Why Be Catholic? | Patrick Madrid

thank you all it's a pleasure to be here some of you have heard the radio show I used to do right here right now and I do a radio show now three hours a day called the Patrick Madrid show hence the logo on there I'll tell you a little bit about the program later but I know that those of you who have heard my radio program are scratching your heads and saying he sounds much taller on the radio could I see a show of hands how many of you here know somebody who has left the Catholic Church everybody how many of you here have ever been faced with a tough question about your Catholic faith at one time or another but didn't have a good answer to that tough question right and how many of you do not like to be asked to raise your hands in public may I see that also almost as many people the talk I'm going to give now deals with the theme of why be Catholic and it fits nicely with both of those two problems that we all raised our hands about and that is you know somebody who has left the church and my guess is it could be even someone in your own family and I'll guess further that someone in your own family might be your own son or daughter who grew up and left the Catholic Church you were diligent and taking them to Mass every Sunday teaching them the faith doing your very best to pass on that Catholic teaching that you had received from your parents only to your sorrow to see your sons and daughters get into high school or maybe it was in college when they began to drift away from God that's probably true you don't have to raise your hands but it's probably true for most parents who have adult children in this room right now and so the talk is going to on the one hand give you some information that you can use in conversations with people whether it's someone you know and love like a son or a daughter or could be somebody at your place of work or someone you meet on an airplane the opportunity to engage in apologetics and to explain why you're Catholic can happen anywhere and what I'd like to do is to survey some of the things that are very important to me the things that I talk about when someone asks me that question why be Catholic the second category of problem is that all of us know that uncomfortable feeling of being put on the spot with a question and you don't have a good answer and you know you don't have a good answer and you might Bluff your way through it or you might you know kind of bluster your way with an answer but deep down inside you're thinking to yourself I really don't know what to say apologetics keep in mind is not the art of winning arguments it's the art of winning souls and sometimes when you are faced with a question you won't know the answer now the beautiful part about being a Catholic in the 21st century with the internet and all the wonderful books and DVDs and radio programs and things that are available is that the answers are not very difficult to find it just requires a little bit of effort and you can find the answer to any question that might be raised by an atheist or a Muslim or a Protestant or whoever the person might be the answers thankfully are there you just need to do a little bit of work to get the answers and then you can respond but I'd like to include a little proviso and that would be that you should never try to bluff your way through an apologetics response if you don't know the answer the very best thing to say in all honesty is you know that's a great question I really don't know the answer but I know there is an answer and if you give me your email address or if I can friend you on facebook or in some other way stay in touch with you I'll get the answer and I'll send you a link to the answer I promise you that and I found that when you're engaging in apologetics one of the temptations is to worry that if you don't know the answer that maybe there is no answer and the other person when you're speaking to him or her is going to see an authenticity about you that you not only have the humility to admit that you don't know the answer but also that you have the willingness to go get the answer because the answer is important and you might think well if it's important enough to her to go find that answer then it should be worth my time to at least take a look at that answer does that make sense to everybody okay well with that in mind what I'd like to do is is to present to you how I respond to the question why be Catholic and I've been asked this question numerous times over the years I am NOT a convert to the Catholic Church I'm a cradle Catholic born into the into a Catholic family I was baptized at about two or three weeks of age and so I bring a different perspective that might track with those of many of you here your perspectives or your experience probably a lot like mine is you grew up with the Catholic faith and you didn't have to give up anything to receive it that's one of the reasons that I'm so grateful to converts like Scott and Kimberly Hahn and Marcus and Maryland Grodi and Tim staples and all the other household names that I know that you're all familiar with what inspires me about their stories is that they had to go through a lot of mental work a lot of emotional work they had to give up things and friends and situations that from one standpoint would be very difficult to give up in order to lay hold of that pearl of great price the Catholic faith but I on the other hand it was given to me I didn't ask for it I was raised that way and perhaps like many of you I was as a child I was in that childlike state of faith when I just believed everything my parents told me other than it was time to go to bed and I didn't believe that but if my parents said that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist on the altar I believed that I didn't demand biblical evidence from my parents you know gee mom unless you can prove to me from the Bible that this is true I'm not going to accept it and all of us at one time had that kind of childlike faith didn't we and you can probably wistfully recall those days when it was so simple and you just believed it because mom and dad who love you told you it was true and that was good enough for me and good enough for you back in those days I recall when I was about five years old being flabbergasted when I discovered that not everyone in the world was Catholic and it was very strange to me my five year old brain thinking that everything my parents had taught me was true was so obviously true that everybody everywhere would accept this so when somehow or another when I just that there