 Hi everyone, I'm Mary Harrell with Tan Books. Thank you all for joining us today at the Tan Round Table. The fullness of truth is found in the teachings of the church and encompasses tradition and scripture. What was handed down from the apostles still guides Holy Mother Church today through the Holy Spirit, who would teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. That's from John chapter 14. In time though, moral relativism has taken hold, perverting the good, the true, and the morally right understanding of our one Holy Catholic Apostolic Church. So how can we best understand and appreciate the church's teaching on tradition and faith that have been handed down to us since apostolic times? Well, to that end, the Tan Round Table this week is focusing on the errors of Protestantism and the fallout from separating tradition from faith. Joining us today for our discussion are our guests, Father Chad Ripperture, an expert in spiritual warfare and exorcism. He's being joined today by apologist and media master, Steve Cunningham, as well as historian and New York Times bestselling author, Joshua Charles. This is the Tan Round Table and you can find a new live discussion here every month. We're giving you personal access to our authors and our guests concerning the most pressing topics impacting the church and the world. Back to our speakers, Father Chad Ripperture. He's a leading expert in the area of spiritual warfare and exorcism, as I said before. He is a well-known and sought-after speaker. His education and firsthand experience make his presentations highly informative and interesting. He always provides a plentitude of insights into the Catholic faith and traditions. To that end, he provided the forward for one of Tan's newest releases, Tradition and the Church, the story of sacred tradition unfolding through the ages. Father Ripperture, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Josh Charles, he's a former White House speechwriter for Vice President Mike Pence. He's also a number one Amazon bestselling author twice over now. He's a historian, a researcher, international speaker, as well as being a passionate defender of America's founding principles and the Catholic faith. Josh is also a concert pianist who has performed all over the US and Europe, my goodness. The term Renaissance man really fits here. Josh, welcome and thanks for being with us. Thank you. I'm really thankful to Tan and it's an honor. Steve and Father have been heroes of mine coming in to the church from Protestantism. So it's very humbling to be with both of you. Thank you. Fantastic. Steve Cunningham, welcome back to the Tan Roundtable. He's the founder of the Census Fidelium channel on YouTube, which to date has over 200,000 subscribers, 10 foreign language channels and a whopping 75 million views. Steve is a grad of Spartanburg Methodist College. He's a cradle Catholic who reverted in 2011. He's a husband and a father of two. And with that many millions of views, Steve has arguably done more than any other Catholic media expert now to bring people into the faith and advance that faith. Steve, it's great to have you with us. Thank you for having me. I'm just, sorry, I'm laughing at the interest. I'm like, yeah, yeah, thank you. I'll send you to check for that. There you go, yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say Josh, I was just gonna say, Josh, when you said that Steve was one of your heroes, I'm like, yeah, I think he's everyone's hero. Yeah. Yeah, Census Fidelium has played a huge role in not only coming into the church, but deepening my faith in spiritual life. So thank you. I'm just some guy that gave the priests a megaphone. Is the priest doing their job? And I just figured out a way to get him out there. Yep, yep. I can see him blushing. That's very cute. Just a little housekeeping today, we'll be giving away a bundle of books to go with our theme, which includes a tan classic called Facts About Luther, as well as the Catholic controversy, a defense of faith. And as I mentioned above, tradition and the church by Father George, a juice. No, by Monsignor George. We'll call him that right now. That's how I breathe back. I can't get it. Those books we'll be giving away today at the end of the webinar. So please stay tuned to see if you are our winner. Also stay tuned to the end, we'll be giving you a discount code for 40% off any of the books we're gonna talk about today. Stay tuned for that as well at the end. So before we launch into our discussion of Protestants and Errors today, we're gonna kick it off with something a little bit lighter. I'd love for each one of you to tell me what is your favorite tan book, if you've got one, or and, or what book are you in the middle of right now? What's on your reading stack? So Father Rippager, please kick us off. Tell us what you're reading. Well, actually right now I'm reading the, I mean, if you're talking about the main, the primary thing I'm reading, I'm actually reading the disputed questions on Truth by St. Thomas Aquinas. So that's the primary thing I'm reading. But as far as my favorite tan book, I kind of vacillate a little bit. It's either between Sparago's Catechism Explained or the Ludwig Ott, which I don't know if, in case you're still publishing that, if I'm not mistaken, right? Oh, I think so. Yeah, so that's one of my favorite, just as a scholar, I tend to look at that quite a bit more, but on the spiritual level, it would definitely be the humility of heart. Always tell everybody, nobody, nobody reads that book without getting a little bloodied around the years, you know. So, but yeah, so that's, those are probably my favorites. The D'Artagn book of the year, Last Year, Humility of Heart, wonderful. Yep, good for everyone. Steve, I know your book stack, if that's it behind you, we're in trouble, but give us a couple of your top titles. Well, that's just extras that I just ain't moved to the other room yet. I'll go with just the three pack you got going on, the controversies. I remember a Father Buckley gave a sermon basically from the controversies back when I was at St. Paul's in Sparenburg and my brother and I were going, hmm, yeah, kick it at him. But yeah, reading, now that's the only book in English on St. Peter of the Martyr, Peter of Verona, the latter divine ascents, the Jesus prayer and invitation of St. Joseph that Father Calthrow. That's fantastic, awesome. Josh, over to you. Yeah, easily, St. Francis de Sales, the controversy. It played a big role in my conversion, cemented a lot of things, and it actually, we can talk about this later perhaps, but it exposed me to different things that I wasn't even fully aware of about what Calvin believed, and it sounded too preposterous to be true, like, oh, this must be Catholic propaganda, but I actually found the source for the quote that St. Francis de Sales provided, and it was accurate. So yeah, St. Francis de Sales, I think it's probably the single best Catholic apologetic work vis-à-vis Protestantism that's available even today, so. Fantastic, wonderful titles. So to go ahead and start us off on our topic today, Father, I'd like to go with you. As I said, you wrote the Ford to our book here for tradition and the church. So please give us some definitions that we can work with. What is tradition with a capital T, as we say in Catholicism. How is it different from sacred tradition? Are they the same? And how is it different strictly from scripture? Well, Mary, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the distinction between capital T and little T tradition is a modernist invention. Really? Yes, it is, it started, it didn't start, that type of distinction didn't really start. So let me just make a couple of statements about Aegis, and then I'll give you some of the background to that. So originally there was a book written, called Tartacus de Divina Tradizioni. So it was written by a guy by the name of Fronzelein. And Fronzelein, this became the gold standard for any discussion on tradition whatsoever, even modernists like Kangar and the like who came later and discussed tradition. Everybody had to at least know that they had read this, but because it was the book that, it's probably the best book that was ever written in the history of the church on tradition. And it's even better than some of Robert Bellarmine's stuff that he incorporates all of that. Well, what Aegis did in his work, The Church and the Tradition, which you guys have republished, is he took that and then he boiled it down and made it approachable to the lay faithful, okay? So what happens is when the modernists come along a little bit later just before the second and after the second Vatican Council, historically the church had always considered and all the authors, and you see this actually in Fronzelein, but it's also somewhat in Aegis, that there's actually, it's not a distinction between what do we have to believe and what don't we believe, it's rather within the Catholic tradition itself there's grades of requirements or certitude regarding what we're bound to believe based upon the particular source. And so historically, that's why they never made the, historically the church never made that distinction or the authors never made that distinction. It gets made later because they basically want to cut it off that basically unless it's been formally defined by the church or it's in some papal document then you don't have to believe it. And they say, well, those, all those other things you don't have to believe, those are the little T and then the stuff you do have to believe that's the big T. When in point in fact, historically, both in the way the church has talked, but then also in the way that Fronzelein and all the subsequent authors actually after Bellarmine talked is that there's different degrees of certitude regarding a proposition. And so within the tradition, the more that's part of the tradition then the more you're bound to adhere to it. If, so obviously something that's de fide you have to believe it in order to be Catholic something that's part of the common opinion of the theologians or what they call this intensive communities, you would have an obligation to adhere to it unless you had grave reason to the contrary. So there was varying degrees of certitude about these things. The only ones that the church would consider that, you know, you're not really bound to believe that it would be what we call pious tradition in the past. So the advantage and so what's happened is, and I think that's one of the things that's really important, what's happened in the church since then is this whole loss of the fact that there are various aspects of the tradition which require different degrees of assent have been lost and it's being replaced by people who just want to basically make it cut and dry, whereas historically it was never really that way. If that makes sense. Sure. Steve and Josh as converts and reverts, were you aware of that distinction, the modernist invention of the small t versus capital t that that does not, that should not exist. That's not a thing. Oh yeah. Saw him in a cracker jack box one time. That was easy. Who didn't know that? No, that's what I looked at the channels because I consider like the, if you remember the old hair club for men commercials, I'm not only the president, I'm a client. So like I said, my father's done that a couple of times in lectures. And so I've heard that and read his books on tradition. So that's the only way I've ever heard because I never got taught that as a kid. And I went to Catholic school to sixth grade and all that jazz and you can count on one hand, how many times I heard that in a sermon outside of a Mike Dicka sermon longer ago. But so no, I wouldn't talk that as a kid because we weren't taught, as we've said before, and I know others have said it, we've had our fate stolen from us from the past. And so it's trying not to be bitter about that. So we're learning as we go. Josh, would you add to that? Yeah. Well, the first thing I'd say is I've learned very quickly and it's unfortunate. It's actually not funny, but you know, Gallus humor that usually when somebody says, I went to Catholic school, I can be sure that what I'm about to hear next is not good. But that's unfortunate. It's sad. Like I said, it's Gallus humor. It's not to be made light of, but you know, Gallus, we laugh so we don't cry. But no, I knew the gist of it, not in all the fullness of what Father just explained, but I knew it honestly because of the oath that I took coming into the church through an FSSP parish out here in the Sacramento area because that oath outlines that more complete definition of tradition that Father just outlined. And so I've had a number of friends who came into the church, who came in through the more normal RCIA, and you know, they had to take an oath and it was all good and orthodox, but it was not nearly as detailed as the one I had to take, which included, you know, a lot of stuff related to the Council of Trent, Vatican I indulgence, it was about a three page oath, I'll just put it that way. And it makes very clear that the sense of tradition is very much like what Father was describing. So Father, to go back for us, now we know what tradition is not, it's not two separate things, what is it and why is it different from Scripture? Well, primarily, well, tradition, if you actually look at the way the Father's of the church ride it and the theologians throughout time, tradition is the totality. So there's a twofold distinction. It's the totality of what is passed on, which actually includes Scripture. In fact, tradition actually predates Scripture because originally stuff was passed on verbally and those things remained verbal for some time. Some of them, not the totality of them were written down in Scripture. And so the Scriptures then is sometimes distinguished between what they instead of tradition in the broader sense, but tradition in the more restrictive sense, which is counter-distinguished from Scripture, all those things that are not contained in Scripture, but tradition is just merely the totality of what's passed on in the church as part of the deposit of faith. So that's kind of the generic definition. So it would be the totality of what's being passed on and so that's how it's distinguished between Scripture and against Scripture. Obviously, we know there's all sorts of things that are in Scripture or that are in tradition that are not contained in Scripture that we're still required to believe is Catholics, but also it just says it right in one of the last books, the last verses of John. He says, you know, and if we did not recount all the things that Christ had said and did and if we did it would be the violence would fill the world kind of thing. And so there's all sorts of stuff that never got written down, but those things were passed on. The tradition includes not just the teachings, but it also includes what we call the elements of sanctification, such as the sacraments, holy orders, the authority structure of the church, the power over the diabolic, all those things which Christ gave to, because the deposit of faith isn't just teachings, even though that is an integral part of it. It's the totality of everything that he passed on. Even the structure of the church, everything is what's passed on from tradition and will remain intact until he returns. Wow. Steve, I would say there's a lot of misunderstanding, not just with Protestants but with Catholics, about what sacred tradition is and is not. And there's even an open hostility towards the idea for many Protestants that we encounter. So Steve, could you explain what would a Protestant think tradition is in the Catholic sense and how do we refute that in debates? I think they just look at it as anything that we do really. I mean, praying the statues or sacramentals or going to mass, everything they just keep throwing at the, you know, don't hold up traditions of men as the scripture says, but they don't take that out of context where Christ isn't talking about that, talking about the Pharisees at the sense, but these guys talk about this and everything we do. So it's more like a generic thing. I don't even know they know what they're upset about. I mean, Joshua, you're the convert, you might know more about what you'll actually think, but every time I've experienced it in the Bible belt here, quote unquote, where it's the most anti-Catholic areas, Greenville, South Carolina, where Bob Jones is, they have no idea, I've asked them before, they have no idea what they don't like. It's basically the tradition of theirs is they hate what we don't, what we know, but they don't know why. It's a blind obedience, I guess you could say to it. So I just don't think they even understand what we even do. Yeah, I would say most, I mean, I always took my faith very seriously from a very young age. I was always reading mostly apologetics type of stuff. Maybe you guys are familiar with names like William Lane Craig, Josh McDowell, Ravi Zacharias, who just passed away. Unfortunately, a bunch of scandal came out about him. So I always took my faith very seriously, read the Bible a lot, read Luther, read Calvin. And for me, it was just recognizing that to even, I mean, this is a very common argument, but I think it's irrefutable that to even know what the books of scripture are, and needed something outside of scripture. It was a very syllogistic, irrefutable proposition that if scriptures are soul and fallible source of authority, then you can't even arrive at what the canon is. And this was actually ironically sealed for me by a Protestant, a very well-known intellectual Protestant named R.C. Sproul. He died a few years ago, a reformed guy, and he has a ministry called Ligonier, Legionier, whatever, and a very anti-Catholic, you know, nice guy, but he gave a lecture on the canon. And he basically said, as far as classical Protestantism can go, to the extent that's not an oxymoron, we can only say that scripture is a fallible collection of infallible books. And he would also, yeah, it was a quite remarkable admission. And for me, that sealed the scripture issue. I was still studying like, is there any Protestant way to get around this problem? Because if you can't even come up with the canon of scripture without tradition, that means you can't know the contents of the faith with certainty. And to me, it just struck me as absurd that if God is going to reveal something, it necessarily must be clear. Otherwise there's no point in revealing it. God does not give us things just to be confusing. That's what the would-be God does, Satan. And so, yeah, the canon argument was huge for me and recognizing, even from the mouths of Protestants, that the absolute furthest they could go without any notion of sacred, binding tradition that was on par with scripture, they couldn't even come up with scripture. Wow. Father Rippager, you say in your forward to the Monsignor's book here, that it is one of the best texts written in English on tradition. And rightly it is, but certainly there aren't many books like it. You can't point to many books about tradition that we have today to reference. So why do you think tradition seems to be, as yet, so unexamined by yet, older Catholic and modern Catholic, really any Catholic author? Even by traditionalists. Which Steve and I have talked about that. But I think that it really just boils down to, you know, it's kind of hard to say. I think part of it has to do, I think it's a complex issue, but I think the primary issue has to do with, the whole modernist problem. Because the modernist problem basically shifts the standard for what is true about what we believe from objective reality, of which tradition is a part. It's an external standard to which we have to conform to basically the interior becomes imminent. That is, it's at the interior. What my personal experience is, constitutes the determination of what I'm gonna actually believe. So that principle of eminence and modernism has caused people to just think that they don't really need to study. They don't need to know more about their faith because if it feels good, then it must be true. If it doesn't, it doesn't. And I think that that's made its way even into a lot of Catholics. So I think one of the observations I made in an article some years ago was the fact that modernism, I've actually come to the conclusion it's in, we're in the sixth stage. Originally I thought we were in the fifth, but the fifth stage is is that the intellectual gath ran out. So by the time you get to the 60s, 70s and 80s, intellectual gas, theological considerations and discussion of theological topics by modernists imploded because in the end there's no real rigor because what makes something rigorous academically or theologically philosophically is the fact that there's a reality to which you have to have very precise judgment and clarity about. And that just all collapsed because it all just became a morphous in relationship to our personal experience. So I think that that's one of the primary reasons why you just don't see people even studying the tradition or anything like that. Whereas if you're not, if you're a realist and you realize that the philosophical underpinnings of modernism are just false and that the church has already condemned it, then you realize there has to be an external standard. And that's one of the reasons when I first came across to Aegis' book, I'm like, this is perfect for your average layman to be able to read and get a sense of here's the external standard, the rule of faith that I need to conform to at least as to the structure so that I know what I have to conform to in order to know that my faith is right. So I think the reason you just don't see people reading or studying the tradition is simply because they just don't see the need to. Mary, do you mind if I add one comment off of what Father said? Cause it is directly, I mentioned earlier a quote of Calvin from St. Francis to Sales. And the quote was about the canon and it was quoting Calvin's French confession of faith. I think it's like 1559 somewhere in there. And Calvin in the section on the canon appeals to the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit. That's his exact phraseology. So it's, I don't think many Protestants realize that Protestantism, as far as I would argue, as far as a civilizational force, something that's not, some gnostic sect here or heresy there, but as something that actually grab hold of a large chunk of Christian civilization is thoroughly modernist and even gnostic because that, you know, the church, the church through councils couldn't be infallible, but the individual could in their perception of, you know, a very necessary datum of the faith. And so Steve, I really didn't fully answer your previous question, but I would ultimately say, it's the Protestant idea that there are these accretions through history, these barnacles on the ship, so to speak, that they presume to kind of, no, these aren't, these are man-made things, but when they're appealing to the inward illumination of the Holy Spirit, there's no longer, as Father just said, that external standard of truth, it's completely internalized. And ironically, someone like Calvin was very much against that. He had a, he appealed to it to get out of the church, but then he was ruthlessly against it against Protestant laypeople because he asserted laypeople didn't have the authority to interpret scripture. Laypeople didn't have the authority to make such claims. He actually executed some of them. And so anyway, that would just be some details based off what Father said, that Protestantism, I would argue, is the root civilizational force behind modernism. It started with Protestantism. And I think that, go ahead, Steve. I'm sorry, I was just gonna say just off that last question, they have their own traditions that it's basically their own. You have to like their own. I mean, the Bible's a tradition. They gotta hand it back to them. Sol of Phoebe, Sol of Scriptura is a tradition. So it's kind of like you hear today, approved conspiracy theories versus unapproved. The approved ones get on CNN and MSNBC. It's the unapproved ones, and that's Protestant. They don't like the unapproved ones, they like the approved ones. Yeah, and it basically just boils down to Steve, is that in the end, the Protestants can't argue that there's no such thing as tradition. We all agree there's a tradition, because even they have one. The question is, which traditions are gonna be? That's the only real issue. And in something in relationship to what Joshua said, the principle of eminence, which came via the Catholic Church, came via philosophical collapse, whereas, but it was the exact same principle as the Protestant illumination theory. It was the same thing. It got brought in through a different avenue because the Catholics wouldn't accept it unless it was given a different kind of flavor, so to speak. So would we say that tradition is the defining feature that distinguishes between Catholicism and Protestantism? Do the sacraments fall under that or above it? Where's the ranking of what is the one defining feature between Catholicism and Protestantism? Do we agree on that? I don't think, well, the sacraments are obviously part of that. I think it ultimately boils down to the one distinguishing feature ultimately boils down to the authority, ultimately, because it's the authority to whom the passing on of the tradition was given. It's the authority whose place it is to judge what is actually part of the tradition and what is not. It's the authority's place to make sure that everything that is understood in relationship to the tradition is accurate, and that the actual perpetuation of the tradition ultimately boils down to the authority. So it's really the authority that Jesus Christ gave to the apostles and their successors, which is the primary thing through which the tradition is passed and through which we have its guarantee because ultimately it's because of the fact that, and I think aegis, it might even be an aegis. I know it's in Fronsoline, but it ultimately boils down to the fact that it's because of the magisterium, that is the authority of the church that tells us that this thing is to be believed and then the reason it's to be believed is because it's an uninterrupted tradition from the time of Christ, and it contains those things necessary for salvation. It's because they tell us is why we actually have to give assent, which is ultimately why they, that's why the authors end up talking about well what happens if certain magisterial members start deviating from the tradition and which is what we have to believe. They say well then ultimately you have to fall back to the tradition itself which still contains the authority as it has been proposed throughout tradition or throughout history. So I mean for me it would be that the primary distinguishing factor is the authority which is precisely why the tradition in Catholicism and the tradition in Protestantism is different because we'd actually think there is somebody who has authority and they may or may not. Father, you've assembled a beautiful collection of prayers in your book on deliverance prayers for the lady, very popular Catholic circles. What is the best way to pray for people? Are siblings, adult children who have left the faith maybe joined a Protestant church? And additionally with that, what is it that keeps people from returning to the church that have fallen away? Is our actual demons involved in that process? Yeah, actually I think they are but not. I don't think demons are under every rock. Sometimes people are just wed to their sin. They just like sin and they don't wanna come into the church cause they have to change. But I tell people there's a positive and a negative to people's conversion. And this is even true like even if they're on their death bed and they don't wanna see a priest like as in you see with parents and children dealing with that with their parents, et cetera. Or that the kids have left the faith and they don't wanna come back or what have you. I tell them there's a positive. The positive side is they actually have to have grace. They actually have to have grace in order to convert because the conversion is a conversion to a supernatural deposit of faith and a supernatural life. And so they have to have grace in order to do that. You have to keep praying for that. On the other hand, demons because they have access to our emotions and our imagination that can actually influence people's reactions to the grace. Even if God gives them grace, they can inspire fear like, oh, well, if you become Catholic, well, then you're gonna lose your friends or you're gonna have to stop this particular behavior in your life or you're not gonna be able to get this or that or what have you. So they can use our emotions against us and also our perceptions. And so I tell people saying the binding prayer or just saying prayers to keep demons out of these people's lives to block them. So in the binding prayer, I just tell people bind any demon that is keeping them from converting and do it on a regular basis. So you can use that particular prayer or other prayers, consecrating them to our lady on a consistent basis, plus as well as saying the positive stuff. And that's what I've seen as the most effective way to convert. In fact, I have a relative whose husband was a very, he was a man of natural virtue. Everybody in the family really liked this guy but he was a Protestant. And it seemed like he was stubborn. But in the end, so at one point, I just said to my sister here, say this binding prayer against any demon that's keeping him from coming into the church. She started saying it within 10 months he was in the church even though she'd been praying for 20 years. So the point being is this gives you an indicator that if we can get the demons out of life, people will generally speak and follow, hopefully not absolutely, but they'll follow the way of grace. And so that's why we do both. Josh has a convert. What is your take on that? Oh, I wouldn't presume to speak on demonology when Father Rickerson in the room. So I don't have additional opinions. But Father, is that prayer because I actually have some family members who are going through some tough things right now. Is that binding prayer in the book? I think I have that book. Yeah, it's Deliverance Prayers for the Lady. Yeah, it's in that book. Okay, great. Yeah. And on the bottom of his footnote, if this doesn't work, pop him on the head with a bat. Yeah, there. Plan B. Steve, do you have Protestants in your life who would take umbrage with the idea that there are demons keeping them in their faith of choice? Oh yeah, how is it? 98% of the guys I used to talk to don't talk to me anymore. I'm in the South and we're surrounded by Protties. Yes, man. There is an example. I don't have enough time to go through all that stuff. I mean, my brother's post, then texting me up. What's wrong with your brother? He's so arrogant about it. He's saying that church is the one true church and all that I go in. So I remember, that was my first apologetic was telling the guys, you're an SCC, you know, soccer and like game doctrine, right? Is the SCC the best football, college football conference in the union? And he goes, yeah, yeah. Is that arrogant or truth? And I, eight years later, I still don't have that response. But yeah, for everything, from morals to whatever you change, you started living that way. You figure out who your friends were real quick. So yeah, most of those got missed of my friends I grew up with. Yeah, we barely talking. I got one left. I mean, he's a Lutheran. And I don't know why he still talks to me because I will bash him up out the head with things like, I went to his baptism, his kid's baptism and whatever the cleric was. What's your name? What's the name? Bryce. Oh, that's a good Lutheran name. I go time out outside of Martin and Luther. What's a good Lutheran name? And, you know, things like that. And just tell him, you know, you guys just have this Lutheran duty we have over here. I don't know what's holding them back. Maybe it's just, you know, countless years of being in the world, being surrounded by other friends, seeing what happened with me, with our friends just being basically, you know, pushed aside and ostracized in a sense. But I don't know, just, yeah, they're torn around me. I think they would, if I told them they had a demon in them, they would, I don't know what the reaction would be from them. But trust me, I do the same thing with Father Recommend and as Father Mateo says, there's a price for it. The price needs to be paid. So those are the dependence for them. Josh, you were going to mention something by Dr. Paul Thickpin in the book. Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I thought Steve was done. Oh, you're good. You're good. Don't worry about it. Paul Thickpin, I believe, I'm forgetting the name of the book at the moment, but he has an example of an exorcist. I think it was in Poland. They were meeting with a Calvinist who was seemingly possessed. And I'm honestly forgetting the details, but somehow the demon responded well to a copy of Calvin's institutes. And that was an indication to the exorcist that there was possession. So I'm forgetting the details, but yeah, I was, yeah. I mean, that's what's so, I mean, I definitely, honestly, I don't recommend telling Protestants they have a demon in them because I don't know that. And unless I get an indication otherwise, I'll assume goodwill. But I think many Protestants, if you approach them with an acknowledgement of their genuine concerns, which are to be faithful to scripture and whatnot, that's a great way to start asking some basic questions about, well, where does scripture come from? And Jesus said the Holy Spirit would be with the apostles till he came back. And so, how does that work? And the Holy Spirit would guide the church to all truth, how does that work? And so that would be the approach that I would recommend. So. Yeah, that leads us to a question from one of our viewers, Marvin, who asks, how does one approach a friend, as you're saying, Josh, or someone who is born Protestant, who through no fault of their own really in their raising doesn't know about the church. How do we introduce them to Catholicism with charity and truth? Father? Actually, I think that's a good question for Joshua, but I think that the primary thing is two things, truth through with charity. I mean, it really does boil down to being charitable to them because then they see, there's no animus, if you actually see what you're seeking, what's good for them. But then also the truth, I think a lot of times they're, especially if they're, a lot of the Protestants today are uncatakized even in their own religion. So a lot of times they're actually more open if you're just very rational, calm, and they see that you're a normal person and you just want the best for them. A lot of times just presenting them things here and there will get them thinking and then they'll actually, that's kind of a segue. Because I think that even though they're Protestants, they still have reason, they still have use of reason, and as a result, if you appeal to that, I think that's the segue into getting them to give serious considerations to what they believe. Mm-hmm. Josh, that sounds like what you were saying before. Yeah, I mean, I can tell you from my experience, the way it really started for me is I had about a decade's worth of just studying scripture carefully and I couldn't reconcile Paul and Christ if what Paul meant was what most Protestant sects in one form or another said that he meant. And so I actually tell my Protestant friends, reading the Bible carefully is what really sent me toward Catholicism and I could give a million examples of that. But I didn't read a single church father until June of 2017. But by that time, I was already convinced pretty much that some Protestant ideas are wrong. And I will say, the Lord has seen fit to, I mean, I'm constantly having new conversations with Protestant friends and a lot of it has happened. Social media brings a lot of evil into this world but it doesn't necessarily have to. I mean, as Steve knows with census Fidelium and whatnot, but I just posted church father quotes all the time. So many conversations, so many conversions. I've had a number of friends who've already converted. Some were very close. I mean, just today, I don't know him, but a famous Protestant, well, he's not Protestant really anymore, but it named Cameron Batuzzi has a channel called Capturing Christianity. And he just announced today that he's converted because he did an in-depth study of the papacy. So, but in my experience, many thoughtful Protestants have actually already kind of maybe thought about some of the issues like, well, how do I get the Bible? Why are we endlessly dividing? There's clearly no basis for that in scripture. So if you kind of scratch the surface with some Protestants, I've often found that there's an openness, not with everybody. And I think Steve definitely knows that and I definitely know it as well. But if you just present the truth and love, it can go a long way. Steve, we have another question from one of our viewers, Marike, she asks, why did Protestants remove the seven Deutero canonical books from the Bible? I know it's a question a lot of apologists field all the time, but go ahead and walk us through that one. Well, let me just think back on what they said on the last one, because I mean, I've been doing that for years, going straight to St. Paul Street team, giving out medals and rosaries. I mean, I had the people had mentioned the Anti-Catholic Bob Jones University. We had the Tower Festival walk around with rosaries. All blessed. The many, many festivals here in the South, Uber, I have, you know, people get in my car, I had rosaries, I had miraculous medals, I had CDs strategically. So when I'm doing 70, I could figure out which CD that person needed is, and it was color coded. So if they were black, I had a black thing on it. No kidding, white at white, Spanish had green. I had it so I could easily see it and give it to them. And I remember having one guy, he was from Valahara. And we were talking about the Cresteros. And by the end of the trip to the airport, he was looking at the movie trailer and was talking about wanting baptism. So it's all about sales. You gotta know who you're talking to. You have to know the product. You have to know the person. So if you, one, you can't, if you don't know the faith, you can't give it to another. If they have a question for you, then somebody, usually nobody has the humility to say, I don't know, but I'll go get that answer. They're gonna spew off something that they don't know. And, or if they don't know what they're doing to over-talk and instead of listening, and then not showing joy. The great example of Francis the sales about him talking to a guy. I think it was a turk, maybe. No, it was a Calvinist. And he thought he was just full of it. And then everyone's out of the church and he's hiding behind a pillar and he sees Francis goes up and genuflex the same way he did when everyone else in the church was in there. He goes, he believes what he says and that made him go to conversion. So there's our old line. No one's ever been converted through arguments. So actions. I mean, you can tell, we can give the arguments to a blue in the face, but if we act like a bunch of pagans out in the real world, that's not going to change anybody. No joy. I mean, walk around today. This should be an easy time to convert people. Smile on your face. Why is that guy happy? It's terrible out there. Yeah, it does your cat. I mean, three cheers for joy, the excitement, charity, all that goes in, but it's a sales thing. You got to know the person. You got to know how to interact with humans. Some people are better online. I like being face-to-face talking to them because then you can see the expressions and eye contact, tone of voice, no screw-ups and typing or someone getting upset if I didn't like how you spoke to me, et cetera, but that's, I've been in sales all my life. So I was going to doctors and talking to them and, hey, you build that trust. You shouldn't get this product, even if it's ours, because it stinks. You should get this one, even if it's not ours and that builds a trust, now they're buying from you. Same thing with the, you relate that to the faith, but yeah, due to chronological, yeah, you go to Catholic Answers, find them more of the officially great answers for that one, but it goes back to Luther and Calvin and saying that they didn't like it. I mean, the first King James Bible had all 70, was it 73 books? They had all of them before they tossed them out, but Luther didn't like the St. James. There's a pistol of straw. As one priest said, they didn't like a lot of the cool stories, like Tobias, Maccabees. He just didn't like a prayer to saints, the Catholic stuff. Ecclesiasticus, I mean, you can't read Ecclesiasticus 24-24 unless you got the not actually the Bible, the NAB, that doesn't have that entire chapter in it, but that's a tradition that we took out. But yeah, Josh, you want more of the due to chronicle ones, but I'd say just go to catholic.com on the YouTube channel and get those answers for you. Oh yeah, no, I would emphasize one of the ways I've initiated conversation with Protestants is at the end of the day, the intellect played a huge role in my conversion, but at the end of the day, and I think there's a very important point to make, it's ultimately love, love of Christ. You know, St. Thomas Morrison in the movie at least, it's ultimately a matter of love. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll obey my commandments. Well, as a Protestant, that was what I was having great angst about is I couldn't know with certainty what those commandments were, because people I knew who were, as far as I could tell, good, well-intended, educated people were all disagreeing about it. Divorce, contraception, can you lose your salvation? I mean, so many issues. And if you want to love Christ, you need to know what he commands with certainty. And so anyway, that's what I've taken as well is because Protestants, many of them are genuinely, I think trying to love Christ as best they can with what they know. I will give them the benefit of the doubt on that. So, but if they're all disagreeing, that's a huge source of, that's an apologetic opening for us, so. And don't give them too much credit. They don't know as much as they think they know. Oh, I completely agree. I mean, I had a Catholic guy in my fraternity in college and I later apologized to him for being so, you know, I wasn't rapidly anti-Catholic. I didn't think Catholics weren't Christians, but I thought they were kind of like quasi semi-apost almost, you know, I had kind of vague ideas about it, but no, I agree with you completely, you know. Father, you had mentioned the Magisterium before and how important that is to our understanding of tradition. So question from Daniel, what I think is really relevant, especially in this papacy at times is that, how do you hold fast to truth and tradition while staying humble and obedient when non-infallible magisterial statements seem to conflict? I actually wrote an entire book on this. But it's just, it's called Magisterial Authority and it's actually how you actually deal with it. It really boils down to what's actually in another book, which is we, first of all, we as Catholics know, for example, if some German bishops get up, gets up there and says that, I think we should allow gay marriage or I think that we should, you know, that the sins against the Sixth Commandment are no longer binding, they're no longer sins. We immediately know as Catholics that that's just not right. We know it and we call that the Census Fidelium. But the reason we know that is because even though that particular Magisterial member is saying something contrary to the faith, it's precisely because we have a separate rule of faith. So the distinction that they always made in the past was what they called the proximate and the remote rule of faith. So the proximate rule of faith, normally speaking, is that the Magisterium gives us the tradition and those two coming together, what they passed to us, that's the rule of faith. So they call that the proximate rule. So the Magisterium is the proximate rule. And by proximate, I mean it's under normal circumstances, even though we're not living there now necessarily, but under normal circumstances, you just do what the Magisterium tells you because under normal circumstances, they're gonna tell you what the truth of the Catholic faith actually is. But then the authors are very clear if a particular Magisterial member fails or members fail, then as Catholics, and we do this just intuitively, we go back to the remote rule. What has the church always taught? As Saint Vincent Loren said, what has the church taught always, everywhere and in all circumstances? And we know that the church has always taught that sins against the six commandments are grave matter. We've always known that the church has said that women can't be priests. We've always known, and so we just, as Catholics, we intuitively go back to that and we know that's not what we were to believe. So it's, like I said, under normal circumstances, you would follow the proximate rule, but when you recognize when something's clearly contrary to what you know is true as a Catholic, then you revert back to the remote. When the proximate rule fails, you convert back to the remote rule. But as I mentioned a little bit early, a little bit kind of on the side is that even the remote rule contains the whole of the Magisterium throughout tradition as it's teaching, even though it's not the current living Magisterium, that's where the obedience lies, is that ultimately our obedience lies first and foremost to what Christ has taught and the Magisterium is the means by which that's transmitted. And so our primary obligation is not to the means, our primary obligation is to what Christ has taught us. And normally speaking, you would follow both of those because they go hand in hand, but when they don't, you ultimately have to obey Christ, as it says in scripture, it's better to obey God than men. And so that's generally how it works. Fascinating. Steve, would you add anything to that on the current climate magisterial teaching or error? Just like how one of the questions prior you asked about wise books like this, not more read more or publish mores, if people would focus not on the blogs posted and read about the drama that's going on in the church and so much drama in the LBC, and focus on things that would make you holier and get to heaven and read the tradition. You would be so much better. I mean, because personally, I don't give to, you know, what's about with reading about those things. I'm focusing on becoming better, learning about the church, learning about the religion, learning about the faith. Yes, I have it in the back of my mind. I know what's going on, not saying to completely ignore it. No, as I think Father's talking about before, just know enough for your state in life really. So if you're focused on that and that's bring you down like another lecture he gave on negativity, it will bring you down. It'll take your joy away. So if that affects you, how do you convert somebody if you're just down in the pits? I can't believe the church is this way. It's a wreck, it's this. There's a book by Philip Hughes, The Church in Crisis. It's always in a crisis in some sense or another. Three churches were joy. That's from a quote from a bishop of St. Theophane whose all his priests were in Vietnam getting killed and his motto was three chairs for joy anyways. Even though they were just being pounded in the ground out there, he was joyful. And that's just some polyamory, just polyamory person just going around smiling just for any reason. No, because you're Catholic. You should be happy over that because you went to the sacraments. You went to mass, you'd be excited over that, confession, happy over that. So yeah, there's things going down. I think it's a great time. I love this stuff and I'm weird. I think it's great that everything's going down in a hell of a handbasket around us, but it's kind of like that matrix. We are still here in the sac. Just by way of just observation, relationship, sometimes I always tell people, look at the prophecies told us this was gonna happen. And that tells us that what the church teaches and the prophecies and the saints throughout the time, what they said was true because we're seeing it happen. But that also means everything else they taught us was true. And so the light will come, but we're gonna have to go through some stuff that's difficult, but it also means that the Catholic church is 100% true. And then to that. Yeah, Mary, this is a topic I've studied a lot the last few years. I won't go into all my thoughts on it's too big of a topic, but frankly, some of the eschatological aspects of things and reading all the commentaries from the fathers on Daniel and the second that Thelonians two and the apocalypse. The church very clearly says in the Catechism that before the end that there will be a final Passover, a final passion that the church goes through. Whether we're in it or not, I'm not here to say, but there's no doubt passions that the church goes through throughout history. And the prophecy seemed to point to an escalation of that birth pangs through history to an ultimately climactic one. So I have found through the study of typology and scripture and the fathers on these various texts, you know, a great source of comfort. I think St. John and our lady at the cross or the model for right now. And if there's anything that's different now from my life as a Protestant, it's the theology of suffering. I, me, my fellow speech writers of the White House, the three of us who worked for the vice president, they were all Catholic, all Catholic converts, which I thought was great. And I made a comment to them one time. I said, you know, I was joking, of course. I said, you know, the one thing that sucks about being Catholic is we can't complain about suffering anymore. And, you know, it's really, and it's even, it even has ecclesial implications, you know, process, you know, separated from the church based on this idea that, oh, it's so bad, this way or the other. And, but if you have a Catholic, no, you have to suffer and you have to like it. You know, at some point, that's of course what we're striving for. But anyway, those would just be some thoughts. I think St. John and Our Lady at the Cross are the model right now. And, you know. Certainly. We're getting close to our end here. I wanna lob one more question towards Father Rippager. Father, there was an interview back in September between a popular young actor who's putting St. Padre Pio in an upcoming movie and Father Robert Barron in this actor revealed that in the course of playing St. Padre Pio, he'd been attracted to the Latin rite of the mass and had begun attending and had begun his conversion, of course. So not to say this is not a TLM versus Novus Ordo debate, but to say there's something about the richness of our tradition and our faith history that can be used to bait Protestants to coming back into the fullness of the church that is maybe as yet untapped in our diocese. Yeah, I definitely think so. I mean, I think it's, I think if the Protestants actually knew about the depth and the richness of the Catholic tradition, they would just be attracted to it just based on that alone. You know, and it's one of those things that, even as Joshua, I was happy to hear him say, you know, just quoting the fathers itself. And I think that if we were to provide the Catholic faith whole and unencumbered without hiding any of it, without, you know, apologizing in the negative sense of that term, not defending it. But I mean, in the sense of, you know, saying, oh, well, we're sorry that we actually believed it. If we just said, no, this is what we believe, that and, which would be the richness of the tradition coming forth, I think that you would actually see Protestants much more attracted to it. You know, when Christ said faith comes through hearing, that's true even in relationship to Protestants. They're gonna see the attraction to the Catholic faith if they actually hear it without, you know, with clarity and with love, but without any kind of, I'm trying to cover it, but also with bringing the whole of it forward. I mean, it's true that the Catholic tradition doesn't necessarily have everything that's absolutely stellar, but the riches that are actually there. And I think that's true, not just, you know, in relationships to his teachings, et cetera, but I think that's even true in its sacramental life and our rituals and things like that, that if the Protestants actually really fully understood them, they would be very much attracted to it. Absolutely. We will leave it there. That will do us for the tan round table today. The winner of our book of the way, John Ingalls from Alaska. Congratulations, John. You have won our trio of books, including tradition and the church. Wonderful copy to have before Christmas. Either keep it or give it away as a gift. If that's not you, we have a discount code for everyone. Add tradition and the church or any of our other books we've talked about today to your cart and take in the code round table 40 and you will get 40% off your purchase round table 40. If you have any questions, please email us at talks at tanbooks.com. We'll see you next month on December 14th at noon Eastern for our next round table, which will be discussing communism and the Catholic church. That's gonna be a great one. We'll be talking with Dr. Paul Kangor and others about communism's diabolical roots and how it still seeks to undermine the church and the U.S. I'll be another great discussion. Father, before we go, would you mind giving us all your blessing, please? Absolutely. Benedictine de Omnipotentes, patrice ed fili et spiritus et supervos, et monet semper, amen. Amen. Thank you, Father, and thank you both to you, Josh, and to you, Steve, and early happy Thanksgiving to everyone next week. Thank you to all of our viewers for turning in today and for your wonderful questions in the chat. We love giving those to our guests. We'll see you next month. God bless and take care. ["Pomp and Circumstance"]