October 11, 2022 Show with Ottavio Palombaro on “From Rome to Reformed: The Confessions of an Italian Ex-Catholic”

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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 Tuesday on this 11th day of October 2022.

And I'm thrilled to have as a first -time guest today, Ottavio Palombaro.

He is an author and a Roman Catholic convert to Reformed Protestantism who is conducting doctoral work on the historic

Italian Protestantism of the Waldensians. And today, we are going to be addressing his autobiography,

From Rome to Reformed, the Confessions of an Italian Ex -Catholic.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Ottavio Palombaro.

Thank you, Chris. It's an honor to be here with you and share together this time.

Amen. Well, let's jump right in to your conversion testimony.

I know that you are not only an Italian ex -Catholic, you are actually from Italy, as your accent clearly revealed when you just greeted me.

And why don't you start with your childhood being raised in Italy?

Yes. So I am now 35 years old. I grew up in a very

Catholic family right at the heart of Italy, two hours north of Rome.

So in what today comes to be known as the state that used to be part of the pontifical state of the

Vatican for hundreds of years until the unification of Italy. I come from a town that is right next to the hometown of St.

Francis of Assisi. So very deeply into Catholic spirituality. I have a aunt who is currently a nun in a very

Marian order. I have many siblings, and my parents are very devout.

In fact, they were praying that one of us as children would become a priest. My mother had her eyes on me because I was the most spiritual.

And in fact, I was part of many, many Catholic movements throughout my life.

In adolescence, I never doubted God. I always thought the Catholic Church was the only true church.

And in particular, I looked down on Protestants. I was part of even

Catholic missions. I was going to pilgrimages in several places of the

Catholic faith, both in Italy, outside of Italy, places where the Virgin Mary appears and gets vision.

And I always was very, very strongly devout, struggled several times and seasons in wanting to become a priest.

One time I got sick, and I promised the Lord that I would consecrate my life to the priesthood. And again, attended monasteries, several

Catholic monasteries, both in Africa, Western Africa, and South America, where I was involved with activities within monastic life, you could say.

And so I was always trying to figure out the will of God for my life.

All the way to my university years, I went to Rome to study.

And there I even attended the meeting of the

Pope, at the time was Benedict XVI, with a Catholic student in town.

And so I shaked his hand. I was super thrilled of, again, defending the

Pope, even with my fellow students at university who were actually against Catholicism.

So I was very jealous. From time to time I had encountered some Protestants, and it had always been very antagonistic on my side, trying to prove them wrong, trying to defend the

Catholic Church from their attacks. Until I came to North Italy to study.

After my bachelor's degree in cultural anthropology in Rome, I then went to Turin, where I was doing a master's degree in sociology.

And I was part of this monastery where my roommate, who was trying to find a cheap apartment, came in.

And he was actually a Protestant, an evangelical. Now, I didn't find out that he was evangelical from the beginning, but I most surely, as we would discuss in religion, came to understand that he was

Protestant. So if he was cheap and a Protestant, he must have been from Scotland.

I'm just kidding. Well, this friend of mine was not Scottish. He was actually from Albania.

He was in town in Turin for study. But he definitely had already

Calvinistic leanings. So in our debates and conversations, I was almost immediately introduced to Calvinism early in my conversion.

So as I was debating with my friend there, I was very, very animated.

And I was trying to find support to Catholic doctrine. Not only I couldn't, but I was also challenged by the

Bible knowledge of this friend of mine, and the fact that he knew the Scripture. And so I decided to start reading the

Bible, the Catholic Bible with all the Apocrypha, and to go through the Bible for the first time in my life.

Yes, the priest might have read on Sunday certain passages from Scripture, but I never read it through.

So I started, and from Genesis to Revelation, I began to see that there was very, very little support to many of the

Catholic dogmas that I was supposed to believe as a Catholic. Not only that, but I began to kind of be convicted of sin, because I started to see that my devotion to God was very much like a

Pharisee, a religious man who knew much and wanted to defend the faith, but had very, very little sincerity and much hypocrisy in the heart.

Yes, I went to Mass. Yes, I confessed the sin to the priest. Yes, I even undertook wanting to become a priest and selling all my possessions and give it to the poor.

I wanted to go as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, but nothing of this was really bringing peace.

In fact, I was struggling with sin, carnal thoughts, and also just anger toward God, because I felt

He was distant from me, no matter how many rosaries, no matter how many good works I was doing. And so, as I read the

Scripture, however, for the first time in my life, the first book in my life,

I read many books through my learning, and no other book was giving me so much peace.

And I felt it was close to me like never before. I always thought it was a distant book, but now it was speaking to my heart and the deep issues of my life, both in my challenging the foundations of my

Catholic faith, but also my condition as a sinner before a just God. And so, throughout that season of conviction of sin,

I was engaged in a relationship with a girl who was actually very much nominal, if not atheist, and that was the amount of my apostasy.

But she had managed to convince a priest, and again, as I was seeking to contemplate leaving this girlfriend and joining the priesthood,

I had six different priests that I went to, asking, how do I know the will of God for my life?

Jesuits, a Franciscan priest, a Salesiando Bosco priest, which in that town was a strong movement, and none of them could give me an articulate answer.

Yes, they would give me a book written by a Jesuit or some sort of spiritual discipline, but nothing was actually bringing in peace to my heart.

The Bible did it. The Bible did it. And as I was coming to a deeper understanding of Scripture, that's where actually, providentially,

God brought that relationship to an end with that girl, and I was honestly in a desperate condition, both to the providential ordeals of God, but also the way that the

Holy Spirit was already acting in opening my eyes to the truth of Scripture.

So I went to my Albanian Protestant friend, and I asked him if I could join him into an evangelistic retreat where a pastor preached the

Gospel clearly, that we are unworthy sinners, that there's no way that we can reach

Heaven through our good works, that after death comes judgment, and that we will be unable, unable to be reconciled to God, but Jesus Christ at the cross paid the penalty for our sins, and bore the wrath of God for our sins, so that by trusting, and trusting alone in His work, at the cross we can be reconciled and at peace with God.

In perplexity, I went to that pastor and I said, how can I be sure that what you're saying is true? And he started sharing the

Gospel of John, that if you believe in Jesus Christ, you have eternal life, that no one shall snatch you from the

Father's hand. I never heard those truths, and so out of perplexity

I left that retreat, and I thought this would pass on just like any

Catholic retreat, any spiritual journey that I did in places of pilgrimages, it will go on and life will move on.

