Roman Catholic Apologists: an Hour Long Phone Call in Response to Rome’s Claims

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White. We're with you on, well, it's getting toward the end of the year. I don't see anything up there, by the way. I'm not sure if it's frozen up or dead or, hey, oh, well, it was probably better to have what was up there before.

Anyway, I am in shock that this is today and tomorrow. We're gonna have to do the program tomorrow again, just simply for scheduling stuff. So you'll have two days in a row and then by Saturday, people will be complaining that it's been too long or something.

That happened last week, honestly did. But we're gonna do the last two programs of the year and then it's 2016. I don't know where the first 15 years of the century went. Can you believe that? The first 15 years of the century.

Wow.

But I mean, that's amazing. 2000 does not seem that long ago at all by any stretch of the imagination. And yet there we go. We're gonna be doing those last two programs of the year. And I really don't see how I'm going to be able to do anything while I'm back east.

I'm leaving on the 10th of January. I get back on the 25th or 24th. So it's two full weeks. And I'll be teaching at RTS in Charlotte. We'll be doing the G3 conference. It would be great to be able to do something from G3 maybe.

We'll see. It's hard to get the connections and I'm just not all that technical as far as all the stuff I wanna be able to drag along. Besides, if you've gone through TSA recently, the more wires and connections and stuff you've got, the less happy they are.

That's just all there is to it. So when traveling, it can be a challenge. I don't know how Michael Brown does it because he does his program from all over the place. But anyway, that's what's gonna be coming up on the program.

Today, I have some stuff queued up, but got a Twitter message, let's see, about an hour ago. And we're just gonna sort of throw everything up in the air and just see how things go here and take a phone call, actually.

Sola Scriptura and the Authority of Scripture

And let's start off by talking to Luke. Hi, Luke, how you doing?

I'm doing well, how are you?

I'm doing well.

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, no, go ahead.

I had a question or two regarding Roman Catholicism depending on how much time you have.

Sure.

I guess I'll start with this. I grew up in a Protestant household. I'm only 18 right now. So lately I've been researching Catholicism because there's been a few Catholic people showing up at my church trying to debate me.

Okay, let me back up. Luke, hold on just a second. When you say a Protestant church, that doesn't tell me a whole lot. Give me a little idea of what your background is.

I mean, I grew up in the Assemblies of God church. And so lately I've been in a non-denominational church.

Okay, when you say non-denominational, like Calvary Chapel type?

If anything, it's gonna be closest to a Baptist. If I had to label it.

Okay.

All right.

I've got a few points.

Oh, sorry.

Okay, so the folks have been showing up, giving you some Catholic answers books or stuff like that?

No, it's just been like oral.

Or just oral discussions. So you haven't gotten into any reading or anything yet?

Articles and so forth, but nothing like, books at this point.

Okay, all right.

So once the...

No, go ahead.

I'm not...

Tell me what your question is.

All right, so the first one is basically, what biblical evidence is there for the doctrine of solus fructura? Because one of them made a point regarding 2nd Trinity 316, I believe, which is all scriptures breathed by God.

Right.

And they made the argument that it doesn't say that only scriptures breathed by God. So that's the first concern I had.

Okay, well, let me just point something out there. Even Rome does not claim that her oral traditions are theanustas. I'd like to direct you to a debate that I did with Father Mitchell Pacwa in 1999. Mitch Pacwa is a very well-known Jesuit priest.

I've done five debates with Mitch, and I would encourage you to watch the three of them. You can watch. Two of them were video recorded, but the Roman Catholics won't let us have the videos of them. Those are the first two we did on the mass and justification back when I had hair, which was a long time ago.

Anyways, all five debates with Mitch Pacwa, I think, demonstrate that we can have these disagreements in a proper, respectful, really helpful way. Not all the debates I've done with Roman Catholics have necessarily been that way, but certainly the ones with Mitch Pacwa.

He's a man I respect greatly. He speaks 12 languages. He's a very bright man, and we've debated some of the key issues. We debated the priesthood, the papacy, but we also did sola scriptura. And I would really recommend that you take the time to listen.

I love directing folks to debates because you get to hear both sides that way. And what makes a debate so much better than I think anything else is you get to hear both sides interacting because you and I can talk here.

