Travel Report and then the Pope on the Death Penalty

I just looked over at my Twitter feed, and it just popped up. A lady smashed the world record for running a marathon with a stroller, and it looks like there was a kid in it. I'm not sure I'd want to try to do that with a kid in the stroller, but three hours 10 minutes with a stroller.

Now the question is, does both the mom and the kid get the record, or just the mom? Because the kid's in the stroller. So is there an in the stroller record? I'm really not sure, but that's pretty cool.

I couldn't run that fast without a stroller. Maybe somebody could push me in a stroller, and I might be able to do that well. Hi, I'm feeling weird today. Having one of those days. A three hour time shift isn't that much, but I think sometimes it throws your eating off enough that it affects your blood sugar, and it's just one of those days where I'm just not sure how well this is going to go, to be honest with you.

Sometimes there are just days like that after trips, and I've been doing a lot of trips this year. A lot of trips this year. Though I must admit, I only got one upgrade in three flights, and I haven't really figured out how that works yet.

I mean, I signed in for my seat as soon as you could, and listed myself in the Hawaiian Yards. I was like sixth in the row, and it's like, got the highest status in Hawaiian Yards. You don't get it. Flying used to be fun, and when you had status, you'd not get upgrades.

All these mergers, there's just not that many airlines left, so it's been fun. But anyways, I just got back from being out of state. I was in Fort Worth over the weekend, and I'm sorry that we didn't advertise that, but that had been agreed to by the church.

They have limited space, and we're a little bit afraid of what might happen if they didn't have enough space, basically. So we didn't really push it. It was primarily just for the church, but had a great time there in Fort Worth, and hope to go back in the future there, and renewed a lot of old friendships and met folks, and it was good.

It was a very good time, and sort of a much higher liturgical service than I am normally accustomed to, but it was really nice. So I had a good time in Fort Worth, but then went straight from Fort Worth to Washington D .C.

Had not been there. I don't remember the last time I was in Washington when we lived back in Pennsylvania. I think we went twice. I remember once, I shouldn't say this, but I'm feeling a little weird today, so it's okay.

I remember once, my dad just pounding on the steering wheel of the car, going, whoever designed the roads in this city was on drugs, because you can see where you want to go, but there aren't any roads to go there.

He was not happy whatsoever with the road system in Washington D .C., and I do remember very clearly going up the Washington Monument twice. The first time, I was so petrified, because I'm afraid of heights, especially as a kid.

I've gotten over most of that, though I still don't like being on top of a ladder, but I can ride a bike up Mount Evans, so I've gotten over most of it. The first time I was so petrified, I went up the Washington Monument that the doors opened, and I sort of squeezed out with my back to the wall of the elevator, because I could see those windows are tiny.

Have you seen those teeny tiny little windows at the top of the Washington Monument? I mean, you couldn't get out if you tried. They're barred, and it didn't matter when you're a kid and you're petrified of heights.

Couldn't even get near them. I just stood up there with my back plastered against the wall the whole time we were up there. And then the second time, I was a little older, a couple years older, and I actually got up to the window, but not like looking out it, but, you know, well, there's sky out there.

That was the best I could do. And so there you go. So we had gone, and I remember some of that stuff, and I remember the Lincoln Memorial, and I don't think we ever got to do anything at the Capitol, as I recall, or the White House.

I think we just drove by, getting lost, back when I was a kid. So it's been, I'd say, a good 45 years since I had been there. And so, didn't have much time to be looking around, but I did, yesterday morning, go for a almost 11k run, where I just ran the mall.

So ran around the Washington Monument, and then down to the Lincoln Memorial, past the World War II Memorial. I never even saw the Vietnam Memorial. Someone told me later on where it was, but I guess I was too far into the mall.

It was over farther into the trees somewhere. I didn't see it. I saw the Korean War Memorial, but I really was bummed out that I missed the Vietnam one. So I ran down to the, and everything's closed. I mean, I gotta admit, the place looks sort of beat up.

