catholicism.

So I think that that would just go in a different place in the equation. It's not that it's irrelevant at all to the probability of.

Catholicism being true. You don't, you don't see the authority of the papacy as being central in the definition of the assumption? Oh yeah, I do. I think, yeah, I think supremacy is one of the parts of the papacy.

And how would you define, see, you've lost me now because I've debated papacy with numerous Roman Catholic apologists, and none of them took your position. So I'm just trying to figure out what it means because...

Sure, I can define the papacy for you the way I've.

Defined it. So there's three different elements, and one of the elements I'm, I was talking with a Catholic last night about, and he's kind of like, I don't know, anyways, but I'll give you the three elements that I'm currently working with.

So succession, infallibility, and supremacy. So those are the different, the three different elements of the papacy. So if you have those three elements, you have the papacy, but I don't think you necessarily have Catholicism because that, from those three elements, it doesn't entail that Linus was the second pope or that, you know, on down the line that these people making these pronouncements or these claims, it doesn't entail that those are actually true.

I think it entails, I think if the papacy is true, then we do have, like, some really good reason to think that Catholicism would be true. But that's where additional evidence, like you said, the assumption of Mary, if you think that that's really improbable, that could be an argument against Catholicism later on, but it's.

Not necessarily an argument against the papacy. Now, one of the things that I'm, okay, you realize that once you become a Roman Catholic, you don't get to define these things Rome does, right? Define what things?

All of these things. So in other words, the dogmatic writings of the church define what the papacy is and that it is of necessity directly connected to Peter as the first pope and the succession of authority through his successors.

And you don't get to go, you know, I'm not sure we can really do that. I mean, it's certainly, it's really good evidence that there wasn't a monarchical episcopate in Rome until 140. And, you know, you got the pornocracy, you got the Babylonian captivity of the church.

You've got popes anathematizing other popes. You got Honorius. Oh, good grief. For 400 years, every pope that took the chair of Peter had to anathematize Honorius as a heretic, as the Bishop of Rome. These are the things that made Cardinal Newman go, yeah, no, I don't think so.

And hence developed the development hypothesis, which I haven't asked you about yet, but I need to. I mean, there's just so much here, but Rome is the one that gets to define what Roman Catholicism is.

I mean, I sound like a real conservative Roman Catholic here, but the fact is without those claims, there is no essence to Roman Catholicism. That's why there are a lot of people that have been looking at Francis going, this is a disaster because he's, who am I to judge?

Well, we thought you were the infallible vicar of Christ. We're confused here. I mean, I can debate a conservative Roman Catholic that actually accepts the claims of Unum Sanctum or the Council of Trent or the papal syllabus of errors or things like that, because those are objectively clear, definable, the documents have a history behind them, so on and so forth.

I can't debate liberal Roman Catholics. I did a debate on the papacy back in 93, I think it was 94, at Boston College. And I could just tell looking at Do you remember who it was with? Well, I did two.

I did two debates with Jerry Matitix, and then I did a two-on-two debate with Scott Butler and Robert St. Genes.

By the way, would you be interested in doing a dialogue with Jimmy Akin on my channel?

Depends on what the subject is. We tried to arrange debates on solo scriptura and things like that. I think the last time we had any conversation, I was like, let's talk, we need to talk about Francis, and everything sort of died at that point because no one wants to talk about Francis.

And I understand why. I wouldn't want to talk about Francis, especially when Jimmy Akin and I were on the Bible Answer Man together, and that was during John Paul II. And if you want to talk about differences, there they are.

We can talk about the difference between John Paul II and Francis, but that's he and I. The point is, things have changed in the current situation, and you can find Roman Catholics who are at Boston College, they don't believe anything.

You'll find Roman Catholics at Boston College do not believe the bodily assumption of Mary is de fide dogma for anything in the world. But I'm simply saying, when it was defined in the middle of the last century, the people that defined it actually believed that it is de fide.

