Patrick Madrid - Answers to Life's Complicated Questions (2019 Defending the Faith Conference)

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I just want to say that I didn't expect anybody to be here today with all of the wonderful speakers and the exciting talks on different topics so the fact that any of you are here today is actually mind boggling to me I would actually rather not be here for my talk I'd rather be here for some of the other talks so thank you I appreciate it this is Stumpf the apologist probably 20.0 I think I've been doing this workshop for nine to twenty years now and for those of you who have been to previous workshops like this you know that it's kind of a free-flowing freewheeling question-and-answer session and if if we run out of questions then I'll start asking you questions but it's kind of like the the daily radio show I do the Patrick Madrid show on relevant radio Monday through Friday from 9:00 to noon Eastern 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. Pacific depending upon where you are if we have a relevant radio station near you you can hear it live or you can catch it on the app on your phone if you get a get the phone app it's just go to relevant radio in either iTunes or Google Play you can download it there it's free and you can hear all the programs live or you can listen podcasts however you like it but this would be similar to the radio show which is a lot of calls that come in on various questions and we cover all kinds of different topics and we're gonna do that today as well so I will just throw it wide open the only ground rule is if you can kind of shout your question or say it as loud as you can and then for the benefit of the recording I'm going to repeat the question but just so we make sure everybody can hear your question as well as possible and we'll go through as many as we have time for okay who's first yes ma'am right right so the ladies question and you would like my comment on that the ladies question is what about people who say I'm spiritual but not religious I'm a good person and I don't really need religion and did you say also that they don't need God did you add that or you talked about the people who or have a some vague idea of God but they don't really believe in being religious okay they don't want to prescribe structure they want to be spiritual but not religious what would you say to somebody I know some people like that and quite frankly if you live long enough chances are going to be some people like that in your own family so I can relate I understand where you're coming from there are a lot of things one could say typically what I try to do in that situation is I start asking questions you know I like the Socratic method I think it's beneficial so I might say that's interesting that's a fascinating theory tell me more about that and then let the person ramble let them say what they want to say I believe in being a good person I believe in being kind to other people they may give any number of things that they believe about that but that'll help you get a clearer idea of what they're really saying and then you might say something like well how do you define spiritual what does that mean exactly and then let them explain it you know I think it means that you are aware that God exists and you meditate or you pray or you commune with nature or you you know let the person fill in the blank as to what they mean by spiritual it's probably going to be somewhat vague probably going to be rather difficult to nail down and then you can say okay that helps now what do you mean by religious what does that mean to you what is how do you define religious oh well church in rules and Commandments and thou shalt nots and Mass on Sunday and you got to do all these things because I'm not about rules man I'm about relationships you know I guess I just went back to the 70s one one way I found to talk about that is to say well do you think rules are bad you notice I'm asking questions I'm not lecturing and and the other person is explaining what he believes and I haven't lectured at all so he may say well you know some rules man-made rules I don't like man-made rules I think man-made rules are not good and all right well how do you feel about like Lane stripes on the freeway you know the man-made rule to keep cars in a certain lane or stoplights or seat belts or airbags or you got to wear a helmet when you drive a motorcycle and that's just using you know automotive and motorcycle analogies but you could extend it to anything do you think that the man-made rule that the FDA has got to make sure that beef is properly inspected to make sure that it's clean before people sell it to you so you don't catch a disease or die that's a man-made role do you think all man rate made rules are bad you just keep asking questions and what will happen is two things are likely that will happen number one is the person will realize he's never really thought this through before the whole idea of being spiritual but not religious is a nice slogan sounds good and it's kind of easy to do because you get to define what it means to be religious but probably they've never really thought of it much more than that so as you begin to ask these these questions suddenly now they may be thinking well I don't really even know what that means or I don't know why I'm opposed to man-made rules things of that nature then you'll be able to ask more specific questions well what is it about religion that you think is bad because we've already discussed how rules in themselves are actually pretty good they keep people keep people alive they keep people healthy we don't have canned or random chaos if we we would if we didn't have rules so rules are good you know there are some rules that are not so good or there rules that are a drag but more often than not rules are good because they help keep things in in good order and I would just continue that just continue continue continue and what will happen is by the end of half an hour or so however much time you've got either the person won't want to talk to you anymore or you may have planted some really good seeds for him to think about you know maybe the slogans really not that great maybe there's more to it than that and then that you could talk about Jesus have you ever have you ever encountered Jesus and the Gospels have you listened to what he had to say yeah I don't think he was he was just a good prophet he had a lot of great ideas and it got out of hand it got exaggerated and so you then might say well really well what did the Apostles get out of out of exaggerating it if Jesus was a good prophet with some great ideas what was in it for the Apostles to exaggerate this and make outlandish claims like he rose from the dead and appeared to people because only that only got them to be treated like criminals and almost all of them were martyred st. John wasn't martyred but they were killed in very grisly painful ways they didn't get groupies so there was no woman angle for them there was no money angle there was no power angle there was no benefit to them that we can see so why would they do that what would who would do that why would they do that and let him answer and you see it you see what I'm doing you you want to make the other person see that there may be more to this question than just a slogan okay yes sir yeah yeah this is a common common question so the gentleman's question is how do you answer somebody who says you believe that Jesus is God you Christians you Catholics you believe that Jesus is God and yet Jesus himself said that no one knows the day nor the hour of the end only the Father Knows not even the son knows which is a paraphrase of what Jesus actually says there well this gets to the heart of the Incarnation and unless we understand the Incarnation it would be difficult to answer that question because it would appear as though Jesus is saying that he's not God and that he doesn't know so just a quick refresher on the Incarnation as you know in John's Gospel chapter 1 it says in verse 1 in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and then if you skip forward to verse 14 the whole the whole chapter is talking about the Incarnation begins with the divinity of the second person of the Trinity then in verse 14 assess and the word became flesh and dwelt among us so we as Catholics recognize that God took human nature to his divine nature and you might say married the two it's a very unequal marriage because human nature is a creature and yet God chose to become one of us and not not wear a human suit he wasn't wearing a human costume it wasn't like Jesus was God inside of a costume that looked like a human being he really did possess the fullness he does possess the fullness of human nature and so what that means is that Jesus in his humanity had everything a human nature has so he has a body he has emotions he has an intellect he has a will he has a he has a soul all of which are creatures all of which are part of humanity and that's something obviously less than God but yet at the same time he's still God so it's not as though the God part quote-unquote of Jesus was in suspended animation and and some people will mistakenly say well Jesus didn't know he was God or Jesus didn't none of that is true Jesus always knew he was God because as a person to divine person the second person of the Trinity the word he couldn't not know he was God because he's God does so that God can't go to sleep God can't forget God can't suddenly suspend his his godhood and yet at the same time he was human so a clue to the answer and in the the question you're asking is very important but it requires somewhat more than just a superficial answer one of the keys to understanding this is we're we're told in Luke's Gospel that after Joseph and Mary had lost track of Jesus when they had gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover and you know the story because they couldn't find him Joseph thought he was with Mary Mary thought is with Joseph we presume they were scurrying around looking for him finally they caught up with him in the temple back in Jerusalem and here he is teaching the doctors of the law the scholars the rabbis who were in awe that this twelve year old boy is teaching them he could do that because he's God in his humanity his twelve year old mind had not worked out that level of theological depth he didn't have the capacity at the age of twelve in fact we're told that when they they got Jesus back you know with them that he went with them to Nazareth where he remained there and he grew in knowledge and wisdom so in his humanity the the mind of Jesus as a man needed to learn how to walk how to tie his sandals how to do carpentry assuming that Saint Joseph taught him carpentry he needed to learn how to read he needed to learn how to do all those things that human beings do so in his humanity there were many things he didn't know and he gradually came to know them the way we do in a course of a normal human life but simultaneously with all of that and this is what was impossible for us to visualize we can't imagine what this would be like but it's simultaneously with his human mind and knowledge growing and and learning he's always God and as the divine second person of the Trinity he knows everything he knows everything that can be known so what we have to do our difficulty is trying to imagine what it would be like to have the knowledge of God infinite unending knowledge there everything secret thoughts everything and at the same time being a 12 year old boy learning how to become a man there's nothing we can point to and say it's like that because there is nothing else like that and yet it's true it's a canoe it's it's a paradox not a contradiction so to your point do you see I'm kind of spiraling into your to your question here so to your question when Jesus says things like that you are seeing him emphasizing his humanity in his human mind his human intellectual abilities he didn't know but in his divinity he had to know there was no way he couldn't know because that would mean he would cease being God which is impossible because God by nature can't stop existing he can't stop being God so when we look at these passages we have to recognize in the Incarnation some passages emphasize his divinity some emphasize his humanity in the mystery of the Incarnation which we can never ever plumb the depths of in this life we can at least say okay I at least understand what's going on I can't I can't necessarily understand how it all works or how you can have infinite divine knowledge in the same body as the limited human knowledge but I know that that's true so I guess I'll leave it at that but that that would be the way in which you can see those passages and not be thrown by them and think there's a contradiction it's really a paradox not a contradiction helpful okay thank you yes ma'am right my truth so the latest question is how do you deal with somebody who says that maybe your truth that that's not my truth and you have your truth I have my truth and so she said when she tries to use an example of a truth two plus two equals four math then the person says well that's just math but that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about my truth and chances are if I had to guess what the person is really saying without saying it is lifestyle choice who I sleep with what I eat or drink recreational drugs what I believe what I what I do what my activities are chances are that's really what the person means when he or she says my truth in other words what is my opinion of sexuality or drugs or you know you know what I'm saying that's more likely what's really being said so there's a number of ways you can approach that but the key is to begin by identifying or at least agreeing that there is something called subjective truth subjective is is based upon your personal preference it's your own it's your own preference so you may like opera music and your husband may hate opera music but it would be true for you to say that opera music is beautiful it would not be true for him to say that because to him he doesn't like it because it's a matter of personal preference so ice cream music fashion art you could go on and on there are many things where as the old saying goes the beauty beauty is in the eye of the beholder you with me so far that's subjective truth there's also something called objective truth which is true regardless of how you feel about it it doesn't matter if you like it or don't like it it's still true now a mathematical truth is an example of that it's abstract okay but there are other things that we can say are true so one of the old jokes is you know for somebody to say there is no such thing as objective truth well the easiest way to defeat that is to say is that statement objectively true because if it's objectively true that there's no such thing as an objective truth then it falsifies the statement itself because you see it contradicts itself if it's not objectively true then why should I even believe you then you're saying something that's not true so either way the person gets caught in the dilemma so what I would do is start pointing out things that the person can't deny are true you can start asking questions like do you believe in anything called truth do you believe in truth as such that we can knows that something is true or not true can we know for example that so-and-so cheated on her final exam and didn't really get an A on it is there a way to know that sure there is you can you can find out if somebody actually cheated so it would be true to say this person cheated on an exam is it is it true to say that the gas tank in the car is on empty or is it just my truth is that it's full your truth is that it's on empty and I guess my truth what happens when we run out of gas half a mile down the road it doesn't you know regardless of how I feel about it the truth is the gas tank is on empty so you can feel one way or the other about it but it doesn't matter it ultimately doesn't matter what about the law of gravity some people might be very insulted by the law of gravity and they don't like it and they think it's unfair that you know the birds don't seem to mind because they're flying around how can we can't so in the same way you can use examples what they're really talking about though is not the law of gravity or mathematics or things of that nature what they're really talking about is moral truth and that's where it gets a little bit tricky because people say you can't force your morality on me you can't say that this is right or wrong so you could say really well don't you believe in right or wrong in other words you must believe in right or wrong because you're saying it's wrong for someone to say that something is wrong so how does that work you can ask if you believe that it's quote/unquote wrong to tell somebody that this or that is wrong well then you do believe that some things are right and wrong and you believe that we should speak out against things wrong don't you okay yeah and then you say well then how do you know what's right and wrong how do you determine do you have any way outside of your own personal preferences to say what's right or wrong or is it just it's wrong for me therefore don't do it because I don't like it nobody operates that way we all know that lying is wrong we all know that stealing is wrong is wrong torture is wrong slavery is wrong racism is wrong we can go down a long list of things that pretty much everybody would agree with that they're wrong we shouldn't do it so your question to that person is how do you know it's wrong and how could it even be wrong if there's no such thing as an objective standard of morality if there's not something that we should do even though not everybody does it or we shouldn't do even though some people do it we have this built-in recognition that some things are just right and wrong and st. Paul says the reason for that is that the law of God is written on everyone's heart so we just have this innate ability to recognize that certain things are right or wrong so what you want to do and what I'm teaching you is technique more than anything else rather than say you know here's how you develop a moral theological treatise on how this activity is wrong for your purposes I think it'd be much more beneficial to help the person see how their argument just breaks down it doesn't meet it doesn't really mean anything ultimately because they can't defend it and that's what you want them to see that's what they'll say and then say okay well then is it bad then for people to say that there is good and bad if somebody says there's no good or bad all right so if somebody comes along and says there is good and bad is that bad and they have to say well yes it is well then you do believe in good and bad because you have I already identified something as bad do you believe that torturing animals is bad or is it okay to torture animals as long as they don't do it in front of you well no that's terrible you shouldn't torture animals well wait a minute I think so there's no such thing as good or bad you'll very quickly breakdown that person's argument and they'll recognize that it's it's just a slogan it doesn't really mean anything and they don't really believe it you see I'm telling you the Socratic method works and the more you use it the more you'll just you'll accomplish good and you'll stay calm and the person's gonna walk away from the conversation thinking what just happened you know yes ma'am okay mm-hmm so the lady's question is correct me if I have it wrong you know somebody who says she believes in God but she doesn't believe that Christ is God she believes in a God of some sort okay but Jesus is not God he's just some guy and the part about the blue state she comes from a blue state so her her probably her opinion on things like abortion marriage I would guess probably track with this idea of this amorphous God who doesn't really make any demands on us isn't really asked us to do anything okay well what you could say is how do you know Jesus is not God what's your evidence just ask her what's your evidence that he's not gone well she's never heard that question before so she won't know how to answer it she may you know she may ham and haw or she may bluster a little bit but just ask her that question how do you know that Jesus is not God what is your evidence do you have scientific evidence that he's not God do you have testimony from somebody whose authority is unimpeachable that Jesus is not God the answer obviously she won't know because there is no nothing like that so then say well then you let me make sure I understand this are you saying that you have decided that Jesus is not God with no evidence to support that whatsoever that doesn't seem like a really smart logical rational way of approaching something it's like you know saying I don't believe that the earth is round you know and you've never studied the evidence it doesn't really make any sense that might be a starting point then you can say have you ever really considered the evidence that Jesus is God oh sure I read the Bible and yeah okay I grew up in the Catholic Church and they filled my head with all this stuff about Jesus being God okay so tell me what what is some of the evidence that you carefully evaluated well you know all the legends and fables about that okay so what how did you what did you do to study this what was your method a lot method of methodological principle how did you approach this and again what's your what you're going to do and he can get to the point where it becomes embarrassing for her so you don't want to do it too much but you want her to see that you see that she sees that she has never done a lick of homework to find out one way or the other whether or not Jesus is God she's just saying this it's just a slogan that's all it is so then you could say well I'm here to help you because there's a ton of evidence that points to Jesus being God let's start first of all we know from historical records we have far more historical records that tell us that Jesus existed in what is modern-day Israel at a particular time that the Gospels say that he lived than we do for many other historical figures that we don't have as much evidence about them and yet we believe that they existed we believe lots of things about Julius Caesar for example who lived the century before Jesus we believe lots of things about Julius Caesar on less evidence than we have for the existence of Jesus and nobody questions whether or not Julius Caesar existed okay we have third-party hostile witnesses in the form of the pagan authors who are contemporaries of the Apostles so in the middle to late first century the the last apostle died near the end of the first century Saint John so we already have examples of pagan and Jewish writers who are giving accounts in a hostile manner against Christianity and they corroborate that this man Jesus existed he did live he lived at this particular place at this particular time they corroborate the fact that he was crucified plenty of the younger for example he was sent on a undercover investigation by the Emperor to find out if the things that were told about the Christians really were true like they they practice ritual cannibalism which is interesting because it was a pagan misunderstanding of the Catholic belief of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist they got it all garbled and bungled and they thought that they were actually eating dead bodies that was one of the rumors that going around about Christianity so that's a really nice little factoid if the issue of the Eucharist comes up you can point that even the hostile third-party witnesses like the pagans they were hearing rumors about these Christians thinking that they ate their God in the form of a dead body all that really means is they're pointing to the belief in the real presence but in any case so plenty of the younger he delivers a report and it's available you can read it online in English you don't have to learn you know for a century Latin to read the the letter and he gives a report to the Emperor saying yeah I basically followed these people and I kind of went into where they had their meetings and I observed and I watched and they don't do the kind of things that people are saying about them there they're not you know the lowlife criminals that people are saying that they do so here's here's the point is we're getting to the issue of Jesus so you can say well first of all we have the credible first-hand accounts in the Gospels have you ever read those well I heard about him in school when I was a kid but if you ever actually read them if you ever sat down and read the four Gospels it would only take a few hours to do so chances are she probably hasn't and so you could say well why don't you do that why don't you at least read the first-hand accounts of Jesus then how do you explain the hostile third-party sources who corroborate some of this evidence that we find in the Bible in the New Testament then you can say what about what Jesus said and did we only have a few options here either when Jesus we evaluate Jesus the man and his miracles and of course his ultimate miracle was as he foretold after he died he would rise again from the dead on on the third day and there were a ton of witnesses who said that he did that so let's analyze that for example let's look at Jesus first of all one option is that he was insane and that he like many insane people thought he was somebody else you can go to mental hospitals anywhere and find somebody in that mental hospital who thinks he's Jesus Christ you can find people who think they're Napoleon or you know anybody the list is endless and we recognize that there are people who are detached from reality they just don't realize they have it all appear in their mind but there they don't understand reality because they're insane well it's possible that Jesus was insane at least we can say that for the sake of discussion but how many insane people draw multitudes to them you and I if you were if you were in the presence of somebody who is clearly mentally ill would you be so comfortable that you would just sit in rapt attention and listen to everything that person said no you'd want to put some distance between you and that person because you don't know if that person is dangerous or violent you don't know what's what that person could do we have a kind of innate sense of kind of fear which is natural and also concern in pity for people who are mentally ill we want to help them we want to protect them often from themselves nobody reacted to Jesus that way people were drawn to him they wanted to listen to him they couldn't get enough of even the people who hated him they couldn't get enough of him doesn't fit the bill of a mentally ill person what about Jesus message his message with its coherence and its brilliance and its insights and the profound power to change people's lives bring them to repentance does any of that sound like the ravings of an insane person no what about his manner of life he was a man of great rectitude he was he was a man who was in the who was a master of his emotions a master of his passions his passions did not rule him he ruled them so he was not a glutton he was not a drunkard he was not given to carousing with women or anything like that so we have a very clear picture of Jesus as somebody who clearly was not insane and it doesn't pan out I mean that nothing about it would in any way suggest that Jesus was mentally ill so I think we could safely at least dispense with that that's not a viable option okay what's the next option okay the next option is maybe Jesus was lying maybe he was the most cunning guy around and he knew that none of this was true or he had learned some tricks he had gone to somewhere and he learned tricks so he could mystify people and do things cheap magic tricks and thing like that well sooner or later people catch on to that kind of thing and yet he spent three years publicly even raising people from the dead including somebody who had been in the tomb for three plus days and he there were eyewitnesses who saw it and so the miracles in themselves would be somewhat inexplicable if he was a liar but let's say he was a liar he knew some tricks he was able to fool people that way well what do Liars why do Liars lie Liars lie because they want something maybe he wanted women maybe he wanted money maybe he wanted fame maybe he wanted political influence he issued all of those things he was asked in essence to become the political leader of the Jews and maybe overthrow the Romans you know remember on Palm Sunday how they greeted and they hailed him as the Messiah within a week he was he had been killed and was in a tomb so none of the things that you would expect a liar to lie about or live for our president Jesus he got there was no benefit to him to lie so you'd have to ask your friend why would he lie what's the point of it because there's nothing there's nothing in it for him for that matter why would His apostles lie about it after the fact if there was nothing in it for them so another option is well maybe maybe what he said was good and there were some really great ideas and he was a good man and all that but his apostles they're the ones who falsified this and they made up this story about the resurrection and they were the ones who it all got out of control because they enlarged this to something that wasn't really what Jesus was all about and by the way there's a movie about that actual argument it's called The Life of Brian by Monty Python you remember that I never saw it because it was blasphemous I don't want to see it but the entire comedy movie is about a guy named Brian who winds up because he looks like Jesus he winds up in the end getting crucified and that all of this stuff about Jesus and rising from the dead is all just a story that was told by his apostles I'm not recommending the movie by the way so let's look at that now okay so what if what if he was just a great prophet and he had some great ideas and his apostles of the ones blame for this outlandish story about the resurrection all that alright well then we apply the same treatment to the Apostles what did they gain from this what was in it for them nothing there was no monetary gain there was no influence they were hunted like criminals they were tracked down like animals they were tortured and they were killed in brutal and very painful ways and the followers of Jesus who are not apostles many of them also met similar ends because they wouldn't deny that they had seen Jesus rise from the dead now you could find I'm sure some people you might be able to find one or two people maybe who because they're delusional or something else they might be willing to die for something that they really know is not true can you find hundreds of people thousands of people who would be willing to do that no of course it's it's it's beyond human expectations to assume that you can find that so that the Apostles would fail the test too as either being liars or insane because there was nothing in it for them and in all of these people there were some who recanted obviously but by and large they said I saw Jesus after he rose from the ice awe him I talked to him I had breakfast with him so when you start amassing and I'll stop here because I could go on forever and we don't want to do that but you start amassing all of these things here and then you say well what else is left he's not a liar he's not insane it didn't get out of control after he died the only other real option is he is who he claimed to be he's God and if he and if that's the option that would explain all of these truths all of these evidences that we can point to then isn't it worth your time you would say to your friend isn't it really worth your time to at least explore that because you wouldn't want to be accused of willful blindness would you I mean it's one thing to be blind but to be willfully blind that's not very good is it and you can ask her that question you don't want to be willfully blind do you if there's evidence that compellingly demonstrates that Jesus Christ is God wouldn't you want to know about it I mean wouldn't that be the best ever the greatest thing possible if you could know that Jesus was in fact God and wouldn't it be the stupidest thing ever if the evidence was right there in front of you and you weren't willing to at least consider it and then just imagine her head spinning and what she'll be thinking about long after your conversation is over I'll leave it at that helpful I hope yes sir in the in the blue in the blue shirt I'm I'm open for business so it doesn't have to be apologetics this is a particular patient that you had okay yeah right right right right yeah yeah I love these questions these are great because these are real-world questions this is real life so the gentleman is a physician and he's asking about what might you say to somebody who says I'm not really interested in that God stuff I want to eat well I want to travel I wanna have a good time and chances are if they're younger they want to enjoy their body and they want to just have fun you know it's a pretty common thing for a lot of people so what can you say to that person well I guess I'm sort of being redundant when I answer every question beginning by well there are different ways to approach it but there really are different ways to approach it I had conversations with people like that and so one of the things I found very helpful is to say well basically if I understand you are you saying that this is a meaningless universe so that's coming out of the bullets coming from a totally different angle than what they're expecting because what what she might be expecting is for you to say well the Bible says you shouldn't do that or Jesus said you shouldn't do that that might be where they're expecting something to come from but if you just say so I guess what I'm getting from you is that this is a meaningless universe is that what you mean well no I didn't say that why what do you mean a mean meaningless universe well I guess what I mean is is do you think this is a universe where we're just sort of here by accident we didn't come from anywhere we're not going anywhere there's no afterlife I mean there's no God if that's the universe that we're living it there's no God obviously there's no hell there's no heaven it's just a meaningless universe we're just randomly here and as long as we're randomly here let's party you know let's have fun let's enjoy is that I just want to make sure I understand is that the universe that you believe we live in and then see what she says she may say well no I don't know I don't believe that I think there's a god I think there's probably a heaven or hell and at least a heaven I hope you know and so then you start asking questions well then what what can you tell me about this god I'm very interested what can you tell me about him or her and then see what she says and then what what you're doing is you're kind of opening her mind I'm assuming it's a her I don't it could be a man you're opening her mind to reflect upon her worldview which is you know eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die let's have fun while we can and if she says well it's not a meaningless universe I guess somebody created us I guess there's some kind of an afterlife after that so then my next question would be this is very interesting I'd like to know more tell me about this god I'm interested tell me and then probably one of a couple things will happen either she might say well I guess I've never really thought about it or I guess I mean I don't really know or she might say well you know I know some people believe this and some people believe that and people have different ideas and I don't think anybody can really know whether or not God is a certain way or anything I just think he wants us to be good he wants us to treat other people with respect so then maybe I might follow up by saying well how would you feel if there were somebody who said there is a way to know that there is a way to know what kind of God this is and that he loves you and that he wants you to be happy and that he wants you to be happy forever with him in heaven and that your life is not meaningless I mean if somebody had a plausible reasonable body of commentary on that wouldn't that at least interest you because if you're saying that you don't really know wouldn't it be better to know I mean wouldn't it be better to have more clarity on something like that than to not know well yeah well have you ever really considered the claims of Jesus and in his his message that God does love you and he wants you to be happy and he wants you to be free truly free not enslaved to addictions and passions and things like that which is so easily able to enslave us have you ever really thought about what Jesus had to say these issues well I guess I have it well I'm happy to talk to you about that or here's a New Testament why don't you read what Jesus said and then maybe it can play out that way it could play out in any number of different ways but these are scenarios and again I'm not a one-trick pony I don't only do the Socratic method but I do it frequently enough that I see that it does have good benefits so that might be one scenario that would benefit yes sir owl right stand I'm sorry okay it's close owl stand very close I'm gonna repeat the question don't worry blasphemy yeah so is your question then how do we how do we understand what Pope Francis said okay I'll repeat your question for everybody so the gentleman's question is was there more to it or do I have it okay sure sorry mm-hmm right yes I'll add that I'll add that okay the gentleman's question is pope francis within the last year he revised the Catechism shortly after he made a statement that as far as he is concerned as far as the church is concerned that capital punishment is inadmissible that's the term that was used and so the gentleman's question is how can that be the case or what are we to make of that given that in the Old Testament God commanded capital punishment for certain crime certain sin sodomy was one of them blaspheming your parents was another one boy I've told some of my kids over the years you are so lucky that you live in the New Covenant because if you had lived in the Old Covenant there would have been a much worse punishment for disrespecting your parents so since God said that capital punishment was necessary for certain crimes and since the good thief on the cross acknowledged that he was being justly the two thieves are being justly punished how then should we understand what Pope Francis said about the death penalty now being inadmissible here's my answer there's no question that the death penalty is not intrinsically evil it is not intrinsically evil now there are plenty of people nowadays who I think in part at least because of what Pope Francis said we'll disagree vehemently with what I just said those say no it is intrinsically evil that is impossible because a the practice of capital punishment was commanded by God and it was commanded not that God was gonna kill these people but he told Moses by man shall his blood be shed in the case of a man who sheds the blood of somebody else so you shed you kill somebody then by some other man you yourself will be killed this is the phraseology in the Book of Leviticus so we see that not only was death penalty enjoined by God for certain crimes we also see that in Scripture there is no prohibition of the death penalty there are appeals for mercy that's true and we should always be mercy and by the way I need to play I don't need to put my cards on the table as I do this I personally am opposed to death penalty I don't want the death penalty I'd like to see no death penalty but some people are going too far by saying that the death penalty is intrinsically evil and what Pope Francis said I think kind of played into this mistake that some people are making because it is an ambiguous term interval is not a theological term it's not a biblical term it's it's a term that is malleable and can mean different things so I'm going to give you my full fledged answer here in just a moment I want to lay a little more groundwork for the entire nineteen hundred and roughly let's say 50 years of the church's history prior to the pontificate of Pope John Paul the second the church always recognized the Lacetti the more illicit nests of the death penalty and there were Pope's who wrote documents about the morality of the death penalty Pope Pius the 12th for example did I don't have the list of them in front of me but I've read even some of these documents where the Pope's say this is morally permissible in the Catechism that was promulgated by Pope John Paul the second it came out in 1988 and the English edition did not come out for a few years originally you had French Spanish there was a lot in addition that nobody had is nobody reads Aladdin I had the French Edition and I had the Spanish tradition and then when the English edition came out I could compare between the three different languages and in nineteen when the the Catechism appeared so let's say by 1990 when the english-language catechism was available it was filled with everything that I just said the Catechism said the judge the the death penalty is not intrinsically evil it's in the Bible God commanded it the Pope's have talked about it I'm paraphrasing what the catechism urgently said then in 1992 pope john paul ii issued his encyclical letter called evangelion vitae the gospel of life and in the gospel of life this was the first time now that I'd know of any way in which a pope did a sharp turn and said no more death penalty we got to do away with the death penalty we don't want it any more death penalty and he had the Catechism changed in 1994 to reflect what he said in Evangelion vitae in 1992 which makes sense because he doesn't want the Catechism to say something at odds with what he said so when the Catechism was revised in 1994 all that language was taken out and it was replaced with a statement that included that the death penalty is not intrinsically immoral however given modern means of incarceration and circumstances and you know I'm sure in his mind he was also thinking because we live in the culture of death and we are supposed to be about protecting life and doing everything we can to support life that it is it should be practically what's the word he used practically but he used unnecessary but there was a phrase that he used and I'm just blanking on it it should be so rare is to be practically non-existent I think that was the phrase but he left the door open saying it's still permissible but let's not do it is what he said so what Pope Francis did is he amped it up further and withdrew the language about it's permissible to do this but but let's not do it he moved it further to say now it's an attack on human dignity therefore it's inadmissible so all of that is preamble to my answer if you can believe that here comes my answer now but I needed to say all that first so it makes sense my answer is Pope Francis nor any other Pope cannot change the Church's doctrine on the moral law say it t and that's just a fancy word it means the illicit Ness of the death penalty the evidence is too overwhelming and it's too it's just too overwhelming to say otherwise that the church has for 2,000 years been wrong about something so important and that the Bible was wrong about something so important so I see this is the way to thread the needle I'm gonna share with you how I thread this needle what Pope Francis did now what he intended to do I don't know what people understood him to do I know some of them understood him to do something other than what I think he did but what he actually did was what pope john paul ii did and that is she changed the church's pastoral approach to this topic he didn't change a doctrine because he can't he can't change something into being not true that once was true no Pope can do that I'm not singling out Pope Francis I'm just saying it's impossible for a pope to do that what he did however was to say here and now under our current current current circumstances no death penalty whatsoever it's a pastoral approach to a topic and the church can change its pastoral approaches it can it can relax them it can make them more stringent it can eliminate them all together but that's what I believe he did in effect and the reason for that final part of the answer is that if if he felt or if somebody believed that he was able to change a doctrine then did Church's teaching on the E reform ability of doctrine is destroyed in which case any doctrine can change Mary is now divine Mary's part of the Trinity so we're gonna call it a quadrant II now or Mary is not sinless we thought she was but now she's not or that the priest isn't the only one who can confess due to the soccer the sacrament of Holy Orders anybody can you can if you want to or there is no such thing as hell doesn't exist never really existed even though jesus warned about it all the time never really existed and you can go on and on and then every single thing that the Church teaches would be subject to at least the possibility of being overthrown and changed and we know that that can't happen we know that that's not for real so I think the only way that we can understand this and keep our sanity is to say that what Pope Francis did was he changed the church's pastoral approach to the issue which he has the right to do as the sovereign pontiff he has the authority to do it is the right to do it and he did it I believe but he can't and didn't change the reality that the death penalty is not in itself intrinsically evil now I'll leave you with one thought if you want a book that will give you far more evidence on this issue than I could ever give you it's a book authored by Joseph Bessette and dr. Edward fazer it's called by man shall his blood be shed it came out within the last year and it is a tome it is I would say the definitive historical biblical scholarly consideration of the death penalty and honestly if somebody has not read that book I don't think that he can consider himself truly knowledgeable about the situation so I would offer you that suggestion if you're interested in diving deeper long answer to a short question I hope that's helpful yes who's that followed this lady here okay okay the lady's question is and by the way welcome home that's awesome she was raised Catholic fell away gone for a while came back and she's saying how can she or people like her basically all of us how can she know what's doctrine and what isn't if Pope's are changing doctrines do I have the gist of it right if you can't if she can't depend upon the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be doctrine then how could she know from one moment to the next what's true and what's not true what you're supposed to believe okay that's that's the inevitable question that arises from this question when people are unsure what Pope Francis did so I'll reiterate my point very briefly however and that is that Pope Francis didn't change the doctrine pope john paul ii didn't change the doctrine what they changed was the church's approach to an issue in a practical way saying we don't want to do any more capital punishments for all the above reasons we don't want to do that but not saying that capital punishment is itself intrinsically evil so that part technically even under pope francis technically he didn't change that and i wonder at times maybe that's why he chose this very ambiguous word inadmissible because it's it's very difficult to pin down what exactly does that mean so yeah it is the Catechism so the here's here's the best way I can explain it to you under keep in mind that there are doctrines that are always going to be true because they're de fidei there they're proposed to us by the church as necessary to have faith them the the church also has pastoral ways of dealing with situations that touch upon doctrine so I'll give you an example as an example currently in the current code of canon law to be validly married as a Catholic you have to get married outside of some dispensation or some emergency or some strange situation you have to be married in a church and you has to be witnessed by a bishop a priest or deacon you can't get married at the beach you can't get married in your backyard so the church's law impinges upon the doctrine of the doctrine has to do with the validity of a sacrament in this case the sacrament of holy matrimony so that's the doctrinal part and the church's law says that if you do it this way then the sacrament is invalid that's just that's a pastoral way of dealing with the issue of marriage in the sacrament of holy matrimony the church could change that and say you know what because of the problem with many invalid marriages now we're going to eliminate that requirement and say all right if you must get married at the beach okay as long as the other requisite things are in place you still have a valid marriage that's a pastoral approach to a doctrine the doctrine can't change it won't change in others the church can't say well from now on we're gonna let three people get married to each other or you know two men two women that kind of thing I realize it may seem like parsing or splitting hairs but it's really not so when you read the Catechism you're reading primarily the church's exposition of its doctrine on issues like the sacraments and so forth but also you're getting a certain amount that is explaining how the church deals with certain issues priestly celibacy for example a discipline in the church it's not doctrinal but it's the custom in the church a custom I very much appreciate so I'll end with this when you read the Catechism have tried to try to have as much as you can a discernment as to this is something that's a doctrine the church is saying believe in this one God in three persons Mary is sinless heaven and hell but the way the church is going to deal with a particular circumstance in here and now that is going to deal with the church's law or the church's customs disciplines things like that now that may not make you feel any better but at least I hope you see a little bit more clearly the distinction and you'll see both of those things in the Catechism does that help at all okay thank you I don't want to ignore this sight I feel as though I have was there a hand over here yes ma'am mm-hmm the ladies question has to do with people who are getting spooked and agitated by stuff that's going on right now the rise of a very totalitarian form of liberalism that wants to silence and coerce people we see that on TV a lot and so some people she knows I presume they're Catholic or just Christians in general are saying well we must be living in the end times and they'll point to passages in the book of Revelation that suggests that we are do I have it right okay well first thing I'll say I don't know it's gonna shock you we could be living in the end times these could easily be the end times I have no way of knowing I don't claim to know but it's not far-fetched to think that we are living in the end times and perhaps the Antichrist is alive and perhaps this whole thing is going to get very very bad in our lifetimes entirely possible certainly with the rise of the unbelievable capabilities now that that with the internet and cameras and surveillance and of course you all realize you carry a 24/7 surveillance device on your person at all times and one if you look at closely at my phone I know it sounds kind of silly I have little stickers that you can buy on Amazon that cover the the cameras because on my radio show I do stories about how time after time after time we find out that there are apps on your phone that can remotely turn on your camera you wouldn't know it there are ways in which the microphone can listen and the cameras can listen and I only mentioned that in passing to say that we've now reached a point technologically where it's possible now to monitor virtually everybody and we've never had that before China has a social credit rating system we're all 1.3 1.4 billion people in China are now in this database with facial recognition credit scores all these other things and they actually are determined by the government whether or not they can buy things get on an airplane and go someplace and all that now is capable in a way that it wasn't even twenty years ago even ten years ago it wasn't but I would rather not be living in the end times so I'm hopeful that we're not living in the end times and one thing we know for sure is at some point some generation is going to be living in the end times is it this one I don't know I try not to think that this is the end times and I suppose that when when the end times do roll around the people who are alive at that time will realize it and so at this point it seems to me that mumait be it is maybe it's not there's no way to know at least not for the moment so I'm just gonna keep doing my job I want to keep being a good husband a good father a good grandfather I want to do a good radio show I want to be a good friend I want to just stay busy about all the things that I know God wants me to do and not worry about all that other stuff because I can't change it anyway there's nothing I can do about it and if it's God's will that you and I are alive when the end times happen that's his will so glory hallelujah we're that generation if that's what God wills for us but maybe it's not and earlier generations have thought that they were in the end times and it turned out that they weren't in the end times either so my response to your question is whether we are in the end times or not in the end times doesn't affect us either way if it is the end times God wants us here if it's not the end of times great somebody else has to deal with that mess not us so we just stay busy doing what we're supposed to be doing I think that's the only real only real Catholic answer to that question and when people get so wound up and so agitated and fearful it's just not good and then they wind up devoting all their energies to that stuff and the neglect maybe some things that they really should be taken care of that would that would seem to me to be a great trick of the devil to get people sidetrack that way yes sir [Music] purgatory for the for this gentleman who's got family and friends were Protestant tell them revelation 21:27 says nothing unclean can enter heaven do you believe that well of course they do so are you at this very moment absolutely pure and clean free from any lusts or selfishness or grudges or any is your life entirely in perfect conformity with God's will or not no nobody and nobody I know certainly not I can say that we are perfectly spotless so say okay so if the Bible says that nothing unclean can enter Heaven and you in some way are unclean in some ways whatever those ways may be the effects of sin if you died at this moment what would happen well I go to heaven okay but you just said that you're not perfectly ready to meet God face to face and the Bible says that nothing unclean can enter into heaven so what happens well if you really think it through and you want to be consistent something must happen to you either as soon as you die or it's some interval that makes you clean and able to meet God face to face we Catholics recognize that that's purgatory that's what the word means you purified if you want a Bible passage that explains it without using the term it's 1st Corinthians 3 beginning of verse 10 where st. Paul says that he describes a man who built his house his temple on the foundation of Christ and in his life there are works that are likened unto wood hay and straw and gold silver and precious stones and he says on the day that discloses it that's referring to the day of his death the particular judgment Hebrews 9:27 says it's appointed to a man to die once and then the judgment and that's what he's referring to when he says the day will reveal these works he says the wood the hay and the straw will be burned in fire and he says the man will suffer loss and he will be saved he's not in heaven yet he will be saved but only as though passing through fire so although the term purgatory has not used the description of what the church teaches about what happens in purgatory is very blatant it's very explicit so those are three verses you can mix and match but I think that might be one way to do it okay yes sir okay hmm how how can we equip people in faith formation at the parish level to be better at defending the faith I'm not joking when I say invite them to come here you know in the summertime and attend this conference it's great way to jumpstart people there are many great apologetics videos on YouTube and you can maybe have if you're doing meetings every week or however often you could play some of the videos there are tons of mine tons of Scots there's just many to choose from there's a great series of workbooks that were written by Jim Burnham and father Steve Chacon and I think it's Steve Chacon Frank Chacon they're called beginning apologetics there's a really good workbook style and each one covers a specific topic Mormonism Chavez witnesses the Eucharist Mary and so forth I teach apologetics at the academic levels so if somebody in your Faith Formation class or maybe the whole class maybe get a group discount or something they could enroll in the academic program I teach at Holy Apostles College and Seminary and the website with the info on my class is Holy Apostles dot edu slash Patrick so if they want an academic credit or just for personal enrichment in which case the tuition drops by 50% if they want to do it for personal enrichment then they will have a 15 week academic hardcore study of apologetics and that would be maybe the most formal way of doing it practicing in your group setting have a discussion each week about some topic however often you meet maybe choose a topic and then learn together using the workbooks and maybe take a study book Carl Keating's fundamentalism Catholicism's & fundamentalism or pick any number of other books that deal with apologetics and then study your way through that there are a lot of ways you could do it those are several hopefully helpful did you yes you know yes her friend asks her why women or she says women should be ordained priests and her argument is that the church is just not ready yet for that which is a rather patronizing condescending thing to say that church the Bride of Christ guided by the Holy Spirit for 2,000 years now has not been ready for something that she wants that Jesus said nothing about that's pretty kind ascending thing you might point that out to her you know that's rather pretentious of you isn't it to say that so it really gets to the question of why can't women be priests and I think that would would help answer her question about the church being ready or not ready you could say the church is never going to be ready to do something that Christ taught otherwise in Christ as pope john paul ii outlined in a very short document called OD not co Sachertorte allah's' you've read it good in in in that document he just gives some bullet points as to why the church can't do that he says a Jesus did not choose women be the Apostles understood him that they should choose successors who were men the Blessed Virgin Mary he says is the highest most perfect human person ever keeping in mind that Jesus is a divine person not a human person so pope john paul ii says the catholic church almost alone in the world says that the greatest human being a human person is a woman not a man and extols mary as superior to all men and yet jesus did not choose Mary to be ordained a priest and the unbroken custom of the church always understanding this and he concluded by saying as you know that the church has no ability to change the teaching that Jesus gave and therefore he said the argument should basically cease because it's never going to happen the church can't do it it's just never gonna happen now a lot of people they just ignored what pope john paul ii said and they're continuing to argue for it and it may be that we'll see at some point a kind of sysm in the in which you'll have some bishops or groups of bishops or huge numbers of bishops maybe break away and say well now we're going to ordain priests but all that would mean is it's just yet another sysm like so many others that have come and gone in history of the church so and yes ma'am I'm gonna try to go quickly because we only have about 7 minutes sound good how about just one only because of the time can we restrict kitchens that one okay so scenario is how do you talk to people who say I'm Pro I'm personally opposed to abortion but I can't tell other people that they can't do it including my own children well I'd say are you personally opposed are you personally opposed to slavery yes or no are you well sure do you think that you should tell other people not to own slaves are you perfectly are you personally opposed to sex trafficking yeah yeah definitely so would you tell a sex trafficker stop it don't do that would you support lawmakers who enact laws to put sex traffickers in jail she's gonna say of course I would are you personally opposed to racism are you personally opposed to the KKK burning crosses on people's front lawns and lynching people and such of course I am I'm opposed to it and so you're opposed to it but you're not gonna speak out against it you're not going to tell your kids hey guys racism is wrong of course you would so just point out what's really going on here what's really going on here is you're a coward because you believe that some or you claim to believe that this is wrong and why is it wrong because there's a dead body when it's all over an innocent child dies let's face it that's what's going on so what you're really saying is you're a coward you're not willing to stand up for what you believe for whatever reason that's all that really means because you would stand up and speak out against slavery or racism or sex trafficking etc etc so why would you be willing to do that for those issues and you wouldn't be willing to stick up for a child who dies an abortion and that's the end of your friendship you hit that point but you know what will happen you will you have gone right to the heart of the issue and even if she hates you and unfriend you on Facebook and ever talk to you again she'll never be able to say she didn't know she'll always know the truth the reality of her position and please God she will repent of it and change that's the best possible outcome even if you're unfriended on Facebook if she gets to heaven yes sir yes ma'am how do you how do you talk to somebody who says well you know Catholic people I'm assuming right my kids have grown up and they said well we're not Catholic anymore and it doesn't really matter whether they're Catholic anymore because they're good people and good people go to heaven so it really doesn't matter that first of all is what's known as the heresy of indifferentism which says that jesus is really it's just one option among others and either Jesus is God or he's not if he's God and he says to the Apostles in Matthew 28:19 through 20 go into the whole world make disciples of all nations baptizing them all of them baptize them teach them to observe all that I've commanded you so if he's God that's that holds true for everybody including your children if he's not God then let's all go have a party I mean because what is this all about anyway if Jesus isn't God Christianity is a sham well yeah and that's gonna take me beyond the time limit that I've got because which I think I think is now actually so how about that as a starter in the next year we'll pick it back up again and I'll give you the rest of the answer all right thank you everybody I appreciate it I do have one thing and I forgot to bring I forgot to bring it it's actually in my car I have for you in the bookstore a double DVD set it's called where's that in the Bible and in this double DVD set I teach you from the Bible how to respond to common challenges against the Catholic faith now it's not just me at a podium is professionally recorded multiple cameras when I quote a Bible verse the verse comes up on the screen and there's a lot going on in this but if you for your own study or you want to give it to your adult children or even high schoolers it's great for high schoolers they have that in the bookstore in a very limited quantity and they asked me to let you know so if you want to take a look at it you'll see it there and I hope you get it thank you very much god bless you

Channel: Steubenville Conferences

Views: 13,125

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Keywords: Steubenville Conferences, Catholic, Franciscan University, Catholic Ministry, New Evangelization, Youth

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Length: 76min 24sec (4584 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 27 2019