You're gonna get one side from me. Then you go back and talk to your friends. You get another side from them. It's when you get the two together and you've got cross-examination. As Proverbs 18 says, the first one to present his case seems right until his neighbor comes along and examines him.

And so that's really where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. And so I'd highly recommend taking the time to watch those debates because I think it would help you a lot. And even at that particular point of the thing that was just mentioned about 2 Timothy 3 .16, where is oral tradition said to be theanoustos?

Because, for example, when Jesus spoke to the Pharisees, it's recorded both in Matthew and Mark, the Pharisees had traditions that they claimed came from God. One of them was called the Corban rule. The Corban rule allowed you to dedicate your income and your property to the maintenance of the temple so you did not have to support your parents.

Well, remember what Jesus said when he pointed to that, he called people hypocrites and he said that they invalidate the word of God for the sake of their tradition. Well, they claimed that tradition came from Moses.

In fact, they claimed that Moses had passed it down orally outside of scripture down through the rabbis and that it was in fact the word of God. Jesus taught us in Mark 15 and elsewhere, I'm sorry, Mark 9 and I think it's Matthew 15, to test even traditions that claim to come from God by the higher, more firm authority and that is the written word of God.

And so, the normal argument is not that 2 Timothy 3 .16 should allow tradition to be theanoustos, which is God breathed, but that 2 Timothy 3 .16 is only talking about the Old Testament. That's what you'll get from most Roman Catholics, hence allowing for a broader definition.

But as I asked Mitch Pacwa, I said, Father Pacwa, can you show us a single word that Jesus or the apostles ever spoke that Rome has defined dogmatically? One single word that Jesus said or the apostles said that Rome has said by the authority of we, the church, we have this tradition.

So, this is what Jesus said that's not recorded in scripture. And he very honestly admitted there's no such thing. There is no oral tradition, whatever you call that, and it's a very nebulous thing, does not record a single word.

So, the only thing that is theanoustos is that which is found in scripture. And so, remember something, Luke, you've got to ask your friends to be honest in their argumentation because what they'll do is they challenge you on the sufficiency of scripture.

That is their normal approach. Just as Jehovah's Witnesses will challenge you on the Trinity, a Roman Catholic will challenge you on sola scriptura. But what they won't do is defend their positive position, which is sola ecclesia.

Now, what does sola ecclesia mean? Well, sola ecclesia means the ultimate authority of the church. Now, they'll say, no, no, no, no, no, we have scripture, we have tradition, we have the magisterium, we have the threefold authority of the church.

But think with me for a second, Luke. According to Roman Catholicism, who gets to define what is and what is not scripture? Who gets to determine the canon of scripture? The church does, right? And who gets to interpret infallibly?

Now, some people would argue they've never done this. Many Roman Catholic scholars would admit that at best there might be seven verses, grand total, the entirety of the canon of the Bible that Rome has dogmatically defined means this.

But other people would say, no, they've never actually even done that. But theoretically, Rome claims the capacity to infallibly define what scripture means. So if Rome can define what scripture is and what scripture means, how can Rome be under the authority of scripture?

How can scripture be an external authority that can correct the magisterium of the church? It's not possible. Oh, but we've got tradition. Well, wait a minute. If you go back and listen to the debates I've done with Jerry Matitix and Patrick Madrid and people like that, you'll hear us talking a lot about church history, the early church fathers, things like that.

And when I quote early church fathers, who, for example, do not interpret Matthew 16, 18 the way Roman Catholicism does today, or who demonstrate that there wasn't any, there wasn't a single bishop in Rome until the second century.

No one thought there needed to be a single successor of Peter or the fact that the Marian dogmas were unknown to anybody. The Marian dogmas that were defined by Rome infallibly, especially the last one, the bodily assumption of Mary, unknown in the first half millennium of the church as far as being preached by the church or taught as dogma or anything like that.

When I quote early church fathers along those lines, well, that's not tradition. But then when they quote early church fathers to substantiate Roman Catholic positions, that's tradition. So who gets to determine what tradition is?

Rome does. And who gets to interpret those early church fathers? Rome does. So what's your final authority in Roman Catholicism? Whatever the church says. It's not scripture and it's not even tradition.

And so where do you get that from scripture? Where does Jesus teach that? Where do the disciples teach that? Where does a single apostle say to anyone, look to the successor of Peter in Rome and he will tell you everything you need to believe.