It is by faith, a part of the deposit of faith, and it must be believed, and they attached an anathema to it for a reason. And so, basically what I'm saying is, I don't know what their if you're not actually converting to Rome Catholicism that is a full-throated embracement of everything that Rome actually teaches.

Now, it may be a bad time to do it, because like I said, I don't think the Pope believes all that right now. I really don't, but that's one of the issues.

I think if you accept the papacy, you're probably going to be a Catholic. I think that's true.

A Catholic as in Boston College Catholic, or a Catholic as in actually taking seriously the authority claims of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church? The latter. Okay, all right. I would agree that it follows, and that's why I said, we don't get to define these things.

Rome already has.

Vatican I, Vatican II, and the Absolute Claims of the Papacy

Yeah, I'm actually using the Vatican I definition.

And the Vatican I definition would include, as a part of, what was that, Pastor Aeternus. Yeah, Pastor Aeternus specifically identifies the giving of the privilege, the keys, to Peter as being separate from the other apostles and being in supremacy.

Where is that in Vatican I? That's in Pastor Aeternus. I could actually probably have it in one of my documents here. I read it. Yeah, here it is. I mean, yeah, I can read it. Do you want it? Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Go ahead. We therefore teach and declare that according to the testimony of the gospel, the primacy and jurisdiction of the universal Church of God was immediately and directly promised and given to blessed Peter, the apostle by Christ the Lord, for it was to Simon alone, to whom he had already said, you shall be called Cephas, that the Lord, after the confession made by him, saying, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, address these solemn words, blessed art thou, Simon by Jonah, because flesh and blood has not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven, I say to thee that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And I will give to thee, and I just point out, stopping, do so as future, I will give, not I am giving. It doesn't point that out here. I will give to you the keys to the kingdom of heaven, whatever you shall buy on earth, and it was, continuing the quote, and it was upon Simon alone that Jesus, after his resurrection, bestowed the jurisdiction of chief pastor and ruler over all his fold in these words, feed my lambs, feed my sheep, which by the way, the early church never interpreted that way, at open variance with this clear doctrine of holy scripture, as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church are the perverse opinions of those who, while they distort the form of government established by Christ the Lord in this church, deny that Peter in his single person, preferably to all the other apostles, whether taken separately or together, was endowed by Christ with a true and proper primacy of jurisdiction, or of those who assert that the same primacy was not bestowed immediately and directly upon blessed Peter himself, but upon the church and through the church on Peter as her minister, end quote.

So is your point that Matthew 18 also gives the keys to the rest of the apostles?

Is that where you would go next? Well, where I would go next would be, okay, given that Doso is future, then when did Peter receive these keys? And there's only two options. Either it's Matthew 18, and hence it's with all the other apostles in contradiction to Vatican 1, Pastor Aeternus, or Matthew didn't even record it for us.

It was so unimportant that it doesn't even show up in the scriptural record. Those are the only options you've got. The problem is this document claims that this understanding, this is a clear doctrine of Holy Scripture, quote, as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church.

Those are untrue words. They are not true words. And yet these are the words that carry the anathema. And they are what you would have to submit yourself to, to be a self-consciously believing Roman Catholic.

Now, what percentage of Roman Catholics in the world have ever read Pastor Aeternus? I don't know. Certainly less than 5%, I would assume. Okay. But you're talking about embracing something as having ultimate epistemological authority.

And so you don't get to be, ah, I was just raised with it. I don't know. You're going in it with your eyes open. That's a different, I think that's a completely different situation. And so this is just one of the many issues.

I mean, the fact of the matter is, go ahead.

That's actually a great segue, if you don't mind. I wanted to, one of my goals in our conversation today was, I mean, in line with my channel's goals, and I want to have experts on and get their views and everything.

It'd be great to run through a list of your top objections to Catholicism.