Instead, I had joy for the weeks I had, months I had, and now it has been 11 years,

I was able to repent of my sins, something that I couldn't when I was confessing to the priest my sins.

Week by week I always went back to him, because I had no freedom from slavery to sin.

And God began a work in the first year of my conversion, it was very challenging.

The day that I approached my father, after a few months of going to the Catholic Church on Sunday, I couldn't stand it anymore of bowing down to the

Virgin Mary and praying to her or the saints or kissing the statue of baby

Jesus. I was convicted of these things, and I had to say to my earthly father,

I am sorry, but I am leaving the Catholic Church, to which he was extremely furious.

He took a copy of my Catholic Bible and threw it into the trash and said, you have the devil and you have to live with power.

So the first year of my conversion was very challenging. I had to hide my Protestant Bible, and as I was in the process of converting and I was examining, essentially, the beliefs of the

Catholic Church, in particular from the Catholic catechism, in light of Scripture, to what then came out to be the autobiography that you mentioned today.

So that is proof, actually, of that extended period of time where I was looking at Scripture and I was looking at it in the light of the catechism of the

Catholic Church. And, yes, so this is the way that I came to Christ.

Hallelujah. And then Catholicism. Hallelujah. And I don't know if you are aware of this, but I am also a former

Roman Catholic. I was raised in Roman Catholicism, attended a private

Roman Catholic parochial school for eight years, and the

Lord rescued me out of the enslavement to the idolatry, superstition, and false gospel of Rome.

And I have to quickly add to this, I had no bad memories of being raised

Roman Catholic. I had no bad memories of being a student in a parochial

Roman Catholic grammar school. I have nothing but fond memories, actually. The only time

I'm disturbed by the memories is when I realized that I was being taught damning lies.

But as far as the memories of the friendships that I had, in fact,

Facebook and social media has brought a lot of evil to the surface of people's lives, but one of the wonderful things that it has done for me, it has reconnected me with many of my

Catholic schoolmates from St. Martin of Tours in Amityville, Long Island, and it's interesting how many of them frequently like on Facebook my posts that are very clearly

Protestant. So it's, I don't know what the Lord is doing with some of them.

Some of these posts are very explicitly non -Roman Catholic and clearly evangelical

Protestant in regard to the Gospel and so on. So I just hope that the

Lord has a domino effect in mind and is going to bring more souls from my childhood to salvation.

But just back, I'm sorry, were you going to say something? Yeah, no, I can surely relate to that.

Again, we can already draw the distinction a little bit between Roman Catholicism here in the

United States of America and the type of Roman Catholicism that I grew up in Italy, which is very much cultural and obviously more challenging in some aspects.

Yeah, I was going to ask you, what is the religious climate in Italy?

Everybody, I think, knows, even if they are not a Christian or a Roman Catholic or know very little about Italy, from most of their acquaintances or friendships or even their own family, they know that the odds are 99 % of the time if they meet somebody who has

Italian ethnicity that that person is Catholic. Obviously, sometimes they're wrong, but that is the assumption that most make.

But as far as the religious climate of Italy, is there a lot of, or in any rate, was there a lot of very deeply believing

Roman Catholic families that you knew or was it predominantly, in your experience, other than your own faith, which was obviously something that you believed was the key aspect of your life and you were very deeply religious in regard to Catholicism.

But did most of the Catholicism you experienced, was it nominal?

Were your Catholic friends churchgoers? Were they people who actually observed the sacraments and all that, or was it just,

I'm a Catholic just because I'm not a Protestant, a Jew or a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist? Oh, yes.

Italy still, by and large, identifies as majority religion Roman Catholicism.

We're talking about 80%, 84 % of the entire population self -identify as Christian Catholics.

That's what they mean. And evangelicals are 0 .01%, maybe a little bit more of a very, very reduced number of people who will embrace kind of a

Bible -believing Christian identity. And overall, my experience has been actually because of the area where I was born and the type of family that I was part of, very much strongly

Catholic, like not nominal. I have friends who, you know,

I used to be friends in high school that currently are part of the most strict monastic order.

I have friends who are part of a Catholic movement that are very strong.

My cousin, for example, works for the Vatican press, Osservatore Romano, right in the

Vatican. So I speak for the more, like, strongly

Catholic side of things. But it is obvious that out of that 80 % of self -proclaimed

Catholics, there is a large percentage of people who now are very much nominal, which means they might attend

Mass on Christmas, on Easter, and baptism and funeral, although still a quite high percentage of people that comparatively still attend

Mass weekly. And then, yeah, growing secularism, obviously, like the rest of Western Europe, it's definitely there.

So among people of similar experiences to mine,

I encountered, like, ex -priests who currently, and in fact, kind of in some ways, either led the way or, like, contemporary, have struggled with some issues.

Maybe not the whole embracing of Protestants, but they're struggling with some issues.

Let's say there is a priest in South Italy who was refusing to baptize infants, and so he had a strong platform, even on social media in that regard.

Wow, you mean it was a Roman Catholic priest who adopted the Baptist understanding that only repentant believers were qualified as candidates to be baptized?

Yes, and he had a long trial, we would say, with bishops and even

Jesuit theologians, once they ran out of arguments. At the end, he was expelled from the priesthood, and now he's part of a more evangelical church.

But then there's others, like nuns, who for 40 years have been part of the

Catholic Church, or the priests who have been part of the Catholic Church. So there are stories of this nature.

But sooner or later, they become Protestants. I think an example of a very vocal on social media priest who then became a

Methodist pastor. Or others who may be sympathized, but again, there are very, very few, because the exposure to the

Gospel message, as we know it, is very little. As I said, evangelical presence in Italy is almost nonexistent.

And the closest, more widespread that Italian people can come across is

Jehovah's Witness. And that is why it's almost considered as another sect, another cult.

There's very little exposure, relatively speaking. So that makes it, again, a doubly challenge to see, actually, cases of this nature.

In fact, since you mentioned priests and nuns who have left their

Roman Catholic orders and, by God's mercy, were saved and brought to understand the true

Gospel, I just want to give a plug to the ministry of a dear friend of mine that I had known for many years prior to his going home to the

Lord. He passed away several years ago and entered into eternity with Christ.

But are you familiar with Richard Bennett, the former Roman Catholic priest who became a Reformed Protestant evangelist?

Yes, I am very familiar with him. And the website for you folks who may want to investigate the works of Richard Bennett and also works that involved former

Roman Catholic priests and nuns, you can go to bereanbeacon .org,

bereanbeacon .org, and one book in particular is Far From Rome, Near to God, Testimonies of 50

Converted Catholic Priests, and The Truth Set Us Free, 20 Former Nuns Tell Their Stories of God's Amazing Grace.

One thing that this reminds us of, including you and your testimony, is that there are many of us who know the truth, who are

Bible -believing Christians, and yet, tragically, we sin greatly in the area of being more afraid of men than of God and also being more concerned over the feelings of our friends and loved ones than we are over their eternal souls.

And so many of us who know Roman Catholics, deeply involved in their religion, we dare not say anything that offends them, and that would include telling them that they have a false gospel, which, obviously, you are very happy now, in spite of how angry or hurt or whatever the emotional spirals you went through, you are rejoicing that someone told you something that made you uncomfortable in that the very core of your life, your religion, was sending you to hell.

Yes, exactly. And so tell us, there are people, not only

Roman Catholics, but even evangelicals, tragically, it's actually disturbing me deeply the number of evangelical

Protestants, even Reformed Protestants, even brilliant, educated,

I can't even say the word right now. Academics. Academics.

Scholars. Yes, scholars who know the gospel, inside and out, and yet they become very ecumenical with Roman Catholics.

Not telling them to repent of their idolatry, their superstition, and their false gospel.

But for those of our listeners who are, perhaps they're angry that we are having a discussion like this, or perhaps they're just mystified, dumbfounded, baffled, they may think that we are just being bigoted against a religion that is not now our own.

It once was, both of our religions, but now it is not a religion of our own, and so they just view it as Christians making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the differences that we have, and in this case, it would be particularly with Roman Catholics.

So, tell us why this is so important, why this is not a matter of trivial issues, secondary or tertiary issues, or even lower on the rung of importance.

This is not just about the fact that Roman Catholic priests wear robes and clerical collars and have candles and that kind of thing.

There's something far more deeply damning, not that those things are in and of themselves damning, but there are other matters that are deeply damning, and so tell us why we are even having this discussion.

Sure, so this brings to mind the controversy within Evangelicalism that has been going on for quite a while.

We can think about Evangelicalism divided between, let's say,

Archispro and J .I. Packer, or even some of the statements that 20th century, you know, late

Billy Graham make about Catholicism, and so you may have brothers in Christ, brothers in Christ, that might take a different position than us on this issue, right?

And the question is whether, you know, which side is confused on this regard, or why, as you said, is it so important?

Couldn't we consider something? Is the Reformation over? This is what I address in the introductory chapter to my book,

From Rome to Reform, is this, could we just consider that the Reformation is over, as even a recent book has reformed, as you say, sometimes even our fellow

Presbyterians or like an Evangelical exodus we have been hearing from people.

My answer to this is, again, these are issues, first of all, that we need to analyze, taking in mind and noticing something about this.

Notice that, yes, sometimes well -intended and well -grounded believers, but if you look at the majority of cases when we deal with those

Evangelicals or Protestants that either want to be extremely ecumenical and just passe toward the

Reformation as they deal with Roman Catholics, notice that usually, even as you listen, for example, to their conversion stories,

I had to personally debate several times with an ex -seminarian in a

Bible college who now is a priest, and I mean, notice usually what the refrain is.

What is the reason that leads them to Roman Catholicism away from the Protestant faith?

And you will find out that despite the claim of being, you know, I was persecuted,

I was this, I was that, there's usually very little reference to Scripture. There's usually a fascination with the history, with the liturgy, with the tradition, with Church Fathers, which, praise

God, we are not denying any of this. We love history. I personally love Church history.

We do love the Church Fathers, even as Protestants, but the question is, how much

Biblical knowledge, and I would say well -rounded exegetical understanding of New Testament passages in particular, do these cases show?

And you will find that many, many times, if not all of the time, in particular in the media, those that are targeted are usually the very weak and shallow wings of Evangelicalism, which then turn into Ecumenism or things like that, but not so much the solid.

And when that happens, yes, we can discuss. And there we have to go, just like, again, both our forefathers in the faith, from the

Reformation, all the way to the current theologians,

Reformed theologians, and Reformed Baptist brothers who are speaking on this issue. We have to see that this is not a secondary or tertiary issue.

Martin Luther started the Reformation, and this is something that we need to explain to our

Catholic friends. He started the Reformation not like Erasmus of Rotterdam.

Erasmus of Rotterdam wanted to clean up the moral corruption of the

Church, and the Reformation is not that. The reason why a

Reformation was started, the reason why people were ready to be burnt at stake and risk their entire lives, was not simply because they were debating the corruption of the

Church. Yes, the indulgence, per se. That was not the real issue that ultimately led

Martin Luther to make his stand. What led his stand was matters of salvation, eternal life.

How does a sinner stand just before God? How do we access eternal life?

How do we come to God? And in this matter he said that justification by faith alone, through Christ alone, the understanding of Scripture alone, and Christ alone, which is, again, the foundation of the hard core of the

Reformation was, again, not a secondary, but it was the matter on which the

Church, the Church of God, the true Church of God, stands or collapses.

So if we get this matter wrong, as the Apostle Paul says in Galatians, then we are at great risk of being under the curse of God, the anathema of God.

And what is the irony of the Reformation? That the response to the desire of Luther to magnify the grace of God and justificate that no works of the law can make us righteous before God has actually become the item, one of the number one items, of the

Council of Trent that is under the anathema. So it's almost like hitting a hammer on your foot.

So this is not a secondary matter. This is a matter that pertains to the way that we can be reconciled.

In fact, let's pick right up where you left off about this being the core issue regarding how we can be reconciled as sinners to God.

We'll pick that. We have to go to our first break right now. So if anybody has a question for Octavio, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter, such as you are a

Roman Catholic, you may be starting to struggle with maintaining the beliefs that you have been raised in, you have questions about where your faith has led you astray, you don't want to identify yourself publicly at this point because you're still a

Roman Catholic. That's just one example of obviously a good reason why someone might want to remain anonymous.

But if it's just a general question about the Bible, about Roman Catholic teaching, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Octavio Polombero and more of our discussion on his salvation testimony from Rome to Reformed.

Don't go away. Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox and Friends Weekend.

Now, I don't have to tell you, but American education, it's in a free fall, crumbling under the weight of a century of damage inflicted upon America's academic system.

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That's royaldiadem .com, royaldiadem .com. I am now back with Ottavio Polombaro, who is an author and a

Roman Catholic convert to Reformed Protestantism, and he is currently conducting doctoral work on the historic

Italian Protestantism of the Waldensians, and it just struck me as very comical that this young man from Italy just corrected my

English. Accommodition is what I was trying to say, and he knew what

I was trying to say, and for some reason in one of those moments where you get, like, a frog on your throat, you just can't spit out what you wanted to say.

But, anyway, right before the break, we were discussing how the difference between Roman Catholicism and Biblical Protestantism is the difference between how we can, as sinners, be reconciled to God and how we will be led on a pathway to hell unreconciled to him because we are trying to at least partially earn our way to heaven.

Am I correct in using that as a summary? Sure. That is as far as, like, it benefits us as people, but I would say the ultimate issue remains, obviously, the one of authority.

Like, the divide between, you know, Classical Protestantism and Roman Catholicism, whether it's even after Vatican Council II, it's ultimate authority.

What is the ultimate authority for any matters of faith and religious practice and Christian life?

And we would argue it's Scripture. And, obviously, out of that flows the crucial piece of, yeah, that we can be saved and the way we are saved because it directly involves us and it involves our either damnation or salvation.

But every single issue, I would say, of difference can be under this umbrella of authority and the question of ultimate authority, whereas the

Catholic Church, obviously, has placed such authority in the hands of the

Church and tradition and not only Scripture.

That is why in my book, every single chapter, I deal with, essentially, how does the

Scripture compare with, you know, the Catholic understanding of salvation, the

Catholic understanding of baptism, the Catholic understanding of the Eucharist, which is their understanding of the

Lord's Supper, their understanding of the priesthood, and their understanding of papal infallibility, their understanding of Mary's role as a mediatrix, and in particular, her role within Catholic religious practice, and all the way to matters of what is the nature of idolatry and the

Second Commandment. And ultimately, for us as Reformed believers, our understanding of that predestination and when grace goes all the way.

Now, one of the things that I have said to my very dear

Roman Catholic friends and some family members that remain in Roman Catholicism, when they try to make me out to be the bad guy, because typically, your modern day

Roman Catholic, who is not a traditionalist, who is not an old school, pre -Vatican

II Roman Catholic, the typical modern Roman Catholic is an ecumenist, and they are eager for you, as an evangelical

Bible -believing Protestant, to say, you are my brother in Christ, we may have our differences, they are minor, and we can worship together, and we are one in Christ, and I have nothing that I am holding against you at all, you are free to remain where you are in your belief system, and I will expect to see you in heaven.

When we don't react that way, respond that way to them, there is anywhere ranging from hurt feelings to anger, and they will make us out to be the bad guys, and I have pointed out to them that centuries before I was born, there was a thing called the

Council of Trent. The Council of Trent has dogmatically accursed all who agree with the gospel of the

Protestant Reformation. Therefore, all the heirs of the reformers are accursed, they are anathematized dogmatically.

It was not the personal opinion only of those men gathered at Trent, this was to define official teaching of Rome, and when something is dogma in Rome, a lot of people, whether they are

Catholic or Protestant, don't realize this, when something is dogma, it can never be changed.

The definitions of things that were dogmatically proclaimed at Trent are different from other issues, like celibacy and the priesthood, that may one day change, and other matters, as many former

Catholics or current Catholics will likely know. There was a prohibition to eat meat on Fridays at one point, that is no longer something that Catholics are bound to.

So there are issues that are changeable, there are issues that are written in stone, etched in stone, and the latter are called dogmas.

So I tell them, your church officially condemns me to hell because of my gospel, so I'm not the bad guy here.

That actually proves that we have different gospels, and there is only one gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that is that we must solely trust in his sinless life, his death, burial, and resurrection as our only hope for salvation, not in anything.

We do not in anything that we are supposedly given if we are saved or in order to be saved from the treasury of merit of Mary and the saints, that their deeds do not contribute to our salvation.

It is the blood of Christ alone and his grace and mercy. And that is a very crucial difference and isn't the very evidence that even as left -wing and liberal as Pope Francis is, he may not even believe in many of the things that were dogmatically defined at Trent.

He has never reversed or renounced or denounced Trent, and he cannot, because that would collapse the whole system, the magisterial system of Rome, wouldn't it?

Sure. I would say that this new pope obviously, everything comes under the understanding of when the pope speaks ex cathedra, so not everything he says is considered infallible, but when he speaks ex cathedra in matters of faith, then yes, he's authorized to essentially change or is considered infallible.

He has definitely changed a lot the landscape of Roman Catholicism.

A part of his goal, remember this pope is Jesuit, he's also from South America, has very much liberal theology leaning.

Most recently, he had an interview in Italy with the press saying that now atheists apparently can go to heaven, so if there was a time the

Tridentine Church could say that there's no salvation outside the

Roman Catholic Church, nulla salus, extra ecclesia. Right now, we are obviously in post -modern times that have impacted even the leadership of the

Roman Catholic Church as it goes global as well as compared to previous popes.

But he has not defined dogma, Francis. Yes, he's not defining dogma, and obviously this is where we have to really push our

Catholic friends, because you see, when I was Catholic, I myself did not understand many of the dogma.

Although I went to Catholicism, I was actually challenged on them and to investigate them by my

Protestant friends. Yeah, in fact, let's pick up right where you left off there, brother. We have to go to our midway break that you were pushed by your

Protestant friends about some of the things you read in the Catholic Catechism and other things that were very foreign to the ancient history of the

Roman Catholic Church. And we're going to our midway break. Please be patient with us.

It's the longer than normal break. And send in your emails to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. I thank those who have submitted their questions already for your patience.

We'll be right back. Don't go away. Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox & Friends Weekend. Now, I don't have to tell you, but American education, it's in a free fall, crumbling under the weight of a century of damage inflicted upon America's academic system.

The answer? It's called Classical Christian Education, a form of K -12 ed that's very distinct from the type of education most

Americans have received, myself included. And that's why I'm so excited to have been invited by my friends at Long Island's Grace Christian Academy to talk about this wonderful, growing movement and new approach rediscovered to education.

It's at 7 p .m. October 15th at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Melville, New York. I'll also be signing copies of my

New York Times best -selling book, Battle for the American Mind, for the first 50 guests, starting at 6 p .m.

Now, this is a fundraising event designed to raise money to help grow this type of education at a time when it is so desperately needed.

So please come ready to give and to learn about a way to stimulate academic revival in our great country.

You can purchase tickets for the event by visiting GCALI, G -C -A -L -I dot com and following the link to the gala event.

I hope to see you there. I just want to make a correction to Pete Hegseth because they have updated the website for you to register for this fundraising gala.

And by the way, I am the Master of Ceremonies for this fundraising gala where Pete will be speaking. Go to G -C -A -L -I dot com forward slash invite.

That's an important new addition to that website. G -C -A -L -I forward slash invite and it is absolutely free to register now.

So I hope to see you there this Saturday at 7 p .m. at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Melville, Long Island, New York.

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That's Solid -Ground -Books .com. Before I return to my discussion with my guest today,

Ottavio Palombero, who is an author and a Roman Catholic convert to Reformed Protestantism who is conducting doctoral work on the historic

Italian Protestantism of the Waldensians. And I plan on having Ottavio back for another interview to get more focused on that issue.

But before I return to that discussion, from Rome to Reformed, the

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question for our guest, Octavio Palombero, author and a

Roman Catholic convert to Reformed Protestantism. And right before the break, you were talking about how your

Evangelical Protestant friends were challenging you about some of the things that are taught in the modern

Catholic catechism and unless I'm misremembering, from what I understand, what you were saying is that you were being pointed to things in the modern catechism that are totally foreign to the history of Roman Catholicism prior to Vatican II.

They're, you know, they have an allowance and a hope for people outside of the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, to go to heaven, whether they are

Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, let alone

Protestant. So pick up where you left off there. Yeah, so essentially this is a trend that started with John Paul II, the

Vatican Council II, and now with Pope Francis it's flourishing. I do feel like this leaning post -modern trend will not continue.

Either the Church will split or there will be kind of a reactionary force in the coming years because many

Catholics are dissatisfied even with these tenets. An example of unclarity on dogmas can be the

Meccanic conception. So my understanding growing up Catholic was never that such dogma was exactly the fact that Jesus' mother was conceived without sin and not

Jesus. Yes. We understand. So this is an example where many Catholics, maybe as we share with them our biblical concerns, we can point them to those things.

And maybe at times there will be a response with discussions and debates over terms, but this should not scare us.

And also, as you pointed out, that there's usually this newfound trend of wanting to say, oh, we agree.

Yes, we think like you. We have to hold them accountable to what the Scripture says and what their catechism of the

Catholic Church says. We have to show them where the discrepancy is with the hope that they themselves will then investigate and that through the

Holy Spirit then in time come to a proper understanding of the truth.

Yes, one thing that I also like to remind my Protestant friends, evangelical friends, who are ecumenists with Rome, is that the

Apostle Paul was not an ecumenist with the Judaizers. And from what we know about the

Judaizers, they agreed with everything that Paul taught about Christ except that they insisted on adding circumcision to the

Gospel for men to be made right with God to become Christians. And that one thing provoked the

Apostle Paul to say that these Judaizers were not

Christians. They had no Gospel at all. They were accursed. He said, let them be accursed.

And therefore, if Paul did not have ecumenical relationships with the

Judaizers, when he could have used any allies that he possibly could have had during that day when the

Roman government was executing Christians and also the Jews from which the early

Christians came were executing Christians, including the Apostle Paul when he was soul of Tarsus prior to his becoming a

Christian, they could have used as many allies as possible, and yet the

Apostle Paul said, no, this is not Christianity. This is not the Gospel. So if that's true, how on earth can we have ecumenical relationships with Rome when they have even more requirements?

But the oddity of the whole thing is this is where you have to always remember what

Trent taught and what the dogma teaches because today you're being told even by the current

Pope that what you believe and understand isn't really important at all.

It's just the way you behave. And if you're a good person, a good citizen, and like he said about that atheist man who got his child baptized, that was good enough for him.

He's going to heaven. And so don't we also have to be careful,

Octavio, not to automatically declare that every single person who calls themselves a

Roman Catholic will be in hell? To give you an example, my mother, my sweet Polish -American mother who was a very religious

Roman Catholic all her life, when she was dying of pancreatic cancer, I sat down with her and I was having a conversation with her.

She completely renounced prayer to Mary and the saints. She described her understanding of the gospel, which was a biblical one.

She was trusting solely on the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. She said none of her good deeds, even though she had many of them, none of them were even helping her in any way to get to heaven.

I nearly fell off my chair knowing what a glorious gift from God this was in having her tell me these things because it totally removed the fear of her damnation from me.

I realized she is a born -again believer and a Reformed Baptist author who is now in heaven.

Peter Jeffrey met with her on her deathbed. He was from Wales. He was visiting the

United States, met with her on her deathbed, and he said to me when he emerged from her deathbed after being with her alone for about a half hour, your mother is born again.

She's going to heaven. What are you worried about? Therefore, we have to be careful.

There are Catholics who we will meet in heaven, but it's in spite of what their church teaches and the fact that they, either through ignorance of what their church teaches or rebellion against what their church teaches, actually embrace the true gospel.

Is that not a fact that we have to be careful about? Sure. I think obviously people can be saved in spite of the

Roman Catholic dogmas, not because of being part of the Roman Catholic Church. This might be very much the case of your mother or others.

I do feel in general, given my experience having grown up within that system and having...

Really, you could have watched me and seen a very devout person who would have said, yes,

I love Jesus and this and that. But the same standard of professional faith that we have for anyone else, and we know how much nominal

Protestantism is rampant in our country, the same standard of professional faith that we have for them in considering the fruits of regeneration must be maintained in this case, which means that in time, people who might be indeed regenerate and still within that fold, in time they will.

The Holy Spirit should lead them into all the truth. Yes. In particular, I think of, yes, just the final appeal that I make in my book, which, yes, revives some of our ancient confessional understanding of the

Pope as the Antichrist, tries to make the point that we have to come out of her as people, my people come out of her.

Because, again, the Holy Spirit will lead us and should lead us into all the truth.

And yes, indeed there are cases, just like it was at the time of Calvin, who writes an entire book to the

Nicodemites, because he's frustrated of all these nobles who are still Catholic, but they are

Calvinist at heart, and he wants them to step up, but they are afraid, and he's trying to push them like Nicodemus.

Please come out. You do know that I come from God. So, yes, we do not want to make everything the same, but we do, especially knowing from what

I come from, yes, there are very few in -between cases where there really, there are progress in understanding of the doctrine of grace in a more

Athenian sense, but there's still a step, there's still a few steps here and there, and challenges in the whole system, obviously, not that we need to.

Yes, and of course, in the case with my mother, she entered into eternity three weeks after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, so we did not have time to see her officially become a

Protestant in any way, but that's not what God's concerned about. He's concerned with the fact that people are trusting in him alone for their salvation, and she certainly demonstrated those genuine fruits of repentance and clinging to the true gospel.

Let's take some of our listener questions.

We have an anonymous listener who says,

I am a Catholic who is struggling with the beliefs that I have been raised in, and I have a number of friends who are evangelical and even

Reformed. I have friends that are both Reformed Baptists and Presbyterian, and I don't recall you ever saying which branch of the

Reformation you call your own. Are you a Reformed Baptist or a Presbyterian? So I am, just like you,

Chris, I am a Reformed Baptist. Yay! There is an entire chapter in the book where I just lead with baptism, and I want to also comment here that I have a lot of Presbyterian friends.

Being an aspiring pastor, I almost actually was on the road to be ordained with the

Presbyterians, but because of the baptism issue, I could not sprinkle babies and therefore be part of that denomination.

We consider them as brothers in Christ. If they are from the conservative side, we know that some, obviously liberal theology has done what it has done the past century, but yes,

I do belong more on the Baptistic Reformed camp in that regard.

So I do believe, and in fact, this is one of the things that actually clicked early in my process of coming out of Catholicism was exactly the issue of baptism and what it signifies, what it points to, and yes, the nature of the

New Covenant as well, that is an issue with our Presbyterian brothers. We do feel, in Jeremiah 31, fulfilled in the

Hebrews passages, as everyone shall know me from the least to the greatest.

So we do embrace a covenant theology like them, but we do see a significant newness in the

New Covenant in the fact that it will be made of regenerate members who partake both Lord's Supper and baptism as regenerate members of the

New Covenant. There is no unregenerate member of the New Covenant where that would be my position.

Yes, and there are, interestingly enough, even some Pado -Baptists who agree with that.

And there are some that view their children as a mission field, not as...

On the John Owen screen. Yes. Joel Beakey is one of them who believes that children are to be viewed as a mission field, that they should be viewed as lost until they bear fruits of repentance and faith, even though he's a

Pado -Baptist. But just to throw that in there. And by the way,

Anonymous, if you give me your full name and other contact information, our guest today,

Octavio Polombero, has promised us a limited number of electronic versions of his book

From Rome to Reformed. And the reason why we have to give away electronic versions during this interview is that the publisher is overseas and then the cost would be astronomical to ship out to our listeners physical hard copies of the book.

So we will make sure you get those electronic copies. We have

Terry in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. On the works aspect of penance from confession, like Ten Hail Marys or Five Our Fathers, as a young Roman Catholic teenager,

I feared God and burning in hell. After confession, I was happy because I was not fearing hell, but two days later

I was fearing hell again because I knew I had sinned. I saw the hopelessness of my faith and was driven away.

I was seeking why did he die on the cross if I had to do penance?

And the church did or could not tell me why. After I came to Christ at 30,

I threw away my rosary beads. And this apparently is not a question, she just wanted to give a testimony.

So that was, it's great to hear that, Terry. In fact, very much like Martin Luther, he tormented himself and physically tortured himself because he knew that he could not ever be good enough to please

God. He knew he was a sinner and he was constantly sinning. Do you have any comments on what

Terry in Carlisle, Pennsylvania has said? Well, I can very much empathize with such experience.

I would say especially the more I was coming towards seeking in Catholicism, the answer, the more

I felt that way. The more I was within the walls of a monastery and praying to an icon, a picture of Jesus with my rosary, the more

I was giving my clothes and possessions to the poor, the more

I was doing things and the more being yet in a regenerate state,

I was in anger because there's almost a sense in which we are trying to...

We have a theological underlying problem and that was the problem of Luther.

That even his own mentor, Staubitz, had to address in the Augustinian monastery that, again, we have zero experience of a

Heavenly Father and of true grace that reaches into the depths to the point that years later at the end of my brokenness where I could not say, yes,

I'll continue to earn. No, I said, I'm bankrupt. I came bankrupt to the Scripture and the

Scripture gave me grace and Christ applied that grace there in my sin.

That is obviously something that I can very much identify with and we have to help people who are under that bondage.

Yes, and it is interesting that Roman Catholics will very often, at least they've said to me, that they think that we who are evangelicals,

Bible -believing Christians, undermine the seriousness of sin.

Now, it may be true among many evangelicals that have a false theology of easy -believism and cheap grace, people who believe that they are saved merely because of a profession, even a profession that they made at Bible camp when they were eight years old or something, and then from thenceforward they remained slaves to sin, unrepentant, even perhaps even becoming an atheist.

There is a false and damning teaching amongst the evangelicals, and that's only a segment of professing evangelicalism that teaches those lies of an unrepentant gospel, but wouldn't you say that dogmatically even

Rome really has undermined the depth and seriousness of sin, first of all, in the very nature of man that they claim exists, although they believe in original sin, they do not believe as we who are

Reformed believe in the concept of total depravity and that even our wills are so corrupt that we cannot freely choose to please

God through our faith until we have received, by God, a heart transplant, until we have a new heart, our hearts of stone have been removed by God, we have a heart of flesh, and we now, filled with the

Holy Spirit, after the rebirth, we can freely and willingly follow

Christ, and we never will perfectly on this earth, of course, we sin every day more times than we even recognize, but we are covered with the blood of Christ, we are a new creation, and the

Catholic Church seems to be, and I don't mean this as far as the teaching of limbo, but they seem to be in a limbo where they have a concept that they are too good for hell, but not good enough for heaven, hence they're acquiring the doctrine of purgatory.

Am I making sense here? Correct. Yes, so Pelagius' claim against Augustine was exactly this, that his doctrine of grace was undermining the seriousness of sin.

And in our, as you mentioned, more Reformed stream of thoughts, we can see that if you go and read

Our Poor Father, whether it's Reformers or Puritans on sin, then you will find that it is definitely a false claim, but also we have to remember the distinction between Catholicism and Protestants, between penance and their understanding of penance.

We obviously are against penance, as understood as superficial, being sorrowful, and obviously a sin that leads to death, in my judgment, as opposed to repentance, and what that drastic change that takes place at conversion that influences the rest of your life.

And we also must remember, I think, that the greatest sin, this is how

I would answer that claim, is that the greatest sin that we commit against God remains unbelief, or the root of our sin remains unbelief, as the

Garden has taught us all the way to our position toward the

Word of God, did God really say? So unbelief toward the true Gospel. So here the question and the claim is that the true

Gospel in the Scripture is on, if we are on that side, then we have to bow and submit to it, instead of, again, as you said, abiding to a very optimistic understanding of human nature, which might not be

Pelagian, but it might certainly be semi -Pelagian in Roman Catholicism.

Yeah, they say that we undermine the seriousness of sin, and yet they think they can make it to Heaven not completely by their own deeds, but partially.

They believe that their sins are not so damaging to their soul that they cannot help be involved in their regeneration and their maintaining of salvation.

And then, isn't this also, people don't recognize how much of an offense to Christ's finished work on the cross the doctrine of purgatory is.

Basically, even though they may never use these words, they would say, well,

Christ really didn't mean it when He said it is finished. He just finished

His part. You've got to do yours, and it was not a perfect redemption, it was not a perfect atonement that He achieved for His people.

Perhaps it was even 80 % of the way, but we still have to have not only our own good deeds and the treasury of merit for Mary and the saints, added to what we do, and added to our punishment and purgatory, in order to be received into Heaven.

This is a real, I mean, some may call me over -reactionary, but it's a blasphemy.

It's an offense to what Christ has accomplished. Absolutely, and I think of the quote of Jonathan Edwards, who says, you contribute nothing to your salvation except the sins that made it necessary.

We're going back to our awareness of total depravity, and that has been gradually completely lost in the system of Catholicism.

It is an insult also to the work of Christ, for example, the

Eucharist, which is central to Catholic religion, because many confessions of faith,

I think of the Heidelberg, I think of Westminster, do address this problem when they deal with the

Lord's Supper, and now the Catholic, Roman Catholic understanding of a sacrifice really undermines, makes it imperfect.

And again, not only the problem is in insulting our

Creator, but also in overestimating our sin as we compare ourselves with other humans, horizontally, but we do not keep our vertical focus, and if we do, we only do when it's convenient to us, but when it deals with our good works in the light of the perfect works of Christ, not just His death, but also

His perfect righteousness, our works are just filthy rats. And, again, this is because, again, in Catholic tradition, being just before God somehow has to do with internal righteousness in the believer.

We know that this is more a tribunal understanding. Romans, if you read

Romans at faith then, you will never get that idea, that unfortunately it's lost through the history of the

Catholic Church, that it is, again, an imputed righteousness rather than an accumulated internal righteousness to the individual, which could never be the case.

Yeah, the beautiful way this has been phrased is the great exchange. Our sins were imputed to Jesus on the cross, and His righteousness was imputed to those

He redeemed. What a perfect and glorious truth, an amazing truth, something that we are so far from deserving.

We're not only undeserving, we are ill -deserving because, you know, sometimes when you say that grace is unmerited favor, you may have an issue or a thought conjured up in your mind that it's just that we didn't deserve it.

But, the difference would be if, while walking down the street, a homeless person holds up a can and I throw some coins in there and that person didn't deserve that gift, but he received it from me.

The difference would be in the way God has redeemed His people is if that person had murdered everyone in my family and burned my house down, and I gave him my entire inheritance.

That would be the difference of what really happened, you know, when the great exchange took place.

Amen. And I wanted to also add the historical piece, since I'm very, very passionate about Church history, because the claim is that what we're saying now is an invention.

It's something that the Reformation came with that was foreign to Church history.

Again, I want to argue that this is not the case, and this is kind of my interest in looking at Medieval and all the way to the

Church Fathers, you still have the seed forms unlike, you know, the picture that Roman Catholicism wants, the picture of a perfect harmony for 1 ,500 years, and then

Luther comes, and he comes up with this foreign understanding of Scripture. No, that is not the case.

I mean, you have pre -Reformers who, like Wycliffe, John Hus, and also the

Italian Waldensians, who had already developed a certain understanding of Scripture, which is far closer to the

Protestant understanding of Sola Scriptura, and yet it was centuries before, and obviously if it was widespread, it would not have needed any

Reformation. But this idea that both in the Church Fathers and in Medieval theology you have no trace of this is absolutely a false claim, because it was there, and it was not an innovation, but it is a going back to the understanding of Scripture by these pre -Reform figures.

So what we're saying is we are actually trying to be more faithful to the

Apostolic than an Old Scriptural, because again, I think the click, and this is kind of where I tied it all up, is that once as a

Catholic, I started to see how in many ways my Catholic tradition was in not only saying, adding things to what the

Word of God was saying, as I was studying the Word of God for myself, I was also seeing that it was also going in contradiction both with the

Word of God and with one another. So many sources of traditions were saying the opposite of everything else.

And unless we want to be left at sea, we do have to keep the anchor, which is once again the

Scripture. And so that is where the crux of the matter is, both historically and scripturally and theologically.

And we have to go to our final break, it will be briefer than the last break. If anybody has a question, and you want to get in line behind the several people still waiting to have their questions asked, please shoot in your question via email immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Give us your first name, your city and state, and country of residence, and only remain anonymous. If it's a personal or private matter, don't go away, we'll be right back.

Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox and Friends Weekend. Now, I don't have to tell you, but American education, it's in a freefall, crumbling under the weight of a century of damage inflicted upon America's academic system.

The answer? It's called classical Christian education, a form of K -12 ed that's very distinct from the type of education most

Americans have received, myself included. And that's why I'm so excited to have been invited by my friends at Long Island's Grace Christian Academy to talk about this wonderful, growing movement and new approach rediscovered to education.

It's at 7 p .m. October 15 at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Melville, New York.

I'll also be signing copies of my New York Times bestselling book, Battle for the American Mind, for the first 50 guests starting at 6 p .m.

Now, this is a fundraising event designed to raise money to help grow this type of education at a time when it is so desperately needed.

So please come ready to give and to learn about a way to stimulate academic revival in our great country.

You can purchase tickets for the event by visiting GCALI, G -C -A -L -I dot com and following the link to the gala event.

I hope to see you there. And another reminder that that website has been updated. It's G -C -A -L -I dot com forward slash invite

G -C -A -L -I dot com forward slash invite and the registration is free.

I hope to see you there this Saturday at 7 p .m. at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Melville, Long Island, New York.

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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnzen and the

Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray.

I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide. This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised

Chris up for just such a time. Knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Welcome back, Octavio. We have another anonymous listener who says, I am going to try to convince the elders of my own church to invite you to a speaking engagement there.

I was wondering if that is a possibility. Are you here in the States? Are you still in Italy? And how can this happen?

Thank you, Chris. This is a sweet invitation. I am currently in Washington, D .C.,

just came back to the country after church planting in Italy, where I'm currently here in a church doing a pastoral internship.

I will gladly consider a possible speech on this matter some more.

You can contact me through my email, octavio .op,

or through the email provided by Octavio earlier on, in alternative my phone number, 616 -349 -5649.

Great. And if anybody did not have time to write all of that down, just send me an email, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and I'll make sure I get you the information. And by the way, anonymous, you have also won a digital copy of the book that we have been discussing, which is the autobiography of our guest today,

From Rome to Reformed, the Confessions of an Italian Ex -Catholic.

We have another listener who is

Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He said, Have you noticed in your own life any significant differences by the way

Italians live out their Roman Catholic faith and those from other countries?

From what I have seen in documentaries and other things on television and movies, it seems that those from South America and the other

Latin countries seem to excel in their idolatry to higher heights than Italians do, but I may be mistaken about that.

So, this is an interesting question. I think historically in America there were so many fights among migrants who, for example, came from Ireland and migrants who came from Italy because the

Irish Catholics thought that the Italian Catholics were more superstitious. And obviously, maybe we look at Italian Catholics compared to, let's say,

South American Catholics might say that South American Catholics are more superstitious. So, what is going on is actually

Catholicism is one of those religions that wherever it goes, it tends to be syncretistic in its approach, missiologically speaking, to take elements, after all, this is the way

I would say historically Catholicism has been born out of the previous ruins of the

Roman Empire, taking elements of that previous religious set and then utilizing them for, yes,

Christian doctrine, but in the meantime, things get lost, things get compromised.

So, obviously, Italy would be kind of in between, I would say, an Irish Catholic model or a

South American model. I do remember, for example, when I was in Israel visiting there and Italian Catholics being actually a little bit shocked in the way that Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox were far more superstitious in their view of their own

Italian Catholics. But you see, this is because, again, there is more exposure, and going back to your question, in American Catholicism, there is more exposure to Protestantism.

So, whenever I evangelize Catholics in America, I find a far greater Bible knowledge or Bible acquaintances, and even in the forms, and in the

Catholic apologetics that you find, for example, online or through books, there would be far greater appeal to Protestantism.

But notice, it is always because of the cultural surrounding, because as I said in the beginning,

Catholicism works with whatever the culture does and synchronizes, and in this case, paradoxically, it is synchronizing more

Biblical. And so, yes, I found far more Bible knowledge, yes, I found more elaborate argumentation in North America, and perhaps some more sensitivity towards delicate issues.

But at the same time, I want to declare that the issue remains the same.

The issue remains the same, and so, if on the bottom of the heart there is no trust and reliance completely on the righteousness of Christ, then we are dealing with the same issue everywhere in the whole world.

And very quickly, before we run out of time, one of the biggest offenses that I hear from Roman Catholics, whether they are trained apologists or your average

Catholic, one of the defenses that they hold to, that they cling to tenaciously, they try to defend their veneration of Mary, the saints, and even relics and images by saying that this is not worship.

But is there really anything different in the way a

Roman Catholic behaves and acts when he is venerating a person or object and when a person is worshiping the same person or object?

Is there really a difference? Isn't it a distinction without an actual difference? So we go here in a very ancient argument,

John de Massines, who actually has kind of popularized this view that we actually are venerating, and veneration is different than worship.

If you read Calvin on relics, small little booklets, but even in the

Institutes, he has a section in the first part dealing with the doctrine of God where he addressed this very issue and dismantled it, showing that the distinctions of words, and I already mentioned earlier, often this is where many arguments come up.

Oh, but you mean that. We actually don't mean that. But in reality, that's exactly what you mean.

Whether you invent a term, idolatry or more veneration in the

Greek, that doesn't change the issue, because what takes place, even from an

Old Testament point of view, and all the more I speak in this chapter of my book of idolatry, there's an entire chapter on idolatry, it is obvious that even the

New Testament relies on the Old Testament evidence, and the second commandment, if you look at the

Catholic catechism, they have split the last commandment and completely erase or skip over the commandment on idolatry.

So we have to wonder if there's a genuine intention here to actually deal with the issue, or is there a way in which we're trying to make sense of our practice by going back and pushing it on the

Bible. Same thing with the Mariology, which I think is a big, big piece of Catholic understanding.

Yes, there have been changes. Yes, there have been times where even the recent

Pope wants to clarify that we are actually not considering Mary as Christ is our only

Redeemer, she's not a co -redeemer. Yes, occasionally he might say this noble statement, but the overall trend, both in tradition and both in the dogma of Inequality Conception and the practice, it shows otherwise.

It shows, again, that gradually, this is what happens through tradition, gradually things don't get better, they actually tend to corrupt.

And this was the case at Jesus' first coming, where the Pharisees had developed a religious system that was nullifying the

Word of God because of their tradition. And so this same thing can happen as we deal with Mariology.

It is an entire field of study that, again, has, through the centuries, elevated Mary, the

Mother of Jesus, in so many ways. And today, currently, I speak about my visits to places where the

Virgin Mary appears. Her claim, today, to this day, as she appears in Medjugorje, Fatima, Lourdes, or other places, our claim that, first of all, puts her, she's trying to push us away from Christ.

Christ is always, notice, depicted as an angry and very, very disappointed, and that's why

Mary has come now to appease us and bring us to God, and we depend on her, which is, she's chosen by God, we don't want to be favored by the

Holy Spirit, but we obviously don't go to the extreme of then, yeah, making her into something that she never intended to be.

It's a humble servant who calls God my Savior. What did she have to be saved if she was without sin?

In fact, we are out of time now, brother, and I definitely want to have you back on the program to go into depth on the

Waldensians, and let's schedule a date as soon as we get off the phone, or get off the air here.

I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater