July 15, 2025 Show with Leonardo de Chirico on “Proclaiming the True Biblical Gospel in Italy”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

Jim Thorpe. It's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 15th day of July 2025.

Before I introduce my guest and our topic, I do want to pay tribute briefly to one of my modern -day heroes, who is now in eternity with Jesus Christ.

I'm sure many of you have heard by now of the passing onto glory of John MacArthur, world -renowned radio and television

Bible teacher, author, and pastor, and conference speaker. John went into paradise at 6 .17

p .m. California time last evening, 9 .17 p .m.

Eastern time, and Phil Johnson has already agreed to come on the program somewhere in the neighborhood of two weeks from now to join me in a special memorial program in tribute to John MacArthur.

Joining us that day, God willing, will be my dear friend, Dr. Doug McMasters, who is a pastor of New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island, New York, who at one time was director of pastoral relations at Grace To You, the media ministry of John MacArthur.

We may even also be joined that day by my longtime dear friend,

Pastor Jim Capo, who is retired from pastoral ministry, but at one time was pastor of the

Massapequa Church of God on Long Island, and he absolutely loved the ministry of John MacArthur, and he was my co -host on the first and only time

I had the privilege to interview John MacArthur on Iron Trump and Zion Radio in 2007, almost 20 years ago.

I am thrilled to hear from Jim Capo that he may indeed be able to work it out to join us also, so I'll be praying for that.

So, please pray for the family of John MacArthur and also for the congregation at Grace Community Church of Sun Valley, California, as they mourn the loss of this giant of the faith, now in eternity with Christ.

But today, I am thrilled to have as a first -time guest, Leonardo De Chirico.

He is a Reformed Baptist church planter in Rome, and you can find out more about that congregation at brecciadiroma .it,

and we'll be repeating that later. He's also director of Reformanda Initiative, and today we're going to be addressing proclaiming the true biblical gospel and refuting the falsehoods of Roman Catholicism in Italy.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trump and Zion Radio, Pastor Leonardo De Chirico.

Hello, good morning, and Christopher and all our listeners. Warm greetings from Rome, Italy.

Thank you, and am I still pronouncing your name correctly? Yes, you did a fantastic job.

That's good to know. Well, tell us about this congregation,

Brecciadiroma. Yes, by God's grace, the church was planted in 2010, 15 years ago, as a

Reformed Baptist church in the heart of the historic city of Rome. And the church was and is still part of a network of Reformed Baptist churches in Italy, more than 15 churches committed to the 1689

London Confession of Faith, and these churches are to be found in the whole of the country from north to south, and Rome, our church, is one of them.

So in 2010, I moved to Rome. I'm Italian, but I'm not

Roman by birth. I moved to Rome with the support and blessing of the

Reformed Baptist churches in Italy to plant a church here in the city, as well as to encourage a church planting movement in the city of Rome and beyond.

And Rome is the capital city of the nation. Almost four million people live here.

Rome is the center place of the Roman Catholic Church, the place where the

Pope lives, the place where the Vatican is located. And so it brings unique challenges for gospel witness, and we started gathering people, preaching the word of God in homes first, and then by God's grace, since 2016, in a building that was eventually purchased and is still the place where we have our

Sunday services and our other church activities and other events, right in the city center, half a kilometer from the

Colosseum, one of the most iconic monuments in the world.

We're there preaching the gospel of Jesus. And so since 2010, we saw some conversions, people coming to pray, the church was established a few years after.

And in 2018, the first church planting work was also launched out of our church in another area of the city of Rome called

San Paolo, a large neighborhood of 130 ,000 people without an evangelical church.

So 11 members of our church were commissioned to plant a second church in this neighborhood called

San Paolo, San Paolo. In 2022, the second church planting work was launched in another area of Rome called

Prati, next to the Vatican, very close to where the

Pope lives. Nine members were commissioned to plant a church in that area of the same city, the city of Rome.

Our vision and prayer is to plant two more churches in the city of Rome before 2030.

And so that's the vision 2030 that we have. And it's a prayer request.

It's our dream and goal and desire to see the gospel spreading in the city of Rome through faithful churches, serving the cause of the gospel and serving the community around us.

So it's a fairly young church and church planting movement, but we're seeing signs of God's blessings and approval.

And we are encouraged to see what God is doing. Although, as you may imagine, we also face challenges and issues, especially given the context

God has placed us in, majority Catholic context that has had no reformation in the past, has actually fought against Protestants for centuries and not providing a space for Protestant churches for centuries and only experiencing and having religious freedom since the end of the

Second World War, so fairly recently, 70 years, 80 years ago, and still grappling with that long legacy of lack of religious freedom and opposition towards Protestantism.

That is the context that God has placed us in, the context where we serve the cause of the gospel, the context out of which

God is at work and in conversions, in lives being transformed by the gospel and being discipled according to the

Christian faith. And now tell us something about a couple of ministries that you're involved in.

The Reformanda Initiative, whose website is reformandainitiative .org, and also the

Vatican Files, which is found at vaticanfiles .org. Tell us about those.

Yeah, being in the city of Rome and a pastor and theologian here,

I felt God was calling me to serve the global church in providing analysis, evaluation, insight on Roman Catholicism.

Roman Catholicism has in Rome its very center, and having done my

PhD on the Second Vatican Council, the most important religious event in the 20th century, and being now a pastor in Rome, I felt that it was my responsibility to provide some help to not only the local churches or the national churches, but also to the more international work of the gospel.

Roman Catholicism is everywhere, from south to north, from east to west, and everywhere you go in the world, you'll find the

Roman Catholic Church in one way or another. And so the

Vatican Files began as reports, monthly reports on Vatican and Roman Catholic issues, be they papal encyclicals, be they

Catholic events, be they issues coming out of the

Vatican, providing reports for evangelical readership.

