A Protestant Discovers Catholicism. Keith is excited!!!

[Music] welcome to catholic feedback i'm your host keith nester on this podcast we connect the eternal truths of the catholic faith with everyday life send in your questions and comments to feedback at catholicfeedback.com this podcast is brought to you by down to earth ministry a ministry of stewardship a mission of faith and by the generous support of our patrons for more information please visit downtoearthministry.org that's down the number two earthministry.org let's get to it okay so we are live welcome to catholic feedback my name is keith nester and on this podcast we connect the eternal truths the catholic faith to everyday life and i am excited for today's episode i am here i have a guest which i don't do very often i'm probably gonna start that but um i can't find that many people that want to talk to me so it's really hard but no um i met this this uh young man austin because like a lot of you have done with me you know i went on his video and i watched his youtube channel and i just left a comment and i just started talking to him a little bit and then that led to this opportunity for him to come on to uh catholic feedback to talk today about the journey that of exploring catholicism and that's kind of what i want to what i want to talk about with this episode and have austin talk about with this episode because austin has as and i'll let him introduce himself but he's a protestant he's an evangelical he's not a catholic but as you'll hear from him he started to um learn a little bit and grow into that and that's the kind of thing that gets me fired up like i'm so excited because i remember being on that journey and learning things about the catholic faith that i never thought i would ever care about and i think when i heard his video there were a lot of things i watched this video where i saw parallels between our our stories and our journeys and i thought it would be a great time to bring him onto the podcast um and just have a conversation about how it's going for him and what he's learning because ultimately you know the goal of catholic feedback is to connect the eternal truths the catholic faith to everyday life but guess what friends i don't see that as just being for catholics okay i want to see the eternal truth connected to everyday life for everybody whether they be catholic protestant or whatever and my hope for that is that god would use that to draw people into truth now i make no i make no bones about the fact that as a as a comfort to catholicism you know my desires that everyone would would be exposed to that truth and come into that i don't hide that at all but at the same time i am wanting our conversation today and austin and i've talked about this to be uh respectful we're not gonna be debating if you're here for a debate turn the video off right now you're not gonna have that um but what i'm really interested in is hearing from this uh brother in christ about what god has been showing him so austin welcome to catholic feedback welcome to my channel uh so just introduce yourself to our viewers and let everybody know who you are yeah keith thank you so much for having me i'm so glad to be here so as you mentioned my name is austin i am a student here at moody bible institute studying theology and i run a channel called gospel simplicity and that channel it's centered around this conviction that the gospel is really good news and i think that's something we both share and so i seek to make videos about life jesus and the journey of faith while talking about it in a real honest and open way and the goal is that that would lead people to discover the beautiful simplicity and transformative power of the gospel so often that looks like taking biblical or theological topics and things that might seem just really like complicated or esoteric and saying like no these are approachable and understandable and they have these practical implications for your life or sometimes it looks like taking these things that people have long since put on the shelf and they've collected dust and they're saying yeah i get that that's basic we've moved on but saying no there's like this beautiful depth there and so in studying theology and in making videos about the bible you hopefully inevitably learn that you're not the first person to do this and that there's actually a lot of people that have done it throughout history and also right now many of whom might see things different than you so that's kind of how i ended up coming into contact with just people of various branches of christianity and have really been enjoying that more specifically we'll get into it yeah yeah some videos that kind of shaped the channel in this direction of kind of ecumenical conversations so for people that don't understand tell people like what moody bible institute is yeah so moody bible institute it is um an undergraduate college in which everyone takes at least it's like 30 some credit hours of bible and theology classes and so we're an accredited university and not everyone is a theology major but most of our core curriculum consists of bible classes it's here in downtown chicago it is a really unique environment because everyone that goes here wants to go into ministry so it creates a really niche culture and it's a great time that's awesome so is your ultimate goal then to become like a pastor yeah so that's the plan so finishing up my undergrad and then actually been invited to be a part of a church plant back home from where i'm from in maryland and then i plan on doing grad school as well awesome all right well let's just jump right in and talk about um how how this is how we got connected and and the content that you've been making lately that has caused your channel to really um grow in an immense way and i think that you'll you'll discover that catholics are really passionate about this kind of stuff so i know that your channel has become sort of overtaken by catholic listeners and viewers uh just get used to that because here's the thing i feel like i feel like the way that you're you're approaching this this content is a way that i think a lot of catholics will appreciate because the thing that drew me to your videos um and what was and your and you personally was the fact that you you seem to be approaching this idea um in a way that does two things that i think are really important for people who are doing this kind of thing number one you're approaching it without believing that you already know everything about cat the catholic faith okay so many people already think they know everything about the catholic faith because they've talked to somebody who was catholic or they read a book about it or um maybe they were catholic or whatever but they might not know everything and so the openness that you that you have when you come into this and saying look i'm here to learn that's that's huge because all of us are in that boat really but secondly i think you are also able to be honest about the things that weren't connecting with you or the areas that you still are like well okay it's possible to learn things about being catholic without instantly becoming a catholic and i think sometimes there can be this this place where we go okay um if what like with protestants and catholics together there could be sometimes i think this misconception that if only i could show the other person this one thing they will abandon their position so there are a lot of protestants and i deal with them every day through my comments and through emails that think oh well if i can just tell keith and these other catholics that you know we're saved by grace and faith alone not by works if i can just show them that one that one thing or that you know it's wrong to worship mary if i can just show them that one thing they'll instantly stop being catholic or on the flip side for a lot of catholics they think well if i can just show protestants and i'm just making this up as i think about it here that you know jesus really is present in the eucharist biblically then he'll become a catholic and i think that i think that's a little unrealistic you know to think that someone who's had their whole life grown up in the faith that one thing instantly is going to make them convert yeah i actually got a comment the other day that made me think of this but i think it read read john 6 boom argument over i was like i mean i have read it but thanks for the recommendation i i get those kind of comments all the time from protestants and you know so here's the thing like we have to both agree that that's probably not the way things go down with regard to either side i mean because i was like you austin a long time you know i was a protestant pastor and when i met my first catholic who actually knew his faith my misunderstanding was that i could easily convert him to my position of prostitutism and i don't know if he thought it would be easy to convert me to catholicism but we we created this this friendship that was based on our desire to convert each other and so we had a lot of knock down drag out fights we had a lot of arguments we had a lot of of back and forth and eventually we got to a point where we said this really isn't helping either of us you know this isn't fruitful um so let's just love each other and help each other grow in christ and you know eventually um you know i became a catholic but it wasn't because he argued me into something so i i guess i'm setting the stage for for our conversation by saying you know a conversion to either catholicism or protestantism is a complicated thing it's it's it's not just a matter of exposing someone to one or two particular bible verses or points of view because there's a lot that goes into what makes a person convert one way or the other but to be honest with you when i watched your video and i want to talk about the video that i saw first i felt a real connection to where you were in that journey because it reminded me of where i was um years ago that ultimately led to where i to where i am so let's talk about that video the first video that i that i watched of yours that was the one where you talk about the protestant goes to a catholic mass okay and so talk about where that came from and of course we'll link to it in the description so people can go watch that and i highly encourage all of you to watch that video um maybe you should watch the video right now and then pause this and come back to it so you can have the context of that but um talk a little bit about what what led to that video yeah so and thanks for uh linking to it all um but what so it was really a video before that that made that video possible and that first video was a video i made called uh protestant goes to a catholic bible study or something like that and that grew out of an experience i had gosh it might be two years ago now when my uncle who i'd grown up with who had never been into the faith and i'd prayed for for years get a call from him one day saying hey do you want to go to a bible study with me and i mean i was so excited i immediately said yes then he followed it up with the fact that it was at 5 30 in the morning at a catholic church and thought i should have listened for a little longer no but i was excited to do it and so i did that and we went for months it was a that man is you i don't know if you're familiar with the program but it's a catholic program by i think paradise's day anyway went to that for a couple months and it was in the midst of this past summer when there was just so much division on so many fronts and i made videos about that i wanted to start talking a little bit about the division within the church and i made that video with not real high expectations i mean i think my videos were getting like 30 40 views at that time and i was loving it and but i made it and then slowly that video really took off becoming the most popular video i had made and i think the unanimous feedback was you should go to a catholic mass it's great that you went to this bible study but you should go to a mass and see what it's like and i was just so grateful for the support of everyone i thought yeah let's do it this will be fun wow that's so cool first of all i will tell you this as a convert one thing that you have to understand about catholics is they love to do things early in the morning um like super early in the morning like we have we have a morning prayer group that's six a.m you know and and i remember when i first became catholic i was like what's the deal with all these super early morning meetings you know and they were just like well that's what works for us and they peop catholic catholic people typically and i know some people be like i don't i'm a late night guy but catholics love to get up early and pray that's just the thing so anyway that's wonderful so when you went to that bible study um was it weird for you and i know you could i guess we could you know your channel obviously will be linked here so people can watch that video too where you talk about that but um was it weird for did you meet catholics that you were like whoa there's actually catholics that care about the bible was that a shock to you or were you did you did you know better because i no i i didn't know better and i talked about that a little in the video and it's embarrassing now looking back having interacted with so many great catholics but at that point in my life and again i recognize this this sounds horrible but the only catholics i had met growing up were people who went to church maybe on christmas and easter i really didn't think they had any understanding of the bible and for me the way i really would have put it is like they don't have a personal relationship yeah which says and i could probably show them a couple bible verses and show them this is wrong which i get now um it's there's i've learned so much more but that's where i was at the time and so i was just shocked that there were these guys showing up i think there was like 60 guys coming there at 5 30 in the morning who were all really committed to being better husbands fathers and followers of christ and that alone is really what kind of began to change all of this for me it wasn't at first being introduced to an argument thinking okay you know catholicism is a genuine position that i might disagree with on some points but is like a serious intellectual position but it really started with oh there's catholics that care about their faith this is interesting and they read the bible like i didn't even know that was a thing and so that kind of got the ball rolling i mean i know exactly what you mean and and i did i didn't see that video too but um i remember feeling the same way which is what i was watching your stuff i just was cracking up because it and it does sound terrible doesn't it i mean god bless all of our all of our catholic brothers and sisters because what catholics a lot of times have to put up with as far as assumptions about them as a whole from a lot of protestants it's just i don't know it's sad but in some ways you could say it's our own fault because i mean let's face it there's a lot of things that catholics do to perpetuate these misconceptions but yet at the same time when i was a protestant i didn't really like try to find the truth i just wrote the whole thing off you know what i mean i was just like well whatever why do i care about that i don't so when i met somebody who studied the bible was passionate about their faith and was catholic and that was the reason it was like whoa this is challenging a misconception that i have always had about catholics that you know they don't read their bibles they don't have a personal relationship with jesus and it really opened the door for me to kind of go to a different level so um yeah what are what are some other misconceptions that maybe you you had about catholics that are starting to maybe get challenged a little bit yeah in some ways it might be easier to name the few things i might have had right but yeah i think there is there's a lot i think so that first part of there's catholics who are serious about their faith not in spite of it but because of it and that would have been the language i grew up with that yeah some catholics might be saved in spite of their catholicism which i look back on now and it was probably just misinformation for them too but then i think the other major thing was wow there's really good arguments for a lot of this stuff and i started interacting with guys like trent horn and the catholic answers guys and you know math rad's channel and just realizing oh there's a serious intellectual history here and i think another thing that was big for me even some of this i mean some of it was corrected by moody stuff but as protestants it's generally the church was really good in acts it was like all right through maybe augustine we like him and then just forget it like they just they went off the rails it was bad the middle ages like glad we're past that and and pretty much putting all those doctrines that i disagreed with and that many of them i still disagree with really really late around when they got defined but then digging into the history and saying okay they might have been defined at this time but i can't in good conscience say no one believed transubstantiation until the 12th or 13th century when it's defined and so all of this stuff going and really getting into the church bothers i'll say so much this has been head spinning and i'm in the middle of researching a lot of this so if i misrepresent catholicism and or protestantism maya culpa on that but i think that's been a real surprise to me and then i've just been surprised with the support i've gotten on my videos and i think a lot of it goes back to that fact that you bring up that so many catholics have been so misrepresented and just been the butt of so many bad jokes or just really kind of targeted and unfair ways that if you just say a couple nice things about catholicism it's it's amazing how much that has meant to people and that's been humbling to me and also just pointing out like wow i was probably doing damage with these misconceptions and i had no idea well i think that's important to point out you know first of all the misconceptions that a lot of people have about catholicism it's not like they're intentional you know it wasn't like one day you decided hey i want to make up a bunch of stuff about the catholic faith and you know um tell everybody all these falsehoods it's just that that when you're raised a protestant an evangelical or whatever and you don't have exposure to you know actual practicing catholicism and the reality of it it's it's it's sort of like you're just ignorant and it's not your fault it's just it's just that's how you were brought up you know or how or how you're in your in your understanding i don't mean like someone taught you that when you're brought up i just mean like just like we're ignorant about lots of things so i find that when catholics and a lot of catholics i think i don't know if they really get that i don't know if they really understand about all these misconceptions out there i think some do but i think other people just kind of think well what do you mean they don't think we're christians you know what do you what do you mean they don't think that we read the bible and it's kind of like it's a sad day for catholics when they get beat up by protestants and are just like what are you talking about of course we love jesus you know but you know it's amazing so i don't know i mean you mentioned it earlier about the whole like personal relationship with with god thing i mean and and do you do you feel like that idea has changed for you with regard to the way catholics relate to christ than than uh before you went through all this stuff as far as do i think catholics have a personal relationship with christ yeah yeah absolutely that's changed and yeah i think for me it was and again this is just kind of what i'm handed and partially what i see through a couple catholics that i knew but it's nothing more than a couple rituals you go through confirmation so you can get like money and stuff i mean that's like how my friends approached it and but now seeing these people who they i mean so many of them could make my devotion to jesus look like there's so many catholics that wake up at 5 30 in the morning to go to men's groups or at 6am for a prayer and yeah the the claim that catholics don't have a personal relationship with jesus is i mean it may be true about some catholics but i would not use it as a blanket statement anymore yeah and i think like when i started to sort of unpack some of my misconceptions with regard to human beings because i think a lot of it has to do and you hear this argument a lot is well you know catholics don't have a personal relationship with jesus they don't do this they don't and they're talking about individual behaviors and at the time i was going through this you know i was a pastor and honestly everything that was leveled at my at catholics by protestants about that i could look out in my own congregation and even in my own life and say well that's true about all of us isn't it yeah yeah and that's something people brought up in my video one of the points i made about that first bible study was the difference between practicing catholics and nominal catholics because i think that was something i was encountering but what many people responded and completely fairly i wasn't trying to say differently is the same thing's true for protestants i know a ton of protestants who come to church just because they think they're supposed to and they don't really care about it but yeah you know their mom dragged them there their significant other or whatever so yeah it goes both ways so i will i'm sure we'll get into more of this kind of stuff but when you went let's talk about what happened when you went to mass because yeah i know that you were and that was the video like i said the first video i saw was about that experience and uh talk a little bit about what that was like for you um to walk into that situation yeah that was interesting so it i got really lucky and i'm still realizing how lucky i was to have this specific church right down the street from me but so i wanted to go to a catholic mass and i had this idea that going to like an eastern right church would be cool just because i had heard some people talk about it and so i actually googled that and was shown saint john of cancius church here in chicago which isn't eastern right and so it's just dumb luck that it popped up but it was right down the street and i said i want to go to this one and then like many times throughout this journey i became incredibly confused when i had to sign up for a mass and it's like extraordinary form high extraordinary form low ordinary english or i'm like what does this even mean like at my church we have like 9 a.m 11 a.m so i'm trying to sift through all that and i end up going to a mass on a saturday which was extraordinary form low which didn't really mean anything to me besides i had googled enough to know be in latin and thought i don't know this will be interesting but my first impression and i know this won't be everyone's first impression at a catholic church but kantis is it's stunning i've been back since just to pray because it's just such a beautiful church but i walked in and was taken aback visually by just i mean there's paintings everywhere and later someone toured me through and realizing the significance of the of everything in there really blew my mind but on this first time it was just kind of a strange thing i sat in the back and extraordinary form low is really quiet and it's latin so i was really confused i didn't have a missile but i thought at the very least this is interesting and just the reverence of it all was probably one of the biggest takeaways for me so when did you go to your first novus ordo yeah so that was the next week so after i made that first video everyone was saying go to mass in english or go to a high mass and so i did both on the next sunday okay so i think the one i saw i can't remember if it was a novice order that you were talking about i did see the latin one that you talked about too um well how like the kind of church experience that you come from and like the church you go to now is it a liturgical church no so i grew up in one church my whole life up through college and that was it ran about 2 000 people a week very contemporary huge stage big lights played electric guitar there my mom was the creative director there which gotcha tells you the kind of church it was yep yeah i grew up there and cut my teeth on church there okay so for people like for catholics that are watching this you know there are a lot of churches and i'm sure most of you know what i'm talking about you know the difference between like a liturgical church and a non-liturgical church i don't know if there's a better word for that other than just to say non although people do argue about even whether non-liturgical churches have some sort of liturgy because yeah it's rare that you just go in someplace and there's nothing that is the same um or three worship songs announcements it's kind of funny so what quick little little illustration the church that i was at before i became a catholic our we had i think four worship services on a sunday morning and our third worship service was literally called two songs in a sermon so that was the name of the service when i got there they called it two songs in a sermon and that's what it was um anyway in a non-liturgical church you don't have you know these it's not the same typically every week there's not like response and call and readings and this type of thing and you don't always know what you're gonna get um so to for people who worship in like a contemporary non-liturgical way to go into a mass where it's very i mean you guys know it's it's liturgy it's the same it's it's it's dictated to you the way the service is typically um that can sometimes be a shock for people and sometimes people have a negative reaction to that and sometimes people have a positive reaction to that so how how did you do with that part of it austin yeah you know i think i had gone in knowing it was going to be far different than what i was used to so i think that put me on the right track to appreciating it but i will say i mean i grew up again like you were describing you know very it wasn't a charismatic church but you know big worship sets that were really well done and then these practical messages and so to go into this liturgical church where i see people reciting things that i don't even know what they're saying and the priest is talking very quietly and then there's just a lot of silence and there was like a very very brief homily and by my luck it was on mary it was nice though but it just felt like this is all there is to this like and i saw that it was really centered around the eucharist which i think i mentioned in that video makes sense like if if you believe that the eucharist is truly the body blood soul and divinity of christ then that should be at the center but for me it just felt like where's all the stuff i'm used to like like where's my three points to take away and apply this week and like i didn't get that good feeling from worship and you know i understand there's different ways of doing it but it definitely was different yeah i think i think a lot of catholics i guarantee you right now when you said well if we truly believe that jesus christ is the center of you know that he is truly present in the eucharist that should be the center a lot of catholics just started clapping right now because they were like yes exactly um but yeah it is it is kind of a little bit of a of a things i think one of the things that and i heard you mention this in your video that we can sometimes come into the mass as as protestants or whatever with the same idea that it is the same function as our worship services in our evangelical churches so for example and i think you mentioned this you know you talked about the homily how it was shorter than what you've experienced before and i like how you you you made the distinction between what's the purpose of this homily in a lot of our evangelical churches that's the center of the worship service and the purpose is to come and learn something and to be challenged and to be like to be given practical application and to be equipped in in what you're learning and when you come into a catholic church you know that that still happens sometimes i mean and some priests are better homilies than others and there are some priests i can tell you who their their homilies are very much like evangelical sermons they have three points they have a story they have a uh challenge they have i mean i've heard that but a lot of catholic churches simply that they just do something else they you know and i remember like when i would bring my family with me to this they'd just be like well i didn't really learn anything or i didn't really whatever and i and it's like well you weren't really supposed to in the same way that you are used to it's kind of a different purpose um so i was i was picking up on that from from what you had said were there any was there anything else that you felt like um was a surprise to you about the mass it was a surprise i think it was just interesting i mean i guess i already hit on this but really the focus i mean i don't want to like call these people out but there are people who got there late but seemed like they were getting there just because they really wanted to be able to partake of the eucharist and like that was that i could tell it meant a lot to them and so that was that was really interesting and then as i went back to the other ones the the novus ordo and then the high mass the high mass definitely had a different impact on me because someone sat with me and explained it all to me oh great someone who had seen my video yeah they were found to the people at cantius they are wonderful i walked in and the gentleman had seen my video oh that's right hey you're that guy from the video and i was like i have never gotten this before in my life but yeah i guess i'm that guy and he's like i want to sit with you he actually took me up to the balcony so he wouldn't distract people and explained every part and then someone else they were selling missiles that church kante's just published like a new missile oh wow and she gave me one she's like i want you to have this and so andrea and craig they're the best but once i understood it i saw another misconception i guess that came out was when i went to the first one i was like there's really not much scripture here i mean i think i heard like a verse red at the beginning or something but then as i'm reading along in the missile i was like you know in one way you guys are putting us to shame but if we're going by just quantity of bible verses in a sermon because for us i mean you're probably unpacking like one text which might be like four or five verses but just the the way the mass was saturated in scripture was really interesting and then the singing and everything at the high mass that was very cool man i i remember feeling like that when i went to a daily mass um like during the week and the thing that hit me was because i was going through a lot of stuff in my own church where we were struggling with biblical issues and a lack of of adherence to what i thought was like you know normal biblical christianity in our denomination and i was really wrestling with that was one of the reasons that i was drawn into catholicism was because i wanted that you know believe it or not i wanted that authority and i wanted that yeah centralness of scripture which i know a lot of protestants go well then why would you be a catholic but you know hang with me here when i went to the to the daily mass you know which only lasts about a half hour first of all i was blown away that people you know we're talked about being blown away that people would get up so early well in my city which isn't as big nearly as chicago i went downtown to the church which now i'm a member of and at noon there were probably 150 200 people that were coming to noon daily noon mass and i thought to myself would anybody do that in my church like if i just decided we were going to have a worship service monday through friday at noon it was going to last a half an hour there was going to be no music and there was going to be no sermon because we didn't have sermons at those daily masses at that particular one would anybody come and the answer of course would be no way so i was immediately blown away by the fact that all these people were coming on their lunch hour and and i was like this is insane i just didn't know well then when it came time for the procession and the deacon was walking up and he had the gospel the book of the gospel and it was lifted high above his head as if to show everybody this is important and i was like whoa and just the reverence that i saw when it was time to read the scriptures and especially the gospel that impacted me like i was like wow okay i'm still not a catholic at this point but i was like one thing i can't ever accuse catholics of is not reading the bible in church because yeah i mean i grew up i went to a lot of bible churches okay but i never went to a church where all they literally did was just read the bible and sit down there's always a sermon right which i like but when i thought about it i'm like okay if any church really is the closest to that definition i was coming to the to the conclusion that it was the mass because they literally read the bible prayed had the sacrament and that was it right um so this understanding of seeing how everything biblically fit together i'm so glad you had someone to guide you in that because you know i i didn't and it took me a long time especially with going to the the lat mask because that's that's normally i go to the latin mass and okay it it it uh it took me a little while to see all that but it was actually watching that unfold before me and having the missile and reading it and looking through it where i was like this is awesome you know yeah that makes such a difference and i'm so grateful that they did that for me because i i would have just been equally as lost but just thought there was more involved services as well yeah yeah so what was your impression of the novus ordo when you went to that was that easier to follow along with her it was definitely easier to follow along with just without any extra help of the missile or anything once i had the missile and craig who i don't know if this is just a like passion of his or what but he knew everything about that church and everything about the latin mass but the novus ordo it definitely felt more comfortable i i like to dress comfortably and i was it was definitely a different crowd at the two oh yeah people were veiled and in slacks and everything at cantius at the latin mass and then at the novus ordo granted this was also i went to the novus order that night so it was like a sunday night at maybe five o'clock i don't know if that changes the demographic but people were dressed more like they would at the churches i grew up at yeah and so it was definitely easier to follow along with the readings were in english and it's interesting because i labeled this church as slightly more stripped down compared to cantius but it was still beautiful i think it's the cathedral it's holy name cathedral okay but it's all painted white it doesn't have like images everywhere but it was easy to follow along with i believe the priest there's a dominican his uh homily was very good it felt a little more like what i was used to not necessarily as dynamic perhaps but it was easy to follow all of it but there was definitely there was just a difference between the two this one you know far from very different than protestantism but in protestantism we have our debates over like seeker sensitive movements and then and all that and i grew up in a very secret sensitive church and i could kind of get some of that between the novus ordo and the latin mass he was facing us it was easy to follow along it seemed like they wanted it to make sense yeah then there was little things like just i and well i i don't want to go too far in it but just like the novus order they were on top of everything covet and they were like they were running it like very very well the latin mass definitely seemed to be more relaxed with that also huge families like people growing up in buses because they have 13 kids which was just i mean it was cool to see but it was interesting to note the differences yeah that's well i think it's it's really interesting to get your take on that austin because i mean there are passionate people on both sides although i find their the passion is more focused on the on the people who attend the latin mass on why it's in their minds superior to the novus ordo and again that's the mass i typically go to but i'm not one of those guys that's like well if you don't go to the if you don't go to the latin mass you're not a real catholic or whatever like that but i you know i i just prefer it and i think there are certain things about it that for me have been um just absolutely incredible but i would never like go to somebody who goes to novus ordo and like talk down to them but there's it's interesting to hear the perspective of of of you you know and and to hear how how you feel about those situations so what were some things about about the situation that maybe you didn't connect with yeah so there were a couple things i mean when i first went it was just the nature of it felt and again some of this was misconception but and this was a daily mass it was a saturday morning that first one the low mass it felt a little like anemic it didn't feel like it had all of the meat or whatever if you will of what i'm used to at a protestant service but some of that was just the nature of it so when i went back to the high mass some of that was corrected i think one thing that stands out to me a little bit and this is definitely showing my bias because it's not that all or even most protestant churches would be different but i grew up in a church that had a real big emphasis on kids ministries and i have just the fondest memories of being a kid in church in these these classrooms that they weren't set up like classrooms i mean they were they were just fun there was so much to do and we had messages and like lessons and small group leaders who were presenting things in an age-appropriate way and that's really i mean that was one of my first introductions to jesus and i think that was such a formative impact for me so there was this part of me as i saw these little kids just kind of crying and fidgeting and all that which but that's fine but i just felt there was a part of me that was like oh i wish you could have the experience i had of just loving church as a little kid now i've i mentioned that one of the videos and people have responded that you know there some churches have separate environments for that and um at a certain age when they can partake of the eucharist they're like well wouldn't you rather than having that and that that's fair but that was just something that stood out to me as ah like i just wish they had that because it meant so much to me yeah i i felt the same way i remember feeling like that when i first started going to mass and you know my kids were old my kids were older they were you know like 17 19 and 20 i think at the time and my youngest son came with us once and i remember all all the kids were running around he just like dad why don't catholics have nurseries don't they don't they don't they have sunday school don't they hat because he grew up in that you know he grew up in that environment and i'm like well i didn't really know what to say to him and then we went to a church one time where it was just like a lot of the churches that i've been in where the kids were there for the beginning and then they were taken out to do their kids program so i was like okay so it's not like against some catholic teaching to have kids programs um so there are those things out there um but yeah i remember feeling i remember feeling like that thinking that's different experience you know um and i so that's interesting that you said that and i know that you know sort of a philosophical conversation i guess to say which is better for and i don't think it's a catholic first protestant thing i just think it's a general idea which is better for kids to grow up in the church service with mom and dad because let's face it i know a lot of protestants that they have like what they call family integrated churches um which you're probably learning about that at moody a little bit but where they don't separate people up into like little kids youth young adults it's all everybody's always together and they have their reasons for that and then you have other people that are just kind of like no you know the the purpose of church is for people to come in and worship and learn and if kids are distracting they should be somewhere else where they can learn um that was the mindset i grew up with and that i brought with me into my into my catholic faith um but i will say this i've had that mindset challenged a little bit in the last few years as i've seen little kids even little kids i just sometimes i don't think i give them enough credit you know to feel like they can fully participate and fully understand and when i've seen and and i i talk about this a little bit in my book but when i've seen young families that are doing this right but it's a lot of work seeing these kids in their faith that are doing it you know when i say doing it right i mean like they're being intentionally led and taught at home um so when they come to mass they know what's going on it's it's powerful you know and i remember i had this experience where i was so i was trying to learn about the mass i was paying i didn't have anybody like you had that walked me through every aspect of it i'm so craig if you're watching thanks for doing that um but i remember trying to figure out where i'm supposed to sit in the church so i can pay attention and hear what's going on and it wasn't in the back and i thought well i'll go to the front because that's where the old people sit and there'll be less kids up there well one day we went up there and this young family with kids came and they sat literally right in the pew behind me with like little kids baby and probably two toddlers and i was like oh man i was getting irritated i was just like this is gonna be rough and my wife was just she's like just take it easy take i think she could tell i was like oh man he's going to freak out well you know halfway through when we got into the eucharistic liturgy part and you know when the baby would fuss dad would get up and try to console the baby and everything it was fun but when we got into the eucharistic liturgy part i heard this conversation happening behind me between this little boy and his mom and this little boy i don't know he's probably five or six and he said to his mommy he said mommy mommy there's jesus there's jesus and then he looked at the cross and he said why are they hurting jesus i don't want jesus to hurt i don't want anybody to hurt jesus i love jesus mommy i don't want jesus to die and she was explained to him like the gospel like you know well he died for you honey and now we can receive him and then he was like mommy when do i get to receive jesus and i was just like okay i'm an idiot i'm the worst person in the world like i heard this i saw this and heard this happening behind me and i thought i will never ever think negatively or say anything you know whatever about this whole kind of situation again and it really flipped me around to where now like when i see a young family in church i just want to go and high-five them and say man praise god for what you're going through to get all these kids ready and come here and do all this so i'm not going to armchair quarterback these guys and tell them that they shouldn't be in there you know um so i i feel like there's another way to think about that too you know from my perspective but at the same time i hear what you're saying about the kids programs i feel like it's good for them to be able to have those environments if they need them you know yeah and i think you pointed out well that it's not a catholic verse protestant thing and there's protestants who would say that splitting people up like that is the reason that when people go to college they don't end up coming back because they've never really been part of the service as an adult i also have some more charismatic friends who i love how they say this they say there's no junior holy spirit and i'm talking about little kids so i i can definitely see it both ways but that's just a reflection of my upbringing i i remember when i was a youth pastor you know because that was part of what i did for a long time people would say things like well we got to take care of our youth because they're the future of the church and i used to flip out at people what they'd say that because i'd be like no they are not the future of the church they are as much the now church as anybody they aren't they aren't the future the future is not when you're an adult because what does that make you old people is are you the past of the church no you know so i feel like i agree with your charismatic friends in that regard you know um yeah so was there anything else about it that that you sort of wrestled through or or because and you can obviously speak freely here everyone everyone's okay with that and i'm certainly okay with that don't feel like you have to sugarcoat anything or hold anything back yeah anything else that i wasn't okay with yeah i mean the first sermon that was on mary was uncomfortable for me in some ways and i get it i i can i see the arguments i understand them i have much more appreciation for them than i did in the past still feels a little strange um so that that was i don't want to say off-putting but just kind of a i was going in like i'm going to be as charitable as possible and the first thing he says is about i think it was like this sacred heart of mary it was something about the connection of the heart of mary in the heart of jesus and i was like put my charity to the test but that you know it was good i mean what he said was nice but but that was uncomfortable in a way i would say one thing my protestant friends might get mad at me about this i feel like i've had a change of heart on icons at first when i went in they were very strange and i was like i don't know if this is okay but listening to the arguments for them i actually find those arguments to be pretty good and especially given the history of the church and literacy in the church at different times it kind of makes sense to me but upon first arrival that was different it was just strange cantius is filled to the brim with things he even took me back to an area where they just have all these relics that part was kind of strange for me just the first of all a lot of them were weird-looking some of it's like hair from people some like it's and then they have sections there's a name for it craig would be disappointed me that i don't remember but it looks like someone who's dead just like laying in this box oh incorruptible sure yeah yeah that one they have a couple of those and so some of that was just like i i get what they're doing with the icons and stuff but the relics just seemed strange and he did a good job of explaining it to me but it was at those points where it felt a little more like magic yeah like i understand that yeah for sure um well okay let's talk for a minute about and if something else comes to your mind about that just just go back to it but yeah i i think i've i've heard a little bit about the responses that you've had but i want to i want you to unpack that a little bit what what have the responses been like um to this journey that you've been on from both your protestant friends and family and then the catholics that are showing up on your youtube page yeah so far and away it has been very positive from both sides my my youtube channel went from i think when i made that first video maybe around 500 subscribers that were all evangelical protestants and since then it just went over 3 000 and almost all of those seem to be catholic so it's definitely been a changing demographic but so many of the catholics i've interacted with have just expressed gratitude for the charity something that's been really humbling that i didn't even really think of when i made the videos about the mass were people who'd write in and say wow this has made me appreciate the mass so much more getting to see it through your eyes or when i said things about you know if you believe that the eucharist is really the body bloods divinity of jesus then it makes sense these people are getting up and going on these weekdays or whatever and i didn't i didn't even think of the impact i would have on catholics i still imagined myself talking to protestants but that's been really interesting i had no idea the controversy i was wading into with latin mass versus nova sword i think i'd still do it if i knew i was doing it but i i really just didn't know i knew there was these different types and i thought cool i'll go to this one i'll go to that one i'll make a video comparing it everyone's gonna love it and a lot of people did but that definitely attracted some of the internet trolls vatican ii is protestant garbage yada yada yada and so that was unfortunate but they've been it's a small minority compared to the amount of encouragement there's definitely been some that you know you're a heretic you're going to hell blah blah blah and then i mean that that's a very small percentage in some protestants i get occasionally not a lot of you know stop messing with the of babylon this is your last warning or this or that but something i've been really surprised by is the protestants who have enjoyed it i mean moody if the people aren't familiar with it which might not be it's a very conservative school historically i mean it is it is a bible is in the name and it's definitely not like the center of ecumenism but i've been surprised by the number of moody students who have come up to me almost in this clandestine fashion and said hey i really enjoy your videos i've been looking into orthodoxy i've been looking into catholicism and it was really cool that you're doing this and i thought they'd all just be like what are you doing like let me rope you back from talking to these people like this is bad but i've been surprised by just the positive feedback on it i think a lot of people have just commented that it's really refreshing to see someone dialogue with something that they might disagree with but do it charitably and so i'm doing my best to do that i'm not sure i always get it right but the feedback's been really great well i think you're doing a great job with it and i'm i'm very happy to hear that i'm sad that there are people that are you know slinging mud but i'm not surprised i mean it's it's just human nature um for for people to to take their religious experience and their beliefs and turn that into a club to beat other people with as a way to you know make themselves feel like they're superior and unfortunately that i mean being catholic is not an antidote for that in in some ways there are certain personalities that i think are gravitated more towards catholicism because of that and i've certainly met plenty of both virtually and in person probably more virtually i don't know too many people personally like this but that like they're catholic because they want to be right and they yeah it's it's it's i don't know i i struggle with it and it gets to be it gets to be troubling sometimes but i'm glad that you for the most part have been encountering good feedback from people and i'm i'm not surprised i'm not i'm really not so let me ask you i got a couple more questions for you and then i'll let you go yeah um first question is this i actually have three more questions what more would you like to learn about catholicism like what are you what are you still or are you done like do you feel like okay i did my thing with the bible study the masses i'm good or do you feel like there's areas about catholicism that you want to learn more about yeah i feel like i opened this door into this giant world of things and it's spinning and i'm trying to make the make sense of it so nowhere close to thinking i've gone to mass i went to bible study i've got my answers to the objections i'm done although that might be more intellectually comfortable but i definitely feel like i have a ton to learn and so i think there's a couple areas that that's really focusing in on one is the church fathers it's something that really interests me i had started looking into it before all of this but only casually and now being surrounded by catholics virtually that can quote them off hand and use them to back up different things just trying to kind of get my feet under me and get a get an understanding and so some people have been kind enough to send me books doing my own research on that as well that's definitely one area the next area that i really want to look into and i guess this kind of just goes chronologically in church history is that time period that we as protestants look at as this really messy time in church history because there there is bad parts of it but trying to understand to what extent does that negate the arguments being made and just get a better handle on that but i think really at the core the things i mean i just i want to figure out if it's true or not wow and i look to i think the biggest thing on that is the authority claims that's probably the biggest thing between me and catholicism but yeah there's there's a lot more i want to learn and i love learning this kind of stuff i'm a theology major reading books like this just is so much fun for me so it's it's been a good time it's been unsettling in some ways it's been challenging but i've enjoyed it wow what was interesting to me about what you said about what you want to learn are both of those issues that you mentioned are issues about history you know they're not they're not like theological ideas they're they're i want to learn about the church fathers and i want to learn about you know the period that we as protestants have referred to as the dark ages or whatever and that's so awesome because that stuff's there and i i feel like i feel like there's there's a lot to be learned through that so that's that's exciting to me i think people probably are gonna be like okay here's a book recommendation here's this here's a video and i'm just telling you right now feel free to comment below you guys if you have those recommendations for austin i'm not gonna i'm not gonna tell you that he'll be able to handle all of them but i bet you he'll read he'll read some of them and i will certainly make a list and prioritize the list amen amen okay so you sort of talked about this a little bit but i want to i want to ask you another question yeah with a disclaimer and the disclaimer is this i am i'm not going to say anything after you answer this question i am not going to respond to it with an argument or with any kind of um rebuttal to it because that's not what we're here for um but i do really want to know what the answer to this question is i think you alluded to it right now um so without without trying to come across as being like pushy or threatening in any way because that's that's really not my heart here what what would it take for you to basically to say okay i'm convinced this is true because you said earlier like i want to know if this is true what would it take for you to be convinced that it was true to the point where you were ready to say um okay i'm gonna i'm gonna become a catholic yeah and first i just wanna say i really appreciate your approach with this that it's not gonna be a debate but you're also willing to ask the question i think far too often it's either let's debate about this or let's just kind of paint broad strokes it's all the same it doesn't matter so i i appreciate you asking this question and i welcome it i'm going to break it down into two sections i guess as far as and this might be slightly different than what you asked but what are my objections to catholicism sure and i guess in turn getting those answered is what would solve what would make me catholic so i'll break it into like cognitive and effective or like head in the heart so like the intellectual issues on this side i'd also break that into probably two sections like the primary issues and the secondary issues okay so i think at the core of it in terms of intellectually in terms of like what is the crux of the intellectual debate between catholics and protestants i think it comes down to authority and perhaps more specifically the papacy i think that is i heard someone saying this the other day the papacy unites all catholics together and unites all protestants and orthodox against catholics i thought it was a clever way of putting it yep but i think that that really is at the center and then in the secondary issues those would be the doctrinal issues that seem off to me right now and that's a i'm not trying to like sound proud here but there's a decent list there i think at the top would be like marion dogmas then probably i haven't been convinced on the eucharist i'm currently doing a study through the book of john chapter by chapter on my channel i know every catholic can't wait till i get to john 6. i could live to put it off for a little bit but um so there's kind of the priesthood different things but to me the reason i break that into two sections is if i'm convinced of the authority of the church i can't help you be convinced of these other things because the authority has defined these things at least the major things like the dogmas so for instance while i have hesitancy to marry if you convinced me that the pope is the infallible vicar of christ and past pronouncements are infallible on mary then i don't see how that doesn't kind of just fall into line so what i'm trying to do is really focus on that primary issue because i can research all the other ones but until i have a settled answer on this that just seems like secondary issues so i'd like to say that that's all that i think about but none of us are just brains on a stick like there's more to this than just the argument so i'd say on the heart side of the effective side there's there's layers to that as well one thing i've met a lot of catholics virtually that are passionate about their faith but i will say you know i run in a lot of evangelical circles where i'm just surrounded with people who are on fire about their faith that they have this attitude of hey like we have the message of the gospel this is good news for the world we're going to share it and we're going to change the world with it and that's i mean that's just energizing to me and i love that and i i've seen a lot of catholic apologists a lot of people who are really good at arguing over here but something that i think on one hand keeps me protestant aside from those things is just the passion i see in evangelicals which i really appreciate not saying it doesn't exist in catholics but that's that's part of it and then like i want to be honest i am doing my best to evaluate these arguments fairly and and read as i mean i've got stacks of books over here on catholicism and i'm i'm trying my best on that but if i'm being honest there's part of me that doesn't want to be i don't think any of us want to be wrong about something we hold so dearly and i recognize that it would be a major disruption to my life in some ways not that that's the reason to do something or not but i think i would be amiss to not recognize that i pretty much planned my career around being protestant i'm at a protestant bible college and my girlfriend and i who are talking about marriage in a couple years she's protestant my family's protestant so i think it would be very dishonest to say that this side doesn't play a role as well so there's a long answer to your question i love it i love it i really do um gosh i just i just relate so much to the stuff that you're saying austin um and like i'm gonna be true to my word i'm not going to respond to those objections not because i not because i don't have anything to say about them but because i want to i want to honor the conversation and i want i want to just let you sit there for a while because here's what here's what i ultimately believe austin and and this is coming from a person who's been there and i i'm very happy to hear that you're honoring or acknowledging that heart side of this issue for you because i think it's it's there's a lot of people that i've talked to that have reached out to me and said keith i believe the catholic church is true i believe i've gone through these experiences i believe all those things i believe they're true but i can't convert because my life would get too messed up i can't convert and that's where i was man that's like my thing like i lived in that place and it's a hard place to be so i think that the fact that you're acknowledging that you aren't just it's not all just you know checking the boxes of of of doctrinal ideas or objections but there's another side of it i think that's important to to be honest about because a lot of people don't give that enough they don't give that enough head space they just think well i just have to be convinced of an argument but what tends to happen then is is they will either become so hyper focused on those arguments and they'll they'll be d intellectually dishonest and say well i don't really believe that even though they really do or they'll just be miserable because yeah they'll they'll find themselves in a place where they're just like i want to do this but i can't you know so i think it's important to to to hold those things together and i thank you for your for your answer and i i know that as you continue to journey through this you know things things will will unfold to you that that um i don't know you may have different answers in six months to that question there may be something else but um okay one more question one more question um let's do it how has this whole thing like helped you in your personal faith with christ yeah and there's just maybe maybe i'm assuming that it's helped you maybe it hasn't helped you maybe it's made you crazy but how has it affected you and your personal faith in christ no i think it has helped i think there's a couple different ways so on one hand i think you know the you know paul talks about like the greatest of all these of faith hope and love is is love and just interacting with so many people who are different than me has i think built in me a greater love for this vast swath of christians i mean the catholic world is huge and i think that's something protestants don't understand either and so on a very basic level i think it's just helped me grow in love for my catholic brothers and sisters and grow in empathy for the situation they're in with the misconceptions and so i'm grateful for that i'm grateful for just the world that's opened up to me of people i'm i feel comfortable calling brother and sister and so there's that side i think it's deepened my faith intellectually in that i read plenty of books for my theology major as it is and now in my free time my stack of catholic books and whatnot but that's been good for me it's forced me to ask difficult questions about the early church and to what extent am i comfortable disagreeing with church fathers on different things and just really connecting with the history of the church i think that's been really good for me and then i think ultimately it's been uncomfortable like if i'm being honest and i'm sure you can relate to this oh yeah coming up against this wall of intelligent people with good arguments that are kind of and this this makes it sound very militant i don't but like you're you're coming up against all these things that they're making you unsure of some things and i think in times like that our faith grows best when it's put through those tests like that and so as uncomfortable as outside my comfort zone as it's been at times i think it's helped my faith grow not in spite of that but because of it wow that's so awesome that's so awesome hey before we go real quick and i'll put you on the spot here what are i know you talk about this stack of catholic books you've got like what it what do you have so that people don't end up sending it to you so you have multiple copies of like what do you what do you have on your stack that people are sending you yes thank you so just yesterday someone sent me rome sweet home and catholicism and fundamentalism okay so thanks joe i believe that was the guy that sent me that someone else sent me brent petrie's book the eucharist the jewish roots of the eucharist might have bush butchered that title um someone else sent me sanji corbett's book fullness of something something like that and then i've also uh one that i've been digging into a little more is rod bennett's book the four witnesses okay um it's who is it it's four early church fathers yep so that that's been a really good one and then i think the only non so on the other side i've been reading roman but not catholic by um who wrote that book um walls oh i know the book you're talking about yeah yeah purple cover so i think that's the stack of catholic books and then going through a bunch of just good catholic content online well i'm gonna add to your list um okay let's do it i think two books that i think would be super helpful to you um this one is my favorite it's called the faith of our fathers by james cardinal gibbons this was the this was the book that i would say ultimately um i read it and i was like okay you know i'm done and and ironically this book was sitting on my senior pastor's bookshelf in the methodist church and i don't know that he ever read it but he had it and i go hey can i borrow this book and i read it and i was like i gotta be catholic so so that's one um and then this other one this i'm sure you've heard of this guy steve ray i've listened to some of his talks yeah that's on my list upon this rock this is the book he gave this book to me on the night that i decided to convert to catholicism um wow and it's it's kind of a different sort of book it's pretty it's it's pretty like you know facts facts facts it's not like a sermon kind of like the faith of the father's book is more like an uh a conversational book this is more like you know boom but then i think you mentioned rod bennett i think he has a book called the apostasy that never was i think that's rod bennett and he talks about that whole idea of like you mentioned the book of acts everything was great and then everything just went to garbage and then somewhere around you know martin luther started to come back well he he talks about this whole idea of well what if the church didn't really fall away what if there's continuity and he kind of goes through that so um anyway i throw that in there so all right well listen awesome i want to thank you so much for for coming on to my podcast and for being just so open and real with me and being willing to share about this and for just your spirit that that you have as you're walking through these things and i've just really appreciated um watching you go through this and and our interaction together and i want to just let everyone know make sure you make sure you add yourself to the list of catholics that are that are subscribing to gospel simplicity and uh interacting with austin on his content i think it's so cool i bet some of you guys already have but make sure you guys check out his channel check out these videos and uh thank you guys so much for tuning in to this episode of catholic feedback austin thanks for being my guest and until next time friends uh praise the lord and have an awesome week you guys take care thanks for listening to catholic feedback with keith nestor send in your questions and comments to feedback at catholicfeedback.com this podcast is brought to you by stewardship a mission of faith and is also supported by our team at patreon.com forward slash keith nestor please consider joining our support team catholic feedback is a production of down to earth ministries for more information about down to earth or to bring me to your parish or event visit downthenumber2earthministry.org see you next time

Channel: Keith Nester

Views: 31,652

Rating: 4.9546742 out of 5

Keywords: Keith Nester, Catholic Feedback, Catholic, Catholic Podcast, Catholic Talk Show, Catholic Radio, Catholic TV, Catholic Show, Taylor Marshall, Matt Fradd, Mike Schmitz, Robert Barron, Catholic Answers, Catholic Stuff You Should Know, Church Militant, Bishop Barron, Unpacking the Mass, Rosary Crew

Id: W6XO17pcr8E

Length: 70min 27sec (4227 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 06 2020