were plenty of people out there who didn't believe what I had been taught I found it perplexing and I don't remember anything else about that experience other than it was very strange to me that not everybody would believe the things I have been told and as I got older as happens to all of us in one way or another I began to bump into the sharp edges of reality and I would discover little by little in school for example that there were kids in my class who either were not Catholic or maybe they weren't even Christian there were Jewish kids in my class I remember one girl in my fourth-grade class who was an atheist I didn't even know what that word meant until my parents explained it to me they said she doesn't believe in God and that was like super perplexing like how could somebody not believe in God and just but I didn't have any tools I didn't have any way of explaining things I just knew that I believed in God and how strange it was that somebody in my class did him in the fourth grade this this particular year really stands out in my mind for one reason is that I was on a field trip one day and I maneuvered my my way in line so I could sit next to this cute girl in my class that I wanted to spend you know some quality time talking to on this field trip I figured we have the bus ride we can have some nice communication and it worked out i sat next to this girl and everything was great we had a fun field trip that day until it was time to come back from the field trip we're sitting on the bus and somehow or another she asked what church I went to and I told her my parish and she looked at me and she said are you Catholic and I said yes and she said oh and the look on her face was one of disappointment and disgust and I didn't know why so you know what we had this great time together today and why would this ruin it and she said well Catholics are idolaters and I said we are not what sin idolaters Oh that's another word that entered my vocabulary that day I didn't know what that word was and she said well Catholics worship statues and I said no we don't and she said yes and she was quoting from memory from from Exodus chapter 20 where the Lord God tells Moses do not carve any graven images of anything in the sky or on the earth of the waters beneath the earth do not bow down before them and worship them I'm sure you're all familiar with that if you haven't read the book of Exodus lately I'm sure you all have seen Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark well in that movie the Hollywood version of the Ark of the Covenant which which he talks about just shortly after this prohibition against images and she was describing this passage and I had no clue what to say to her she was adamant whatever Church she went to they insisted that Catholics were idolaters because after all look here's a graven image of our Lord and and st. Joseph there's a graven image here of our Blessed lady and if you were to go into any Catholic Church you would find Stations of the Cross and crucifixes and statues all graven images and so there I was sitting on the bus my jaw hanging down I didn't know what to say to her but it was really it made me kind of angry because I had never worshiped a statue I had never seen my parents worship a statue and the whole idea of worshiping a statue seems so ridiculous but I couldn't explain it to her I couldn't all I could do is to say you know no that's not true and she would say yes it is true you know so that was pretty much the end of that relationship at that point and just as an aside it wasn't until many many years later as an adult that I had studied the Bible more closely and I discovered going back to Exodus 20 and the Ark of the Covenant I discovered that God indeed prohibited graven images but for the purpose of idolatry the golden calf for example or when in in the Book of Numbers when God had told Moses to carve the image of a snake remember this bronze snake that would go on a pole and they would hold it up so that those who are being bitten by poisonous serpents in the desert they would see this in some mysterious miraculous way they would be cured of the snakebite and we're told a little bit later that sometime generations later the Israelites began to worship that snake on a pole as if it were some kind of a divinity and the King immediately had it destroyed and so I began to see that it's not graven images is not statues that are being prohibited it's the whole idea of idolatry and the Israelites were prone to a certain type of idolatry that of worshiping an actual image as opposed to the one true God one day Karl Keating my friend at Catholic Answers he and I were to speak at a parish in Chicago and I loved telling this story because it literally happened as I'm about to describe it to you we pulled up in front of the rectory at the parish and on the front lawn were these very large and beautiful life-size statues of Our Lady of Fatima and then the three smaller statues of the children of Fatima kneeling with their hands folded in prayer in front of the bigger statue and I turned to my colleague Karl and I said what a great religion not only can we worship statues but our statues can worship statues this is a true story this really happened when you hear this story told you know that it happened to me and so Carl and I chuckled about it and then I thought well that's kind of a funny way to open the evening so I opened the talk that evening by telling the story the Catholics chuckle just like you did but there were some non Catholics in the audience that evening who didn't chuckle and one of them happened to be a local Baptist minister who at the Q&A period he says why were you laughing because we know that you do worship statues and so then I had a perfect setup for the question and answer to explain from the Bible that it's not idolatry to go back to the Ark of the Covenant you can see in Exodus 20:5 which is just five chapters later that that's where God commands Moses to carve graven images and those are the graven images of the angels that would sit on top of the Ark of the Covenant and they were certainly religious they were certainly very holy and God commanded this so I began to see what's not images it is idolatry now there's it just like a little mini order for you to think about when it comes to apologetics there's an example of how apologetics can be done in a simple way you know a little bit of Scripture and then you make some common-sense explanations we we have images of Our Lady and Jesus and other great figures of our faith in the same way that you might have pictures of your family and friends on the wall of your living room you see them and you remember them and you love them even though you couldn't care anything one way or the other about the paper if you saw me kiss a picture of my wife and children you wouldn't be shocked and think what's wrong with that guy he loves Kodak paper you know why you would know that it's the people represented so there's just like a little mini exercise in apologetics and although we don't have time to discuss any specific apologize issues per se what I'd like to do is to tell you a little bit more about how I began my role in the world of apologetics the next major milestone for me happened in my the summer between my junior and senior year of high school and I was I call it my golden summer because I was living in Southern California we live not far from the beach I had my driver's license which was the most important thing on the planet as far as I was concerned my parents let me use a family car I had some jingle in my pocket because of my part-time job so life was good that summer and one little value-added detail was that I had started this friendship with this girl in my neighborhood really cute girl really nice family and so she and I would be going to movies and going to get pizza and the roller skating and all that kind of thing the downside however was sure she came from a very hardcore Protestant family now her dad especially was very nice a very friendly man and very good to me in many respects but he was also deeply anti-catholic he was the first person that I ever met who strongly challenged me and told me listen you're a nice kid I like you you can continue to come here and see my daughter but I just got to tell you you're not a Christian but I'm baptized yeah but that's that's man-made you don't believe in the real Jesus you believe in a different Jesus you follow a different gospel you are not saved you're not going to heaven and rather than getting angry and leaving I thought well the if the price of admission to be able to see this girl is I've got to sit down with her dad from time to time and go through these things I'm willing to do that and so over the course of that summer every time I would go to Christie's house it seemed like every single time her father would make me sit down in the living room and he would get out his big King James Bible and he would pepper me and grilled me with arguments against the Catholic Church give you some examples and I won't have time to answer them for you in this talk but I want you to feel the weight of what I was feeling that summer as a Catholic kid I knew what I believed but I couldn't defend what I believed he would say things like this he'd say in the Catholic Church what do you call priests father and he would open his Bible to Matthew chapter 23 verse 9 and he would quote it he says well jesus said call no one on earth father for you have but one father who was in heaven and then he'd sit back with a big Cheshire Cat grin and he would say so why does your church do something that Jesus not to do and I had no answer another time he said to me now tell me Pat in your church the Catholic Church you believe that Mary is sinless don't you and I said yeah I do the Immaculate Conception Mary was perpetually free from sin her entire existence free from sin from the moment of her existence and he said well that's interesting and then he would open his Bible to the Gospel of Luke and in the Magnificat section where our lady is praising God she says my soul rejoices in God my Savior so he said now isn't that interesting your church teaches that Mary was sinless which the Bible nowhere says and Mary herself said she needed a savior so if Mary was sinless why did she need a Savior and then he would sit back with a big Cheshire Cat grin and I would flail and fumble had no clue what to say and he would say if she was sinless what was she saved from and I had no answer for that now the answer I'll give you one quick answer is Our Lady did need a Savior as she herself says her Savior is Jesus Christ and Mary and Jesus did save her from sin but in a anticipatory way he saved her from sin before she contracted it he saves us after the fact so when Mary cried out my soul rejoices in God my Savior she was obviously speaking the truth Jesus Christ is our Savior Jesus saved her from sin Jesus saved her by his death on the cross but because God is not bound by time and space that was applied to her at the moment of her conception you and I received the benefit of our Redemption and salvation after the fact you all see how that works but that summer I was like a deer in the headlights I had no idea one day her father gave me a chick comic book tract called the death cookie have you seen these little chick comic book tracts their little comic books but they're anti-catholic they have an anti-catholic message this one was against the Holy Eucharist and it was called the death cookie and on the front cover of this little comic book was a host from Mass with a skull and crossbones over the front of it don't let it bother you there are people out there who who fall for that kind of thing and I knew instinctively I said this can't be true and he says read this it's going to show you why you're teaching about he called it the cookie or the wafer he said this will show you why what you believe is not true so I would go home time after time and I'd say to like to my dad I'd say okay dad here's the latest thing the death cookie what do I do with this and my dad would say no problem and he reach up on the shelf and he'd pulled down a book from the shelf and he'd say it's in this book I'm not going to show you where but the answer to your question is in this book and he would pull down a book like Radio replies for example the three-volume classic work of apologetics I recommend every house every Catholic house have this book and what I found time after time whether it was the death cookie or call no man father or Mary didn't need a Savior that kind of thing I would find the answers in these apologetics books they were biblical they're historical they made sense and they were far more cogent and compelling than the arguments that Christie's father was giving me so what happened was over the course of the summer I would come back to her house stronger and stronger and stronger in my belief in the Catholic faith and I think her father began to realize that so he would quickly change the subject so I would come back and I'd have my note paper and I'd say okay I have the answer from the Bible on why we call priest father and then I would start rattling off the Bible verses and making the connections and things so what happened in the end was Christy and I as these things typically happened we drifted apart we started school in the fall and that was pretty much the end of our friendship no hard feelings or anything but what happened was I had gone through a kind of a crossroads experience that I didn't even realize was happening and that was I could easily have veered off away from my Catholic faith if I hadn't had somebody in my life to give me the answers in this case it was my own father and I also noticed that my dad was not the least bit perturbed by any of these arguments it was almost like he was you know ah no problem got that covered good to go we've got the answers to that so that helped me a lot was to see a kind of reasonable kind of confidence that my father had and then have the having the answers is very important so I could have veered away from my Catholic faith and instead of being at a Catholic apologetics conference who knows I might be a pastor at an evangelical church or something like that and the reason I say that is because many pastors at evangelical churches are former Catholics and many of the people in those churches are former Catholics don't you know which is why it's so important for us harkening back to all of us knowing somebody who's left the Catholic Church it's so important for us to be able to know what we believe and why we believe it so that we can give the answers what happened in my case was it made me a stronger Catholic because I went from the childlike type of faith and I was really in a kind of childish type of faith where it was a matter of customer habit or this is what my parents told me is true I had not up to that point made a concentrated effort to try to know for sure for myself whether or not these things were true I just accepted them on face value as we all did at one time but as you all know the older you get and the more challenges to those beliefs you encounter the more necessary it becomes for you to do your own work and find out for yourself whether or not these things are true and that's what happened to me that summer I didn't even realize that it was happening and I don't know if I'll ever see Kristi's father on Facebook or something I mean I don't know if I'll ever run into him again this is many many years ago but if I do I'll hesitate whether or not to tell him that he's partly responsible for the fact that I do this work that I do I think his hair would catch on fire if he realized that he he actually helped create in his eyes probably created a monster that summer but I look back with a lot of gratitude to her father for that now what that helped me do that and all the other experiences that came after that was to marshal my thinking as to why I'm a Catholic and what I'd like to do now is maybe go through a series of bullet points that I will not be able to elaborate on in any detail but just simply to bring to your attention and encourage you to take a look at these things as bullet points that might work for you in speaking to somebody who asks you why you're Catholic or if somebody that you know has left the church and is asking well why should I come back to the Catholic Church what's in it for me here are some of the things that I say and I make a point of emphasizing to audiences that I don't presume to tell anyone else why he or she should be Catholic but I feel full freedom to be able to express from my heart why I'm a Catholic and that's a very handy rhetorical device remember that apologetics involves not only the content of what you're going to present but also the technique in which you present it I love the way st. Peter puts it in first Peter 3:15 always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you but do it with respect and love do it with meekness be he doesn't say all these things do it with politeness do it with charity do it with patience so that's the technique part the content part is giving the reasons for the hope that are in you and so I just want to emphasize how important it is as a rhetorical device that you could say to somebody listen I'm not going to try to push anything on you but would it be okay with you if I just simply shared with you from my heart how I came to this conclusion of what I believe I've never met anyone who's going to say forget about I don't want to hear that I mean unless he's like a really hardened critic of the church everybody seems to be willing to at least hear me out and they'll do the same thing for you I recall one plane flight I had I was flying from LA back home where I lived down in Columbus Ohio and because I do a lot of flying I have a lot of frequent flyer miles because I have a lot of frequent flyer miles you get all these upgrades into first-class it was an early flight I walked onto the plane got into the first-class cabin and it was nearly empty and there was one gentleman sitting in a window seat and I looked at my boarding pass and I saw that I had the aisle seat next to his window seat but everything else was wide open so I sat down and I said to him is you know they're going to be closing the door in a minute and when they do all move so we can have some more elbow room and he turned to me with a kind of unhappy look on his face he says why is that because I'm a Muslim and I said no and I'm thinking to myself I am definitely sitting in this seat no matter what for the rest is flight and he said well I'm from the Middle East and I'm a Muslim is that why you don't want to sit next to me I said no sir I said in fact now I really want to sit next to you and so we had this long productive conversation in which he immediately got into why I should become a Muslim and so I said I tell you what we've got to cook three hours ahead of us why don't we do this I'm going to say nothing and I'm just going to absorb everything you can tell me about why I should be Muslim you make the case give me whatever the best arguments are I'm going to listen with my full attention all I ask is that when you're done and I get the second half of our plane trip to do that that you will listen with equal attention to what I have to say does that sound fair he said sure and so that's exactly what happened he gave all of his arguments he told me all the reasons why Jesus couldn't be God and why God doesn't have a son all these things and then when it was my turn I gave my presentation and I was so excited by the time the plane trip was over not because I saw any movement on his part he was probably if anything a little more grumpy by the time the conversation was over because he didn't get anywhere with me on that trip but I was really excited because I had I had given myself an opportunity to learn apologetics from the source from a Muslim believer who gave what probably are the best arguments that you can give for and against for Islam and against Christianity and also I had a chance to practice the other side of apologetics which is to tell my story and to do my best to explain from my heart why I believe that Jesus is God and so forth so even though we stayed in touch he wanted me to see some Muslim apologetics videos on this website and he sent me a follow-up email did you see the videos and I said as a matter of fact yes I did and here I saw this one in this one in this one and by the way did you watch the Scott Han video that I sent you you know and I never heard back from him at that so so apologetics is practical and in your day to day lives I would like to encourage you avail yourselves of any opportunity that you have to engage in apologetics that's how you get better at it it's like speaking a foreign language unless you're willing to learn from experience and mispronouncing the word someone might chuckle when they hear you mispronounce the order you use the wrong word or you forget the word that's how you learn to speak a foreign language as you all know if you study foreign languages and becoming fluent in apologetics is very similar you're here to study apologetics which is awesome I'm excited about that and I'm grateful to dr. O Donnell and Kristen in college for making this opportunity available to all of you but don't don't stay at this sort of introductory level you have to go deeper and you have to practice and by practicing you'll get better at it the better at it you get the more comfortable you'll be the more comfortable you are the less flustered you're going to be and the less flustered you are the more effective you're going to be so when somebody says to me will why're you Catholic you know what about the scandals and what about all the other stuff and the Crusades and the Inquisition they bring up Galileo and all the other handy sticks to beat the Catholic Church with by the way that's why I've made a mission of my career as an apologist to write books on all of those topics so that somebody's what about Galileo I just happen to have written a book on that very topic would love to introduce you to some facts on that subject in fact I've been meaning to mention this to you I wrote this book called why be Catholic and this book is a synopsis essentially of the points that I'm making to you but it goes much deeper obviously and when somebody says to me why be Catholic I say well if you're willing I'll share with you in my words why I'm Catholic because it's all here in this book so here are the bullet points I go through I say number one I'm Catholic when I could be anything else because I've become convinced that the Catholic Church is the church established by Jesus Christ and in a moment I'll offer you one way that I try to make that case keep in mind that if you're speaking to an atheist or a non-christian you can't begin with that point that point works if you're speaking to a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness a Southern Baptist etc and chances are the majority of people you meet in your life will fall into that category but for those of you who work with an atheist or you work with a non-christian you have to back up and you have to begin with will first let me tell you why I believe in God and if you can make the case for why you believe in God as being a reasonable worldview a Christian theater well let's start back up a little bit further you first want to establish the theistic worldview why it is that God must exist how it is that atheism for example cannot account for realities in this life that we all know to be true and the reason that it can't account for them is because the atheistic worldview entails a component called naturalism sometimes it's called physicalism or scientism even naturalism holds that the only things that exist anywhere are physical everything that exists is reducible to matter in some way or another and the corollary to that argument is that nothing immaterial exists there's no supernatural realm ergo no God no angels no demons no human souls no Heaven and Hell none of that actually exists because the only things that exist are material keep that in mind well if that's true you want to point out there are many things to talk about with an atheist but this is one entry point into a conversation just say well then how do you account for things that you and I both know are real like truth or love or memory or human dignity right and wrong honesty integrity you could go down the list of giving examples you know that I know that all these things exist where are they can you go get a box of love somewhere or can you reach into your pantry and pull out a container of truth you can't but all of these things really do exist and all the atheists in the world know they exist but how do you account for them if we live in a universe that is purely material now here again I can't elaborate on this or any of the other themes I'd like to touch upon other than to say the books and the CDs and the DVDs and the YouTube videos that amply demonstrate this are available easily many of them are free for example the YouTube videos I would encourage you if you're interested in the apologetics endeavor with atheist for example go onto YouTube and search for atheist Christian debate does God exist and you're going to pull up a slew of them and I would say take any one of them because the Atheist worldview always loses now it doesn't mean that the Atheist might not be the better debater sometimes they are or the Atheist might be a more convincing orator sometimes they are but if you look at the arguments and the explanation you begin to see as I and some of the others have seen that the theistic worldview really does carry the day because it can account for things like this if God exists then there is no problem with love and truth and honesty and so forth if you are talking to a non-christian then you're going to step up from theism which you use to deal with atheists and that would be what we call natural apologetics that's the lowest level or the broadest level of apologetics the second level would be Christian apologetics and that's where you're dealing with those who either believe in God or are perfectly willing to accept that God exists and with them