And so I accredited myself as a journalist to the Vatican Press Office, so that I could attend press conferences and interviewing

Vatican officials, and out of that initial beginnings, the

Vatican Files website was established, and every month, first day of the month, a new article comes out, and there's a free subscription, and people who want to subscribe can do so by adding their email address, and they will receive, on the first of every month, the new

Vatican Files. And up to now, there are almost 250 articles on a variety of issues related to the

Vatican, the Roman Catholic Church, and the popes, what they say, their speeches, their initiatives, etc.

Then, as this work grew, I began to be invited to speak at conferences and preach in various places on the topic of Catholicism, both nationally and internationally.

And so in 2016, the Reformation Initiative was launched, an initiative seeking to equip, unite, and resource evangelical leaders on how to engage

Roman Catholicism faithfully and wisely. And so since 2016, we have organized the

Rome Scholars and Leaders Network, a week -long seminar for scholars and leaders from around the world to study the reality of Catholicism from an evangelical theological perspective.

And then, out of those initiatives, many invitations have been coming in to participate at conferences and seminars around the world.

So with my colleagues, we also go and speak to conferences in Latin America, Europe, and the

U .S., and Australia, touching on Roman Catholicism from a theological, historical, apologetic point of view, and helping evangelicals not to be seduced by what appears to be the change that is going on in Rome and Roman Catholicism, but at the same time,

Rome is not really changing, and not changing its commitments that are not grounded on Scripture alone, and are not focused on Christ alone, but are spurious commitments, and they're leading to a false, flawed account of the gospel.

So the ministry has been expanding, because even in recent years, in the

U .S. or European countries, Roman Catholicism has become more of an issue, even among evangelical circles, seeing a number of especially young people being attracted to it, and so all of a sudden churches and ministries have begun to pay attention, more attention, to Catholicism.

And so that has meant that we have received a growing number of invitations and opportunities to serve the wider

Church. Praise God, let me repeat those websites. First of all,

Reformation Initiative can be found at reformondainitiative .org,

reformondainitiative .org, and the Vatican Files can be found at vaticanfiles .org,

vaticanfiles .org, and God willing, we'll repeat those websites toward the end of the program.

And now, as we always do when we have a first -time guest, we would like you to give a summary of your salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious upbringing you've had, and the providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to Himself and saved you. So let's hear your story.

Yeah, thank you very much. I was raised in a Catholic family, as most of my fellow citizens in Italy, and when

I was a little boy, my parents were visited by a missionary couple knocking doors in our hometown up in the north of the country.

They were part of a missionary team called Operation Mobilization, going door to door, knocking, literally knocking doors and trying to talk to people and share the gospel.

My father let them in, and a conversation began. This missionary couple came from Switzerland and could hardly speak

Italian, but enough to engage a conversation that eventually led to the conversion of my father and mother.

So as they began to talk, this missionary couple asked my father, are you a

Christian? And my father responded, yes, I am Italian. They said, yes, we know you're

Italian, but that was not the question. The question is, are you a Christian? And my father said, well,

I'm Italian. There is no difference. No, they said, no, being a Christian means being a disciple of Jesus, being a follower of Jesus, being a believer.

That was the first time my father had ever heard such a definition. And then the second question was, have you ever read the

Bible? My father turned to my mom and they said, dear, do we have a

Bible in our home? My mom said, no, dear, we don't. They had never opened the

Bible. And so all of a sudden they realized that they were carrying the label

Christian, but they didn't know what it meant. And they had never opened the

Bible, the word of God. These missionaries helped them to see that how can you define yourself as a

Christian and not reading the word of God, not listening to the voice of Christ.

And so a Bible study began in that after the following week around the kitchen table.

I was a boy, as I said, I couldn't understand much at the time, but I could see what was going on in my parents' lives.

After six months, my dad became a Christian. And after a few months, my mom followed in.

It took a few years for me to process what was going on. And when I was a teenager,

I made a profession of faith. I confessed my sin. I realized I was a sinner.

And I realized that the gospel was good news for me. And I realized what

Jesus had done on his incarnation, life and death on the cross and his resurrection.

And I realized that I was lost outside of Christ. And so I became a

Christian. I was baptized later in the local church and I have had the privilege of following the

Lord since. That has been the greatest gift in my life.

And it started out of a conversation initiated by a missionary couple who could hardly speak

Italian. Now that happened 57 years ago. And this missionary couple a month ago, they're now in their 80s, went back and visited my parents.

And it was a moving meeting after so many years, a reunion in the gospel.

And so it was a joyful reunion where the missionaries were able to visit my parents and to whom they had shared the gospel for the first time.

Now, last week, my dad passed away. He was 90 years old and he was a fine believer.

After being converted to Christ, he became an elder in the local church and has always been a zealous evangelist for the gospel.

Praise God. Yeah, he's with the Lord and he passed away last week.

Last week? Last week, yeah. Wow. He was 90 years old, leaving a legacy of faithfulness to the gospel and passion for evangelism.

And so we praise God. Out of that encounter, almost 60 years ago, not only my family was converted, church was planted, and I was also led to Christ in due time.

And then many more other things happened. So God uses a small beginning.

God uses weak vessels. God uses people who are feeble, and yet they trust the power of the gospel that is powerful unto salvation.

Hallelujah. Now, how and when in your journey as a new

Christian did you eventually come to discover and embrace the doctrines of Reformed theology?

When I was converted, the church that I was part of was a kind of missionary, newly established church with no confessional boundaries.

Evangelical, they loved the gospel, they loved the Lord, but they had no awareness of the confessional boundaries and the doctrines of grace.

So that was the beginning of my journey, that non -denominational kind of dispensationalist,

Brethren type church. Eventually, when I grew up, my first encounter with the doctrines of grace was through the reading of the book

Knowing God by J .I. Packer. Amen. And it was at that point that I began to realize that I had to do, and God was calling me to a more serious study of God's word.

I had a superficial knowledge of the Bible, a kind of a pick -and -chew, cherry -picking knowledge of God's word, and I had to dedicate myself to a more thorough study of Scripture.

So after J .I. Packer, I began to read Calvin's Institutes, and then followed by the biblical theology of Gerardus Vos, and then books by Walter Chantry, R .C.

Sproul, and some classics of Reformed theology like Turretin and Warfield.

And it was at that point that I became convinced of the doctrines of grace, and I didn't become a

Presbyterian, but there was a book that helped me,

Children of Abraham, that's the title, that helped me to see that and to have a more covenantal view of baptism.

And so I didn't buy into the whole covenant theology stuff from a

Presbyterian point of view, but I became convinced that the

Reformed Baptist confessional position is the best description of what the

Bible teaches. And I have rested on that since, and I consider myself an evangelical first, so I have sweet and important relationships with all brothers and sisters in evangelical faith.

I'm an evangelical Reformed Baptist, so evangelical first, Reformed second,

Baptist third, and in that order, that gives me a sense of identity as well as a sense of openness to what

God is doing throughout His church, and that has been part of my heritage and part of my teaching.

Amen. Well, we are going to our first commercial break, and I do want to let our listeners know that we may be joined at some point in the interview with a co -host,

Brian McLachlan, who is a sponsor of this program. He is the president of Securecom Group, and he was called into an unavoidable, unforeseen, extremely important business meeting and could not join us immediately.

He may not be able to join us at all, but he may possibly, if the Lord wills, join us later on in the program.

Brian is the one who gave me the idea to do a couple of interviews on the evangelism of the doctrines of grace in Italy, since he had just recently returned from a trip to Italy with his

Italian -American wife and was involved in some outdoor evangelism there.

And so, God willing, he will be joining us later on in the program.

I do also want to let our listeners know, after this live program is over, you may want to listen to an interview

I just did last week on July 9th with Matt Swannevelt on bringing the gospel of sovereign grace to northern

Italy. And he is also a church planter in Italy, not a native of Italy, as the last name might indicate to you.

And I believe you are familiar with Matt Swannevelt. Are you not,

Leonardo? I know something of his church in Trieste. I don't think

I ever met him in person. I know the work of the church he's part of. Yes, he actually brought you up in our interview last week.

Okay. Favorably. Good, good. And so we're going into our first commercial break.

If any of you have questions that you'd like to ask of our guest, we already have

Ted from Moundsville, Alabama, who submitted a question. If anybody else would like to join

Ted with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries, announcing that this

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Living Christ in Loisville. Then on Sunday, September 21st at 1 .30

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For more details on the free pastor's luncheon, visit ironsharpensironradio .com.

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I'm Simon O'Mahoney, pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Originally from Cork, Ireland, the

Lord in his sovereign providence has called me to shepherd this new and growing congregation here in Cumberland County.

At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession. We embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our

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In our worship, we sing psalms and the great hymns of the faith, and we gather around the Lord's table every

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

And we are now back with Leonardo de Chiarico, who is a

Reformed Baptist pastor in Rome, and we're talking about the spread of the doctrines and the gospel of sovereign grace in Italy.

And if you have any questions, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And before we go to Ted in Moundsville, Alabama's question,

I do want to ask you, after you became, by the mercy and grace of our sovereign

Lord, God's Savior and King Jesus Christ, when and how did you come to realize that God had placed the call upon your life to enter into the pastoral ministry?

Yes. Soon after being converted to Christ, I felt a sense of God calling me to something that was not clear at that point, but was certainly put on my heart.

When I was a young Christian, I thought I was going to become a missionary, an overseas missionary.

And actually, I also went on a mission trip to Somalia and the whole of Africa, Mogadishu, before the civil war broke out in 1989.

But that was not the way that God had prepared for me. So after graduating at university,

I got married, and the local church we were part of encouraged us to think about going to Bible college in the

UK. And so after working in order to earn some money to make it possible, we left

Italy to go to Wales, UK, to the

Evangelical Theological College of Wales. And we spent there, my wife and I, two years doing some theological studies.

And after that, I applied to the PhD program at King's College in London.

At that time, we received a calling coming from seven

Reformed Baptist churches, asking us to come back and to be involved in a church planting work in the north of the country.

That was an answer to our prayer and an open door for the beginnings of our ministry.

We moved back in 1997 and started doing church planting work in the city of Ferrara, in the northeastern part of the country, the only

Italian city that Calvin visited in his lifetime, and a beautiful Renaissance university city.

We spent there 12 years church planting and eventually pastoring the church that had been planted.

And so it was a call that I received earlier on in my

Christian life, but it was eventually unfolded. It was not clear from day one when and where and how

I was going to serve because of the gospel, and especially in pastoral ministry.

It came out in different ways, and eventually the will of God, God's will became clear and evident.

And it has been such since. Then after 12 years in Ferrara, the same group of churches encouraged us to move to Rome to start a church planting work in the city.

And that is what we've been doing since 2010. By the way,

I do want to let you know, before I forget, that I plan on sharing this recording of our interview with the widow of Walt Chantry, because you mentioned him earlier as one of the powerful influences upon your life in coming to Christ and coming to the

Reformed faith. Walt was a friend of mine. I had the privilege to interview him several times.

The last time of which I was honored to have that interview face -to -face with him, he was right in my studio sitting next to me.

And I've maintained contact with his widow, Joey, and I'm sure she'll be thrilled to know of the impact that her late husband had upon you and your life and ministry.

Yeah, the book I read when I was a young Christian that impacted me was

The Gospel Today, True or False. Yeah, and its original title was

Today's Gospel, Authentic or Synthetic. Yeah, okay, okay. I re -translated from it.

But that's the book. Yes, and that was the first interview

I had with him many years ago on WNYG Radio in New York, where I used to broadcast.

Okay, we have Ted from Moundville, Alabama, has a question. Pastor De Chiarico mentioned that Roman Catholicism was still strong in all the various regions of Italy.

I'm wondering if he could briefly break down how Reformed theology is faring in the different regions of his nation.

A few years ago, I heard some encouraging reports regarding some vibrant Reformed congregations in the north of Italy.

I'm wondering if that is still the case and in which other regions it is doing well.

Perhaps Ted missed my interview last week with Pastor Swannvelt in northern

Italy. But if you could, Pastor Leonardo, answer

Ted's questions. Yeah, thank you very much for your question.

In Italy, we are almost 55 million people, and if we count all evangelicals across the spectrum of evangelicalism, we would not reach 1 % of that population.

So we're talking about half a million people, more or less, counting all evangelicals.

Of that amount of people, only a fraction is of Reformed persuasions and belong to Reformed congregations.

There are perhaps 70, 80 Reformed congregations throughout the country.

There is no one single region that has more than others, but there are mainly in big cities,

Milan, Rome, Padua. These are the places where you find the more

Reformed congregations. So it's not a big movement. It's not something that is exploding in terms of numbers, but there is a steady growth.

When I was converted to Christ 50 years ago, there were only a handful of Reformed believers in the country.

Now we can have, as I said, 60, 70 congregations belonging to different traditions within the

Reformed faith. But there has been a significant growth.

Nothing explosive, nothing impressive, but we are grateful to God because He's been working powerfully and is working powerfully to spread the gospel and to establish hope for Reformed congregations.

Great. Well, thank you very much, Ted, and thank you for being a faithful listener of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio going back to 2005.

We have Carol Ann in Colchester, Vermont, who says it might be welcome and beneficial for our audience for you to break down the stark contrast between Roman Catholicism and Reformed Protestantism.

Yeah, it's a very good question, and there could be many ways of responding to this question.

But one way of doing it is to recognize the fact that Rome is not committed to Scripture alone.

And so the basis of authority is much more than Scripture.

It includes the tradition of the church. It includes the magisterium, the official teaching of the church.

The Bible is only in between all these other voices, and ultimately the

Bible is not the supreme authority. So when Rome seeks authority, she seeks in herself, not in something external, not in the

Word of God, not in Scripture. That's one way of putting the stark difference.

The other way is to say that Rome is not committed to Christ alone.

It has a high view of Christ, of course. It speaks of Christ, but Christ is not the supreme only mediator between God and mankind.

He is surrounded by sub -mediators, Mary and the saints, and most

Catholics, they do pray not to Christ directly, but through sub -mediators.

They trust these mediators more than Christ, and so they don't have a personal relationship with Christ because that relationship is filtered through other mediators.

So there's no Scripture alone commitment. There's no Christ alone commitment. There is no commitment to grace alone as the only means and source of our salvation.

And Rome, of course, speaks of grace, but it understands grace as a help, divine help, that we need in order to do our own bit, in order to contribute to our own salvation.

It is not the gift of God that is sufficient from beginning to end to turn us away from our sin and towards the leading

God in Christ. So grace is a help rather than a salvation that is given in Christ.

And faith is also something that clearly separates us from Rome.

Rome is no sense of faith alone. You don't receive God's grace by trusting

Christ for our salvation. You can be hopeful of your salvation if you do your good works, if you receive the sacrament, if you come under the sacramental system of the church.

Faith is necessary for Rome, but it's not sufficient to receive

God's salvation. So that's another way of seeing the distinction.

And then finally, I would say the stark difference is clearly seen in the fact that Rome is not committed to a life that is lived for the glory of God alone.

Instead, Catholic life, Catholic devotion, Catholic practice is saturated with devotion dedicated to Mary, the saints, to different people and shadowing the glory of Christ and not pointing people to Christ, but pointing people to other figures.

So in a sense, the five solas of the Reformation, these are helpful tools that help us to see what is at stake with Rome.

Rome is not committed to scripture alone as the supreme authority. Rome is not committed to Christ alone as the only mediator.

Rome is not committed to grace alone as the only source for our salvation. Rome is not committed to faith alone as the only means by which we can receive

God's grace. Rome is not committed to God's glory alone as the cheap end of our life.

And so, Rome is not committed to the gospel, the biblical gospel. And that commitment that is not grounded in the gospel can be seen throughout

Catholic doctrine and practice. And we have to go to our midway break right now.

That was an excellent, succinct answer. And we have to go to our midway break right now.

And once again, if you have a question of your own, submit it to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us a first name at least, city and state of residence, and country of residence.

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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 Arnson and the

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James White here of Alpha Omega Ministries announcing that this September I'm heading out to Pennsylvania to speak at two events that my longtime friend

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Welcome back. Before I return to my conversation with Pastor Leonardo de

Chiarico in Rome, Italy, where he's broadcasting from live right now,

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and put I need a church in the subject line. And I also want to give a shout out to Jack in Australia for the wonderful email that you sent me yesterday that was a great source of encouragement to me, and I would love to know what city in Australia, where you live, and if you are in need of a solid church home in that area.

I do know of some wonderful biblically faithful churches in Australia, and I know that's a huge place, so let me know where you live, and let me know if your church is a good solid church.

We're now back with my guest, live from Rome, Italy, Leonardo de

Chiarico, and we are talking about his ministry, bringing the doctrines of sovereign grace and the gospel of sovereign grace to Italy.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and let's see here, we do have a listener from Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, that's not far from here.

Troy wants to know, are there any diehard traditionalists still in Italy who reject the

Second Vatican Council? Yes, you had mentioned earlier that, I believe you did your doctrinal dissertation on the

Second Vatican Council, maybe describe that briefly. And there is a very small minority of Catholics here in the

United States, I typically call them traditionalists, who actually despise the

Second Vatican Council and reject it. So tell us about your own situation. Yeah, true.

Well, the Second Vatican Council is the latest council of the

Catholic Church and is part of a long tradition of council, and it is not to be,

I mean, these traditionalist people are, they're rejecting something that their church doesn't reject.

Actually, Rome considered the Second Vatican Council a legitimate council, and indeed the council through which all the preceding ones need to be interpreted.

And so in terms of the Catholic doctrine, it is the latest council that provides a lens to read and interpret the previous one.

So everything that the Catholic Church has ever said up to the Second Vatican Council needs to be interpreted according to what the latest council has said.

And so you cannot pick and choose, you cannot say this is not, if you're a Rome Catholic, you must also embrace the

Second Vatican Council. You're not allowed to pick and choose according to your own taste or your own inclination.

That is not part of the Roman Catholic faith. And so I think that in terms of them being traditionalists, they fail to stick to the traditional teaching of Rome, whereby all councils need to be embraced as authoritative pronouncements of the

Catholic Church. Now, having said that, the Second Vatican Council was the first council in church history that did not end with an anathema or with an excommunication or with a condemnation.

All other councils in church history ended with an excommunication of dissenters, protesters, heretics of sorts.

But the Second Vatican Council wanted to convey the message that the

Catholic Church was embracing all, friendly toward all, wanting everybody to be included instead of being excluded.

This is perhaps something that more traditionalist Catholics don't understand or don't like, this change of posture of the

Catholic Church away from this oppositional stance over against those who don't belong to the

Catholic Church or away from the Catholic Church into embracing a posture whereby the

Catholic Church wants to include all and embrace all.

Traditionalists, progressives, liberals, nominal Catholics, cafeteria, fruit salad

Catholics, pick -and -choose Catholics, Vatican II wants to embrace them all and providing for different ways of being

Catholic. If you like to be a practicing one, that's okay. If you like to be a nominal one, a far distant one, that's also okay.

The latest, the last pope prior to this one, Leo XIV, Pope Francis, issued an encyclical, a magisterial important document called

Old Brothers, Fratelli Tutti. We're all brothers, we all belong to the same family.

If you're a believer, if you're not a believer, that doesn't really matter. We're all brothers.

That is what Vatican II has encouraged the Roman Church to pursue.

And this is what present -day Catholicism shows and wants to achieve, this human brotherhood, this

Catholic unity whereby we're all united not on the basis of the gospel, but on the basis of us being human beings, on the basis of our common and shared humanity.

So I think that even in Italy, there are a few provisionalists who take issue with the

Second Vatican Council. They're a tiny minority, but they have a conscience problem because they are actually running against their church they want to serve.

The church that they want to serve has accepted Vatican II, and Vatican II is part and parcel of what the

Roman Catholic Church teaches. You cannot escape that. You may not like it, but you cannot escape the fact that Vatican II is an integral part of the

Roman Catholic Church. Now, the traditionalists that I know and have met here in the

United States, even one of them was involved in my very first theological debate that I arranged between Dr.

James R. White, a Reformed Baptist, and Jerry Matitix, who was more of a mainstream

Roman Catholic back then and was the darling of Catholic Answers, a more mainstream

Catholic apologetic group. But he has since become a sativacantist, a more extreme version of the traditionalists that doesn't even believe that there has been a valid pope since the end of Vatican I or since the beginning of Vatican II.

And nor do they believe that the Vatican II priests offer a legitimate mass.

But even beyond them, you have the Phenaites and the

Lefavorites and others who will say that they have every right and obligation to reject

Vatican II because it is not... The unique things in there that are not repetitions of Vatican I and not repetitions of the

Council of Trent, the unique things in Vatican II have never been declared as dogma and therefore they can be rejected.

How do you respond to those folks? Well, yes. Vatican II didn't issue a dogma, never issued a dogma, a new dogma, and it was considered to be a pastoral council, although it has two dogmatic constitutions, two dogmatic documents, the

Verbum, the Word of the Lord, the Word of God, and the

Lumen Gentium, the Light of the Nations on the Church. These are dogmatic constitutions, dogmatic documents, but they're not properly defined dogmas.

But that doesn't... It doesn't mean that the fact that Vatican II hasn't issued a dogma is not an important, shaping series of documents in the

Catholic Church because, as I said, it is a council, and councils, they do have primary authority and they do interpret previous councils and previous teachings and they do form, together with the previous teachings, the body of Catholic doctrine.

Catholic doctrine is not static, but it morphs, it develops over time.

Interpretation develops over time, and that has been part and parcel of Catholic teaching across the centuries.

There is no frozen Catholic dogma. Dogma is always interpreted, even in the

Catholic Church. The dogma of, say, outside of the Catholic Church, there is no salvation, is now interpreted in a very different way.

The dogma is the same, but is interpreted in a very different way than, say, the papistic reading or the medieval reading.

And the same is true as far as the canons of Trent. The dogmas are there, but they are now interpreted in a different way, and this is compatible with Catholic teaching, which says that the

Church moves on, the Church is a pilgrim in history, and it develops over time without recanting, without changing, but at the same time, not simply repeating, restating what has already been said, but interpreting it.

Vatican II is the latest prism or lens that helps the

Catholic Church to interpret its own identity. So Catholic doctrine is not only formed of dogmas, but is formed of dogmas, councils, magisterial documents, encyclicals, and a whole series of other voices

It is the combination, it is the sum of it, and always in the process of being interpreted by different people, ultimately by the magisterium of the

Church. And so I think that the traditionalists, they do have a view of Catholic teaching as if it were a frozen thing, something that is established and never cannot be interpreted in different ways.

That's not true, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned. They have a limited, short -sighted, reduced, narrow view of their own

Church. Yeah, and they are very disingenuous when you have the more conservative

Catholic apologists claiming that they are following and agreeing with the unanimous consent of the

Fathers, when first of all, the Church Fathers were not in full agreement on many things, but they are not carrying on the tradition of the

Fathers. In fact, the Roman Catholic Churches, you have popes and bishops and theologians teaching things that their own

Church would have executed them for centuries ago. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

The consensus of the Fathers is a wishful thinking.

It's a historical, flawed view. It is a reconstructed theory that has no basis in history.

And the fact that the Church has never changed is also a wishful thinking in people's minds.

But the Church has always been changing, has always been adapting, expanding.

And that is the genius of Catholicism, expanding the synthesis, adding things, collating things without changing the core, but actually making it thicker and more resistant to the

Gospel, but at the same time, always expanding, always opening up the synthesis.

The Catholic Church has opened the synthesis towards paganism in the first centuries, then towards religions where it has planted

Catholic churches. Think of Latin America. Think of China. It has always embraced teachings and traditions coming from different cultures.

Think of Africa. That's the genius of Catholicism, expanding, embracing, integrating without changing the core.

Catholic Church is not a static thing that is always saying the same thing, but is evolving and coming to time without changing the core, but always adapting and expanding the boundary.

Excellent. We have Quinn in Lorton, Virginia, who says,

I know that you likely use the Bible first and foremost when evangelizing Catholics, but do you ever use the

Roman Catholic Church councils to be turned against the Church?

For instance, if you are engaging in conversation with a more liberal

Catholic, you might bring up some of the horrific anathemas of Trent, or if you are engaging in conversation with a more conservative

Catholic, you might bring up some things like paragraph 841 of the Second Vatican Council, or of the

Second Vatican Council's Catechism of the Catholic Church, which tells us in paragraph 841 that the

Muslims adore the same one true God as we do. Yeah.

Yeah, we have to use a variety of sources, a variety of texts, depending on the type of Catholic we're talking to.

Most Catholics I meet in my daily conversations, gospel conversations, are nominal

Catholics. They're Catholics by birth, they're Catholics by tradition, because they were born in a

Catholic family, they were baptized as children, but that's pretty what it is.

And so they have weird, most of them have weird ideas about the gospel, about Jesus, about faith, and everything is then intertwined with Church tradition and procession and practices.

And so my first attempt is at leading them to Scripture and having the

Bible speak for itself and having them taste the beauty, the truth of the

Word of God. Of course, if I'm dealing with a more educated

Catholic that has some knowledge of his own tradition and the documents of the past, then

I can use, I can make reference to various texts, depending on the topic we are discussing, of course.

A post -Vatican II Catholic, ordinarily, when confronted with, say, the

Anathemons of France, he or she would say, yes, but this is no longer how the

Catholic Church describes the Protestants. They are now described as separated brethren.

And so this definition determines the interpretation of the Anathemons.

The Anathemons, they say, were not addressed to people. They were addressed to ideas, whereas now the

Catholic Church talks about people, mainly Protestants, as separated brethren.

Now how they can reconcile the two is an impossible task for me, but for their church, this is what they're taught, that they can maintain both the

Anathemons of the past and the ecumenical friendly terms of the

Second Vatican Council. When it comes to Muslims and other faith communities, our listener is right in pointing out the fact that Vatican II talked about Muslims as people who worship with us the same

God, and they pray with us the same God. That is Vatican II, and that is something that is confirmed in the

Catholic catechism. And that has been standard practice in Catholic theology since the

Second Vatican Council. Popes praying with Muslims.

Popes praying, asking Muslims to pray for them, assuming that we pray the same

God. Allah is our God, and our God is Allah, the

God of Islam. That is something that is an integral part of what present -day

Catholicism teaches and practices. And again, it's something that has come out of Vatican II and then applied, elaborated by different popes to the point of becoming standard teaching and practice of the

Roman Catholic Church of today. One of the things that makes what you describe the defense of the liberalized version of the anathemas of Trent, what makes that modern liberal defense a fallacy, one of the things, is just by reading all of the anathemas, let me just pick one of them.

The ninth anathema, if anyone saith that by faith alone the impious is justified in such wise as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to the obtaining of the grace of justification, that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the movement of his own will, let him be anathema.

And it doesn't say anything about let that concept or that teaching be anathema. It says, if anyone saith and let him be anathema.

Yeah, it's personal language. It talks about people. It talks about him. It talks about a man, a person, a human being.

And yet it talks about, I mean, I'm not advocating the position of Vatican II, but then

I've had multiple discussions on this, and the response was yes, but it's a general statement about a generic person, not a specific one.

Whereas when we talk about in terms of Vatican II or separated brethren, we talk about personal family language that trumps the language that was previously used.

Now, I'm with you. This is a contradiction. This is something that cannot be maintained, and yet this is one of the many polarities or imbalances or contradictions of the

Roman Catholic Church. Now, and please correct me if I've been pronouncing the name of your church wrong.

Is it Breccia di Roma? Well, actually, it's Breccia di Roma. Breccia.

Breccia di Roma. Breccia di Roma. Yes, very good, very good. Is the makeup of the congregation of Breccia di

Roma, is it predominantly people who are already born -again believers and evangelicals and maybe even

Reformed in their theology, or is there any considerable element that are former

Roman Catholics who actually were saved by the grace and mercy of Christ through the evangelistic ministry of Breccia di

Roma? The latter. Most members are converts.

Wow, that's great. From Roman Catholicism. And as members, they have made a profession of faith, they've been baptized, and they have subscribed to the 1689

Confession of Faith. And so that is, you know, a few of them, they do come from Protestant families or families of Protestant tradition, but it's a minority.

We're not a large congregation. We are a congregation of 40, 50 people, but the vast majority of them comes from Roman Catholic background and having gone through a conversion experience away from Catholicism, embracing the gospel.

Hallelujah. That's good to know that so many, if not most, of the souls in that congregation have been rescued by Christ's grace and mercy out of Rome.

Yeah. Oh, praise God for that. Let's see here. We have

Willie in Jamaica, Queens, New York, who wants to know,

I heard in the last interview that Chris Arnzen did with a Roman Catholic, I'm sorry, with a pastor evangelizing

Roman Catholics in Italy. He said that the government has some kind of prohibition against identifying

Protestant church buildings as real churches. Do you face that same dilemma?

Yes, yes. Thank you for the question. Actually, I made reference to the fact that in 2016, we, by God's grace, were able to purchase the building we actually have our services in.

And that building used to be a shop, a commercial shop. And then we transformed it into a place of worship.

But the government has made it difficult for that recognition to be finally accepted.

Because after coming to visit it, they reported by saying that our space lacks an altar, lacks statues, lacks paintings, and other items that are inherent of worship spaces.

In other words, there's a mandate for you to be an idolater. What they had in mind was a

Roman Catholic definition of the church or a Roman Catholic definition of what a church should look like.

They didn't have a category for a non -Catholic church to be what it should be according to the values, the beliefs of that community.

So we fought, we pushed back, and we took the government to court in order to have our right as a faith community to determine the way our biblical convictions shape the way in which we use our space and we organize our space.

Now, two courts came to our favor and they said, yes, this church has the right to organize the space according to their own convictions and beliefs, and there is not one single way of organizing worship spaces.

The government took us to the Supreme Court, our final third grade, third level court, and unfortunately, the

Supreme Court reversed the previous two pronouncements and went in favor of the government saying that when we purchased the building and we transformed it into a worship space, we didn't make any structural change.

And so for that reason, they couldn't recognize it as a religious space.

Now, we are now in the position of having to do some structural changes in our building.

We are going to build a baptistry. We're not building a statue. We're not building an altar.

We're not putting paintings on the walls.

We're building a baptistry because this is in accordance to our convictions of the

God's ordinance of baptism, and we hope and pray that this will be enough for the space to be finally recognized as a religious space.

But the battle is still on and we're still struggling to have this right to be recognized by our state.

Well, that would be a real Romans 8 -28 issue because you previously didn't have a baptistry, and here you are because of this prohibition of calling yourself a church.

You're actually building now a baptistry. Yes, that's right. Where were you baptizing converts before?

We would use a Baptist church not far from where we are who has a baptistry as part of their building, so we would use their space for baptism services.

Or we would also go to the beach, to the sea, to do also a kind of evangelistic service while administering baptism.

But that was the way we used to do it, but now we are about to build our own baptistry.

The problem is that the space is not large, and so we didn't want in the first place to limit it, but now since we have to do some structural change as the

Supreme Court asked us to do, we thought that building a baptistry would be a kind of a win -win solution.

Now, that really reveals, it exposes the sham of this so -called ecumenism and viewing you as separated brethren, doesn't it?

Yeah. Show you a lot of hypocrisy behind that. Yeah, that's right. There is upon the one level, there is the language of friendliness, religious liberty, religious pluralism.

On the underground, though, we're still fighting for the basic rights to be recognized.

We don't want privileges. We don't want to receive privileges. We want basic rights.

You know, faith communities are different. We're not a Catholic church. We don't have an altar.

We don't have statues. We are a Protestant church, and Protestant churches are defined theologically, historically, by being places, simple places, places where the focus is not on the altar or the painting or the statues, but the focus is on the

Word of God. The focus is on the community, worshiping, singing, listening to God's Word.

And there is no category for us in this country yet.

And the Catholic church is primarily responsible for not educating people to be aware of the fact that the

Catholic church is only one religious body, but around it and outside of it, there are many others, and mainly the

Protestant churches, that have different beliefs and different ways of organizing in their spaces.

Now, do they have that same prohibition to Muslims in Italy, who have mosques that are in ordinary buildings that were formerly businesses?

Yeah, that's an issue for them, too, because unless they have a mosque that looks like a church, that is a building that looks like a religious building, they have the same problem.

If they rent a space, they run the same problem. Now, why is this important to you, that the government officially recognized your facility as a church building?

Well, it's partly an issue of principle, and partly it's an issue of taxation, because as a commercial building, you have heavy taxes on it, as if you were a shop or a business.

But we're not a business. We are a church. We don't sell. We don't make money.

We don't sell products. And yet we are taxed as if we were a shop.

And since we're talking about Central Rome, we're talking about 7 ,000, 8 ,000 euros every year to be paid on taxes because of this injustice.

And so we reclaim the tax -exempt status that all religious buildings have.

Again, we're not reclaiming a privilege. We are reclaiming the same treatment that Catholic churches have.

Catholic churches don't pay taxes on buildings, on property, because they are religious buildings.

We want the same, because we are a faith community. We are a religious community.

We meet in buildings that are not shops. Used to be perhaps shops or whatever they used to be, but they now are used as church spaces, worship spaces.

And there is no business going on. There is no money. There is no property. There is nothing going on, only church activities.

And that is why we claim to have the same rights given to us.

Okay, we have to go to our final commercial break. And if you have a question, submit it immediately before we run out of time.

chrisarnson at gmail .com Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back. I'm Dr.

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Janssen and Christopher McDowell.

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word and to enthusiastically proclaim

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love as I have.

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformedli .net.

That's hopereformedli .net or call 631 -696 -5711.

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program.

SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

We can be reached at securecommgroup .com. That's securecommgroup .com.

But today, I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New Hyde Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

In the film Chariots of Fire, Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the Word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

Bronx in New York City. For details on New Hyde Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New Hyde Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's Word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

God bless you. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an

Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother

Chris Arnzen in the highest esteem and I'm thrilled that you're listening today.

I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Well, with the economic nightmare that we're all currently enduring, cvbbs .com,

I want to enable you to build a wonderful personal library of the best literature that the

Reformers, the Puritans, and the great Christian minds of today have to offer, and at affordable prices.

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IRON, I -R -O -N, an added 5 % off all of your orders of $50 or more from Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

That's cvbbs .com, making the joy of reading the finest in Christian literature more affordable.

Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Puritan Reformed is a

Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

Christ. This is Pastor David Rees of Puritan Reformed in Phoenix, Arizona.

Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

Puritan Reformed Church. Believe. Build. Fight. PuritanPHX .com

And don't forget, folks, this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco & Associates.

If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

United States, call my longtime dear friend Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law at 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit his website 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com

Make sure you tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, that you heard about his law firm, Buttafuoco &

Associates, from Chris Arnsen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Also, this program is paid for in part by RoyalDiadem .com.

If you are going to purchase jewelry for yourself or someone you love, whether it's jewelry they already have in stock or having a one -of -a -kind customized piece of jewelry created, please go to RoyalDiadem .com

and mention Iron Trip and Zion Radio. Not only do they provide financial support for us automatically every single month, but they also are giving us 100 % of the profits from any sale of jewelry to our listeners simply by our listeners mentioning

Iron Trip and Zion Radio. So go to RoyalDiadem .com for your jewelry today. And we're now back with my guest today,

Leonardo de Chiarico. And before we have you summarize what you most want etched in hearts and minds of our listeners today, we have

RJ in White Plains, New York, who says, One of the most difficult things that I have to explain to Roman Catholics is that they think that the

Protestant teaching of justification by faith alone is a license to commit sin.

Do you face the same thing there? And how do you teach them to understand otherwise?

Yeah, that's an ongoing challenge. I think that the doctrine of justification by faith is a fiction that doesn't change things, doesn't change hearts, doesn't change behaviors.

And the way I approach this caricature, of course, because this is a caricature, this is not what the

Protestant doctrine, the biblical doctrine of justification by faith is all about, is by teaching the biblical truth whereby we are given and imputed the righteousness of Christ and we are covered, we receive

Jesus' righteousness and that accounts for our legal standing before God.

But that work is also intimately connected with other aspects of God's work in our lives.

Once we are given the righteousness of Christ, we're also imbued with the

Spirit of God and we are led into a path of sanctification.

And so justification never happens without sanctification being a process that comes out of justification.

So if justification is only something that happens in and of itself, it is not the biblical account of it.

Biblical justification tells us that we are accredited, accredited account of the righteousness of Christ and we are united with Christ and therefore we are transformed in our hearts and minds and bodies and therefore we have to see it in the full spectrum of biblical teaching.

If we only think of justification apart from the rest of the work of Christ, we are actually making up a caricature.

So I want people to see that justification is never, is not something that is an isolated item.

It is part of what God is doing and it deals with our position of standing before God.

And once that position is settled and that is the ground of our salvation, we are also taught by scripture that God is at work in us by changing our hearts, regenerating our whole person and then leading us into a sanctified life and that takes place in life.

And so that's the way I try to respond to the caricature that is often put forward by Catholic friends.

Now, if you could summarize in about 90 seconds what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

God is at work in Italy as he's at work throughout the world. Italy has a special history being the cradle of Roman Catholicism that has often acted against the

Protestant gospel and the biblical gospel. But God is at work. So please pray for us as we want to see the glory of Christ be shown in our country, as we want to see people coming to faith, as we want to see churches being established according to God's pattern and as we want to see the gospel spread out in the whole of the country.

We are encouraged and yet we see many challenges around us, and we value your prayers and your support.

Well, I want to make sure that our listeners are reminded of your websites. For Breccia di

Roma, go to b -r -e -c -c -i -a d -i -r -o -m -a dot i -t.

That's b -r -e -c -c -i -a d -i -r -o -m -a dot i -t.

And then let's not forget about Reformanda Initiative, reformandainitiative .org,

reformandainitiative .org, and also thevaticanfiles .org, vaticanfiles .org,

vaticanfiles .org. I want to thank you so much, Pastor Leonardo de

Cayo Rico, and I want to thank everybody who listened. I look forward to having you back on the program,

Pastor Leonardo. You did such an exquisite job. Perhaps we could do a program delving more deeply into the

Vatican, too, since you got your doctoral dissertation on that. Yeah. Thank you very much,

Christopher, for having me, and thank you all listeners who make an effort to listen to an

Italian accent. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater