Aug 20, 2026 Show with Dr. Tony Costa on “An Overview of Chris Arnzen’s Interview with Fr. Paul Robinson”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend Jim Thorpe.

It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better. It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 20th day of August, 2026.

I am overwhelmed with joy to have a returning guest who happens to be an extremely dear friend of mine and brother in Christ. His name is Dr. Tony Costa. He is a world-renowned Christian apologist, former professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, now instructing at the University of Toronto.

He is a highly seasoned debater, and today he is going to be addressing the theme, an overview of my interview with prior Paul Robinson, an insider with the Society of St. Pius X on Pope Leo XIV's excommunication of their bishops and the implications of favoritism of leftists by the Vatican.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my dear friend, Dr. Tony Costa.

Hi, Chris. It's such a pleasure to be back with you, and I always look forward to our interchanges.

Whenever we have the opportunity. Amen, and I'm looking forward to actually seeing you in person, God willing, sometime in the near future, I hope, for a conference or a debate or something that we can labor on together.

But speaking of which, I want to make sure, before I forget it, you have an event where you are speaking next month in California. Please give our listeners the information.

Yeah, it'll be the 25th anniversary of 9 -11 in the United States, and we are meeting in Southern California. The dates are Friday, September the 11th, which is the anniversary date, and then Saturday, the 12th of September, and then Sunday, the 13th.

I would refer our listeners to the Ministry of Muslims, their website. They will have all the information there. The registration information is on there, and you could also join virtually as well, so there will be links available there.

If you obviously are not in the state of California or not in the area, you can access it online as well.

Well, do you have that website at your fingertips?

I believe it's called ministrytomuslims .com. I think that's what it is. It's George Sagan's ministry, Ministry to Muslims. And so if they search for Strong Tower Conference, Ministry to Muslims, 2026, they will be able to find it.

So the website, again, let me just grab that, Chris. I have it right here. Let me just grab that. I just want to confirm. It's actually, no, my wife was trying to help me, but she got the wrong ministry there.

It's M2M Ministry, M2M, Ministry to Muslims. So yeah, the website is ministrytomuslims .com.

Yes, I see that. Yes, I am now on the site itself. Okay, and so I will repeat that later on. Well, to repeat our purpose for this broadcast today, on Wednesday, August the 12th, I had a controversial program here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I say it's controversial because I rarely have guests on my program with whom I disagree over the gospel of Jesus Christ and other crucial areas of salvation and the Christian faith.

I had on the program, as I already announced, Prior Paul Robinson of St. Isidore the Farmer, which is a society of St. Pius X Parish in Watkins, Colorado. The Society of St. Pius X is very opposed to all of the innovations that came about within Roman Catholicism after Vatican II, and they do not recognize Vatican II as a Vatican Council, and they object to the new mass, the Novus Ordo.

Did you hear that, James White? He was making fun of me on his dividing line program because I had a hard time remembering. Yeah, Novus Ordo.

Yeah, I noticed that, Chris. I noticed, and I was more gracious, but I didn't go online and expose you. But I must say, Chris, you made it very clear that you were not, you made it very clear that you were on, you're a Bible-believing Christian in the Reformed tradition, that you and the Prior were not brothers in Christ and so on.

But remember I told you, I sent you a text telling you that after that interview that you had, I was so convicted by that that I actually converted to the SSCA, which is the Society of St. Christopher of Arnzen.

And that was the first, not the 10th, but the first. I do have to say immediately, before I forget to say it, how much I enjoyed meeting Prior Paul Robinson, and it was refreshing to be able to speak to someone such as himself very honestly and directly, telling him that I believed he is lost and in need of the true gospel, as he does with or toward me.

He does not believe I am a true Christian. And unlike what Vatican II teaches, that Protestants are the separated brethren of Catholics, those in the Society of St. Pius X reject that notion. And in fact, the Roman Catholic Church has gone beyond accepting Protestants, Protestant Christians, as their separated brethren.

They even, in their own modern catechism, teach that the Muslims, together with Catholics, adore the one true God and creator and judge of all at the end of time. And that is something that the Society of St. Pius X knows is an innovation.

It has never been the teaching of the Catholic Church, and this is one of those areas where historic biblical Christianity would be on the same page, because there is nothing in Christian history prior to the modern day where Muslims are viewed as our brothers worshiping the same God.

In fact, years ago, on the old Iron Sherpa and Zion radio program, when I was broadcasting out of WNYG, 1440 AM in Babylon, Long Island, I had a friendly debate on the show with your friend, our mutual friend, David Wood, and a Muslim by the name of Bassam Zawadi.

Oh yeah, I know. And I asked Bassam on that program, when I brought up Article 841 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that they teach that Muslims are adoring the same God as Catholics adore, I asked him, what do you think about that?

He said, absolutely not, because do they not, Muslims, believe that a belief in the Trinity and the deity of Christ is the worst sin that a person can commit. Is that not true?

Yes, and shirk, the unpardonable sin.

Yes, because they believe that is adding partners to God, isn't that the way they phrase it?

Yes, shirk in Arabic means to associate partners with God. And so, in their mind, because Jesus Christ is not the eternal Son of God who is one with the Father, they see Him as a mere creature, to associate Him or Mary or anyone with Allah is considered the one sin that Allah cannot forgive.

It's virtually the unpardonable sin.

Yes. And so, my reasons for having this discussion, I believe that there are events such as the excommunication by the Vatican of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X that just recently occurred just a couple of months ago.

Evaluating the Interview and Engaging Roman Catholicism

I believe that is something that genuine Bible-believing Christians should be aware of and they should be educated about and rightly respond to it. I also wanted to point out and make clear and reveal to my audience the leftist agenda of Rome and the partiality, the favoritism that the Vatican demonstrates towards leftists, so much so that they are excommunicating conservative, very conservative Catholics like those in the Society of St. Pius X, who I think that it is irrefutable that although you and I would say the Society of St. Pius X is not historic biblical Christianity, we would say that it is historic Roman Catholic theology faithful to the Council of Trent.

Absolutely. And that modern Rome has departed very far from that council. Modern bishops, cardinals, and popes, and also priests and apologists, if they had lived in the 16th century during the days of Trent, they would have been excommunicated.

And I brought up to prior Paul Robinson, would they not have also been executed? And he eventually admitted that, well, if Pope Francis, for instance, were alive during the days of the Spanish Inquisition, if he remained defiant in his views, his leftist, unbiblical, and even anti-Roman Catholic views, if he remained insistent on declaring them or even believing in them, he would have been executed.

Definitely. There's no doubt about it.

Well, I want you to give your overview, what your thoughts were on this discussion. Was it a legitimate use of my time hosting a predominantly theologically-reformed program? And did I compromise the gospel as some who would be our brethren and kinfolk, even theologically, who would be in our camp, who might think that what I did was an abomination by giving a platform to an enemy of the gospel?

As you brought up before the program started, you have a very good memory, but my very dear friend, the late Richard Bennett, who was a former Roman Catholic priest who was saved by the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ, became a Reformed Baptist apologist and author and evangelist.

He was a very close friend of mine and even contributed regularly financially to Iron Trip and Zion Radio and was a guest on a number of occasions. He was absolutely appalled years ago when I had Robert St. Genes, the Roman Catholic apologist, as a guest on my program, even though I made it crystal clear, just as I did with interviewing prior Paul Robinson, I made it crystal clear that Robert St. Genes was not my brother in Christ, and that he has a different gospel, and even though he is not my brother, and even though he's on the opposite page, the opposite side of the argument over what the true gospel is, I still have a friendship with him, and I thought it was a very wise use of my time on the program to have a conservative Catholic's response to the appointing of Pope Francis, because that interview took place not long after the appointing of Pope Francis, who at that time was the most leftist pope in the history of Catholicism, now only being succeeded by a man who apparently is to his left.

But I thought that that was a wise use of my time, and I did also think that about the interview with prior Paul Robinson. What are your thoughts on that?

Yes, I would agree with you, Chris. On my YouTube platform, I also interview people who are not Christians. I've had unbelieving Jews—that is, Jews who are not in Christ, who are not born again. I've interviewed secularists on various topics, but we make it very clear from the beginning where we stand.

We put down our boundaries, and I think that a show like yours, Chris, with prior Paul Robinson was extremely helpful, because if we're going to share the gospel with our Roman Catholic friends in the SSPX, we need to know something about them.

We need to know what they believe, where do they stand. And so I think that that interview you had was very educational in terms of telling us what are the differences between SSPX and the mainstream Roman Catholic Church.

You also got into some very good discussions about Father Feeney and his very, very aggressive baptism by water. If you're not baptized, you're not saved at all. No baptism of desire, no baptism of blood.

That was very well done. And also the City Vaganists that prior Paul also mentioned and how Gary Matytix was once mainstream, and then he joined the City Vaganists. So I found it very, very helpful, very educational.

I think we need to understand, too, Chris, that when we're dealing with people who are perhaps of a different faith, a different conviction, we need to understand that at the basic level, they are image bearers of God, that God may use you or me or whoever else.

God may use this opportunity to save this person, to bring them to faith, like another Richard Bennett, for instance. And so we need to understand that we are called to engage people with the gospel. You know, the Apostle Paul, we're told, would go into the synagogue to reason with the Jews, and then he'd go into the marketplace and he would defend the gospel, reason with people and so forth.

And therefore, to cut people off and just say, nope, nope, we're only going to deal with faith-related matters, you know, based on our convictions, it takes away from that opportunity to know what the other person, where they're coming from, and how we could learn how to engage them.

And so just having that discussion with Prior Paul, who, by the way, I found was a gentleman. He was very respectful of you and of the program altogether. He did not deny anything you said in terms of where you both stood spiritually.

And so who knows? I mean, the Lord could use this to plant seeds in his heart. And I think we do need to become ultra-pharisaic that, you know, thank God I'm not like that person over there. And thank God, you know, I do this and I cross my T's and dot my I's.

We need to be very careful. So, you know, even John Wesley, even though you and I don't share Wesley's convictions on salvation, Wesley even wrote to Roman Catholic leaders to convince them of the gospel of grace.

And he did that out of love for these people. And so the reason why I've been able to engage Muslims in debates and I've been able to see Muslims come to faith. I have a number of former Muslims in my church and some of them, by God's grace, I had the pleasure of baptizing.

It's a wonderful thing to see, Chris. But if we just isolate ourselves into these little ivory towers or little bubbles, we're going to become detached from those around us in the world. And so I think you did a marvelous job.

I think that we need more dialogues like that and discussions. Because now if people listen to it, they could say, oh, okay. Because like with me, Chris, one of the ladies in my church right next to her is a SPPX church.

And so this is something that is in the horizon. There's a lot of these churches around North America. And we got to be ready to share the gospel with these people.

Yes. And by the way, I want to thank our mutual friend, Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries for enthusiastically promoting that interview on The Dividing Line, his webcast before it took place.

And he also enthusiastically promoted it as a very important interview to listen to on X, otherwise known as Twitter. And the encouragement he gave afterwards also on The Dividing Line was very encouraging to me.

And prior, Paul Robinson, the Society of St. Pius X priest that I interviewed, he asked me for permission to archive our interview on his archive of sermons. And it's there, and it's there already. And they did a great job because they even have time stamps with the specific themes labeled throughout the entirety of the two hours, which I don't even do on my show.

But I was very happy to see that. And one can only hope that Roman Catholics who listen to that may be interested in listening to other programs that I offer on Iron Trackers, Iron Radio. Of course, those are seats.

Yes. And one of the other key areas that I believe our conversation revealed, I believe that that conversation dispelled in a very clear fashion the myth that is still perpetuated by Roman Catholic apologists, that the Church of Rome is a monolith.

Roman Catholic Unity, Authority, and Salvation

And they give the appearance very often, even though they know that what they are saying is not true, but many, not all, but many give the appearance that all of Rome is in agreement about important issues, especially in regard to salvific areas.

And they have a united front. This completely obliterated that. Do I have any further thoughts on that?

Yeah, that's a mirage. So when you hear them say, oh, we're a monolith, there is no monolithic Roman Catholic Church today. The fractures, you see it with SSBX, you see it with the City of Viconess and some of the Feniites that are still around, especially the more aggressive ones in New Hampshire.

And, of course, you have the Eastern Rite Catholics. And so this idea that it's a monolithic institution where everybody agrees, that's not true. But yet it's their own apologists, Chris, that keep perpetuating the old myth about the 300 ,000 denominations, that the Reformation produced 300 ,000 denominations, which that whole idea has been dispelled.

That they've escalated the number to 300 ,000 now? It used to be like 60.

Yeah, yeah. They keep increasing it. And so just the other day, I get some Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox apologists getting on and saying, oh, your church didn't begin until 1517. And then they'll go on about how your church has produced over 33 ,000.

Yeah, the numbers do vary. But it's an urban myth. It's been disproven. Even Trent Horn had to dismiss it as unreliable, the Roman Catholic apologist Trent Horn. But you're absolutely right, Chris. You see, as Protestant Christians, you and I understand, we have the idea of the invisible, invisible church.

And so we understand that God may have his faithful in Bible-believing churches that are not Baptistic. So, for example, godly Lutheran churches like Missouri Synod or even conservative Presbyterian churches that are faithful to the gospel.

I think of R .C. Sproul, St. Andrew's Presbyterian. And we understand that we may differ on baptism. We may differ on the nature of Lord's Supper. But at the end of the day, we affirm that, look, God has his people in some of these various denominations that are faithful to his word.

And therefore, we don't tout the idea that our church, our institution, the Reformed Church of America, is the only true church of Jesus Christ on the planet. We would never go to that.

Especially not by that specific name, because the Reformed Church in America, RCA, is largely an apostate liberal denomination.

Yes. And I wanted to add to that, Chris, that here in Canada, you also have the Reformed Church of Canada, which are also apostate and liberal. And they should be, I think they should be called the Deformed Churches of Christ up here.

But anyway, the point being that the institutional churches like Rome and the Eastern Orthodox, the Copts and the Assyrian Church of the East and all of these churches, they need to make those claims because they claim to be the ancient church.

They claim to be the original church. They claim that they have bishops that can trace their ordinations back to the apostles and so forth. And so they, by necessity, by claiming to be the true ancient church, they need to make these claims.

Rome has made them, historically speaking. And of course, the whole statement, extra ecclesiam nalus salus, outside of the church, there is no salvation. You take someone like Father Feeney, who took that quite literally, that there is no salvation outside of the Roman Catholic Church, unless you've been baptized in water, you have no salvation whatsoever.

So all that to say that the foundations are cracking. Most people are beginning to realize Rome is not this unified institution. I mean, they have, they're venerating Pachamama in Peru, who was actually a pagan earth goddess.

And they're already preparing for the papal visit in Peru.

And that was something that Pope Francis had, this statue right in the sanctuary.

In Rome. Correct. And some Roman Catholics came in at night and grabbed it and threw it out into the Tiber, into the river. I think it was the Tiber. But then you've got, I don't know if you've seen the recent video of St. Agatha, where they've got her skull and they're venerating the skull and putting it into a statue.

And so you have all these bizarre practices that are going on.

But wouldn't that be something, though, that even those at Trent would affirm doing things like that? Yes. Yes, they would. I'm talking about the last one about the skull, Agatha's skull.

Yeah, yeah. They would affirm that. They would affirm that. But then you've got this whole thing with the Pachamama idol. Traditional Roman Catholics would be horrified at that. Yes. The violation of the first commandment and the second and the commandment against idols.

So they have no problems with, you know, statues of Jesus and Mary and the saints. But if these are statues of pagan gods and they believe that that's actual idolatry, but King Leo XIV, rather, has no problems with it.

And as you know, St. Francis, of course, you mentioned this in the interview too, Chris, about Pope Paul II having the International Day of Prayer in Assisi and having Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus and everybody coming together.

You know, the Buddhists having their statues of the Buddha and so forth. I mean, that was a circus, to be sure.

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If you just tuned to SIN, this is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And my guest today is my very dear friend and brother in Christ, Dr. Tony Costa, world-renowned Christian apologist, debater, and author.

And he is giving an overview and a review of my August 12th interview with a Roman Catholic priest in the Society of St. Pius X, Prior Paul Robinson, of St. Isidore the Farmer Parish in Watkins, Colorado, where Prior Robinson was giving a detailed explanation not only of the positions of the Society of St. Pius X, but also the reasons and the implications behind the excommunication recently of their bishops.

The Excommunication of SSPX Bishops and Vatican Contradictions

Oh, and one thing that I wanted to point out is that Prior Paul Robinson pointed out that technically it was not Pope Leo XIV that excommunicated the Society of St. Pius X bishops. It was Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who goes by the nickname Tuco, who is apparently an extremely leftist cardinal who also approves of the pro-homosexual priests in Germany providing blessings to same-sex youths.

But he is so repulsed by conservative Catholics that he is the one that declared that these bishops actually excommunicated themselves. Does that raise any important issues in your mind, Tony?

Yes, it does. We're always told how Sola Scriptura causes so much division, and yet we're told we need an infallible head of the Church to guide the Church. And what we're seeing is divisions, and we're seeing fractures, and so forth—so much for the papacy serving as a unifying force.

But you're absolutely right, and it's not just Fernandez. We think of the Jesuit James Martin in the United States who officiated at a same-sex blessing with another Roman Catholic clergyman. And you would think that Leo XIV would be incensed by this, but he's not.

And you would think this cardinal would be incensed, but of course he's not, because he's pro-LGBTQ. But yet, they're upset because the Society of St. Pius X wants to ordain bishops, and of course, prior Paul explained why.

Because the only way you can ordain priests is you need bishops to be present, because the sacrament of ordination flows through the hands of the bishops. And if there's no bishops, then you can't ordain priests, and therefore that is the end of the Society of St. Pius X as a denominational entity.

So I just find it quite ironic that in China, for example, the bishops were appointed in China by the Communist Party of China, and yet Leo XIV didn't have any questions about the legitimacy of those bishops in China.

Yes, yes. So you've got bishops that were appointed in China under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, and their appointment or their ordination, rather, has been accepted by the Vatican, but not so with the SSPX.

Now, prior Paul, you can tell he's done his homework because he noted that only the pope can grant permission for bishops to ordain priests and so forth. But then there's another clause that he cited, that under certain conditions where there's an urgency, there's a matter of urgency, bishops can ordain in cases of emergency.

So they see their situation as an emergency in that their bishops, those who have passed away, they need new blood. They need new bishops because, as I said, the only way that they can maintain the sacrament of holy orders, the ordination of priests, is they have to have a bishop or at least bishops.

And so they cite that as an urgency, that their identity as a group is in peril of disappearing because if they don't have any bishops, they can't have priests. And so if you remember, he actually cited that other article that in cases of urgency and emergency, bishops can indeed ordain priests without the pope.

And they knew, the Society of Saint Pius X, knew that there was no way the leftists of the Vatican would approve of arch conservative traditionalists being ordained as bishops. So they had to do it themselves.

Right. And remember, this is making them look bad. So the SSPX, I mean, it's making Pope Leo XIV look bad because, let's face it, Chris, they are far more faithful to the historic position of the Roman Catholic Church than the Novus Ordo, the new order that came in in 1965 with Vatican II.

So we, as Protestant Christians, Chris, we could actually look at them and say, you know what, you guys are far more faithful. You're in line with the Council of Florence. You're in line with the Council of Trent.

You're in line with all those councils where even Unum Sanctum in 1302 where Pope Boniface pointed out that no one can be saved unless they're inside the church and subject to the Roman pontiff. And so that type of exclusive language is gone.

Now it's all oxen free. So the Muslims can come in, the Hindus, and even the atheists can come in, Chris, because even in the Vatican II documents, it points out that even atheists have a chance of being saved.

And if you remember when Pope Francis was alive, there was a little boy that came up to him and he was crying and asked the pope, he said, is my daddy in heaven? He was an atheist. He didn't believe in God, but is my daddy in heaven?

And the pope said, well, of course he is in heaven. He had you and your brothers baptized, and that shows that he had this baptism of desire. And so this little boy walked away thinking that his pa or his dad was in heaven because the pope said that he was.

And as you know, Chris, Hebrews 11 is very clear that he who comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those who faithfully seek him. And so, you know, you can't be in relationship with God or have a saving reconciliation with God unless God exists.

And therefore, Vatican II has just basically admitted all types of folks into the kingdom of God.

Vatican II, the Mass, and Protestant Participation

OK, I have a challenge to that interview that has been submitted anonymously by a pro-Vatican II Catholic and a veteran journalist, Catholic journalist. Why this particular Catholic insists on remaining anonymous, I don't know.