I mean, the grass was all disheveled, and okay, it may be the end of the season. They're going into the winter season, so not really trying anymore, but it was sort of beat up. I mean, the Lincoln Memorial was closed, and there was construction stuff around it.

And the Washington Monument had a sign that said, indefinitely closed. And it was strange. It really was. But anyway, so went running around and sort of caught all that stuff, and we stayed. The conference I spoke at for Sovereign Nations was at the Trump International.

And I don't even know what to say. I mean, I'm just, I'm not a chandelier and fancy carpet guy, you know? It's just, I mean, it's beautiful. And it is pretty amazing. I mean, it's huge. It's the old post office.

And he talked about that during the campaign, as I recall, what they were doing with it and all that stuff. And I'm not sure what that has to do with national politics. But anyway, it was, it's beautiful.

The problem is a glass of orange juice is eight bucks. And we're not talking a glass of orange juice. We're talking a tumbler of orange juice, you know? I mean, it's like, whoa, okay, all right. Diet time.

Diet time at the Trump International. But you know, the room was nice. It was very comfortable and fancy schmancy and all that stuff. But that's just not me, you know? I mean, when I was in Fort Worth, I had stayed at a Hilton Garden Inn.

And at some point, they were having some problems with their computer. So whenever you go into the little cubbyhole where you can get, you know, chips and some candy bars or a little thing of milk or something like that.

Twice I went in there and I go up to the counter and said, our system's down, go ahead, take it. And it's like, yeah, that's better than an $8 glass of orange juice, you know? So, you know, cool, you know.

Reformation Issues, the Two Luthers, and the History of Anti-Jewish Teaching

So anyway, but I spoke on Reformation issues and I was only supposed to speak once. I ended up speaking twice. I spoke on justification from Romans chapter three during one of the dinners, which is, you know, it's a little challenging to speak during a dinner, you know, because you're hearing people cutting food and you're hearing the tinkling of, you know, it's just sort of like, is anybody listening to me?

You know, but they were, they were. And it went well. I spoke in Romans three and spoke on justification and it went pretty well. But I had spoken on the two Luthers that morning and in my preparation had come across even more information that I haven't shared with you all yet.

And I will, I will try to do so in the future because I, I did not know that. Well, I don't want to go into it right now, but let's just say the amount of wild-eyed, scandalously false, uber absurd material that you can gather written by ostensibly Christian people, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, against the Jewish people, all the way up, sadly, through the Reformation.

Obviously, if you're talking about Protestants, you're talking through the Reformation. It's just astounding. It just really is. Well, remember Johann Eck? We've talked about Eck before. We'll be talking about Eck when we do more of the church history stuff.

He was one of the sharpest minds that opposed Luther. He heard Luther speaking at the Heidelberg Disputation in, was that April of 1518, I think. And that's where Martin Buzer, also heard Luther for the first time, became a disciple.

Eck heard him and immediately knew, this guy is dangerous. Long before Rome goes, bad man, Johann Eck was going, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, warning, warning, look out, look out. And history proved him right, at least as far as Roman Catholicism is concerned.

Well, you just don't, you don't hear about this stuff in a balanced way or at all in seminary. But the 1540s saw the production of some just reprehensible material. And about the only guy who gets remembered for it is Luther.

And Luther wrote some stuff and preached sermons, especially in the 1540s, against the Jews that were just horrific. But his book, The Jews and Their Lies, came out in 1543. And he repeated some of that material in the last sermons he preached in Iceland right before his death.

He had four heart attacks. And in the midst of some of those, the last two sermons he preached had some of the same material in it against the Jews. And everybody talks about that because, of course, that was picked up by the Nazis and used as propaganda and so on and so forth in World War II.

Well, it's almost made like to sound like Luther was alone in this. He was not. In fact, he wasn't particularly novel or unusual at all. Doesn't excuse it, but it it puts it in the context. Even Martin Bucer, a few years earlier, had written things that you just read today and go, oh, and Martin Bucer is known as the irenic, you know, he and Melanchthon are sort of the irenic, peaceful, get along type guys amongst the reformers, but not in regards to the Jews.

Not in regards to the Jews. There were some Protestants. Osiander, Andreas Osiander was one. Philip of Hesse, who were, shall we say, progressive. I hate to use that term anymore, it's been stolen, but who were going the right directions.

And it was Osiander who wrote something that Johann Eck saw and just went ballistic and wrote this huge book that far outstrips Luther. In its attacks upon the Jews, the blood libel stuff, the idea that Jews take Christian boys and drink their blood and make matzah out of it and all this kind of stuff that sadly was believed by people and promoted by people.

And just the level of stuff, and I think it was, I think Expo came out in 1540, if I recall correctly. Anyway, I had been reading some of this stuff and in fact had downloaded a, the internet's a wonderful thing.

If you want to learn stuff, if you really want to put a little effort into it, I've got certain goals I want to get to by the end of the year. Running, riding, rowing, stuff like that. And I've got a race coming up beginning of next year and it's running, so I need to be getting my miles back up.

And so I wanted to, I wanted to do the longest run I've done so far this year. I haven't done very many long runs this year. And so in downtown Fort Worth, there's a beautiful, beautiful trail, not even a trail.

I mean, it's, you can either run on cement or sort of like packed earth type thing if you like, prefer that, along the river. And it's gorgeous. It really is really nicely done. And so I decided to do a 12K run along there.

So six out and back. And it was so cool just to be able to throw into iTunes the topic I wanted to cover and found a really good series of lectures on sort of the development of sacralism. It was very, very relevant.

And the view of the Jews all the way up to the time of the Reformation. It has some background stuff. That's what I listened to when I did a 12K run over the weekend while I was at Jeff Neal's church in Fort Worth.

So that was really helpful to get some background and stuff like that. But we'll get to it. We'll look at that stuff. We'll deal with it. But it was I don't know. We have a lot to think about when it comes to the relationship that, the history of the Christian church and the Jews goes all the way back, goes all the way back.

So we've got more to talk about along those lines. More to talk about along those lines. Someone on Twitter. Do you think Barnabas would have blocked Paul if they had Twitter? I'm not sure it has anything to do with what I'm saying.

But yeah, you're right. Yeah. Barnabas would not have blocked Paul, but Paul would have blocked Barnabas. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think you're exactly right. Yeah. Apostolic Twitter wars.

That's why the Lord made sure that that stuff did not develop until later on. So anyway, I did my presentation at the conference at the Trump International Hotel there in downtown Washington, D .C. I mean, right near Alda.

I mean, it's right there. Quite an interesting area. I was on the two Luthers, and I was primarily focused upon the fact that you can read the earlier Luther prior to the Peasants' Revolt of 1525, and he has a very different perspective on the Jews.

And, you know, I had some Lutherans saying, well, you know, he was just disappointed there were so few Jews converting. Well, maybe. But it seems pretty obvious to me that 1525 is the watershed where Luther confirms a, oh, hello, confirms a sacralist perspective and really commits himself to it and becomes consistent in his perspective.

And so I was comparing and contrasting the two Luthers. Not that there were two Luthers. There weren't two Luthers, but there were two stages. And there was a younger, hopeful Luther who himself was under siege, who didn't want to see force used to enforce theological consistency.

But that changes. And why did that change? What is sacralism? What is the Magisterial Reformation? What is a free church? These are all issues that most of us have never spent much time focused upon or thinking about, but they're pretty important.

They really, they're very, very important. And so that's what we talked about at the conference. And so I spoke in the morning, then there was lunch, and then in the afternoon, I had, no, Micah, the two Luthers, Martin Luther and Luther Vandross.

No, that was not what I was talking about. I think we lost Micah. Micah must be on pain meds for the kidney stones. That's how he heard what he heard. Anyway, that afternoon, I'll be perfectly honest with you, I was perfectly calm in making my presentations and stuff.

I mean, this was a subject that I have dealt with many times before. So, nope, no problem. I was more nervous in the afternoon. And I was nervous in the afternoon because someone else was speaking in the afternoon.

That someone else was my daughter, Summer, and she's not done this before. And so, I think it's acceptable for dad to be a little nervous about that. And I knew she'd do fine, but she was using sort of new technology for her notes that she hadn't used that's always dangerous.

It can work perfectly 20 times in a row while you're practicing. Soon as you start, that's when everything goes wrong and everything else. And she has, I guess, sometime about a year or so ago, I linked to something by Jordan Peterson, the Canadian professor who is way to our left.

He's in Canada. I mean, that's sort of necessary in Canada. But he's the guy that Google shut him down. It shut down his YouTube, shut down his Gmail, that stuff. And he had enough of a platform to be able to scream and got his stuff back.

But he's the guy that won't use gendered pronouns, and says it's pure insanity. But he's not a Christian. He's secular. And yet he has good common sense, I would say image of God insights into this stuff.

And so, I shared something. Well, she started following him, she's been listening to all of his stuff. And so, lo and behold, only a couple weeks ago, Michael Fallon, who was putting on this conference in Washington, manages to snag him and schedules him right after summer.

So, summer speaks and Jordan Peterson speaks. Jordan Peterson walks in right and sits down right at the beginning, right as summer is getting ready to start. And so, I was a little worried about that.

It's like, okay, how's this going to go? Well, it went great. And of course, her material was great. She's a very, very good writer. And you're going to see books by the new Summer Yeager in the future.

I can assure you of that. But she got a standing ovation. It was really, really well done. It was very clear, very understandable. It was wonderful. So, I was one proud papa in the back. I can assure you that because I learned lots of stuff.

It's not my area. She's talking about intersectionality and feminism and she's done a lot of reading. I'm studying P45, folks. I mean, I am up to my eyeballs in the coherence-based genealogical method right now.

And no, I am in no condition to even attempt to explain the coherence-based genealogical method right now. I've got a dissertation on the subject coming, should be arriving fairly soon, if I recall. Probably tomorrow or something, I hope.

But maybe Monday. Yes, it's here. I could be here tomorrow anyways. Yeah, great. But anyways, I was just, you know, proud papa. And then Dr. Pearson gets up. I didn't hear all of his presentation. He started off sort of slow.

But by the time I got back, he was on a roll. And he just sort of does a stream of consciousness type thing. Really is. And he's really the quintessential professor type guy. I'm not sure how to describe him, but he was an interesting fellow.

I'll be honest with you, he wasn't as easy to follow as Summer was. But I could be biased, but I don't think I was. Not on that. But it was fascinating. It was interesting. And like I said, the next day I got to go out and run around the mall there.

And that was quite enjoyable. And it was cooler back there than it is here, though. It's finally cooled off here. Yay! Excuse me. Your air conditioning was still rattling? Well, yeah, that's true. That's true.

But it'll stop eventually. Oh, so Red Goatee, it's his birthday today, huh? He's 42. Oh, okay. Mentioned the travel fund before we were out. What? Oh. Oh, well, that's next year. Yeah. Oh, okay. So I have been asked to remind everyone that those big trips.

Well, I haven't even told anybody about what the next trips we're doing. We're planning around the world trip. Probably in May of next year. And that ain't going to be cheap. And we're talking we're talking London.

I was talking with Peter D. Williams on Twitter today. He was talking about indulgences, plenary indulgences. And I said, all the more reason for the Reformation. And I suggested a debate topic. He said, let's do it.

And so we'd have a great debate in London. So London to Joburg to Zambia, probably to Perth. And definitely Wellington or a couple of places in New Zealand and back. So it would be global. It would be around the world.

And clearly we're going to need help to be able to put all that together. Sort of the baseline time period is late May. So probably start mid-May and get done early June. Minimum three weeks, minimum three weeks or something like that.

And that's a lot of air travel, a lot of air travel. So we should probably start getting those funds lined up now to make sure that we've got everything covered on that one. And then hopefully later on in September, sure would like to do the Swiss Reformation.

That's certainly my hope. But I've got to limit my travel next year because I've got to get a lion's share of work done on that doctoral program down in Potsdam. And right now the key issue is exactly how to pursue the study of P45 in light of the emergence of the coherence-based genealogical method.

That's probably going to end up being what I focus on. Can CBGM give us an idea of the different sources that were drawn upon by P45? And part of that would be dependent upon when they get the John volume done.

I'm not sure when that's going to be. That's all going to be changing because you'd have to have Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Axe all done in the ECM. Anyways, I'm babbling about other things. I apologize.

But yes, we have a lot of traveling coming up to be doing and we'll need your assistance in getting there. So with all of that said, fascinating stuff that took place. Now, one thing that I wanted to get to, and we've just always had stuff going on.

There's stuff going on right now on social media. Just disgusting insanity. I'm going to try to hold off on saying anything about it right now. I wrote a big long post again in response to all the absurdities flowing my direction from the usual suspects, but in particular, Steve Camp, Janet Mefford, as it makes us sad, former compatriots and things like that.

But there's stuff to be dealing with. But before that, what has kept this from getting mentioned earlier? I forget how long ago it was. It's been a good month now. When you look at Roman Catholicism today, a lot of people find it extremely confusing.

And I've said over and over again, as we are forced into a smaller and smaller portion of the society, as secularism restricts the area of our free speech and our activity, we are going to be pushed closer and closer into proximity with Roman Catholicism.

And last night on Live with Jeff Durbin, he had a conversation with Robert Jeffress about the Sean Hannity stuff, for example. And what brings all that up? Well, what brings all that up? And now there's controversy even over that.

I haven't had a chance to watch all of that or read everything as of this point in time. What brings it all up is, of course, we have, you know, didn't we just have an anniversary? Oh, yeah. 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation.

Everybody's already forgotten about. But not for me. I mean, this is just the beginning. For me, I've been encouraging folks, look, that was the start. That was the start. Now we need to be looking at, you know, the next thing would be the Heidelberg disputation next April.

We need to look at Leipzig, the run up to the Diet of Worms. We should put together a calendar for when Luther's major works came out during this time period. It would be great to read some stuff from some of these things, like the Babylonian captivity of the church and, you know, the Christian man and stuff like that.

If anyone's going, well, glad we're done with that. That just shouldn't be the way it is. It's sort of like, it's sort of like how the Christmas festival started on December 25th, but ended on January 6th.

It was, it was a lengthy period of time. And we, we moderns are so shallow with our commemorations that, okay, we did one day. That's enough. Let's move on. You know, our attention spans are that long.

That's how I feel my attention span is right now. But that's for other reasons. Physical reasons rather than anything else. So because of all that, you know, I think we really need to be thinking about putting together a calendar of the developments during the Reformation and trying to become more historically minded people.

Well, with all that said, when we talk about Roman Catholicism, we are under tremendous pressure, tremendous pressure to just get along, you know, just, just bury all that stuff. And let's just, let's just get along.

And if you hesitate at that point, you're looked at as basically being pigheaded, a stick in the mud, you've got the wrong priorities. And look, I, there are a lot of people who look at me today and go, he's become a flaming liberal and he's, he's, you know, lost the, lost the, the program and blah, blah, blah, blah, because he won't attack this person.

He won't attack them. And so basically what people say is if you, if you don't just go along with Roman Catholicism, then, you know, you're, you're just like the fundamentalists. Well, obviously on the one hand, you have the, the, the funny mentalist who can't get along with anybody because they, they make every single thing the test of orthodoxy.

So if you don't agree with them on every little thing, you're just not their brother in Christ. You know, the kind of person you've met them. And on the other hand, you've got the wild eyed liberal and also you don't really, don't find the resurrection to be compelling.

Well, that's okay. You know, we're still brothers and sisters in Christ. You know, I love my Mormon polytheist brothers. And you know, I do some Buddhist stuff, that kind of stuff. And there's obviously a huge spectrum in between.

And we all are on that spectrum someplace. And the question is, where is the biblical balance to be found? And there is a range of biblical balance because look, it's obvious to me, if you're in the church at Ephesus, you didn't have the exact same focus as the church at Corinth.

It's not, they're both founded by the apostle Paul. There are certain things that defined absolutely both of them for them to be churches. But it's pretty obvious that the church at Ephesus was a better grounded church than the church Corinth.

The Paul's day, but man, according to Clement's letter, continued having problems for decades thereafter. So, you know, when there's this, there's a spectrum and we have to find the biblical, the biblical balance.

And so there's going to be, there's a tremendous amount of pressure and there's going to be increasing amount of pressure for us to abandon having a biblical balance and just giving in and saying, yeah, you know, our differences with Rome just aren't all that important.

Well, obviously I can't go there. And the question is going to be eventually to each one of us, why not? And that's what requires us to think through the issues of the gospel itself. And one of the things that immediately comes to mind in that context is just how much Rome has changed and is changing.

And Pope Francis is the clearest example of that. You know, we, we love the Lutheran videos about Pope Frankie, but the reason that they're funny is because there is truth to them. I mean, Francis is, I mean, I have to wonder, I've not taken time to think it through, but can you imagine a stronger contrast between two popes, then Ratzinger and then Francis?

Sorry, Benedict and then Francis, you know. I can't imagine two more different people as far as their theology goes. And so it's a, it was a sudden hard turn. And you know, if you jerk a car real hard one direction, you can pull that baby up onto two wheels.

It almost feels like Rome is still doing the two wheeled wheelie, wondering which direction it's going with Francis. And I imagine some of Rome's apologists feel exactly the same way. And so when we, when we think about this relationship we have with Rome in an ever secularizing society, we really have to think through what's definitional, what isn't.

And I am concerned, very concerned, listening to, for example, the Robert Jeffress interview with Sean Hannity and then last night with Jeff Durbin. I didn't hear a lot from Robert Jeffress that indicates a solid understanding of the issues of the Reformation as being definitional in regards to who is and who is not a Christian today.

And I fully understand wanting to have as broad a desire that God has a people who have a simple faith in Jesus Christ, even within the bounds of Roman Catholicism. Yeah, I understand that. But the fact of the matter is that as Peter D. Williams and I agree on this, Rome's gospel from my perspective brings about the anathema of Galatians 1 and vice versa from his.

And I don't think his pope would say that, and that's his problem. But we have to, you know, if you're going to pull the anathema of Galatians 1 out, you better be really accurate in your application.

I think there's a for the fun of it, and I think they're going to pay for that someday. You'll be held accountable for that. When we look at the current pope, you may have heard the story that, and I have a number of, this is back from, okay, it was October 11th.

Pope Francis on Wednesday said the death penalty is in itself contrary to the gospel because it is voluntarily decided to suppress a human life, which is always sacred in the eyes of the creator and of which God, only in the final analysis, is a true judge and guarantor.

The pun of said capital punishment is an inhumane measure that humiliates in any way it is pursued human dignity. Now, obviously there was the death penalty numerous times in the Old Testament scriptures.

There has to be some kind of a thing going on, some kind of a development concept going on. And so you might say, well, it's an old covenant, new covenant thing. Well, I'm sure there are entire books on this subject, but if you trace a traditional view of capital punishment, it is a pretty modern thing.

I mean, probably starting around the time of the Renaissance Reformation, you're going to start getting some voices raised against capital punishment for specifically theological crimes, but capital punishment for like the murder of infants or something like that, you're not going to get any voices at that point.

It is a modern, modern thing. And there isn't a lick of question historically that the Roman Catholic hierarchy, the popes and bishops of Rome have not only taught capital punishment, but have practiced capital punishment against theological adversaries.

Most people don't know this, but Geneva under Calvin produced a stream of missionary martyrs who pretty much went straight from Geneva right into Italy to die at the hands of the Roman Catholics. Well, Protestants did the same thing.

That's what sacralism does. But the point is we're talking about Rome here. We're talking about the Bishop of Rome. And we're saying that that the death penalty is in itself contrary to the gospel means that the preceding bishops of Rome for centuries on end acted in a way that is in opposition to the gospel.

That's what he's saying. And it raises in the logical, rational mind of a human being, the question of the consistency of Roman Catholic pontiffs in their teaching office and the whole concept of infallibility.

At least you would think that it would. But here's the problem. It's painfully obvious that when papal infallibility was finally defined over against the objections of the brightest minds in Rome, that immediately you had to adopt this slippery way of dealing with history.

I've told the story many times. It's still on the blog somewhere, I would assume. That blog is who knows where anything is anymore. But I mean, I'm sure it's searchable and stuff. But sometime it was during John Paul's pontificate.

I point out that like one year John Paul would throw out meat for the liberals. The next year, he'd throw out meat for the conservatives. And the next year, meat for the liberals. It just seemed to just go back and forth, just trying to keep both sides from killing each other.

And he had made a statement on the liberal side. And I contrasted it with what had been stated by popes long before him. Clear contradiction. But Robert St. Genes, I'm not sure St. Genes would do this anymore, but back then Robert St. Genes basically said, well, who are you to interpret the past teaching of the church?

So even though it was plain as day, plain as day, that there was no way to put these statements together into a consistent, coherent thing. The idea is you don't have the right to interpret what the church said in the past.

Only the modern church gets to interpret the church of history. Well, that's convenient. So when the modern church changes the teaching, you just simply say, oh, we always misunderstood what it was in the past.

It's the same teaching. Nothing's changed. That sort of reminds me of George Orwell, 1984. Just the newspaper comes down and, oh, we've changed something. Let's just edit it out, make the change. And we rewrite history and all is well.

And that's seemingly how commitment to papal authority ends up working. And so, I mean, it's just painfully obvious that the Roman church in the past has held a view of authority of the papacy, that it does not hold any longer, and that things have changed, and that teaching has changed.

It has developed. It's Newman's development hypothesis now on steroids. And if you listen to, if you go back to October 11th, 12th, 13th, that time period and pull up, you don't even have to pull up Protestant sources.

Just pull up Roman Catholic news sources. I have three of them sitting on the screen right now in front of me. It was the 25th, if I recall correctly, it was 25th anniversary of the Universal Catholic Catechism, the CCC.

And in essence, at this celebration of the 25th year of the catechism, I've got it. Thought I had it back there somewhere. I rearranged everything. So yeah, there it is. There we go. There's a much larger, I thought I had the hardback.

The hardback might be in the other room. But this is a little playback version. And that's a big book. And basically, the Pope was saying it's wrong on his 25th anniversary, because it allowed, just barely left the door slightly cracked open for a just use of the death penalty.

And the Pope says, never. Can't do it. Can't do it. No, no such thing. And so that's a change. And he knows it. And everybody else knows it. And when you look back at history, the Popes have taught as Popes, the propriety of the destruction of heretics with the death penalty.

This is a 180 degree change. It is a contradiction. You have to completely redefine categories of truth to say it's not a contradiction. So what you do is you say it's a development. It's a development.

And so when you read the language of the Pope in these various news sources, Pope Francis has condemned the death penalty many times during the almost five years of his papacy. But this week, he made an even more significant move when he signaled that he would change church teaching to make it inadmissible.

The death penalty was, he said, an inhuman measure that humiliates human dignity in whatever form it is carried out. And it is of itself contrary to the gospel. God alone is the true judge and guarantor.

So the only way to substantiate this in light of Rome's own history, as well as the history of the Old and New Testament, but Rome's own history, is to take Newman's development hypothesis and put it on steroids.

And that's exactly what Francis has done. If you really understand what Rome is saying today about the development hypothesis, it is continuing revelation that cannot be tested by previous revelation.

You can't say you can't go there because it's been taught in the past. No, the living voice of the church can reinterpret everything, everything, because there is no way. How do you make sense out of the church is infallible?