It's not there. And it's not what the early church believed. And the great doctrines of the faith, such as the Trinity, the Christological controversies, the people that were involved in those things, none of them believed that all you had to do was go ask the Pope in Rome.

I mean, even after the Council of Nicaea, Arianism became the predominant perspective. Even the Bishop of Rome collapsed on that issue. Only Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, stayed firm on that. So historically, this kind of argumentation, it collapses under cross-examination.

It sounds real good when you're just talking to somebody and maybe you haven't done a lot of reading of church history yourself, or maybe you're not familiar with why Sola Scriptura says what it says, maybe not even familiar with what it says, because very often they will misrepresent, because they've had it misrepresented to them, what Sola Scriptura is.

Sola Scriptura is not the claim that everything that can possibly be known is in scripture. Sola Scriptura is not the claim that there was never a period of time when God's word was in oral form. Because obviously, when the apostles preached, what they preached was authoritative.

It took decades before it was written down. But the point is that we don't have apostles anymore, and Rome admits this. Rome admits that revelation has ceased. So when revelation has ceased, what is it that we are directed to as our, what will perfect the man of God to do all the good works God has called him to do?

According to 2 Timothy 3, it's that which is theanoustos, which is the scriptures. And remember, when Paul met with the Ephesian elders and told him he'd never meet with them again, he was that they were never gonna see him again, he warned them.

There are gonna be people that are gonna arise and they are going to draw disciples away after themselves. And this would be the perfect time, Luke, for Paul to say, well, all you gotta do is follow Peter.

All you gotta do is follow Peter's successors at Rome. But you remember what he did in Acts chapter 20?

That's not what he said.

He said, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is exactly what he did to Timothy. When he said those words to Timothy, those were the last things he said to Timothy, and he was warning Timothy about the same thing.

Difficult times are gonna come. False teachers are gonna come. But he doesn't say to either the elders at the church at Ephesus, he doesn't say to Timothy, follow the successor of Peter at Rome. Instead, he directs them to that which is unchanging, that which is the ultimate authority, God's inspired word.

And so there's much more that can be said about that subject, but just in the way that you presented it in regards to, well, you know, that's not the only thing that's the honest to us. Actually, it is.

And I would challenge your Roman Catholic friends, if they're gonna use passages like when Paul says, hold to the traditions, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us, if they're gonna try to read into that word of mouth tradition, an oral tradition that contains a body of revelation that's not in scripture, then I think it's fair of you to go show that to me in history.

In other words, what has Rome defined on the basis of this tradition? Well, papal infallibility, the bodily assumption of Mary, immaculate conception, they might even claim such things as purgatory, indulgences, et cetera, et cetera.

Okay, show me where the Thessalonians believe that. Show me where the early church believed those things and said that they were taught by the apostles. Because according to what Paul says, they already had received these things.

These were hidden things. These were things that had been preached. Now, the reality is that text is simply talking about the gospel, the gospel that Paul preached to them and the gospel that Paul wrote to them.

It's the same thing. It's not some extra body of revelation, but challenge them to show you where these, especially these things that have been made a dogma. I remember a dogma, Luke, according to Roman Catholicism is something you have to believe de fide, by faith.

You cannot reject that and be a faithful Roman Catholic. So it is, I've had Jerry Matitix, a Roman Catholic fellow years ago that I debated. Jerry Matitix put it this way. He said, we have just as much warrant to believe in the bodily assumption of Mary as we have to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And why would he say that? Because the Roman Catholic Church had defined both as dogmas. And that is the only reason to believe either one. Now, the reality is, Luke, the biblical and historical evidence of the resurrection is astoundingly strong and clear.

The biblical and historical evidence of the assumption of Mary is non-existent. It's not there. So that's what happens when you end up embracing sola ecclesia is you end up having to believe things that are utterly absent from the Bible and utterly absent from the earliest tradition as well, but they've been defined by Rome.

So once you bow the knee to the papacy, then you believe what the Pope says. Now, of course, today that's a little bit problematic because we have a pretty liberal Pope. So technically he could come along and say something really wild.

And who's to know whether he's one of the anti-Popes or one of the real Popes. I mean, there were decades where there were two different Popes, then there were three Popes, and they each anathematized each other.