what you do is you want to make the case for Jesus the divinity well the existence of Jesus Christ did he actually exist was he God did he rise from the dead and if you can make the case and you can for those components then you have opened the door to the third and in some ways the most interesting dimension of apologetics and that is Catholic apologetics because then you're making the case for those distinctively Catholic aspects of Christianity such as the Holy Eucharist and the community of saints and apostolic tradition etc etc so this is a very very fluid kind of three different categories of apologetics it's not always easy to know when one has ended and one begins they all go together they're not mutually exclusive but they are distinct so please keep that in mind natural apologetics Christian apologetics and Catholic apologetics in this case you're dealing with a Christian apologetics argument when you say as I do I believe that the Catholic Church is the church established by Jesus Christ and perhaps the most effective way I found to do that to make that case in a quick way would be to use the historical argument John Henry Newman Blessed John Henry Newman was a master of this in fact those of you who have studied Newman you know probably that he was once a bitterly vociferously anti-catholic Anglican minister who preached sermons about how the Pope was the Antichrist and the Catholic Church was the of Babylon and he decided that he wanted to write the definitive work that would once and for all disprove Catholic claims on things like the papacy and purgatory and the mass and so forth and so he said about surveying the early church to show that the early Christians were not Catholics he got a third of the way through his project and he threw up his hands in exasperation and he became Catholic because as he put it in his classic work an essay on the development of Christian doctrine to become deep in history is to cease to be Protestant and what he discovered is simply that no matter how far back you go in history all the way back to the first century during the time of the Apostles you will not not find the Catholic Church you find the Catholic Church in every generation from the present day back to the end and if you wanted to make a biblical case you could say something like this well jesus said certain things that were clues about the church in the Gospel of Matthew for example Matthew chapter 5 Jesus said that you are the light of the world remember that one no one lights a lamp and then hides it under a basket well that would seem to imply visibility right that the church is visible he said you're like a city set on a hill you can see a city set on a hill especially at nighttime because of all the light emanating from it so I would say to somebody well there a clue and it implies visibility the Jesus also said in Matthew 16 he said on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it now there's plenty other things in that same passage that are very important but we will concentrate just on that statement on this rock I will build my church now I pose it to somebody by saying well Jesus seems to say then that this church is his church he's establishing this church it's not traceable to some other person would you agree with that most people say well yeah that makes sense and then the last clue I found in Matthew chapter 28 at the very end of the Great Commission where Jesus says go into the whole world make disciples of all nations baptizing them teach them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold I'm with you always even until the end of the world well that would imply perpetuity would it not that Jesus would be with the church till the end of the world therefore the church would have to exist until the end of the world and if that's the case though we don't know when at the end of the world will come we can look backward and test this theory and here we are in the Year 2015 the Catholic Church is visible the doctrines especially but also the Pope and the bishops and union with the Pope and all the other external qualities but there are many other churches that are visible go back 200 years go back 200 years and you'll find in the year 1815 the Catholic Church but you won't find Mormonism it didn't exist Joseph Smith Jr the man that would start that religion was still a little boy you won't find your home as witnesses you won't find seventh-day Adventists you won't find any of the nondenominational denominations none of those groups existed but you will find the Catholic Church and what Newman did essentially was he kept going back he's okay now let's go back to the Year 1515 guess what Martin Luther is still Catholic priest there were no Baptists no Methodists no reformed no Lutheran's keep going back and what you'll find is gradually all these various religious movements and groups begin to vanish until you get back to the 1st century and you still see the Catholic Church in an unbroken line of exist from the present day all the way back to the very beginning it's a very powerful argument especially so if you're speaking to somebody who may not really know that much about Christian history another reason why I'm Catholic when I could be anything else is because I've become convinced that the teachings of the Catholic Church are true and here again over the years that I've had the privilege of engaging in apologetics one of the things that I found was a lot of for example Protestants but also atheists and others they would want to do public debates and I'm not a particularly good debater I'll admit that freely and it is a very scary thought to walk into a church with a thousand people there who are there most of them to see you lose and they have the video cameras and the lights and the recording equipment one debate I was invited to participate in was in Pasadena and there was 1,600 people in the audience dr. bill Marcia a recently retired from christen of college was one of three I was a leader of a three man team of debaters dr. bill Marcia was one of the other two and we were debating a Lutheran and two reformed ministers and there were 1600 people in the audience I asked the the people who were organizing it how many people do you think here are Catholic and he said maybe maybe 200 and so I realized there are 1,400 people in this room who are waiting to see me crash and burn did not feel very good but what happened was in spite of my own deficiencies as a debater at the end of the debate a young woman came up to Nancy and me and she introduced herself and she said I'm an Evangelical Protestant I came here to see the debate I brought a bunch of my Catholic friends so that they would be converted to evangelical Protestantism but she said I'm feeling really weird right now because I feel that I've never heard the Catholic case before until this debate I've never known what the Catholic Church might say and I'm worried that maybe God is saying that I have to become a Catholic when I wanted them to become Protestant and turns out her name was Annie turns out we stayed in touch she did become Catholic she's now happily married with several children and to this day she'll still send me notes on Facebook or by email and she'll say guess what I met this baptist minister in a grocery store and I gave him the CDs of that debate and he's in our CIA now he's going to become Catholic at next Easter so I offer that to you just as a way to emphasize this truth and that is that Catholic Truth Catholic teaching has its own gravitational pull it has its own beauty but it's our job to show forth that beauty and show forth that truth by being willing to talk about these things and by being willing to share our faith give our testimony that kind of thing it really does draw people I wish there were time to tell you some other stories about how that actually works but suffice to say I can tell you it really does work when you speak and you share your faith from the heart it really has a draw and the truth of the Catholic faith will draw people now the reason I mentioned that debate is because sometimes that's how people find the truth of the Catholic Church or they read their way in or they hear it on Catholic radio etc we're there time I would cycle through all of the major doctrines of the Catholic Church the role of the Pope the Holy Eucharist Jesus Christ truly present body blood soul and divinity it would be as if a conductor of a symphony orchestra we're to gather all this this ensemble of trained musicians and say okay now I want you to go into the whole world and describe music to people tell them what music would sound like if only they could hear it that would defeat the purpose of an orchestra wouldn't you say but if the conductor said here are the instruments now go make music to me that's a great analogy for what Jesus did with the church and in particular the mass in the Eucharist rather than simply read about Jesus talk about Jesus sing about Jesus all of which are good we actually received Jesus body blood soul and divinity under the appearance of bread and wine because the mass is the analogy to the instruments that make the music and when people can begin to see what the Lord did for his church in the sacraments especially and most particularly the Holy Eucharist it is a powerful draw for them I would love to spend time talking with somebody asking me about why I'm Catholic talk about the Blessed Virgin Mary or to talk about the church's moral teachings I'm going to conclude with just a few brief thoughts on that point because we have to wrap things up here in just a minute one of the one of the great lessons that I learned in my life I learned from my lovely wife Nancy and Nancy's here with me I don't see her I don't see where she is but she's here with with me she's out at the book table okay this happened when we were our youngest child who's now 14 this is our 11th child was a newborn now Nancy and I by the way oddly enough have never been invited to teach natural family planning classes I don't know why but we had our 11th child and we wanted to get away from all the hubbub so we went to a local Olive Garden Nancy and I and our new little newborn and the waitress put us into our booth gave us our menus and we were going to order but she started talking with Nancy about the baby oh how old is the baby boy or girl that kind of thing and Nancy's answering all the questions that we've answered that any mom would answer until the the waitress asked Nancy the question that neither she nor I wanted her to ask which was is he your first so I'll never forget this Nancy looked at me across the table and with her eyes she asked me do you want to tell her and I shook my head no you can tell her so Nancy says he's our 11th now this poor woman did not know how to act when she heard eleven children she grabbed she clicked like the guy from Sanford and Son remember he clutched his chest and she ran off and got three or four other waitresses and brought them back to our table where this spectacle so they were sitting at our table and these waitresses are now clustered around the table and they're looking at us and they're commenting like eleven kids why would you have eleven kids and that's got to be so expensive and you know it's just clearly very weird in their eyes that we would have 11 kids willingly have 11 kids and I could see them they were looking at Nancy thinking you poor thing and they're looking at me thinking you monster how could you do this to your wife and then they started giving their own contraceptive habits they started talking about that so one waitress says yeah well we have two kids and I'm on the pill now ha ha ha they're all laughing and the other one said yeah well I got my tubes tied and the other one said well I made my husband get a vasectomy and I'm sitting there thinking I just want to have a plate of lasagna I I really don't want to know this information right about now and so in the midst of all of this lecturing and all the criticism and all that my lovely wife she smiled at these women and she said these exact words she said well my husband and I believe in being open to life because children are blessing from God and we want God to bless our marriage that's it that's all she said and it was like putting water on a campfire because that they all settled down they went back to work so we kind of laughed oh isn't that kind of funny and then we ate our food we forgot about it I paid the bill we got the baby and we went out to our car and as we were getting into our minivan we heard footsteps running up behind us and I turned around and it was our waitress and she had run all the way the length of the parking lot to where we were parked and every time we passed by this Olive Garden I always think about what happened next she said kind of out of breath she said oh I'm glad I caught you I didn't want you to leave without saying thank you now I knew she wasn't talking to me because the tip was not anywhere near that big so she was talking to my wife and she said I just wanted to say thank you what you said in there about children being a blessing from God she said when you