Sept 11, 2026 Show with Robert Sungenis on “A Conservative Catholic’s Assessment of the State of the Church of Rome from Left to Right”

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 Arnson.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this 11th day of September, 2026.

And of course, today's date is one of the most infamous dates in American history, and that is, of course, the date of the terrorist attack in 2001 resulting in nearly 3 ,000 deaths and the most deadly attack by a foreign enemy in the history of the United States.

Of course, the Holocaust of abortion is far greater number than that. But nonetheless, this is a very sad day for many who lost loved ones. And I would urge everybody listening to, after this live program is over, I urge you to look up an interview I did on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio on September 9th, 2016, with my dear friend, Staff Sergeant David Carnes.

He was the United States Marine who rescued New York City transit policemen from being trapped underneath the rubble of the collapsed towers. And this was in an area that the rescue workers had already given up on.

And he went in there alone. And sure enough, eventually heard one of the transit police banging on a piece of metal underneath the rubble. And the rest was history. He was able to get the aid of firemen to help dig out those trapped police officers.

And he was actually, he was portrayed by Michael Shannon, the actor, in the movie Twin Towers, starring Nicolas Cage. And that's Staff Sergeant David Carnes. And by the way, David protested the making of that film.

He believed there was so many inaccuracies in it. And he also thought that the film was being released far too close to the actual events. And he did not feel comfortable with that at all. He didn't like the way he was portrayed in the movie either.

But anyway, you might want to listen to that fascinating interview. David is a Christian, by the way, if I didn't mention that. So just type in the search engine of ironsharpensironradio .com, K-A-R-N-E-S, and you will get the link for that.

A Conservative Catholic Assessment of the Church of Rome

But today, we have one of those controversial programs on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. I want to say immediately, as I always do when I have a guest on the program that is not an evangelical Christian. My guest is Robert St. Genes, a Roman Catholic author, apologist, and debater.

And although Robert is my friend, and I enjoy interviewing him, and I even enjoy having dinner with him, I am not an ecumenist, and I believe that Robert's gospel is not the true gospel. And he also believes that I have serious heretical problems with many things I believe.

So this program today is not an exercise in ecumenism, nor is it a debate, but we are simply having this program to have a conservative Catholic's assessment of the state of the Church of Rome from left to right.

And we're also going to be hearing Bob's response to my interview with Prior Paul Robinson of the Society of St. Pius X on the recent excommunication of their bishops. But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Robert St. Genes.

Chris, thank you so much. You're so gracious, always are, and I'm always happy to be a guest of your radio programs, I think, over the last, what, 15 years or more? We've done intermittent programs and debates, and it's been a privilege to work with you.

Yeah, the first debate that we arranged was in 1999, so it was last century. We had you debating James White of Alpha Omega Ministries at the Choral House in Baldwin on the Mass, and that was the infamous debate where I introduced you as the papal bull.

And I introduced James White as—go ahead.

I just saw that debate today on YouTube by happenstance. Today, by happenstance. You know how they, by the algorithms, will just bring up random programs that are on YouTube? Well, that debate came up this morning, and I watched part of it this morning.

So it's quite interesting that you mentioned that today.

And I introduced James White as a ribadurchi roma. And, by the way, before I forget, a mutual friend of ours, a Reformed Baptist pastor in the Lancaster area, Joel Saint, always tells me to send his greetings to you whenever I'm in communication with you.

So I just thought I'd let you know.

Yeah. I know Joel from Washington Bible College. Wow. When I was young and naive, and so was he.

Well, this program today was really spawned by my interview with prior Paul Robinson of the Society of St. Pius X, where he was explaining not only the origins and specific beliefs and positions of the Society of St. Pius X, also known as the SSPX, but he was explaining the excommunication by the current pope of his bishops, and obviously in protest against that, and also pretty much saying that he and his fellow priests and bishops in the Society of St. Pius X are basically continuing life as usual, as if nothing had happened to them, because they do not believe that their excommunication is legitimate.

And I had, as you know, my friend Tony Costa, who is a Reformed Baptist theologian. In fact, you've debated Tony right here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at the Carlisle Theater during a snowstorm. But he gave his assessment of that interview, and it was interesting that Tony, much of that interview, as you may remember, dealt with our responding to a moderate to liberal pro-Vatican II Catholic journalist who insisted on being anonymous.

Why, I don't know. But we were responding to that journalist and his assessment of that interview, and Tony actually agreed with that Catholic journalist at least half the time when it came to his criticisms of a prior Paul Robinson's position.

But first of all, it'd probably be good for those of our listeners, and by the way, folks, you've got to excuse Robert's health today. He's got a little bit of a cold or something. But if you could, it would be wise for us to have an explanation of the Society of St. Pius X, because not everyone heard that interview with Paul Robinson and not everyone even knows anything about the SSPX.

So why don't you, from your own knowledge of that organization, tell our listeners about it?

The Origins and Canonical Status of the Society of St. Pius X

I will. The SSPX, which stands for the Saintly Society of Pius X, was formed as a lay association when it first started, not a priestly fraternity as it claims today. That's very important to know. And that sets the stage for what we would expect the SSPX to be and do in the coming years.

So that means that the seminary that the SSPX established, they were not to be forming priests for the SSPX. They were to be forming priests for the diocese of the local bishop, because at that time they were under the bishop, of course.

You could not be what they are without being under your local ordinary. That is, the bishop. So that's very important to know, that the seminarians that were graduating from the SSPX were not for the SSPX, they were for the bishop.

Another point is the SSPX had no authority to incardinate priests in any case. Now, incardination is what is required of everyone who is a Catholic priest, which basically means he is to come under a bishop.

And if he cannot, for some reason, come under a bishop, because some bishops will refuse to incardinate priests who have graduated and been ordained, at least not in their diocese, for one reason or another.

So, you just can't set up stakes in one city because you're a priest and then, like you Protestants do, you can go preach on a street corner and be a preacher. That can't happen as a Catholic priest unless you're incardinated.

Of course, you can go preach the gospel anytime you want, I'm just talking about the legal canonical exercise of being a priest in the Catholic Church.

By the way, I just wanted to let you know, and maybe you're not aware of this, but all the Reformed pastors that I know and representatives of what I would view as solid churches believe that if somebody is doing open-air evangelism, they should be doing it under the sanction and under the authority of a local church, not as a rogue maverick who just sets up a soapbox somewhere and starts preaching without any authority over him from a local church.

And many of the people doing that open-air evangelism, not all, there are a lot of great guys doing it, but a lot of them don't even belong to a church. So I just wanted to make sure that our listeners knew that, that not every evangelical permits or even, you know, not every evangelical is pleased by mavericks just sitting up on a tree stump and screaming at people as they walk by.

Yeah, I get the picture.

All right. So that point, again, just to reiterate, was that no priest can act as a priest unless he's incarnated. It's a very important term. The next point I'd like to make is the SSPX was formed in what the Latin says is ad experimentum.

That is, literally, they were formed as an experiment. Okay, let's try this out for a while. And they were given a six-year period or trial in which they were to sufficiently please their bishop or the pope or the cardinals, whoever was above them and watching them, because these people were going to decide after the six years whether they could have another six years.

And phase was just over and they could move on. So Lefevre, Archbishop Lefevre—now, I say Lefevre, there's a lot of people that say Lefebvre and all that. I learned this when I was a Catholic grade school student.

They always used to say Lefevre, and that, to me, was the way you said this French name, because there were a lot of baseball players in Canada who were, you know, they went by French names, and one of them was Lefebvre.

I remember him distinctly. So anyway, that's what I'll be saying, Archbishop Lefebvre, so nobody gets confused.

Just like you mispronounced Notre Dame, right?

Yeah. You're talking about Notre Dame, is that what you mean? Yes. Yeah, right. Okay. French, a little hard to get the right pronunciation. So Lefebvre agreed to this ad experimentum, six years, okay?

And that basically means the SSPX had no right to exist after the six-year period unless they were officially approved of doing so by the Vatican. That's what it boils down to. So the next thing I think is important is in 1988, the SSPX was suppressed directly by the Pope, the supreme authority from whose decision there is no appeal.

That's just the bare facts of the matter. You can disagree with it. You can agree with it. You can come halfway. It doesn't make any difference. That's the fact that they were suppressed. And so after this six-year period, there was no approval by the Vatican for the SSPX.

That was over. But, you know, behind that is this simple fact, that Archbishop Lefebvre went into schism with the Catholic Church in the early 1970s, long before 1988 came along, and he was excommunicated for ordaining four bishops.

Lefebvre’s Rejection of the Conciliar Church

In the 1970s, and he was warned about this in the 1970s, he was warned not to ordain any priest by his own authority, okay, and put them into priestly ministry. As I intimated before when I talked about the fact that the SSPX was a lay organization when it began, and it would take its seminarians and give them to the bishop, not that the SSPX would keep their own priests and, you know, do their own business outside of what the bishop was doing.

So I want to make sure everybody understands that he was already disobeying the church when he exercised this priestly ministry and was ordaining priests in the early 1970s without approval of the Vatican.

Now, there are many errors and heresies that I could go through that Archbishop Lefebvre taught. One is that he believed that the Catholic Church at large had defected from the Catholic faith. And he said at one point, I think it was 1974, and I can find the exact quote when he said this, if need be, but he said verbatim, quote, the conciliar church is no longer the Catholic church, unquote, okay?

So that's quite a bold step. I mean, it's one thing to say that the church has become heretical in some of its doctrines or a lot of its doctrines. The people no longer follow the faith at large, although there may be some who do.

When you say that the church as a legal entity, legal canonical entity, is no longer the church, you have said the ultimate. You have now gone to the place of no return. And in place of the Catholic Church, Lefebvre said that the St. Pius X Society was the true church, okay?

And again, these can all be shown in documents. It may be a surprise to some, but you can imagine that something with this gravity is not advertised very much. And but I'm going to bring it to you because we want to know the whole truth here, okay?

Oh, I just remembered, when I was talking about Lefebvre ordaining priests illegally, and he was censored for that by the Vatican, I think it was 1974 where he was given a one-year probation not to do this any longer, and he disobeyed that.

And in 1975, the next year, that's when the Society was officially suppressed by Paul VI for continuing to ordain priests, okay? So again, we have a paper trail going all the way up from the 1970s through to 1988, where he is basically doing the same thing.

He's sticking his nose up at the Vatican and saying that he has these rights. And I'm not sure if he was using the argument from necessity at that time in the early 70s, but he may as well have, because nothing's changed in his approach to the Vatican.

Now, it's interesting that in the—before I go along with my points, in the interview you did with Father Robinson, before the mid-break, you said, I want to ask you some very serious questions. Mm-hmm.

And do you remember that? Yes. Okay. And the questions, I don't know who asked them, but I do know that Father Robinson tried to answer them. And what came out was, after your inquiry about the Pope, I think it was something like, does he still have infallibility?

And you also asked, has any—did the Pope of, you know, John Paul, whoever it was, did they change any doctrine from tradition? And to the first question, does the Pope still have infallibility to declare doctrine for you and the rest of the Catholic Church?

And he said, yes. Okay. So that's important, because that's not where Archbishop Lefebvre purported to be in his stance. His stance was that the conciliar church was no longer the Catholic Church. So if that's the case, then the Pope no longer has the authority to declare dogma, infallible or not.

Okay. So, see, this is where there is confusion, a lot of confusion between what the reality is and what the people of the society want to believe is the reality. So, and he also said, curiously, that Vatican II did not define any dogma.

Okay. Now, that's a stance that normal Catholics have always understood. For those who criticize Vatican II of the Catholic faith, they say, you know, Vatican II made all these errors. Well, it didn't define any dogma.

So nobody's bound to dogma from Vatican II. You might be bound in the sense that Vatican II has authority, okay, but you always have the right in the Catholic Church to disagree with the authority if it affects your conscience.

And that's always been very clear. So if Paul Robinson believes that Vatican II did not define dogmas, then what's the problem, you know? Why point the finger at Vatican II if you know the possibility is it's not going to get everything right, in your belief, at least, then the lowest common denominator is, hey, it's the same for everybody, you know?

So why separate yourself from the Church if this is not a dogmatic issue is basically what it gets down to.

Now, do you think that that is what they claim they are doing, separating themselves from the Catholic Church?

That's a good question, because it depends on who you talk to in society, because it's not a monolithic consensus among them about what they believe. This stuff that I'm saying about Archbishop Lefebvre, you know, that SSPX was a lay association given a six-year probation period, basically, they don't even know about that, a lot of them, you know?

They just think it's just sort of, you know, whatever it is today, that's what it always was, kind of a thing. No, it wasn't, you know? It's progressed, and it's bitten off more to chew at every juncture where it's had a controversy.

It took the opportunity to make itself bigger and more important and more inclusive and all that to where it is today, where, you know, they think they're the true church, and they're the leaders, too, at least.

Okay? What the people believe, you know, that depends on who you're talking to.

So, let me go on. Tom. Well, just maybe if you want to squeeze in this one comment. I think prior Paul Robinson brought this up in the interview. I'm pretty sure he did, but he was using as an example Athanasius, who is known by that phrase, Athanasius contra mundum, Athanasius against the world, because he even stood up against the bishops of his day who were adopting Arianism, the denial of the deity of Jesus Christ.

And so, he was trying to defend the actions of the SSPX by saying they were just following the example of Athanasius because of the egregious errors that the Vatican II had brought into and introduced into the church, which you must admit yourself, it had very enormous effects on even local parishes globally.

Like, for instance, the Catholic Church of my oldest brothers, both of whom are now in heaven, when they were Catholics, they had Latin mass and so on, and they were even taught such things as, if you set foot in a Protestant church, you're going to hell unless you confess that sin to a priest.

Now, I'm not saying that that was Catholic dogma or anything, but that's what they were taught. And I had a radically different experience as a Vatican II kid and altar boy, where we were told about the separated brethren that the Protestants are, and I can even remember we had a project where we were supposed to interview a Protestant in a favorable way and bring that interview into the class.

And I actually tape recorded an interview with my own father because my father was Episcopalian at the time. And the nun I can remember that I had as one of my teachers was so pleased and enamored with my father's articulate way of explaining himself.

But anyway, going back to my original statement, I'm assuming you believe that Briar-Robinson is illegitimately claiming that they were just following Athanasius' example.

RL Yeah, and I understand why they appeal to Athanasius. There's a lot of groups for one reason or another find Athanasius to be their, you know, poster boy, so to speak, for their cause. So it doesn't surprise me that the SSPX has done that.

But here's the thing, Athanasius didn't try to ordain bishops to replace the ones that were there. That's the issue. When you take that authority into your own hands, you have become a whole other animal.

It's one thing to preach against the apostasy of the church, because the church can be apostate. Okay, I mean, that's what 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 3 says that's going to happen to the church before the end of the world when Christ comes back.

It's going to be apostate. Okay, so we're not going to be surprised when we see it again. And this verifies to everybody that's a Catholic, look, this is not heaven yet. This is the devil roams as a roaring lion every day, and he snares some of the best of us to do his will.

And so it was back in the time of the Arian controversy when he woke up and said, Jerome woke up and said, the whole world is Arian. But we preach against that, but we do it by staying in the church. Because you're not going to do a very good job of it outside the church, thinking that because you leave and have your own bishops, now everything's going to be okay.

No, you're just going to create more problems. That's what happens when somebody goes out on their own authority and thinks that because they started new, somehow this is going to be the solution. No, it's not.

Not only do you put your soul in jeopardy because you have basically broken off from the true authority, no matter how bad it is, you've broken off from the true authority and you're going to suffer the repercussions for that.

You know, they say, well, they're just ignoring it now. Well, you can ignore it as long as you want, but it doesn't take away the fact that you did it and you're accountable for it. So that's what's going to happen to them.

R. In fact, when we come back from our first commercial break, it would probably be good for you to describe your own Catholic faith. And what I mean by that is I introduced you as a conservative Catholic, and I know that there are things that the Society of St. Pius X teaches and protests against that you agree with them on.

You're in harmony with them. And even though you're defending Vatican II as being binding in some sense, there are many things I know from the years that I've known you that you are against, like things in the Catholic catechism, the modern Catholic catechism.

And I believe it's Article 841 that teaches that Catholics and Muslims adore the one true God and things like that. I know you do not agree with that, and that's right in the catechism. But we'll have you explain some of those things when we come back, and then you can continue with your assessment of not only the SSPX, but even the left wing of the Catholic church.

And if anybody wants to join us for the question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

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Vatican II, Biblical Inerrancy, and Catholic Liberalism

Welcome back, and if you just tuned us in, I am conducting one of those rare interviews on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, where my guest and I are on opposite sides of the Tiber River, as it were, and we have strong objections to one another in the areas of the gospel and other crucial doctrines of the faith.

But today, I am having a conservative Catholic's assessment of the state of the Church of Rome from left to right, and his response to my interview with prior Paul Robinson in the Society of St. Pius X on the recent excommunication of their bishops, and that is none other than Robert St. Genes, who is my guest today.

And as I said before the break, I think it'd be a good idea for you to explain yourself as a Catholic, because unlike the claim of many, the Catholic Church is not monolithic. And in fact, I know that you have even had some unpleasant run-ins with none other than the Eternal Word Television Network, EWTN, the Catholic network, because of your honesty and your strong disagreements when John Paul II was the pope, because of his ecumenism and even having a special day of prayer with those not only outside of the Catholic Church but outside of Christianity completely, all kinds of pagan religions and so on.

And he famously kissed a copy of the Qur 'an a few years later. But so I know that you would fully agree that not everyone in the Catholic Church is in lockstep with each other. So please explain yourself.

Yeah, there are many issues like that. Assisi was one of them, and this has particular relevance to our discussion because it was for exactly the Assisi meeting that John Paul II organized in 1986 that drew the ire of Archbishop Lefevre to a fever pitch where he just couldn't take it anymore.

And that Assisi meeting precipitated the idea that, okay, it's time to ordain our own bishops, and if we don't, it's going to be too late. So it's interesting that you mentioned the Assisi as the agreement I have with the excesses, if you want to be polite, of John Paul II, and there were many of them.

Let's put it that way, okay? And so I have no qualms about admitting, I could go through a list of 15 of them. Well, why don't you? I'm going to take up the rest of the program.

Okay, you want to mention a few of them anyway?

Yeah, yeah. Let's go back to what they did with Vatican II. There is a common teaching in the Catholic Church today that Scripture, the Bible, is only inerrant when it talks about salvation, okay? Now, you as well as I know that that cuts out about 90 percent of the Bible, okay?

Because most of the Bible is history, and so the Catholic liberals today have decided, and you can find this in every seminary, every college, every high school, every grade school, every church, every group of Catholics, that Scripture is only inspired when it talks about salvation, and it has to be directly about salvation.

It can't be some periphery talk or some tangential talk. It has to be direct.

That's why I was taught Darwinian evolution in the science class at St. Martin of Tours Catholic parochial school when I was still a Catholic.

Sure, and that's why you were taught that Jonah and the whale wasn't a true story, and the Tower of Babel wasn't a true story, and there are parts of the Garden of Eden that aren't true. The creation story certainly isn't true.

Adam and Eve weren't real. Yeah, John Paul II himself believed that. So, yeah, this is what it does, and it basically rips apart traditional Catholicism. And the way they got there is insidious, because there's this document in Vatican II called Dei Verbum, and that is Latin for the Word of God.

And there's a section, section 11, that's very important because there it defines what inspiration is. And in that, I'm not going to go read it, I'm just going to tell you the gist of it. That part of the document says that the whole Bible is inspired by the Holy Spirit for the sake of our salvation.

Okay? Did you catch that last phrase or that last clause, for the sake of our salvation? Now, if you were to read that as, you know, let's say you were a Catholic for 15 seconds and you read that, how would you interpret that last clause?

The Bible's inspired for the sake of our salvation.

Meaning nothing else is important, really.

Yeah, something along those lines, that the reason God inspired the Bible is to give us truth about salvation. I mean, how else are we going to know about salvation? And what we know has to be true.

And ironically, the same pro-Vatican II Catholics, to that extreme, I'm talking because I know you are a believer in Vatican II being authoritative in some sense, but the same people don't even really believe that the Bible is absolutely necessary to determine what salvation is, because as we already mentioned in Article 841 of the Catholic Catechism, they're teaching that Muslims are adoring the same God that they are.

Yeah. Let me get to that in a second. Let me just finish up with this, because this is very important. It'll give you a bird's-eye view of what the controversy is all about. So as I asked you how you would interpret that, you gave the natural explanation, right?

No big deal. You just came up with it. There it is. A three-year-old, well, a third-grader could figure that out. But you know what they did with it, the liberals in the Catholic Church? Here's their chance where they said, oh, for the sake of salvation?

Well, that means that the Bible was inspired for those passages that talk about salvation. Something like that. Right. You can twist it a number of ways. But the meaning is that it doesn't mean that God inspired the Bible to give us truth about everything we read in the Bible that leads to salvation.

It was God only inspired those things that are talking about salvation. That's the major belief in the Catholic Church today. And like I said, any seminary, any university, any college, high school, grade school, church, you name it, that's what they all believe.

Any of them? Any of the seminaries?