And the history of the papacy is long and sordid as well, raises all sorts of issues along those lines. But the issue of authority, very, very important. That's why we've debated it numerous times. And I would highly recommend that you take the time to look at some of the debates we've done on that particular subject, because I think it really is helpful to see both sides together.

Justification by Faith and the Meaning of Saving Faith

Can I interrupt something else by you?

Oh, please.

You've got, I'm in no rush. I'll answer anything you want.

All right, cool. So one of the beliefs that I hold still and I have held since I was like really young was by grace you've been saved through faith of your own works. And then I've been reading through scripture lately.

I've seen more stuff, like in Romans, if you confess with your mouth to Jesus as Lord, you'll be saved. For those who endure to the end, you'll be saved. I think James 2, 24, that was a Catholic thing for them to be too.

Those seem like there's more than faith involved in a lot of times too, which is like something I, it's, I see where they're coming from with that kind of stuff, you know? But at the same time, it just doesn't settle, right?

Because I feel like obviously there's nothing we can do to merit salvation, you know? So while it may appear that way, it's just, I feel like I'm interpreting it incorrectly, so.

Okay, huge subject. The statement, he who endures to the end shall be saved is a perfect example of the fact that there are, there are two starting points that you can adopt in reading scripture. Only one of them is going to be consistent.

One is a, is a idea that, well, when the scriptures speak, they are giving us prescriptions as to how we are to be saved. And so by your endurance, you bring about your own salvation. The other is to recognize that the gospel is God's greatest means of glorifying himself.

And that there are so many texts in scripture, not just the one you quote in Ephesians 2, 8, 9, for by grace you've been saved through faith and that not of yourselves is a gift of God, not of works as any man should boast.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. There is the, there is the perfect balance where you have God is the one who saves, God is the one who's glorified by that act of salvation.

And then it is his intention, having brought about regeneration, having justified us by faith, having adopted us into his family, having placed his spirit within us and made us new creatures in Christ.

Then what does he want us to do? He wants us to be conformed to the image of Christ, to be his, his hands and his feet in this world. We are the ones that he uses to bring the gospel message to others.

He wants to sanctify us, make us holy, make us like Christ to be salt and light in this world. And so we are called to live in good works because it's, now it's our nature. It's what we want to do. We're not earning something from God.

We are not adding to the righteousness of Christ that has been given to us. Instead, what we are doing is we are demonstrating who we are in Jesus Christ. And so when people understand that biblical truth, then you look at a text like Jesus, when Jesus says, he who endures the end shall be saved.

And yes, saving faith, which is described in scripture as the gift of God given to his people, will endure. And so I believe firmly that the only ones who will be saved are those who endure to the end.

But what that means is the faith they've been given is a faith that will last. That's what makes it a divine saving faith. So you can either read scripture in a descriptive way where it's describing what true believers are like, or in a prescriptive way.

This is how you become a true believer. Only one is going to be consistent. You can't read the Roman Catholic way. In fact, I would highly recommend, again, these are issues, Luke, that for your own sake, I hope you will, you're 18, you've got time, look deeply into these things.

We'll be more than happy to direct you to all the debates that we've done because we've debated justification, we've debated purgatory, for example. The debate that I did with a Roman Catholic priest and scholar, Father Peter Stravinskis, two PhDs from Ivy League schools, we debated the subject of purgatory.

It ended up being more on justification than it was on purgatory. But again, take the time to listen to both sides. Be happy to recommend the best books to you on this particular subject because this is an area that has been dealt with for a long, long time.

Unfortunately, most modern Roman Catholics and non-Roman Catholics don't know much about church history. We don't know where we came from. We don't know much about either early church history or the Reformation or what the issues were or any of these things.

And so make sure that you stay in contact. We'll be happy to direct you to those resources, provide those resources to you if you don't have access to them. But what you wanna do is you want to, excuse me, look at Romans.

And here is a question that I have asked my Roman Catholic friends for a long, long time. You got your Bible with you?

Oh, I do not right now.

Okay, well, I'll read it for you. And then just write down or just, I'm sure you can remember Romans chapter four. But in Romans chapter four, here's what Paul says beginning at verse four. Now to the one who works, his wage is not credited as a favor, but as what is due.

Now, what's he saying there? Are you gainfully employed at the moment?

You asking me?

