June 21, 2024 Show with Dr. Robert Sungenis on “Did Jimmy Akin Accurately Represent the Roman Catholic Church’s Teachings at His Recent Debate with Dr. James R. White”

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, Lake City, Florida, 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 Friday on this 21st day of June, 2024. And I have a warning, warning, warning. This is not a modern, squishy, mushy, gushy, ecumenical program.

As I know, I will be accused of conducting today, no matter what I say. But today, we have an interesting program. As anybody who listens to this program regularly knows, I very rarely interview a Roman Catholic, being a Reformed Baptist myself, a committed Calvinist.

But today, we are making an exception. We have an old friend of mine on the program by the name of Dr. Robert St. Genes. He is a Roman Catholic apologist, author, debater, and founder of Catholic Apologetics International, also known as CAI.

And today, we are going to be discussing, did Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers accurately represent the Roman Catholic Church's historical and dogmatic teachings at his recent debate with Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries on the theme, How Does One Find Peace with God?

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Robert St. Genes. Thank you, Chris. It's been a few years, and I'm happy to be back with you. Yes, it has been quite a number of years.

In fact, the last time you were on, a very dear friend of mine who is now in heaven, Richard Bennett, many of my listeners may recognize that name. He was a former Roman Catholic priest who had converted to evangelical Protestantism and was a Reformed Baptist evangelist and author.

And he was heartbroken when I interviewed you the last time, and he actually called me up and said with his thick Irish accent, Oh, Chris, what have you done? What have you done? You broke my heart, Chris.

This isn't the Chris Arnson I know. And I kept explaining to him that it wasn't intended to be an ecumenical platform. At that time, we were addressing a conservative Roman Catholic evaluates the Roman Catholic Church's most liberal pope in history.

This was after Pope Francis became the pope. And so I did get other negative feedback, but I stuck to my guns, and I'm sticking to my guns now that just because I have a friendship with a Roman Catholic and because I have once in a blue moon, a Catholic on my show doesn't mean I'm a bleeding heart, mushy, gushy, squishy modern ecumenist.

But the reason, as you know, that you're on the program today is what I just mentioned earlier about the recent debate that took place. This was not one that I arranged and hosted. This took place in Houston, Texas.

The debate was arranged, hosted, and moderated by Pastor Brian Gunter of First Baptist Church in Livingston, Louisiana, a two-day debate with Dr. James R. White and Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers. And we're going to be evaluating that from a conservative Catholic viewpoint, even though Jimmy Akin and Catholic Answers, I'm sure, would identify themselves as conservative Catholics.

There seems to have been a change in direction in the manner with which the field of apologetics is being practiced by Catholic Answers and perhaps specifically Jimmy Akin in this case. There was a time when you could count on Jimmy Akin to be very openly and vocally opposed to Protestantism and even, more specifically, evangelicalism.

But there was more of an approach of an ecumenical love fest at that recent debate. And we'll get into that for a moment. But before that, since this is a very timely occurrence, which just happened actually yesterday morning when you and I had dinner last night at Pitt Street Station restaurant here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania—I wasn't even aware that this happened—but Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano has been summoned by the Vatican because he apparently is being charged with schism due to some very caustic comments that he has made publicly about Pope Francis.

And apparently, according to you, this has been going on for quite some time. He called Pope Francis a liberal servant of Satan, demanded his resignation, and even suggested that the Vatican Swiss Guard arrest the 87-year-old pontiff, according to the Washington Post.

And he was saying in this letter, this open letter, a lot of things that you probably agree with as far as your disagreements with Pope Francis, but I assume he, in your opinion, went overboard in denying him his papal office.

If you want to speak for yourself here and say anything else that I failed to mention about Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano and this recent severe criticism of Pope Francis, which is basically leading him to a penal canon trial on the charges of the crime of schism and denial of the legitimacy of Pope Francis.

Yes, let me add to that a little bit to sort of round things out. First of all, his name is pronounced Vigano, with the accent on the O, so people don't get confused. He was from, what, 2009 to 17, something like that, he was there for eight or nine years as the papal nuncio to the United States, and he had his office in Washington, D .C.

The papal nuncio basically is like the pope to the bishops in the United States. The next highest up would be Pope Bergoglio, Pope Francis. So he had a very high position. And as you said, since Bergoglio is a liberal through and through, and he was that way when he was in Argentina, very staunch, intolerable, liberal for the liberal cause, as most Catholics are today, I would say, I would easily say that 90 percent of Catholics today are liberal.

Wow. Yeah, I would make that, you know, he might lower it down to 85, possibly 80. But anything above 50, you're in trouble, big trouble. And that's the way it's been for a while, for decades. Even John Paul II, as conservative as some people think he was, had some wacky liberal ideas that he pushed through.

Yeah, you were actually, you were actually fired from EWTN, the Eternal Word Television Network, the Roman Catholic network run by, at the time, Mother Angelica, because you were openly critical on your program of Pope John Paul II, correct?

Yeah, well, Mother Angelica had nothing to do with my firing from EWTN, that's for sure. That came from the management, the board, let's say, particularly a guy named Colin Donovan. I don't know if he's still there or not.

Me? Yeah. But, you know, is he? Okay. So they just draw their line in the sand, and that is no criticism of the pope, no matter what he does. And I still think that they have that today, although they allow, what's his name, Raymond Arroyo, to have a lot of freedom in that area, because he's on Fox News with Laura Ingram a lot of times.

So he's got a name for himself that you don't want to push him too far, or else he'll pack his bags and go somewhere else. And he has the privilege of doing that, because he's very popular. So they let him go.

But anybody else, you know, first thing you know when you go down to EWTN is no criticism of the pope. I think, though, that Pope Francis is straining credulity down there at EWTN, because he's so out on left field that even EWTN is wondering where the line should be drawn now, because it's not the same as it was when John Paul II was in.

So, yeah, they have a whole different can of worms to deal with with Francis. But anyway, getting back to Viganò, like I said, he was the papal nuncio for eight years or so. And so, you know, you can't be a jerk and get that kind of position.

You have to know a lot of people. You've got to know your Catholic faith. You have to be faithful. You know, you have to toe the line in order to get into a position like that. And he had a lot of authority as well.

And I guess something happened while he was papal nuncio with Bergoglio that he just couldn't take it anymore, you know, because as a Catholic, and you may even know this growing up as a Catholic, there's a lot of crap you've got to take that goes on inside the church, internally, externally, that you just sort of put on the shelf and you live with it and you move on.

And he reached that boiling point where he could not do so anymore. And he's been like an open faucet since then of criticism of Pope Francis and this whole entourage. There was a guy on, who was his name?

Father Gumco or something like that. I just learned from he says 80 percent of the cardinals are gay, 50 percent of the bishops are gay, somewhere near that for the priests. And so, you know, and it goes on and on and on.

And it never stops. They try to cover it up when it gets exposed in the news. And everybody thinks everything's OK now. But it's not. It's the same old story over and over again. And he knows it because he's in the upper echelon of Catholicism.

He has to know everything. And so anyway, he's been saying that Pope Francis is not the pope. He's been saying that, you know, this guy should be burned at the stake. And, you know, I didn't hear that one.

No, no, I'm just making that up. Oh, I'm just I'm just, you know, using history's response to some heretics, as you probably could say, if he lived centuries ago, Pope Francis likely would have been burned at the stake, wouldn't he?

Yeah, well, you don't burn the pope at the stake. That's just one thing you have to accept. And being a Catholic is the pope is the pope. And he's not going to be gone from your midst until the Lord decides to take him in death.

And you're stuck with him until then. But see, this this this revolves around something larger at issue here, and that is the structure, the hierarchy, the the physical presence of the Catholic Church.

The reason it's so it's has survived for 2000 years and we've had some doozies, really some real monsters as popes. And, you know, it's more than like two dozen throughout the 2000 years. There's been 266 popes, I think.

I forget the exact number now. But out of that, you know, 10, 15 percent were real scoundrels and people had to put up with them. And but the byword was, look, the institution has to survive. And the only way the institution can survive is if there are aberrant voices out there, we give them a little rope enough to hang themselves, so to speak, until they get to the point like they know has gotten where the pope's no longer the pope, the everything Pope Francis says is heresy, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

The church will give you a little rope, you know, to voice your opinion. But after you cross a certain line, it's over. And that's where it is now with Vigano. He's he's been such a staunch and unrelenting voice of criticism that the Vatican has said, OK, your time's up.

And that's why he's being called to the Vatican now. And he will be convicted, I believe, because they can't let something like this go. And he's going to serve as an example for anybody else there who basically is overshooting himself in the sense of an overreaction where now he's he's trying to tumble the institution.

And when you reach that point, you know, it's not the same thing as just criticizing the pope for making a mistake on his Wednesday address. You know, you're you're going after the whole enchilada Vigano is.

And that's why he's being called. Now, to repeat what I said earlier, I'm assuming and you could clarify whether I'm correct or not in this assumption that you agreed with most of what Vigano was saying, but you just disagree with his reaching the point which I can't see it being anything else but state of vacant ism or state of account ism, however you pronounce it, that the the system that has been adopted by our mutual friend, Jerry Matitix, once one of the most beloved Roman Catholic apologists around once the the darling of Catholic answers.

Who has come to believe that there has not been a genuine pope, if I'm not mistaken, since Vatican two. And is that where you believe he went overboard reaching that point? Yeah, and Jerry and I have had discussions on this as far back as 2004.

We took a trip together to Ireland and we we stayed at the house of another study of a cantus. And he and Jerry ganged up on me, actually, when we went out to dinner. They didn't tell me they were going to do this.

They ganged up on me and they started because they wanted to get me in the pond with them. And so they challenged me on any point that they felt was relevant to convince me to be a set of the campus like them.

And it all boiled down to one basic idea. And that is, look, you can have any opinion you want of whether this guy is a pope or not, but that's as far as it goes. It doesn't go any further than an opinion.

Why is that the case? Because you have absolutely no authority, absolutely no authority. And that's what makes the Catholic Church the Catholic Church. It's a hierarchy of authority. And the guy at the top, which is the pope, holds all the cards.

So there's really, you know, he could come as close as possible to being exactly what Jerry thinks he is. But that's where it stops. And and the case is over, period, done. You know, and that's what I told him in my argument is you have absolutely no authority beyond what your opinion is.

And what are the parameters, the guardrails that are imposed upon you as someone who considers himself a faithful Orthodox Roman Catholic? Well, in regard to what you can say in criticism of the pope, you can as Canon to 12.

Of the Code of Canon Law, 1983 says you have the right and duty to bring to your pastors things that from your expertise, you know, like, in other words, you have to be educated, just can't be any Joe off the street, you know, complaining.

You have to be educated in your field of expertise. And with that and due respect for the office of the pastor and this in this case, the pastor would be the pope. With due respect, you can give your opinions to the pastor about the needs of the church, whether it's moral issues or faith issues.

OK, and that's that's what gives us the right as a Catholic apologist to say what we believe the pope might be doing wrong. And we also have the right to give that information, it says in Canon to 12 to fellow Christians.

So that's what makes it public. So you have the right. I mean, you're not going to go whispering in the ear of some Christian. You're going to be telling them outright in public what you think is wrong with what the pope is doing.

You know, take, for example, his recent encyclical, you know, fiduciary supplicants, which allows for the blessing of homosexuals. So, you know, we all have the right to give our opinion, but that's where it stops.

We have no authority, whatever, to get rid of that document. Now, as far as the Catholic catechism, the Catholic catechism contains things within it that the traditionalist Catholics would openly oppose, things that are not dogma that are included in there, like, for instance, that Muslims adore the same one true God as Roman Catholics do.

That kind of a thing. Are you bound to not publicly oppose the Catholic catechism? No, because the Catholic catechism, which itself says is not infallible. This is written by men without the charism of infallibility, and that's it's repeated in the catechism.

That's as a matter of fact, even the English translation of the catechism that was put out in 2000 by the USCCB says that very thing. So, no, we are allowed to criticize the catechism, but again, it has to be understood that that's the limit of your authority because it's just an opinion.

You have the right to complain to your pastor and to fellow Christians, and that's it. It's over. But you do have the right to do that. And I can think of a lot more issues in the catechism besides the Muslims and us worship one God.

I mean, even in that one itself, if the catechism had gone on the next paragraph and said, but there is a distinction, and that is that the monotheistic God of Catholicism is composed of three independent persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that makes it different than the Muslim God Allah, you see.

But they didn't do that, and that's where the problem comes in. So, the impression you get after you read that passage, I think it's in 850 or something, paragraph 850, or right around there. The impression you get is, oh, no big deal, you know, Muslims, Catholics, hey, all the same, no difference, worship the same God, let's move on.

You know, that's the kind of impression you get. But of course, that's not Catholic tradition. So, the catechism is written in such a way, and most of the guys that wrote it were liberals, even Ratzinger, who put his imprimatur on it.

You know, half the days he was a liberal, half the days he was a conservative. You never really knew what was going to come out from him. Whereas with Francis, you know it's all going to be liberal. But so, you had a lot of liberals behind writing the catechism, and you see that throughout the catechism, you see their ideas.

And of course, you had a lot of the same thing in Vatican II. I mean, the liberals actually were honest about that, and they came out and said, yeah, well, one paragraph was written by the conservatives, and the next paragraph was written by the liberals, so everybody can live together.

I mean, that's Vatican II, for Pete's sake. So, it goes far back. Liberals have been invading the Catholic Church for a very long time, since the late 1880s or so, and they've made some inroads, and that's where the problems are coming in.

And then you get a guy like Viganò, who had, what, he's what, 90 or something? So, he's been around. He knows what the tradition says, and you're the papal nuncio. Nobody's going to push you around. You know what the truth is.

But sometimes what happens with people in the Catholic Church, they get so fed up with it, they can't control their emotions or the overreaction that's going to take it to get people's attention, and, you know, then the whole thing falls apart, which it's doing right now for him.

So, to boil it down to its core, you believe that popes, as this present one, can develop unthinkable anti-Christian ideology, but somehow God—and I'll apply this to Roman Catholic theology, even though it usually doesn't come up, this word—but God and His sovereignty somehow is restraining a pope from ever dogmatically defining these anti-Christian, anti-biblical, anti-historical ideas that even defy Roman Catholic history.

So, is that what basically—. Yeah. Yeah, well, like St. Paul said, do you want to know what's going to happen to the Church? Let me tell you. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verses, what, 6 and 11, or 5 and 11, he says, let's go back and look what happened to Israel, and I hope the same thing doesn't happen to you, which means he's implying that the same thing could happen to you, right?

So, when he goes back and looks at the history of Israel, he picks some incidents that happened that were, you know, off the wall, apostate, heretical, whatever words you want to use. They were wrong, and they were immoral, too, like a lot in the Catholic Church are today.

I mean, if 80 of your cardinals are gay, I mean, come on, something's wrong with this system. But you had the same kind of immorality back in Israel, and he picks that time where God actually killed 23 ,000 of them in one day for their immorality.

And Paul says, now, look, why were these things written down? They were written down for you who live in the New Testament, who's just about to come to the end of the ages, you know, so time is short, and you're it.

You're on the stage now. Israel was before. Now it's your turn, so let's see what you're going to do. And so, what we learn from this is, hey, if you want to find out how the Church is going to be go back and see what happened in Israel.

And man, if you look real close, you wonder how they survived sometimes because they were so wicked. Almost every page of the Old Testament, you have some sin that crops up that's just about to destroy them, and somehow they survive.

If you look at the kings of Israel, you had, what, 20 kings in the north. Every single one of them had a bad epitaph. This king did evil in the sight of the Lord. And out of Judah, you had 20 kings. Ten of them were so-so, and only three of them were really good.

And even David, the one that was considered good, committed adultery and murder. So, I mean, look, that's not good prospects for what's going to happen to the Church. And if you look at Catholic Church history, like I said, we've had a lot of doozies in the papal office, and you can imagine how many are going to be in the cartel and the bishopric if the popes get back.

So, I mean, when you get educated as to what this is all about and what to expect, it's only going to be a small amount of people that actually remain faithful in the Catholic Church. And that's what we see today.

Like I said, 90 of them are liberal. How did that come? Well, same thing that happened in Israel. So, that's how we can live with it, by knowing that God was the one who forecasted this. There was a time in Elijah's day where you had probably about 10 million people.

This was in the 800s, because when they came out of Egypt, they had 600 ,000 men, which means they probably had about two or three million people with women and children included. But by Elijah's time, you had about 10 million, and you can only find 7 ,000.

That hadn't bowed the knee to the devil, for Pete's sake. You know, that's like 0 .014 of the people. And so, it's like, okay, you know, we can have all these great plans, but give man free will, and this is what's going to happen, and that's what we're seeing today in the Catholic Church.

Okay, we have to go to our first commercial break. And please do not go away, because we're going to be right back after these messages with more of Dr. Robert Syngenis, and we will be critiquing Jimmy Akin's representation of the Roman Catholic Church during recent debates in Houston, Texas, with Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries.

Don't go away.

Greetings. This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program. SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com. But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur. In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt God's pleasure when he ran.

He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God. I sense that same God-given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God. That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the Bronx or New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672. That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my long-time friend and brother, Chris Arnzen, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.

I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for reformed Christian literature for decades now, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, cbbbs .com, I want to enable you to build a wonderful personal library of the best in literature that the reformers, the Puritans, and the great Christian minds of today have to offer, and at affordable prices.

Not only does cbbbs .com offer up to 50 off retail prices, but you'll get an added 5 off orders of $50 or more by using promo code IRON, I-R-O-N, an added 5 off all of your orders of $50 or more from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

That's cbbbs .com, making the joy of reading the finest in Christian literature more affordable. Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

Here at Iron Sharpens Iron radio, praise God for the generous monthly financial support of Royal Diadem Jewelers, educated by and affiliated with the American Gem Society, Jewelers of America, and the Gemological Institute of America.

For the perfect custom-designed engagement ring, or any one-of-a-kind piece of jewelry created exactly according to your imagination and specifications, Royal Diadem Jewelers has you covered. No matter where you live in the world, Royal Diadem will walk you step-by-step through every stage of the process, and even hold a high-tech internet virtual visit using state-of-the-art jewelry design technology to serve you.

They start by listening carefully to determine your needs. They're interested in making what you want, not what they want to sell you. From rough design to digital model, to photorealistic image, to wax prototype model, to the finished product, they're continually listening to your input, likes and dislikes, making any changes necessary along the way.

This will ensure that your custom jewelry will turn out exactly as you dreamed, and well beyond your expectations. Visit royaldiadem .com. That's royaldiadem .com today. Sterling Vandewerker, owner of Royal Diadem Jewelers, his wife, Bronnie, his business partner and manager, Brian Wilson, and the entire family, thank you all for listening to, praying for, and supporting the work of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio.

And don't forget folks, royaldiadem .com is still offering Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio 100 of the profits from any sale of jewelry to our listeners, as long as you mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. So please go to royaldiadem .com today to at least get the ball rolling on your purchase of jewelry, because we have no idea when they're going to pull the plug on this mind-blowing offer where we get 100 of the profits from the sale of jewelry.

But Royal Diadem .com today, and don't forget to mention Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. If you've just tuned us in, my guest today is an old friend of mine on the opposite end of the Tiber that I am on. His name is Dr. Robert Syngenis, founder of Catholic Apologetics International, one of the more conservative Catholic apologists left in existence.

And we are, if you want to boil it down to its essence, we are today agreeing about how much we disagree. And that seems to be something that many Catholic apologists are no longer doing. They seem to be taking a much more soft, gentler approach that is more driven by modern ecumenism than by historical accuracy as to what Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants believe.

And of course there are multitudes of evangelicals out there doing the same thing. But today we are going to be critiquing debates that were recently held, and we are going to be basically dissecting some things that occurred there.

And we're having Robert Syngenis, as a conservative Catholic, let us know what his opinion is as to regard the accuracy of the statements that Jimmy Akin made during this debate, which actually, as I said earlier, surprised me very much because I can remember hearing Jimmy Akin on the Catholic Answers radio program and being very critical of evangelical doctrine and so on.

And he is taking the approach of trying to win us over with, I guess, what he views as love. I don't personally believe it is loving to dilute the truth of how different we are as far as Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants are concerned.

But one of the clips—in fact, this is the only clip I'm going to play. The rest of it I'm going to leave to your memory of—predominantly we're going to be addressing his comments, that's Jimmy Akin's comments, on justification by faith alone, which is a core doctrine of evangelical Protestantism, at least it's supposed to be.

And also I'd like to get into, if we have time especially, the anathemas pronounced at the Council of Trent, because that seemed to be totally diminished in its condemnation of Protestants, as I always viewed it as being.

But I'm going to play a clip that probably startled me more than anything in both debates. It is Jimmy Akin's response to James White when James White brings up the pro-homosexual agenda of Pope Francis.

And here we have Jimmy Akin's response. I think that the Pope's view—I think you're misreading the Pope's view of homosexuality, and I don't understand exactly what you've asked me. Can you restate the question?

Well, it just seemed to me that air conditioners and the idea of blessings of irregular relationships, especially in light of the synod of synodality, is a really long stretch. That's not appropriate.

Wouldn't you agree?

Um, I think that in both cases we have the Church doing something that is not prohibited by either scripture or apostolic tradition. You may have different valuations in terms of which ones you approve, but I don't see a difference in principle in what's happening here.

And I frankly think you're misreading the situation, perhaps because you haven't followed the Catholic press on this closely enough, but giving a blessing—it has been clarified that this does not involve giving a blessing to a union, but to two individuals.

I understand that. We'll stop the clip there. So, please respond and tell us how you would have responded to James White's questions about Pope Francis's pro-homosexual ideology. Well, I can tell you very easily it wouldn't be what Jimmy Akin said, that is for sure.

I just wanted to say, Chris, my end of this transmission is a little choppy. I don't know if you got my message during the break, but I could hardly make out what either White or Akin was saying, totally, because it was so choppy.

That's interesting, because people in the audience, I have been asking certain people who I knew were listening, and they said that the audio is fine, so I'm not sure why you're hearing it in a choppy fashion.

No idea. Okay. So, I checked my connections. Everything seems to be okay. So, I'll go on with what I think I heard. So, this is the dilemma that Jimmy Akin is in as a Catholic apologist, and most Catholic apologists are in the same dilemma, and that is if the Pope says or does something that is off-kilter, not kosher, wherein everybody who's listening knows something's a little off here, even the most conciliatory judges would say, it doesn't sound right.

It's not passing the sniff test. And so, they have to make a decision right away, and that is, what am I going to do? Am I going to defend the Pope and make it sound like, hey, I'm really a Catholic apologist here, and the apologist's job is to make what the Pope says look good, because that's what an apologist does.

Like a political apologist, for example, that's his job, and that's what the news media does for President Biden. Whatever he does, they make it sound good, because they're apologists. Or are you going to say, look, this guy's not perfect.

That's obvious. He's had some real faux pas in the 10 years he's been Pope, and now we're getting to an area where, hey, I know that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed totally because of one big sin, and this Pope seems to be angling toward that like a freight train that can't be stopped ever since he got into the pontificate.

I mean, from when he said on the plane, you know, who am I to judge? To fiduciary supplicants, this guy has not taken his foot off the gas. So now you have to decide as a Catholic apologist, what am I going to do?

Am I going to go with my moral gut that's telling me something's wrong here and I need to say it? Or are you just, well, it's not the same thing, James. I think we're looking at things a little differently from different perspectives, you know, and you give this goobledygook kind of, let's try to get away from this question as fast as possible.

So I'll say some words here that sort of put you off, and maybe we can move on to the next question, because this is a debate anyway, right? That's what it appeared like to me that he was doing. He wasn't really going to call the Pope out for saying or even intimating that homosexuality was okay.

And sometimes from Pope Francis, you get two different messages. Like two weeks ago, in a private conversation he had with some of his top cardinals, and there were some bishops there, he off the cuff said to one of them, there's too much faggotry in the Catholic seminaries.

And the news media caught hold of this and made it front page news, and the woke people came out and said, oh, he's racist, he's this, he's called them faggots, you know, can't use that kind of language.

That's what they were concerned about. I didn't know they were a race. Hey, don't you know everything's racism today? So, and so he got called on the carpet for that. And the next day, very next day, I mean, after the worldwide news that he called them faggots, the next day, he apologized for what he said, you know, okay, I shouldn't have called him faggots.

And I don't know to the, I don't know what extent there was to that apology. Like, well, I'm going to retract the whole substance of the thing. Like, I didn't really mean there were a lot of faggots in the seminary.

Or he just meant that I used the wrong word. I don't know, to this day, two weeks hence, I don't know. But, you know, he's given mixed signals. So, the Catholic apologist is looking at him and going, oh, you know, what do I do?

I get, I get mixed signals from the Pope. I don't know exactly where we stand in all this. And then he's waiting for some clarification. He doesn't get it. And so he's left with that dilemma. Do I go with my gut?

And, you know, like, would, another way to say that would be, what would Jesus do? You know, the old wristbands we used to wear, what would Jesus do? I'm a Calvinist. I never wore those. You know, the Pope should wear it around his neck, actually, you know.