Um, actually, well, um, I really want to, most people want to hear from you, uh, and they want to hear us talking. We'll do that. Um, I had a sort of semi-viral blog post number of years ago in response to somebody who was converting, and it was my top 10 reasons to question Roman Catholic Church.

I'll send that to you. And, and maybe if Rich could look it up and maybe send me the, um, link, um, uh, I can provide it to you. But the, the, the, the two things we've already been touching on the first thing in regards to papacy, because that's what you were talking about on Trinity radio.

And, and that's what people are hearing and that's what they want to know more about. Uh, I want to make sure that we really cover that. And then I do want to ask, uh, before we wrap up, I want to ask what your understanding now is and what it, what it was from your, from your church or whether your church just didn't talk about it.

Um, and that is in regards to the soteriological issue of your, of how you have peace with God. Because I know that, that a lot of charismatic churches aren't necessarily overly focused upon systematic theology and especially upon a particularly robust soteriology.

And so I want to, I want to get to that, but let me just ask a couple other, other issues. I ran through some things and I just want to know if you have plugged these into your calculations. Um, did you consider the rather strong evidence that exists right now that there was no monarchical Episcopate in Rome for the about 140 AD and, and I'm sorry.

Yep. Okay. And that, how, how can, how can you avoid, I guess, can you avoid a subjective analysis of historical data in creating your probabilities? Well, can you? No, I'm asking you because I, I don't use statistical analysis.

I don't think anyone can. I don't think anyone can. So you're assigning now, the system you're examining tells you as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church. So there is no, there is no opportunity for anything other than a 100 probability from Rome's perspective.

So if you're assigning anything less than that, you're actually in rebellion against Rome to do so. Just, I thought I'd point that. In other words, your, your, your calculations, once you step over that line, have to have to change.

You can't, you don't have the right any longer to have that subjectivity. Do you, do you, do you, do you say that you still think you could, that you could go against this and be a faithful Catholic? What do you mean by go against?

So I.

Would just take a different interpretation of it as known in every age. I would take an interpretation of like, there's a way of talking like everybody knows this, but does it, it's not like everyone actually knows it.

It's just like a saying. So that's kind of the way that I view this is that it's because they weren't, they weren't aware. This was written that Vatican.

One was written what in the fifties. So they're very aware. 1870. Oh, 1870. Completely. 1950.

Is the bottom of the assumption. Okay. Um, so they, they knew about the Protestants and, and.

So I, it just strikes me like a charitable interpretation. Wait, wait, wait a minute. I don't think, I don't think they're talking about Protestants. It says as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church.

So, uh, trust me, I'll at least give you the interpretation that has been given to me by all the Roman Catholics I've debated on the papacy, which includes Mitch Pacwa and, uh, and other people. Um, and by the way, if you've not heard my debates with Mitch, I highly recommend them to you.

Mitch is a great guy. And the, the thing that I loved about doing five debates with Mitch Pacwa is he never played games. He never pulled punches. He never engaged in cheap debating tricks. Um, they were just respectful, straightforward.

Um, and there was a couple of times, well, you're, you're, you'll just break out laughing because we all did, um, which was neat. Um, but, uh, but anyways, it, I wish you could watch all of them, but the first two, though they were videotaped, we were never given the videotapes of them to make available.

So that's a sad situation, but you can listen to them. Um,.

Yeah, but I went back to this question of like a hundred percent certainty. So I, I, I'm not a infallibilist with respect to knowledge. I don't think that knowledge has.

To be 100 certain in order to constitute knowledge. Okay. But Rome, what Rome is claiming, um, what Rome is claiming is that it was known in every age is that Catholic church is that has, as it has been ever understood by the Catholic church.

And what I was saying is the claim that was made to me, well, I'll give you an example. Every time when I was, uh, when, when, uh, when Jerry Matics and I were debating the early church and the Marian dogmas initially on Long Island, I kept bringing up people who contradicted what Rome is teaching.