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Okay, so you go into work and it's payday and you see your boss coming up to you and he's got an envelope and you can tell it's your paycheck. Now, when he hands it to you, he's not gonna say to you, or at least if he does, you better start getting really nervous.

Here's a gift for you. Cause you put your hours in. That's not a gift. It is what is due to you. In fact, if he doesn't pay you, you can sue because that remuneration, that remuneration, sorry, that pay is what is due to you because it is owed to you.

And that's what Paul is saying in Romans 4 .4. Now, the one who works, the one who puts out that effort, his wage is not reckoned to him as grace. Literally, the Greek word in the original is grace, as a gift, but as a debt, what is due to him.

Then the next verse, but to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. So Paul takes the exact same phrase. He simply negates it to the one not working, the one who is not putting out some kind of an effort with the idea he's going to get something back for that.

But instead of that, is believing upon the one who justifies the ungodly. So his faith is directed toward the God who declares righteous those who are ungodly. This is, these are not words for people who think they're godly.

These are not words for people who think that they have self-righteousness. These are words for people who recognize I am ungodly, I am unworthy before God. I know the only way that I can have righteousness is if I, by faith, believe in the promises God has given to me in Christ.

And Paul says that kind of faith, his faith is credited as righteousness. And then he gives an illustration. He says, just as David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits, or again, it's the term legizimai in Greek.

It means to impute, impute righteousness apart from works, apart from works. Not by doing works, not by fulfilling the sacraments, not by crawling upstairs on your knees, not by going to priests. And there are no priests in the New Testament, Christian priests.

There's one high priest. All Christians are priests in a technical sense, but there's no special class of priests. Not by any of this kind of stuff. Instead, God credits righteousness apart from works.

And then he quotes from the Old Testament. He quotes from the Psalter. And what I've done down through the years, Luke, is I have asked my Roman Catholic friends. He quotes from the 32nd Psalm. I've asked them, who is the blessed man of Romans chapter four, verses seven and eight.

Here's what Romans four, seven and eight says. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account.

Now, literally Romans four, eight says, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Using the very same word impute that was used in verse six about imputing righteousness to us. So in Roman Catholicism, who is the blessed man?

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not impute to him. And Luke, Roman Catholics cannot answer that question if they know their own doctrine.

In fact, when I asked Peter Stravinskis, Father Peter Stravinskis, Peter Stravinskis, editor of the Catholic Answer, Peter Stravinskis with two PhDs from Ivy League schools, when I first asked him, who is the blessed man of Romans chapter four?

You know what his answer was? Jesus, Jesus. So Jesus is blessed because the Lord would not impute his sin to him? Whoa, I realized he had completely missed the text, did not understand the text, maybe was rushed, whatever.

And so I went back and I'm like, I don't really think you meant to say that. I don't really think you meant to say that Jesus is the blessed man that is being spoken of by David, being quoted by Paul in Romans chapter four.

You wanna take another shot at that? And he, having realized his mistake, said the only thing that a Roman Catholic could consistently say given Roman Catholic dogma and the fact that Rome does not have a finished work of Christ and a gospel that brings peace, he said, well, I hope to be.

And Luke, if you go that direction, that's all you can ever say. No Roman Catholic can look at this text and say, that's me. That's me, I'm the blessed man. But the point is for the apostle Paul, every single believer in Jesus Christ is the blessed man of Romans four, seven, and eight.

Every single believer in Jesus Christ has had their lawless deeds forgiven, has had their sins covered. Every single believer in Jesus Christ, their sins were imputed to Jesus Christ. His righteousness is imputed to me.

The reason that I have peace with God, Luke, is because the righteousness that is mine is a perfect righteousness. He made him who knew no sin to be righteous, to be sin in our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That is the great exchange and Rome denies it. Rome doesn't believe in that. And hence the gospel that Rome gives to you can never bring you peace. You are constantly on the treadmill of sacraments. You can commit venial sins and you have to go to a priest and you have to go through confession and you have to go through penance and you have to work the temporal punishments of those venial sins off, or you can commit a mortal sin.

And if you commit the mortal sin, then you lose the grace of justification. You become the enemy of God. If you die in that state, there's no such thing as purgatory. There's no such thing as a second chance.

You do not have the opportunity for salvation. You are lost. Now I'm talking about historic Orthodox Roman Catholicism. I hope you realize, Luke, that under the banner of Roman Catholicism today, there is every kind of belief in the world.

And in fact, I would think that today, probably the Pope and certainly the majority of the bishops of Rome are at least inclusivists who would believe you could be saved without actually knowing who Jesus Christ is.

And I think a bunch of them are universalists who think everyone's gonna be saved. I mean, that's just a fact. And if you go to places like Boston College and places similar to that where you have tremendously liberal Roman Catholicism, most of this stuff, they don't even believe in anymore.

So I'm talking what Rome actually believes. And generally, when Roman Catholics are seeking to try to convert someone, they tend to be very conservative. If they're arguing with you about sola scriptura, they tend to be very conservative.

But the reality is they're in the minority in Roman Catholicism now. I don't think that the Bishop of Rome would say the same things to you that they are saying, which is an amazing thing to realize. So when I'm talking about venial sins and mortal sins and stuff like that, I'm talking about Rome as it existed really up to the 1950s and still exists in many places.

And this is still what's taught in universal Catholic catechism. But you're gonna run into all sorts of Roman Catholics who will believe an entire spectrum of things. You just have to keep that in mind.

I have a feeling your friends though are probably much more on the conservative side because they're the only ones that have any reason to be arguing about sola scriptura or anything like that. So do you see why a text like that is so important?

Because fundamentally, Luke, the reason that I wrote a book called Roman Catholic Controversy, which if you'll stay on the line, we're done talking, Rich will get your address and we'll send it to you, okay?

The primary reason I wrote that book was because I am absolutely convinced that the gospel of the Church of Rome can never bring anyone true peace. It cannot because it does not have a finished work of Christ.

If you understand what Rome teaches about the mass, they teach that it is a propitiatory sacrifice. That because of the alleged miracle of transubstantiation, Jesus is rendered body, soul, blood, and divinity on the altar of the Roman Catholic Church by the sacramental authority of the priest.

And his once for all sacrifice is represented in an unbloody fashion. And this has a propitiatory effect, but it's a limited propitiatory effect. That's why masses can be offered for the dead. Masses can be offered for people who are in purgatory, but it's limited.

And that's why a faithful Roman Catholic can go to mass literally every single day and still commit a mortal sin and lose the grace of justification and be lost. They can approach the once for all sacrifice of Christ 10 ,000 times, 20 ,000 times in their life and never be perfected by it because it's not a finished work.

Therefore, there can be no peace. And yet what the Bible says in Romans 5, 1 is, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. True shalom. Luke, I asked Mitch Pacwa in the first or second debate we did, I forget which one it was.

They were on two different nights.

This was 1990.

So you're not old enough to realize that as you get old like me, you forget which night things happened on, but you'll find out someday. And I asked Mitch Pacwa during our debate a very important question.

This is what I love about Mitch Pacwa. He's an honest man and he never engaged in cheap debating tricks. That's what I really, really, really liked about him. And I asked him a question. I said, Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

If breaking the greatest commandment is not a mortal sin, I don't know what else would be. So Mitch Pacwa, if you could commit a mortal sin before you go to bed this evening, which theoretically he must admit he could, lose the grace of justification, no longer be the friend of God, then how can you say that you have true peace with God?

Because you know that the term that lies behind Paul's use of the word peace there, in Greek it's Irenae, but Paul was the Hebrew of the Hebrews. He spoke Hebrew. And what's the Hebrew word for peace?

Even you know what that is, shalom. Shalom, we've all heard the term. And since Mitch speaks Hebrew, he knows that shalom is not just a ceasefire. You may know that in Israel today, they have a missile defense system active 24 hours a day.

Their military is on constant alert because of the knife attacks that have been happening all across Israel. Everyone's armed and very nervous. So even on a day where there's no missile attacks, no bombings, no knifings, there is no shalom in Israel because shalom is a wellness of relationship.

It's a positive thing. And Mitch Pacwa knowing that, I asked him, you knowing what shalom means, how can you say if warfare could break out between you and God before you go to bed this evening, how can you say that you have peace with God?

And Luke, you can listen. We can direct you to the MP3 of this. It's on video, but like I said, the Roman Catholic side won't release the video, unfortunately. You can listen to him. He tried to answer at first and didn't really answer the question that I had asked him.