said that you believed in being open to life so that God will bless your marriage she said just struck me all of a sudden that that's true she said I'm on the pill I've never ever thought about it that way we have two kids we don't want anymore but now that I heard you say that she says I realized something has changed in my heart that's true she said I've already decided I'm getting off the pill when I go home tonight after my shift I'm telling my husband that I'm off the pill I don't know what his reaction is going to be but I'm doing this because I want God to bless my marriage and I just wanted to say thank you for what you said she gave Nancy a hug she went back in the restaurant we never saw her again but what a powerful lesson for me personally I hope it's useful to you too when you're doing apology you don't have to be complicated you don't have to be razzamatazz if you share from your heart and you simply speak the truth and love do your best give it to God pray for the other person don't be afraid to fail don't be afraid to mispronounce the word speak from your heart it's incredible the miracles that can take place the last thing I want to leave you with and I'm keeping an eye on my timer here so that I don't go overtime the last thing I want to leave you with is just this thought two final quick thoughts this one is from a book called small miracles and the man who wrote this his name is Greg O'Leary true story happened years ago but listen to this and now be thinking in terms of why it's so important for you and for me to take action when it comes to trying to help even just one person at a time we can't say the whole culture but we can help one person at a time listen to this story I was walking down a dimly lit Street late one evening when I heard muffled screams coming from behind a clump of bushes alarmed I slowed down to listen and panicked when I realized that what I was hearing were the unmistakable sounds of a struggle heaving grunting frantic scuffling the tearing of fabric only yards from where I stood a woman was being attacked should I get involved I was frightened for my own safety and cursed myself for having suddenly decided to take a new route home that night what if I became a victim shouldn't I just run away and call the police and let them handle it although it seemed like an eternity the deliberations in my head had taken only seconds but already the girl's cries were growing weaker I knew I had to act fast how could I walk away from this no I finally resolved I could not turn my back on the fate of this unknown woman even if it meant risking my own life I'm not a brave man nor am i athletic and I don't know where I found the moral courage in the physical strength but once I had finally resolved to help the girl I became strangely transformed I ran behind the bushes grabbed the assailant and pulled him off the woman grappling and punching we fell to the ground where we struggled for a few moments until he jumped right and ran off panting hard I approached the girl who was crouched behind his tree sobbing in the darkness I could barely see her outline but I could certainly sense her trembling shock not wanting to frighten her further I had first spoke to her from a distance and said soothingly it's okay the man ran away you're safe now there was a long pause and then I heard her words uttered and wonder in amazement dad is that you and then from behind the trees that my youngest daughter Catherine and every time I read that story as a father I have five daughters of my own every time I read that story and I think about what could have happened if he had taken the Cowardly way out if he had not said I don't know what's going to happen I don't know what the risk might be to myself but I'm going to step in and I'm going to do something because this person needs my help god only knows what could have happened to his daughter if he had taken the Cowardly way out now I like that story because it's very galvanizing to me and I hope it is for you as well that we don't have the luxury of saying we'll all wait for Scott Hahn to do that are all wait for the people at Catholic Answers to take care of that you have a job to do just as I do just as they do and that is to be person-specific and help the people we can in the moment don't you think all right so we'll finish with this mission statement which I did not write I wish I had it's I don't even know who wrote it there are different people who claim to have written it but it's not clear who actually wrote it but it's called the Fellowship of the unashamed and I'd like to conclude with all of you budding apologists I'd like you to think about the Fellowship of the unashamed as a mission statement a way of operating going forward from here today I am a part of the Fellowship of the unashamed the die has been cast the decision has been made I have stepped over the line I won't look back let up slow down back away or be still my past is redeemed my present makes sense and my future is in God's hands I am finished and done with low living small planning the bare minimum smooth knees mundane talking frivolous living selfish giving and dwarf goals I no longer need preeminence prosperity position promotions applause or popularity I don't have to be right first the best recognized praise regarded or awarded I now live by faith I lean on Christ presence I love with patience live by prayer and labor with the power of God's grace my face is set my gait is fast my goal is heaven my road is narrow my way is rough my companions are few my guide is reliable and my mission is clear I cannot be bought compromised detoured lured away turned back deluded or delayed I will not flinch in the face of sacrifice hesitate in the presence of adversity negotiate at the table of the enemy ponder at the pool of popularity or meander in the maze of mediocrity I won't give up shut up let up or slow up until I have stayed up stored up prayed up paid up and spoken up for the cause of Christ I'm a disciple of Jesus I'm a Catholic I must go until he comes give until I drop speak out until all know and work until he stops me and when he returns for his own he will have no difficulty recognizing me for my banner is clear I am a part of the Fellowship of the unashamed thank you all very much thank you very much

Channel: ChristendomTube

Views: 184,421

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Keywords: Catholic, Christendom College, Patrick Madrid, Catholic liberal arts

Id: qQlpF_3buyg

Length: 53min 13sec (3193 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2015