Radio Free Geneva: Reformation Day 2025

You absolutely hear people that are Calvinist harp on this. Raaah! Raaah! God's sovereign! God's sovereign! Raaah! Sovereign!

Sovereign! Sovereign! They just keep repeating it, and they repeat it so much you start to think it's a biblical truth. You take lessons from Judas White and Jeff Durtbin.

It shows in this kind of sequential format, and... Pffft! Do you really believe that it parallels the method of exegesis that we utilize to demonstrate those other things?

Um, no. I said the other day in class that I don't understand the difference between hyper -Calvinism and Calvinism.

It seems to me that Calvin was a hyper -Calvinist. You cannot override your unbelief.

Hydra is evil for causally determining Bucky to kill Tony Stark's parents, but everybody recognized that Doctor Strange is the hero in Infinity War and Endgame.

In Infinity War and Endgame. To realize that he's gone from predeterminism, now he's speaking of some kind of middle knowledge that God now has to...

I deny and categorically deny middle knowledge. Then don't beg the question that would demand me to force you to embrace it.

He's talking about necessarily God choosing something for no apparent reason, but you're choosing that meat because it's a favorable meat.

There's a reason to have the choice of that meat. And now, from our bunker deep underneath Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, safe from Dave Hunt fans,

Leighton Flowers, Provisionists, and future monks of the Dominican Order, we are Radio Free Geneva, broadcasting the truth about God's freedom to say to his own eternal glory.

Well, you know, we may have to move the bunker. We may have to move the bunker.

The center of the rebellion is no longer at Midwestern.

I think it's back to New Orleans. I was told recently that folks at New Orleans were part of...

Let's just say they're involved in getting rid of Reformed men who are trying to bring Reformation to churches, trying to get them to have a biblical ecclesiology and things like that, and that folks at New Orleans are involved in trying to keep people in the old

Southern Baptist ways. It's funny. I remember the first time I realized that the

New Testament taught a plurality of elders. I'd been raised.

You just have the pastor, and he's hired by the deacons. Isn't that how the church has always been run? Well, no, it's not.

You look at the New Testament, Westhoff got in a lot of trouble for saying what I've said for years.

There are two offices. There's the elder, the presbyter, the bishop, the elder.

They're all the same office. And deacons. Of course, it makes sense that those are the only qualifications we're given in the

New Testament. But man, people just lose their minds over that.

Because of the traditions that they're raised in. So anyways, welcome to a Radio Free Geneva. And the reason we're doing

Radio Free Geneva is because Rich insisted that we do a Radio Free Geneva because it is Reformation Day.

So there you go. That's why we're doing it. I'm actually going to be continuing responding to stuff about the

Reformation and things like that. But hey, everybody gets to see that awesome video intro.

There are two of them that are just so painful. Every time,

I'm just like, Oh, that hurts. And I'm not talking about Ergen Kanner getting tased either.

Somebody just yesterday sent me an AI graphic of trying to stand on a stump on your hands and your feet or something like that.

Well, you know, AI gives people extra hands and arms all the time anyway. So I'm not sure why

AI couldn't pull that off. But there you go. But it is fitting, very fitting, that we do

Radio Free Geneva today. And the reason being, starting only a couple days ago,

I don't invest a lot of time or energy trying to listen to the heartbeat of what's going on in Roman Catholicism, for example.

I follow certain people online. I have columns in my

X thing, pro -X thing, where I follow certain people that do keep their ears to the heartbeat of Roman Catholicism.

I added a few accounts on Eastern Orthodoxy recently. But I hadn't been seeing much.

And then, a couple days ago, this actually only says yesterday, but I'm not sure.

That may have been just when I saved it. I see an article, Vatican to weigh in on Mary's role in salvation with doctrine document on November 4th.

Doctrine document. What is that going to be?

And there are a bunch of people that are just absolutely convinced that what

I wrote about 26, 27 years ago, right here, is finally going to happen.

And for those that aren't familiar with the book, Mary, Another Redeemer, what you should know about the controversial movement to name

Mary as co -redeemer with Christ. And this was published in 1999. Because there was a lot of speculation in 1999.

Well, there was a lot of speculation in 1999 about a lot of stuff. Y2K was the big thing back then.

And I wonder how many people even know what Y2K was now. I mean, the younger generation, why would they?

It's just not important to them. But anyway, there was a lot of speculation because John Paul II was such a

Marian Pope. His personal motto was totus tuus, addressed to Mary, totally yours.

Totus tuus su Maria, I think. Something like that. That was on his papal coat of arms.

And he credited her with saving his life when he was shot. And all that kind of stuff.

The speculation was that for the 2 ,000 year jubilee that he would define the 5th

Marian dogma. Now, that's what the book's about. It goes through the previous...

It's available on Kindle, on Amazon. That's the only place available right now. I mean, it's 26 years old and it's been taken out of print.

But it's still available on Kindle and still, I think, very useful as an introduction to Roman Catholic Mariology.

Not Eastern Orthodox. That's a different thing. There are some differences.

I went through it. I thought about the speculation and I taught, I helped people understand what are the first Marian dogmas.

One of the things we have to keep in mind is much of the Marian doctrine and teaching that you see today.

You see it online. You hear about it. The books that exist. The glories of Mary. Things like that.

This is all post -Reformational development. Was there an excessive veneration of Mary at the time of Reformation?

Well, of course. It starts in the 3rd or 4th century. Did Martin Luther as a former

Augustinian monk have views on Mary that the vast majority of Lutherans do not hold today?

Yes. All the Reformers inherited that and that's not what the

Reformation was about. That's not what the Reformation was about. So what few things they said are pretty much irrelevant.

It's not like, okay, this is a central issue and I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking through it and write some books about it and yeah, we should continue to believe these things about Mary.

They didn't do that. That's not what the Reformation was about. And so they just sort of defaulted to acceptance of certain things but again, you have to remember two of the major dogmas.

Let me remind you the vast majority of you already know this but it's always good to remind folks there is a difference in Roman Catholicism between doctrine and dogma.

That's not a difference that is generally prevalent in evangelical circles.

Let's put it that way. So you can have popes teach doctrine in sermons in anything sub -infallible which again the problem is what is infallible and Rome isn't really certain about stuff like that.

There's always a way around it. so this fifth

Marian dogma has been taught as doctrine by popes since the 1800s it's in the language of the

Roman Catholic Church it's in the language of Vatican II I can show you the quotes they're in the book if you want to purchase that book or get it on Kindle find it in a used bookstore grab it it would be a good resource to have and we sort of have something similar to that we talk about central defining doctrines and then we talk about what's called the

Adiaphora the things that do not make a difference and that they're in concentric circles so there's stuff that's near the center very very important but you eventually get to a point where yeah this is still important but there can be disagreement without necessarily messing up what's in here and where you draw that line obviously lots of differences down through history as to exactly how you do that and it's an area that should be thought of more clearly in our day but in Roman Catholicism a dogma is what's called

De Fide by faith it's definitional of the faith itself and so it's to be accepted by faith if you reject it you in essence are rejecting the faith itself and so when you have infallible definitions they are dogmas now

I can't tell from this headline doctrine document some of my sources have said that this is not a dogmatic statement that's why it sort of snuck up on us but it's a clarifying statement something like that but a lot of other sources are saying no it's the 5th

Merian Dogma and it's going to be codified it's going to be declared to be a dogma that would be a pretty major thing that would be the whole we declare define it would be interesting to see because last time this happened was 1950 and there was all sorts of build up to it and there's been no build up to this at all which may mean that it's just a doctrine document and it's not all that important and it actually won't add to anything because this doctrine of Mary as co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix, and advocate for the people of God it's a long description is already a part of the language of Vatican II it's been taught by popes since about the 1850s somewhere in there so it could be that it would be really surprising if it was more than that but there are some scenarios

I can think of where they might want to do it that way I don't know I have no earthly idea

I have no inside channels on any of this stuff there's a lot of talk about it online but no there's nothing more than that but the point is two of the

Marian dogmas were not defined in 1517 or even in 1600 1600 the reformation is pretty well underway, the counter reformation has begun so this was not a part of reformational thinking the

Immaculate Conception 1854 and the bodily assumption of Mary in 1950 so Rome had not departed as far from apostolic teaching in the year 1600 as it has today it continues moving away based upon its traditions in that sense and so the

Marian stuff wasn't a central focus of the reformation that's why everybody whenever I go, oh look at this the reformers said this about Mary it's irrelevant if you had any serious knowledge of what the reformers were saying, what they were focused upon what was definitional you would realize and that's irrelevant but hey, it makes for great memes and fodder to post online and get more clicks and things like that so in 1999

I forget what the number was I don't remember but in 1999

I forget how many millions of signed petitions had already been turned into the

Vatican and this was over a quarter century ago and they were asking the

Pope to define this dogma to make it binding upon everyone he did not do so the speculation went unfulfilled and I wasn't the only one making the speculation by the way there were lots of people within Roman Catholicism that were hoping for it there are lots of people within Roman Catholicism today that are hoping that next week let's see

November 4th, what, Tuesday that next week there is going to be a definition made of Mary as co -redemptrix co -mediatrix and advocate for the people of God it's a statement regarding and this is the topic

Mary's role in salvation that is what it would be about and if this headline comes from somebody that is in the press when it comes to the press they know very very little about Roman Catholicism and very little about Roman Catholic theology so they might go oh it's

Mary's role in salvation with doctrine documents it's a badly written headline but all this stuff is modern development and I truly believe that Immaculate Conception Bodily Assumption are two of the clearest demonstrations of the non -apostolic nature of the trajectory of the

Roman Catholic Church and again when I say apostolic that's not a term that is generally in use amongst evangelicals outside of saying something that the apostles themselves taught but that's not what

Roman Catholics understand by apostolic and that's one of the problems is we talk past each other well it's not so much talking past each other it's the fact that Rome equivocates so she'll use one meaning of apostolic talking internally and a different meaning when talking externally and so there is the claim made over and over again in regards to the

Immaculate Conception Bodily Assumption that this is the ancient faith that this is what has been believed from the start of course every council makes that claim

Nicaea too made that claim we read the anathemas last week this is what the apostles taught and then when you press it and you go prove it all of a sudden apostolic changes meaning from an identifiable objective reality to a non -identifiable secret mythology and it becomes anything taught by the apostolic church well how's apostolic functioning there well a church that claims apostolic succession and authority well there's lots of churches yeah but we're the right ones and that's why when you see competing groups all claiming the same apostolic authority it's pretty much stalemate there's no way since they're not making an objective historical claim they're not saying well actually the apostles did deliver these doctrines to the next generation of believers normally 2

Thessalonians 2 .15 is the one that's cited and so these allegedly apostolic beliefs had been delivered to the

Thessalonians Paul had preached them or he wrote them in his letter the thing is that when you look at the things that Rome has defined on the basis of this supposed apostolic body of truth apostolic succession is more of an ecclesiastical power play than anything else there's no evidence that anyone believed these things for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years especially when you talk about the bodily assumption of marriage honest

Roman Catholic historians will admit this but they get around it by saying and we don't need to have evidence of this don't need to have evidence of it all if it's taught by the right group then it's apostolic and so what they're saying when they use it that way the only connection to the apostles is the one they claim exists between their leaders today and the apostles that lived almost 2 ,000 years ago it's not that there's actually and yeah they make the claim it's an unbroken chain of succession that's ridiculous anybody who knows anything about history knows two periods of time there's many others you can point to but there are two periods of time you have what's called the pornocracy in the pretty much 9th century where the city of Rome was degraded the papacy was degraded the churches in Rome basically became brothels there was corruption everywhere the papacy was bought and sold for 20 chickens and 3 goats and it was truly the low point in the history of the

Roman Catholic religion that's focused upon the idea of a papacy so you've got that and if you want to call that unbroken succession well good luck with that some guy that paid the most number of chickens is the successor of Peter okay and then you have what's called the

Babylonian captivity of the church the Babylonian captivity of the church so what takes place in the middle 1300's sort of earlier part of the 1300's is a movement of the papacy out of Rome Italy is a mess at this point in time historically there isn't a strong central government it's a bunch of feuding little kingdoms that are constantly being overrun by whatever marauding group of Saracens from the sea managed to run over them and so the papacy literally moved to Avignon France from Rome now that raises some questions given how central

Rome views Rome in the succession of authority the claims of the

Bishop of Rome so the papacy moves to Avignon France it's not long until a reformer reestablishes papal claims in Rome while the papacy continues to function in Avignon and so you have

Avignon Popes and you have Roman Popes busily anathematizing one another and by the end of the mess of the

Council of Florence in the early 1400's they well the

Council of Pisa actually they attempted to heal the schism by appointing a third

Pope but the problem is the first two Popes wouldn't relinquish their office so now you have three

Popes so the Council didn't accomplish anything other than have three people running around saying we're the

Pope it's the Council of Constance that finally heals the schism and it does so by basically elevating the power of councils above that of the papacy to heal the papacy and then over the next century the papacy is like yeah we don't like that and they reverse all that as far as the power structure is concerned but the papacy couldn't heal itself it did not have the ability within itself to do so and so the council deposed the current pretenders to the papal throne and established a single unitary throne in Rome after that and that was the victory of conciliarism councils as the highest authority but it didn't last long because the papacy took that power back to itself so that Luther could be scandalized when he visited

Rome in 1510 when he sees the Pope riding through the streets of Rome in full armor at the head of a mounted cavalry preparing to go to battle so this was the situation that you're facing historically at that particular point in time is a corrupted

Roman Catholic hierarchy and so and by the way all this is very relevant to the rise of the reformation too that Babylonian captivity of the church had broken many people's belief and faith in the idea of a singular

Pope being able to rule the church in essence because the papacy could not heal itself and even though the reformation takes place you know 1517 180, 170 years later it had an impact on the view of the papacy as the inevitable uniter of Christians had been broken because these

Popes were busily anathematizing each other who were you supposed to believe so it depended on what day of the week it was and so that was one of the key things and just in passing since it is reformation day there are a couple other things that were absolutely vital to the reformation happening too that I think you need to keep in mind

I've said many times we'll get back to Mary here in just a second but I've said many times that if I were

God which thankfully I'm not I would have chosen someone like John Wycliffe to lead the reformation brilliant mind brilliant mind way ahead of his time frame but he died and eventually his bones were exhumed and burned and thrown in the river swift for having started the

Lollards and having translated the Bible into English and translated it into Latin but still he felt that the plowman needed to be able to read the scriptures and the church disagreed very very thoroughly so why didn't the reformation start with Wycliffe his writings were very straight forward or his sort of successor in reformation

Jan Hus who was burned at the council of Constance for his heresy and that would come back to haunt

Martin Luther at the Leipzig disputation in 1518 anyway why not start it there because the world wasn't ready for it the world wasn't ready for it a couple of really important things hadn't happened yet in God's providence one was the fall of Constantinople and the fall of Constantinople led to many eastern scholars fleeing to the west and bringing their manuscripts with them and this led to an explosion of knowledge and learning in western

European universities that did not have access to that kind of information before that was very important but most important most important was the invention of the printing press the reformation could never have happened without printing if Martin Luther's books and booklets had to be hand produced hand copied word by word it would never have happened you saw those pamphlets we would call tracts today being read by people all over Europe even when it was illegal easy to hide something like that under a coat and you also needed to have the bible available to people to be able to read and up to this point in time that was very rare only rich people had a bible because only they could afford the huge cost of the production of one why?

because it's all handwritten once Gutenberg invents the press it just didn't happen overnight but once the printing press starts doing what the printing press is supposed to be doing the bible is the first book translated the first book printed and that becomes absolutely central to the reformation taking place you also had to have the rise of nationalism this is a different thing than what we're hearing about Christian nationalism today it's difficult for people to understand that there were many times in history you would live in a land and as far as you knew this land had always been owned by this little petty king over here, that little petty king over there this duke over there and you didn't know there was anything else different in the past this is again that issue of what we call anachronism that many people in the medieval period suffered from thinking that things had always been the same as they are now most people who are born in western europe during this time frame never travel more than 7 miles any one direction from the place they're born so figure out where you are right now have google maps draw a circle around where you are right now that extends 7 miles every direction so it would be 14 miles across the diameter so 7 mile radius how big is that circle?

not very big yeah, rich would never be able to get home yeah,

I'm 4 .5 miles even myself and I'm the closest one so people started you had the rise of universities you had the renaissance take place you had people like Lorenzo Valla discovering the problems of what's called anachronism he discovered for example the donation of Constantine which had been used for centuries to defend the authority claims that papacy was forgery it wasn't written at that time period and this is all taking place the renaissance brings classical learning learning of the

Romans and Greeks into a wide variety of people's experience they did not have before and that impacted the reformation as well the grounding of the reformation and then you had humanism now humanism back then is not the same as humanism today humanism back then you could argue led to today's humanism but not necessarily inevitably humanism just is the idea that mankind should and has the capacity to pursue objective truth in God's world and the cry of the humanists was ad fontes to the source rather than many of the works of scholasticism very similar to Jewish works during the intertestamental period where rabbi so -and -so said to rabbi so -and -so said to rabbi so -and -so and by the days of Luther it was this person quoted this person to this person and by the time you get down to what people were functioning on there was very little connection to reality and so that going to the sources was extremely important and then finally the last real important reason why the reformation had to take place well

I shouldn't have said last I may have said the rise of nationalism and then didn't explain what

I meant if you look at Germany today for the vast majority of human history

Germany has been a collection and still is today I mean when you look at what we would call counties things like that vast collection of little city states and there was no single

Germany and so as people as printing became available literacy improved part of this was by the way because of the great mortality which we call the black death they didn't call it that they called it the great mortality well a couple other things too that created a middle class so many people died that skilled laborers all of a sudden became the most important thing you could find and a middle class develops out of that so there is a a burgeoning middle class that is not rich but has the ability to live at a higher level than in the preceding hundred years once that happens then you get universities universities are founded at this period of time earlier than this 10th, 11th centuries because the middle class has disposable income and people can go learn and improve themselves and so you start seeing this printing press once again being used to keep this thing going and then

I suppose the last thing in the background of the reformation that was absolutely necessary to happen was simply the corruption of the church like I said

Luther saw the Pope riding through the cities of Rome in armor and he was scandalized by it he was scandalized by going into official

Roman Catholic churches in Rome and people would pay to have masses said for the souls of departed believers so I will pay you 20 ducats to say mass for my departed father so that he can get out of purgatory and I'll set aside a set amount of money that sort of buys your saying of masses either just one time or multiple times and Luther goes to Rome and they had set up there probably is a

Latin name or Italian name but they were like hallways with altars all along the wall and the priests could go in and approach an altar and do mass and things like that and the pilgrims outside they've walked

Luther walked from Germany to Rome can you imagine that that's a lot of walking he walked from Germany to Rome he was an

Augustinian monk you couldn't ride a horse and people would come and they want a mass said and the popular idea was if it's said in Rome it has more value than if it's said in my hometown someplace else and so they'd bring their money and sometimes it was money they didn't really have it was their last bit but they'd bring their money and they would pay to have masses said for their departed loved ones because this fear of purgatory now today with these

Roman Catholic apologists saying well you know purgatory might just be an instantaneous thing and it just happens at the end of life and there's this instant cleansing it's like that is not what the church was teaching at this point in time you could never have had the indulgence trade that created the amount of wealth gold, silver, precious stones

I'm not going to say what it is that Rome gathered out of the sale of indulgences or in this case they'd bring their money with them to have masses said and they would pay a priest to go into one of these hallways that had these altars set up and he would say mass in the name of such and such a person because that is supposed to involve a transfer from the treasury of merit and somehow benefit that soul well

Luther goes into one of these places and he's going to say mass and he's listening to the priest around him and he realizes he's not sure what they're doing but they're rushing through it skipping entire sections of it so they can get back out on the road and have the next pilgrim come along and say

I'll pay you 20 ducats to say mass for such and such a person and so they go in there and they would do some stuff they had to spend some time but they would say either do it in German rather than Latin or the story is told that's where Hocus Pocus came from from Hocus Corpus Meum this is my body and by the way

Rome is now having Latin Masses in the Vatican Francis had not liked the

Latin Mass at all but that's been reversed anyway this kind of degradation once again of the papacy was well known very very well known and so all that comes together with the fact that nation states are beginning to coalesce and so Germany was made up of all these different electorates with a different ruler they figured they'd have little battles with one another all this kind of stuff but Germans are starting to think of themselves as Germans and you might go what else would they think of themselves as?

the point is there wasn't a Germany before these little nation states are dissolving especially thanks to the black death in the middle of the 14th century the rich might have had a slightly lower mortality rate because they could get out of town but there were lots and lots of people who died in the great mortality that left all their possessions behind that's sort of how it happens when you die and that would create a middle class and that had allowed a lot of these little tiny kingdoms that were constantly fighting with one another to unite so that the person in charge wasn't wasting all his money raising a little army to fight with the next guy over now we're all part of the same country we can pull the same direction

I'm going to get richer and the other guy is going to get richer and that's great because we're at peace with one another so the rise of nationals because what happened was when

Tetzel proclaimed that indulgence that he did he was raising money for St.

Peter's Basilica in Rome and so that gold that went to buy that ceiling and that building was stolen from German peasants on the promise of receiving a plenary indulgence for whatever it was they had done for giving money and I say no one would have believed that I would suggest you watch the audience

Q &A section of my debate 25 years ago now with Peter Stravinskas on Purgatory and this guy gets up and asks this rather long question of Fr.

Stravinskas regarding well basically what the guy said was so if I'm understanding this

I can just write a check for forgiveness now it was late when this guy asked this question

I'd say a third of the audience had already left it was probably 11 o 'clock at night which in New York isn't all that late a city doesn't sleep really but Stravinskas wanted out of there at this point he's pulling on his collar he just wanted this to be over with he did not have an enjoyable evening and so this guy says so could

I just write a check and I as soon as I heard that I was starting to formulate how

I expected Stravinskas to respond but how he did respond was not how

I expected it to be and it's one of the most famous lines has

Algo typed it 47 times now in channel no

Algo today ok I think this

Stravinskas debate is one of Algo's favorites he quotes from it all the time he said he in red used to quote stuff from Stravinskas all the time anyway

Stravinskas' response to the guy's question which left me just going it was late pay me now or pay me later pay me now or pay me later everybody who has left about two thirds of the audience just sat there going did he just say what

I think he said yep he did yeah that was one of those debate moments no twist about it so these are the background issues that prompted the reformation so let's bring it back up to the day you didn't hear me say anything about Mary there she was not a key issue in the reformation at all it's not until you get into really the third and fourth generation of reformers where they are seeking to apply the principles that the first generation had used on doctrines such as ecclesiology papacy soteriology justification by faith this kind of stuff once you get down the road a bit then it's like you know these

Marian beliefs that we've been believing for a long long time really don't make much sense and they're not biblical in fact they're anti -biblical and there may be all sorts of piety associated with it but this isn't something the apostles taught at all and so semper reformanda all is reforming was applied and appropriately so in regards to these

Marian beliefs and they weren't even the Marian beliefs we have today it did not include the

Immaculate Conception it did not include the bodily assumption of Mary and it certainly did not include Mary as co -redemptrix, co -mediatrix and advocate with the people of God so all of that to say that a lot of the stuff you see online from Roman Catholics today

Reformation Day is just really based on massive ignorance and you know why they get away with it?

because Protestants are massively ignorant of church history you just have to be honest that's really what it's all about and so they get away with it they shouldn't some of us call them out on it but man

I would be spending all day sitting here responding to stuff on X alone let alone

Facebook or TikTok or Instagram never used any of that stuff but you can spend your entire day responding to stuff like that it's absolutely all around us so when we come to this current situation with the possibility what's this going to be?

well like I said this little article very poorly written anything that comes from the media they know nothing about theology they have no way of evaluating what's important and what isn't even if they knew so I don't know what's going to happen next

Tuesday my gut I'll just tell you my gut right now my gut feeling would be some kind of reiteration of what

Vatican II said about Mary as mother of the church and mediator of graces and that kind of stuff

I mean again popes used that language I think the earliest

I didn't have a chance to look it up I think the earliest was like 1853 or something but that number is just floating through my mind which doesn't mean anything that could be an old locker combination in high school for any other reason only older people understood that but it's been around for a long time and there's immediate objections to the idea this is going to be the 5th

Marian Dogma because Rome hasn't accepted some of the previous

Eastern Orthodoxy has not accepted some of the previous Marian stuff now they've got a lot of Marian pizzazz themselves they've got a lot of Marian prayers the

Blessed Theotokos is elevated through the roof in Eastern Orthodoxy but Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't function like Roman Catholicism does with dogma, doctrine these types of necessary distinctions and books

I can look it up here in an encyclopedic thing it just doesn't work so when it comes to Rome they like dogmas and could it be that?

yeah, it could be but if it was defined the movement toward ecumenical unity between Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism would be severely damaged that was one of the things

I talked about in 1999 in this book that would put yet another stumbling block between the

Eastern Churches and the Western Churches which believe that Rome has gone too far in defining certain claims regarding Mary it's not necessarily that they reject

Eastern Orthodoxy or that they reject the general concepts of the exaltation of Mary to even being an advocate for the people of God but it's the dogmatic insistence that it needs to be understood in one particular way that's what

Eastern Orthodoxy is rather allergic to is that kind of theological precision which they would blame

Rome for and any definition of the 5th Marian dogma would involve some kind of theological precision or it means nothing my gut feeling

I would be very surprised if I wake up next Tuesday and the 5th

Marian dogma has been defined personally

I would actually view it as a tool it's already functioning in the

Church you can see while I was looking there's a who is this

Bree Solstad a woman, Roman Catholic posting on Twitter and she had said initially when she posted this

I am both insanely excited and absolutely terrified at the same time I even pray that Pope Leo handles this right it's time to proclaim the 5th

Marian dogma please give it to me straight what is your expectation for this then she quotes this headline which

I had already read to you then she commented on her own post

Mary is the co -redemptrix of all people let's proclaim it she doesn't just distribute the fruits of the redemption won by her son she is by God's will an instrument in the work of redemption itself no

Mary, no salvation no Mary, no heaven though her role in the work of salvation is secondary and finite limited she's a creature and though her role is utterly dependent upon Christ Our Lady is truly part of the actual work of salvation itself and then there's lengthy quotations here from all the way going back to 10th century

French hymn holy redemptrix of the world pray for us actually this is a decent thing here may

Mary our protectress the co -redemptrix to whom we offer our prayer with great outpouring make our desire generously correspond to the desire of the

Redeemer Pope now Saint John Paul II who I was talking about right there in 1999

Mary cooperate in our redemption in such a way that our salvation flowed from the love of Christ and his sufferings intimately joined with the love and sorrows of his mother

Pope Pius XII she renounced her mother's rights to the salvation of mankind and as far as it depended on her offered her son to placate divine justice so we may say that with Christ she redeemed mankind that's

Pope Benedict the 15th from the nature of his work the

Redeemer ought to have associated his mother with his work new Adam and a new Eve just like the old Adam and the old

Eve for this reason we invoke her under the title co -redemptrix she gave us the savior she accompanied him in the work of redemption and as far as the cross itself she went to Calvary with him every step of the way sharing with him the sorrows of the agony and of the death in which she has consummated the redemption of mankind

Pope Pius XI and obviously you can go back in certain kinds of literature the same literature that gave us immaculate conception bodily assumption that also gives us

Mary as the spouse of the spirit and the incarnation of the Holy Spirit we talked about this just what?

two months ago when Matt Fradd interviewed that guy that was saying amazing stuff that same literature that gave rise to what's already been dogmatically defined contains this as well

Mary is the neck the grace is in the head in God but Mary is the neck through which it flows and turns the head of God as to where grace is going to be given she's no grace accrues outside of Mary according to this teaching none now it is ludicrous to assert the apostles taught that it's ludicrous it is an abandonment of any type of idea that we have any idea whatsoever either what the other church taught or can in any way trace our beliefs back to the apostles you just throw that all out it's apostolic because we proclaim it not to be connected to the apostles but we can proclaim it by our own authority we're an apostolic church so we can determine what apostolic teaching is that's basically what you have there so it's very different than how we when we're talking about is this apostolic what we're asking is does it have its origin and source in the teachings of the apostles of Jesus Christ because the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints was once for all delivered to the saints during the days of the apostles and honest

Roman Catholics with whom I've had numerous conversations about this I remember one man that was studying for the priesthood 1990s we were instrumental in talking with him and he ended up leaving all that but one of the things he said was it just struck me it became so clear the only way for dogmas like the immaculate conception the bodily assumption to be true is if there's continuing revelation in the church because it didn't come from the apostles and with Leo's elevation of John Henry Cardinal Newman to doctor of the church, now saint

John Henry Cardinal um that development hypothesis which breaks the necessity of having that connection you don't have to have that historical connection the apostles didn't have to believe this the apostles might have looked at something you were saying today and went what are you talking about but you see if you have an apostolic church nurturing the germ the seed you know it can go from what the apostles thought of an acorn,

I need to have an acorn we need to find an acorn just buy ourselves an acorn um used to have them all over the place, actually that should be easy to do because there are certain

RV parks I park in that I end up with that stuff all over the truck need to stick one in the cab and bring it in um but uh they delivered the acorn that has now grown into this huge tree that the apostles would never recognize they never preached a sermon on it but it's still apostolic because apostolic becomes a mechanism of the transmission of things rather than an actual statement that the apostles actually taught that's continuing revelation that's what it is, it's a claim of continuing revelation and um so we'll see the reformation day today may be very very very important with what happens on November 4th it may be nothing it may not clarify anything beyond what was already in Vatican II well then at least we took the time to explain it and so there we are, hopefully that's helpful to you so um if you're going to be celebrating this evening or this weekend please remember

Martin Luther did not please do not get arrested for nailing things to doors your local

Roman Catholic church he didn't really do that um please recognize that the 95

Theses were not what you think they were most people have never read them but you should um and um just be thankful for post -Tenebrous