 I just want to say that I didn't expect anybody to be here today with all of the wonderful speakers and the exciting talks on different topics. So the fact that any of you are here today is actually mind-boggling to me. I would actually rather not be here for my talk, I'd rather be here for some of the other talks. So thank you, I appreciate it. This is Stump the Apologist, probably 20.0. I think I've been doing this workshop for nine to 20 years now. And for those of you who have been to previous workshops like this, you know that it's kind of a free-flowing, free-wheeling question-and-answer session. And if we run out of questions, then I'll start asking you questions. But it's kind of like the daily radio show I do, the Patrick Woodridge show on Relevant Radio, Monday through Friday from 19th and Eastern, 6 to 9 a.m. Pacific. Depending upon where you are, if we have a relevant radio station near you, you can hear it live, or you can catch it on the app on your phone. If you get the phone app, just go to Relevant Radio in either iTunes or Google Play. You can download it there, it's free. And you can hear all the programs live, or you can listen, podcast, however you like it. But this will be similar to the radio show, which is a lot of calls that come in on various questions. And we cover all kinds of different topics, and we're going to do that today as well. So I will just throw it wide open. The only ground rule is if you can kind of shout your question or say it as loud as you can, and then for the benefit of the recording, I'm going to repeat the question, but just so we make sure everybody can hear your question as well as possible. And we'll go through as many as we have time for. Okay, who's first? Yes, ma'am? Hi. Right. So the ladies question, and you would like my comment on that, the ladies question is, what about people who say, I'm spiritual but not religious, I'm a good person, and I don't really need religion, and did you say also that they don't need God? Did you add that? Or you talk about the people who have some vague idea of God, but they don't really believe in being religious. Okay, they don't want to prescribe structure, they want to be spiritual but not religious. What would you say to somebody? I know some people like that. And quite frankly, if you live long enough, chances are there would be some people like that in your own family. So I can relate. I understand where you're coming from. There are a lot of things one could say, typically what I try to do in that situation is I'll start asking questions. You know, I like the Socratic method, I think it's beneficial. So I might say, that's interesting, that's a fascinating theory, tell me more about that. And then let the person ramble, let them say what they want to say. I believe in being a good person, I believe in being kind to other people. They may give any number of things that they believe about that, but that'll help you get a clear idea of what they're really saying. And then you might say something like, well, how do you define spiritual? What does that mean exactly? And then let them explain it. You know, I think it means that you are aware that God exists and you meditate or you pray or you commune with nature or you, you know, let the person fill in the blank as to what they mean by spiritual. It's probably going to be somewhat vague, probably going to be rather difficult to nail down. And then you can say, okay, that helps. Now, what do you mean by religious? What does that mean to you? How do you define religious? Oh, well, church in rules and commandments and thou shalt nots and mass on Sunday and you got to do all these things because I'm not about rules, man. I'm about relationships. You know, I guess I just went back to the seventies. One, one way I found a talk about that is to say, well, do you think rules are bad? You notice I'm asking questions. I'm not lecturing. And the other person is explaining what he believes and I haven't lectured at all. So he may say, well, you know, some rules, man made rules. I don't like man made rules. I think man made rules are not good. And all right. Well, how do you feel about like lane stripes on the freeway? You know, the man made rule to keep cars in a certain lane or stop lights or seat belts or airbags or you got to wear a helmet when you drive a motorcycle. And that's just using, you know, automotive and motorcycle analogies, but you could extend it to anything. Do you think that the man made rule that the FDA has got to make sure that beef is properly inspected to make sure that it's clean before people sell it to you so you don't catch a disease or die? That's a man made rule. Do you think all man made rules are bad? And just keep asking questions. And what will happen is two things are likely that will happen. Number one is the person will realize he's never really thought this through before. The whole idea of being spiritual but not religious is a nice slogan. Sounds good. And it's kind of easy to do because you get to define what it means to be religious. But probably they've never really thought of it much more than that. So as you begin to ask these questions, suddenly now they may be thinking, well, I don't really even know what that means or I don't know why I'm opposed to man made rules, things of that nature. Then you'll be able to ask more specific questions. Well, what is it about religion that you think is bad? Because we've already discussed how rules in themselves are actually pretty good. They keep people alive. They keep people healthy. We don't have random chaos if we would if we didn't have rules. So rules are good. There are some rules that are not so good or there are rules that are a drag. But more often than not, rules are good because they help keep things in good order. And I would just continue that. Just continue, continue, continue. And what will happen is by the end of half an hour or so, however much time you've got, either the person won't want to talk to you anymore. Or you may have planted some really good seeds for him to think about, you know, maybe the slogan is really not that great. Maybe there's more to it than that. And then you could talk about Jesus. Have you ever encountered Jesus in the Gospels? Have you listened to what he had to say? Yeah, I don't think he was, he was just a good prophet. He had a lot of great ideas and it got out of hand. It got exaggerated. And so you then might say, well, really, well, what did the apostles get out of, out of exaggerating it? If Jesus was a good prophet with some great ideas, what was in it for the apostles to exaggerate this and make outlandish claims like he rose from the dead and appeared to people? Because that only got them to be treated like criminals. And almost all of them were martyred. Saint John wasn't martyred. But they were killed in very grisly, painful ways. They didn't get groupies. So there was no woman angle for them. There was no money angle. There was no power angle. There was no benefit to them that we can see. So why would they do that? Who would do that? Why would they do that? And let them answer. And you see what I'm doing? You want to make the other person see that there may be more to this question than just a slogan. OK? Yes, sir. Yeah. This is a common question. So the gentleman's question is how do you answer somebody who says, you believe that Jesus is God, you Christians, you Catholics, you believe that Jesus is God. And yet, Jesus himself said that no one knows the day or the hour of the end, only the father knows, not even the son knows, which is a paraphrase of what Jesus actually says there. Well, this gets to the heart of the incarnation. And unless we understand the incarnation, it would be difficult to answer that question, because it would appear as though Jesus is saying that he's not God, and that he doesn't know. So just a quick refresher on the incarnation. As you know, in John's Gospel chapter one, it says in verse one, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And then if you skip forward to verse 14, the whole chapter is talking about the incarnation, begins with the divinity of the second person of the Trinity. Then in verse 14 it says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. So we, as Catholics, recognize that God took human nature to his divine nature, and you might say marry the two. It's a very unequal marriage, because human nature is a creature, and yet God chose to become one of us, and not wear a human suit. He wasn't wearing a human costume. It wasn't like Jesus was God inside of a costume that looked like a human being. He really did possess the fullness, he does, possess the fullness of human nature. And so what that means is that Jesus in his humanity had everything a human nature has. So he has a body, he has emotions, he has an intellect, he has a will, he has a soul, all of which are creatures, all of which are part of humanity, and that's something obviously less than God, but yet at the same time he's still God. So it's not as though the God part, quote unquote, of Jesus was in suspended animation, and some people will mistakenly say, well, Jesus didn't know he was God, or Jesus didn't. None of that is true. Jesus always knew he was God, because as a person, the divine person, the second person of the Trinity, the word, he couldn't not know he was God, because he's God. So that God can't go to sleep. God can't forget. God can't suddenly suspend his Godhood. And yet at the same time, he was human. So a clue to the answer, and the question you're asking is very important, but it requires somewhat more than just a superficial answer. One of the keys to understanding this is where we're told in Luke's Gospel that after Joseph and Mary had lost track of Jesus when they had gone up to Jerusalem for the Passover, and you know the story, because they couldn't find him, Joseph thought he was with Mary, Mary thought he was with Joseph. We presume they were scurrying around looking for him. Finally, they caught up with him in the temple back in Jerusalem. And here he is teaching the doctors of the law, the scholars, the rabbis who are in awe that this 12-year-old boy is teaching them. He could do that because he's God. In his humanity, his 12-year-old mind had not worked out that level of theological depth. He didn't have the capacity at the age of 12. In fact, we're told that when they got Jesus back with them, that he went with them to Nazareth where he remained there, and he grew in knowledge and wisdom. So in his humanity, the mind of Jesus as a man needed to learn how to walk, how to tie his sandals, how to do carpentry, assuming that St. Joseph taught him carpentry. He needed to learn how to read. He needed to learn how to do all those things that human beings do. So in his humanity, there were many things he didn't know. And he gradually came to know them the way we do in a course of normal human life. But simultaneously with all of that, and this is what is impossible for us to visualize. We can't imagine what this would be like. But simultaneously with his human mind and knowledge growing and learning, he's always God. And as the divine second person of the Trinity, he knows everything. He knows everything that can be known. So what we have to do, our difficulty is trying to imagine what it would be like to have the knowledge of God, infinite, unending knowledge of everything, secret thoughts, everything. And at the same time, being a 12-year-old boy, learning how to become a man. There's nothing we can point to and say it's like that, because there is nothing else like that. And yet it's true. It's a paradox, not a contradiction. So to your point, do you see I'm kind of spiraling into your question here? So to your question, when Jesus says things like that, you are seeing him emphasizing his humanity. In his human mind, his human intellectual abilities, he didn't know. But in his divinity, he had to know. There was no way he couldn't know, because that would mean he would cease being God, which is impossible, because God by nature can't stop existing. He can't stop being God. So when we look at these passages, we have to recognize in the incarnation, some passages emphasize his divinity, some emphasize his humanity, and the mystery of the incarnation, which we can never, ever plumb the depths of in this life. We can at least say, OK, I at least understand what's going on. I can't necessarily understand how it all works, or how you can have infinite divine knowledge in the same body as the limited human knowledge. But I know that that's true. So I guess I'll leave it at that. But that would be the way in which you can see those passages and not be thrown by them and think there's a contradiction. It's really a paradox, not a contradiction. Helpful? OK, thank you. Yes, ma'am? My truth. So the latest question is, how do you deal with somebody who says, that may be your truth, but that's not my truth? And you have your truth, I have my truth. And so she said when she tries to use an example of a truth, 2 plus 2 equals 4, math, then the person says, well, that's just math. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about my truth. And chances are, if I had to guess, what the person is really saying without saying it is lifestyle choice, who I sleep with, what I eat or drink, recreational drugs, what I believe, what I do, what my activities are. Chances are that's really what the person means when he or she says my truth. In other words, what is my opinion of sexuality or drugs or, you know what I'm saying? That's more likely what's really being said. So there's a number of ways you can approach that. But the key is to begin by identifying, or at least agreeing, that there is something called subjective truth. Subjective is based upon your personal preference. It's your own preference. So you may like opera music, and your husband may hate opera music. But it would be true for you to say that opera music is beautiful. It would not be true for him to say that, because to him he doesn't like it, because it's a matter of personal preference. So ice cream, music, fashion, art, you could go on and on. There are many things where, as the old saying goes, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. You with me so far? That's subjective truth. There's also something called objective truth, which is true regardless of how you feel about it. It doesn't matter if you like it or don't like it. It's still true. Now, a mathematical truth is an example of that. It's abstract. But there are other things that we can say are true. So one of the old jokes is for somebody to say, there is no such thing as objective truth. Well, the easiest way to defeat that is to say, is that statement objectively true? Because if it's objectively true, that there's no such thing as an objective truth, then it falsifies the statement itself, because you see it contradicts itself. If it's not objectively true, then why should I even believe you? Then you're saying something that's not true. So either way, the person gets caught in the dilemma. So what I would do is start pointing out things that the person can't deny are true. You can start asking questions like, do you believe in anything called truth? Do you believe in truth as such that we can knows that something is true or not true? Can we know, for example, that so-and-so cheated on her final exam and didn't really get an A on it? Is there a way to know that? Sure there is. You can find out if somebody actually cheated. So it would be true to say, this person cheated on an exam. Is it true to say that the gas tank in the car is on empty? Or is it just, my truth is that it's full, your truth is that it's on empty, and I guess my truth, what happens when we run out of gas half a mile down the road? Regardless of how I feel about it, the truth is the gas tank is on empty. So you can feel one way or the other about it, but it doesn't matter. It ultimately doesn't matter. What about the law of gravity? Some people might be very insulted by the law of gravity, and they don't like it. And they think it's unfair that the birds don't seem to mind because they're flying around. How can we can't? So in the same way, you can use examples. What they're really talking about, though, is not the law of gravity or mathematics or things of that nature. What they're really talking about is moral truth. And that's where it gets a little bit tricky, because people say, you can't force your morality on me. You can't say that this is right or wrong. So you could say, really? Well, don't you believe in right or wrong? In other words, you must believe in right or wrong, because you're saying it's wrong for someone to say that something is wrong. So how does that work? You can ask. If you believe that it's quote unquote wrong to tell somebody that this or that is wrong, well then you do believe that some things are right and wrong. And you believe that we should speak out against things that are wrong, don't you? OK, yeah. And then you say, well then, how do you know what's right and wrong? How do you determine? Do you have any way outside of your own personal preferences to say what's right or wrong? Or is it just, it's wrong for me. Therefore, don't do it, because I don't like it. Nobody operates that way. We all know that lying is wrong. We all know that stealing is wrong. Murdering is wrong. Torture is wrong. Slavery is wrong. Racism is wrong. We can go down a long list of things that pretty much everybody would agree with, that they're wrong. We shouldn't do it. So your question to that person is, how do you know it's wrong? And how can it even be wrong if there's no such thing as an objective standard of morality? If there's not something that we should do, even though not everybody does it, or we shouldn't do, even though some people do it, we have this built-in recognition that some things are just right and wrong, and St. Paul says the reason for that is that the law of God is written on everyone's heart. So we just have this innate ability to recognize that certain things are right or wrong. So what you want to do, and what I'm teaching you is technique more than anything else. Rather than say, here's how you develop a moral, theological treatise on how this activity is wrong. For your purposes, I think it'd be much more beneficial to help the person see how their argument just breaks down. It doesn't really mean anything, ultimately, because they can't defend it. And that's what you want them to see. That's what they'll say. And then say, okay, well, then is it bad, then, for people to say that there is good and bad? If somebody says there's no good or bad, all right. So if somebody comes along and says there is good and bad, is that bad? And they have to say, well, yes, it is. Well, then you do believe in good and bad, because you've already identified something is bad. Do you believe that torturing animals is bad? Or is it okay to torture animals as long as they don't do it in front of you? Well, no, that's terrible. You shouldn't torture animals. Well, wait a minute. I thought you said there's no such thing as good or bad. You'll very quickly break down that person's argument and they'll recognize that it's just a slogan. It doesn't really mean anything. And they don't really believe it. You see? I'm telling you, the Socratic method works and the more you use it, the more you'll just, you'll accomplish good and you'll stay calm and the person's gonna walk away from the conversation thinking what just happened, you know? Yes, ma'am. So the lady's question is, correct me if I have it wrong, you know somebody who says she believes in God but she doesn't believe that Christ is God. She believes in a God of some sort. Okay, but Jesus is not God. He's just some guy. And the part about the blue state, she comes from a blue state. So her, probably her opinion on things like abortion, marriage, I would guess, probably track with this idea of this amorphous God who doesn't really make any demands on us, doesn't really ask us to do anything. Okay, well, what you could say is, how do you know Jesus is not God? What's your evidence? Just ask her. What's your evidence that he's not God? Well, she's never heard that question before. So she won't know how to answer it. She may, you know, she may hem and ha or she may bluster a little bit, but just ask her that question. How do you know that Jesus is not God? What is your evidence? Do you have scientific evidence that he's not God? Do you have testimony from somebody whose authority is unimpeachable that Jesus is not God? The answer, obviously, she won't know because there is no, nothing like that. So then say, well, then you've, let me make sure I understand this. Are you saying that you have decided that Jesus is not God with no evidence to support that whatsoever? That doesn't seem like a really smart, logical, rational way of approaching something. It's like, you know, saying, I don't believe that the earth is round. You know, and you've never studied the evidence. It doesn't really make any sense. That might be a starting point. Then you can say, have you ever really considered the evidence that Jesus is God? Oh, sure, I read the Bible and yeah, okay. I grew up in the Catholic church and they filled my head with all this stuff about Jesus being God. Okay, so tell me, what is some of the evidence that you carefully evaluated? Well, you know, all the legends and fables about that. Okay, so what, how did you, what did you do to study this? What was your methodological principle? How did you approach this? And again, what you're going to do, and you can get to the point where it becomes embarrassing for her, so you don't want to do it too much, but you want her to see that you see that she sees that she has never done a lick of homework to find out one way or the other whether or not Jesus is God. She's just saying this. It's just a slogan. That's all it is. So then you could say, well, I'm here to help you because there's a ton of evidence that points to Jesus being God. Let's start. First of all, we know from historical records, we have far more historical records that tell us that Jesus existed in what is modern day Israel at a particular time that the gospel say that he lived than we do for many other historical figures that we don't have as much evidence about them and yet we believe that they existed. We believe lots of things about Julius Caesar, for example, who lived the century before Jesus. We believe lots of things about Julius Caesar on less evidence than we have for the existence of Jesus and nobody questions whether or not Julius Caesar existed, okay. We have third party hostile witnesses in the form of the pagan authors who are contemporaries of the apostles. So in the middle to late first century, the last apostle died near the end of the first century, Saint John. So we already have examples of pagan and Jewish writers who were giving accounts in a hostile manner against Christianity and they corroborate that this man Jesus existed. He did live, he lived at this particular place at this particular time. They corroborate the fact that he was crucified. Plenty of the younger, for example, he was sent on a undercover investigation by the emperor to find out if the things that were told about the Christians really were true, like they practice ritual cannibalism, which is interesting because it was a pagan misunderstanding of the Catholic belief of Christ's real presence in the Eucharist. They got it all garbled and bungled and they thought that they were actually eating dead bodies. That was one of the rumors that was going around about Christianity. So that's a really nice little factoid if the issue of the Eucharist comes up. You can point that even the hostile third party witnesses like the pagans, they were hearing rumors about these Christians thinking that they ate their God in the form of a dead body. All that really means is they're pointing to the belief in the real presence. But in any case, so plenty of the younger, he delivers a report and it's available. You can read it online in English. You don't have to learn first century Latin to read the letter and he gives a report to the emperor saying, yeah, I basically followed these people and I kind of went into where they had their meetings and I observed and I watched and they don't do the kind of things that people are saying about them. They're not the low life criminals that people are saying that they do. So here's the point, we're getting to the issue of Jesus. So you can say, well, first of all, we have the credible firsthand accounts in the gospels. Have you ever read those? Well, I heard about them in school when I was a kid, but have you ever actually read them? Have you ever sat down and read the four gospels? It would only take a few hours to do so. Chances are she probably hasn't. And so you can say, well, why don't you do that? Why don't you at least read the firsthand accounts of Jesus? Then how do you explain the hostile third party sources who corroborate some of this evidence that we find in the Bible in the New Testament? Then you can say, what about what Jesus said and did? We only have a few options here. Either when Jesus, we evaluate Jesus the man and his miracles and of course, his ultimate miracle was as he foretold after he died, he would rise again from the dead on the third day. And there were a ton of witnesses who said that he did that. So let's analyze that, for example. Let's look at Jesus, first of all. One option is that he was insane and that he, like many insane people, thought he was somebody else. You can go to mental hospitals anywhere and find somebody in that mental hospital who thinks he's Jesus Christ. You can find people who think they're Napoleon or anybody, the list is endless. And we recognize that there are people who are detached from reality. They just don't realize. They have it all up here in their mind, but they don't understand reality because they're insane. Well, it's possible that Jesus was insane. At least we could say that for the sake of discussion. But how many insane people draw multitudes to them? You and I, if you were in the presence of somebody who is clearly mentally ill, would you be so comfortable that you would just sit in rapt attention and listen to everything that person said? No. You'd want to put some distance between you and that person because you don't know if that person is dangerous or violent. You don't know what that person could do. We have a kind of innate sense of kind of fear, which is natural, and also concern and pity for people who are mentally ill. We want to help them. We want to protect them, often from themselves. Nobody reacted to Jesus that way. People were drawn to him. They wanted to listen to him. They couldn't get enough of him. Even the people who hated him, they couldn't get enough of him. Doesn't fit the bill of a mentally ill person. What about Jesus' message? Is this message with its coherence and its brilliance and its insights and the profound power to change people's lives, bring them to repentance? Does any of that sound like the ravings of an insane person? No. What about his manner of life? He was a man of great rectitude. He was a man who was a master of his emotions, a master of his passions. His passions did not rule him, he ruled them. So he was not a glutton. He was not a drunkard. He was not given to carousing with women or anything like that. So we have a very clear picture of Jesus as somebody who clearly was not insane. And it doesn't pan out. Nothing about it would in any way suggest that Jesus was mentally ill. So I think we could safely at least dispense with that. That's not a viable option. What's the next option? The next option is maybe Jesus was lying. Maybe he was the most cunning guy around and he knew that none of this was true or he had learned some tricks. He had gone to somewhere and he learned tricks so he could mystify people and do things, cheap magic tricks and things like that. Well, sooner or later people catch onto that kind of thing. And yet he spent three years publicly even raising people from the dead including somebody who had been in the tomb for three plus days and there were eyewitnesses who saw it. And so the miracles in themselves would be somewhat inexplicable if he was a liar. But let's say he was a liar and he knew some tricks. He was able to fool people that way. Well, why do liars lie? Liars lie because they want something. Maybe he wanted women. Maybe he wanted money. Maybe he wanted fame. Maybe he wanted political influence. He eschewed all of those things. He was asked in essence to become the political leader of the Jews and maybe overthrow the Romans. You know, remember on Palm Sunday how they greeted him, beheld him as the Messiah. Within a week he had been killed and was in a tomb. So none of the things that you would expect a liar to lie about or lie for are present in Jesus. He got, there was no benefit to him to lie so you'd have to ask your friend, why would he lie? What's the point of it? Because there's nothing in it for him. For that matter, why would his apostles lie about it after the fact if there was nothing in it for them? So another option is, well, maybe what he said was good and there were some really great ideas and he was a good man and all that. But his apostles, they're the ones who falsified this and they made up this story about the resurrection and they were the ones who it all got out of control because they enlarged this to something that wasn't really what Jesus was all about. And by the way, there's a movie about that actual argument. It's called The Life of Brian by Monty Python. You remember that? I never saw it because it was blasphemous, I didn't wanna see it. But the entire comedy movie is about a guy named Brian who winds up because he looks like Jesus, he winds up in the end getting crucified. And that all of this stuff about Jesus and rising from the dead is all just a story that was told by his apostles. I'm not recommending the movie, by the way. So let's look at that now. Okay, so what if he was just a great prophet and he had some great ideas and his apostles are the ones to blame for this outlandish story about the resurrection, all that. All right, well then we apply the same treatment to the apostles. What did they gain from this? What was in it for them? Nothing, there was no monetary gain, there was no influence. They were hunted like criminals, they were tracked down like animals, they were tortured, and they were killed in brutal and very painful ways. And the followers of Jesus who were not apostles, many of them also met similar ends because they wouldn't deny that they had seen Jesus rise from the dead. Now you could find, I'm sure, some people, you might be able to find one or two people maybe who because they're delusional or something else, they might be willing to die for something that they really know is not true. Can you find hundreds of people? Thousands of people who would be willing to do that? No, of course not. It's beyond human expectations to assume that you can find that. So the apostles would fail the test too as either being liars or insane because there was nothing in it for them. And all these people, there were some who recanted, obviously, but by and large, they said, I saw Jesus after he rose from the dead, I saw him, I talked to him, I had breakfast with him. So when you start amassing, and I'll stop here because I could go on forever, we don't wanna do that, but you start amassing all of these things here and then you say, well, what else is left? He's not a liar, he's not insane, it didn't get out of control after he died. The only other real option is he is who he claimed to be, he's God. And if that's the option that would explain all of these truths, all of these evidences that we can point to, then isn't it worth your time, you would say to your friend, isn't it really worth your time to at least explore that? Because you wouldn't wanna be accused of willful blindness, would you? I mean, it's one thing to be blind, but to be willfully blind, that's not very good, is it? And you can ask her that question. You don't want to be willfully blind, do you? If there's evidence that compellingly demonstrates that Jesus Christ is God, wouldn't you wanna know about it? I mean, wouldn't that be the best thing ever? The greatest thing possible if you could know that Jesus was in fact God? And wouldn't it be the stupidest thing ever if the evidence was right there in front of you and you weren't willing to at least consider it? And then just imagine her head spinning and what she'll be thinking about long after your conversation is over. I'll leave it at that, helpful, I hope? Yes, sir, in the blue shirt. I'm open for business, so it doesn't have to be apologetics. This is a particular patient that you had? Okay, yeah, I love these questions. These are great, because these are real world questions. This is real life. So the gentleman's a physician and he's asking about what might you say to somebody who says I'm not really interested in that God stuff, I wanna eat well, I wanna travel, I wanna have a good time. And chances are if they're younger, they wanna enjoy their body and they want to just have fun, which is a pretty common thing for a lot of people. So what can you say to that person? Well, I guess I'm sort of being redundant when I answer every question beginning by, well, there are different ways to approach it, but there really are different ways to approach it. I had conversations with people like that. And so one of the things I found very helpful is to say, well, basically, if I understand you, are you saying that this is a meaningless universe? So that's coming out of the, it's coming from a totally different angle than what they're expecting. Because what she might be expecting is for you to say, well, the Bible says you shouldn't do that. Or Jesus said you shouldn't do that. That might be where they're expecting something to come from. But if you just say, so, I guess what I'm getting from you is that this is a meaningless universe. Is that what you mean? Well, no, I didn't say that. Why, what do you mean a meaningless universe? Well, I guess what I mean is, is do you think this is a universe where we're just sort of here by accident? We didn't come from anywhere. We're not going anywhere. There's no afterlife. I mean, there's no God if that's the universe that we're living in. There's no God. Obviously, there's no hell, there's no heaven. It's just a meaningless universe. We're just randomly here. And as long as we're randomly here, let's party, you know, let's have fun. Let's enjoy. I just wanna make sure I understand. Is that the universe that you believe we live in? And then see what she says. She may say, well, no, I don't believe that. I think there's a God. I think there's probably a heaven or hell and at least a heaven, I hope, you know? And so then you start asking questions. Well, then what can you tell me about this God? I'm very interested. What can you tell me about him or her? And then see what she says. And then what you're doing is you're kind of opening her mind. I'm assuming it's a her, it could be a man. You're opening her mind to reflect upon her worldview, which is, you know, each drink can be married for tomorrow we die. Let's have fun while we can. And if she says, well, it's not a meaningless universe, I guess somebody created us. I guess there's some kind of an afterlife after that. So then my next question would be, this is very interesting. I'd like to know more. Tell me about this God. I'm interested, tell me. And then probably one of a couple of things will happen. Either she might say, well, I guess I've never really thought about it. Or I guess, I mean, I don't really know. Or she might say, well, you know, I know some people believe this and some people believe that and people have different ideas. And I don't think anybody can really know whether or not God is a certain way or anything. I just think he wants us to be good. He wants us to treat other people with respect. So then maybe I might follow up by saying, well, how would you feel if there were somebody who said there is a way to know that? There is a way to know what kind of God this is and that he loves you and that he wants you to be happy and that he wants you to be happy forever with him in heaven and that your life is not meaningless. I mean, if somebody had a plausible, reasonable body of commentary on that, wouldn't that at least interest you? Because if you're saying that you don't really know, wouldn't it be better to know? I mean, wouldn't it be better to have more clarity on something like that than to not know? Well, yeah. Well, have you ever really considered the claims of Jesus and his message that God does love you and he wants you to be happy and he wants you to be free, truly free, not enslaved to addictions and passions and things like that, which are so easily able to enslave us, have you ever really thought about what Jesus had to say on these issues? Well, I guess I haven't. Well, I'm happy to talk to you about that. Or here's a New Testament. Why don't you read what Jesus said and then maybe it can play out that way. It can play out in any number of different ways, but these are scenarios. And again, I'm not a one-trick pony. I don't only do the Socratic method, but I do it frequently enough that I see that it does have good benefits. So that might be one scenario that would benefit. Yes, sir? Al, right? Stan, I'm sorry, okay. It's close, Al, Stan, very close. I'm gonna repeat the question, don't worry. Blasphemy, yeah. So is your question then, how do we understand what Pope Francis said? Okay, I'll repeat your question for everybody. So the gentleman's question is, was there more to it, or do I have it? Okay, sure, sorry. Yes, I'll add that, I'll add that. Okay, the gentleman's question is, Pope Francis, within the last year, he revised the Catechism shortly after he made a statement that as far as he is concerned, as far as the church is concerned, that capital punishment is inadmissible. That's the term that was used. And so the gentleman's question is, how can that be the case, or what are we to make of that, given that in the Old Testament, God commanded capital punishment for certain crimes, certain sins, sodomy was one of them, blaspheming your parents was another one. Boy, I've told some of my kids over the years, you are so lucky that you live in the New Covenant because if you had lived in the Old Covenant, there would have been a much worse punishment for disrespecting your parents. So since God said that capital punishment was necessary for certain crimes, and since the good thief on the cross acknowledged that he was being justly, the two thieves were being justly punished, how then should we understand what Pope Francis said about the death penalty now being inadmissible? Here's my answer. There's no question that the death penalty is not intrinsically evil. It is not intrinsically evil. Now there are plenty of people nowadays who I think in part, at least because of what Pope Francis said, will disagree vehemently with what I just said, and they'll say no, it is intrinsically evil. That is impossible because, A, the practice of capital punishment was commanded by God, and it was commanded not that God was gonna kill these people, but he told Moses, by man shall his blood be shed in the case of a man who sheds the blood of somebody else. So you kill somebody, then by some other man, you yourself will be killed. This is the phraseology in the book of Leviticus. So we see that not only was death penalty enjoined by God for certain crimes, we also see that in scripture, there is no prohibition of the death penalty. There are appeals for mercy, that's true, and we should always be mercy. And by the way, I need to put my cards on the table as I do this. I personally am opposed to the death penalty. I don't want the death penalty. I'd like to see no death penalty, but some people are going too far by saying that the death penalty is intrinsically evil and what Pope Francis said I think kind of played into this mistake that some people are making, because it is an ambiguous term. It admissible is not a theological term. It's not a biblical term. It's a term that is malleable and can mean different things. So I'm gonna give you my full-fledged answer here in just a moment. I wanna lay a little more groundwork. For the entire 1900 and roughly, let's say, 50 years of the church's history prior to the pontificate of Pope John Paul II, the church always recognized the lisaity, the moral listedness of the death penalty. And there were popes who wrote documents about the morality of the death penalty. Pope Pius XII, for example, did. I don't have a list of them in front of me, but I've read even some of these documents where the popes say this is morally permissible. In the catechism that was promulgated by Pope John Paul II, it came out in 1988. And the English edition did not come out for a few years. Originally, you had French, Spanish. It was a Latin edition that nobody had because nobody reads Latin. I had the French edition and I had the Spanish edition. And then when the English edition came out, I could compare between the three different languages. And in 19, when the catechism appeared, so let's say by 1990 when the English language catechism was available, it was filled with everything that I just said. The catechism said the death penalty is not intrinsically evil. It's in the Bible. God commanded it. The popes have talked about it. I'm paraphrasing what the catechism originally said. Then in 1992, Pope John Paul II issued his encyclical letter called Evangelium Vite, the Gospel of Life. And in the Gospel of Life, this was the first time now that I'd know of anyway, in which a pope did a sharp turn and said, no more death penalty. We gotta do away with the death penalty. We don't want any more death penalty. And he had the catechism changed in 1994 to reflect what he said in Evangelium Vite in 1992, which makes sense, because he doesn't want the catechism to say something at odds with what he said. So when the catechism was revised in 1994, all that language was taken out and it was replaced with a statement that included that the death penalty is not intrinsically immoral. However, given modern means of incarceration and circumstances, and I'm sure in his mind he was also thinking, because we live in the culture of death and we are supposed to be about protecting life and doing everything we can to support life, that it should be practically, what's the word he used? Practically. He used unnecessary, but there was a phrase that he used and I'm just blanking on it. It should be so rare as to be practically non-existent. I think that was the phrase, but he left the door open saying it's still permissible, but let's not do it is what he said. So what Pope Francis did is he amped it up further and withdrew the language about it's permissible to do this, but let's not do it. He moved it further to say now it's an attack on human dignity. Therefore, it's inadmissible. So all of that is preamble to my answer, if you can believe that. Here comes my answer now, but I needed to say all that first so it would make sense. My answer is, Pope Francis, nor any other pope, cannot change the church's doctrine on the moral lisaity and that's just a fancy word, it means the licitness of the death penalty. The evidence is too overwhelming and it's just too overwhelming to say otherwise that the church has for 2,000 years been wrong about something so important and that the Bible was wrong about something so important. So I see this is the way to thread the needle. I'm gonna share with you how I thread this needle. What Pope Francis did, now what he intended to do, I don't know what people understood him to do. I know some of them understood him to do something other than what I think he did, but what he actually did was what Pope John Paul II did and that is he changed the church's pastoral approach to this topic. He didn't change a doctrine because he can't. He can't change something into being not true that once was true. No pope can do that. I'm not singling out Pope Francis, I'm just saying it's impossible for a pope to do that. What he did however was to say here and now under our current circumstances, no death penalty whatsoever, it's a pastoral approach to a topic and the church can change its pastoral approaches. It can relax them, it can make them more stringent, it can eliminate them all together but that's what I believe he did in effect and the reason for that, final part of the answer is that if he felt or if somebody believed that he was able to change a doctrine then the church's teaching on the irreformability of doctrine is destroyed. In which case any doctrine can change. Mary is now divine, Mary's part of the trinity so we're gonna call it a quadrennity now or Mary is not sinless, we thought she was but now she's not or that the priest isn't the only one who can confect the Holy Eucharist due to the sacrament of holy orders, anybody can, you can if you want to. Or there is no such thing as hell, doesn't exist, never really existed even though Jesus warned about it all the time, never really existed and you can go on and on and then every single thing that the church teaches would be subject to at least the possibility of being overthrown and changed and we know that that can't happen, we know that that's not for real. So I think the only way that we can understand this and keep our sanity is to say that what Pope Francis did was he changed the church's pastoral approach to the issue which he has the right to do as the sovereign pontiff, he has the authority to do it, he has the right to do it and he did it, I believe but he can't and didn't change the reality that the death penalty is not in itself intrinsically evil. Now I'll leave you with one thought, if you want a book that will give you far more evidence on this issue than I could ever give you, it's a book authored by Joseph Bassett and Dr. Edward Fazer, it's called by man shall his blood be shed, it came out within the last year and it is a tome, it is I would say the definitive historical, biblical, scholarly consideration of the death penalty and honestly if somebody has not read that book I don't think that he can consider himself truly knowledgeable about the situation so I would offer you that suggestion if you're interested in diving deeper. Long answer to a short question, I hope that's helpful. Yes, who's got the follow-up, this lady here, okay. Okay, the lady's question is, and by the way, welcome home, that's awesome. She was raised Catholic, fell away, gone for a while, came back and she's saying how can she or people like her, basically all of us, how can she know what's doctrine and what isn't if popes are changing doctrines? Do I have the gist of it? Right, if she can't depend upon the Catechism of the Catholic Church to be doctrine then how could she know from one moment to the next what's true and what's not true? What you're supposed to believe, okay. That's the inevitable question that arises from this question when people are unsure what Pope Francis did. So I'll reiterate my point very briefly however and that is that Pope Francis didn't change a doctrine. Pope John Paul II didn't change a doctrine. What they changed was the church's approach to an issue in a practical way saying we don't wanna do any more capital punishments for all the above reasons, we don't wanna do that but not saying that capital punishment is itself intrinsically evil. So that part technically even under Pope Francis technically he didn't change that and I wonder at times maybe that's why he chose this very ambiguous word inadmissible because it's very difficult to pin down. What exactly does that mean? So yeah, it is the Catechism. So here's the best way I can explain it to you. Keep in mind that there are doctrines that are always going to be true because they're de fide, they're proposed to us by the church as necessary to have faith in. The church also has pastoral ways of dealing with situations that touch upon doctrine. So I'll give you an example as an example. Currently in the current code of canon law to be validly married as a Catholic you have to get married outside of some dispensation or some emergency or some strange situation. You have to be married in a church and you have to be witnessed by a bishop, a priest or a deacon. You can't get married at the beach, can't get married in your backyard. So the church's law impinges upon the doctrine. Now the doctrine has to do with the validity of a sacrament in this case the sacrament of holy matrimony. So that's the doctrinal part. And the church's law says that if you do it this way then the sacrament is invalid. That's just, that's a pastoral way of dealing with the issue of marriage in the sacrament of holy matrimony. The church could change that and say, you know what, because of the problem with many invalid marriages now we're going to eliminate that requirement and say, all right, if you must get married at the beach, okay. As long as the other requisite things are in place you still have a valid marriage. That's a pastoral approach to a doctrine. The doctrine can't change, it won't change. In other words, the church can't say, well from now on we're gonna let three people get married to each other or two men, two women, that kind of thing. I realize it may seem like parsing or splitting hairs but it's really not. So when you read the catechism you're reading primarily the church's exposition of its doctrine on issues like the sacraments and so forth. But also you're getting a certain amount that is explaining how the church deals with certain issues. Precycelibacy, for example. A discipline in the church, it's not doctrinal but it's the custom in the church. A custom I very much appreciate. So I'll end with this. When you read the catechism try to have as much as you can a discernment as to, this is something that's a doctrine the church is saying believe in this one god of three persons, Mary is sinless, heaven and hell. But the way the church is going to deal with a particular circumstance in the here and now that is going to deal with the church's law or the church's customs, disciplines, things like that. Now that may not make you feel any better but at least I hope you see a little bit more clearly the distinction and you'll see both of those things in the catechism. Does that help at all? Okay, thank you. I don't wanna ignore this side but I feel as though I have. Was there a hand over here? Yes ma'am. The lady's question has to do with people who are getting spooked and agitated by stuff that's going on right now. The rise of a very totalitarian form of liberalism that wants to silence and coerce people. We see that on TV a lot. And so some people she knows, I presume they're Catholic or just Christians in general are saying well we must be living in the end times and they'll point to passages in the book of Revelation that suggests that we are. Do I have it right? Okay. Well first thing I'll say, I don't know if it's gonna shock you, we could be living in the end times. These could easily be the end times. I have no way of knowing. I don't claim to know. But it's not far-fetched to think that we are living in the end times and perhaps the Antichrist is alive and perhaps this whole thing is gonna get very very bad in our lifetimes entirely possible. Certainly with the rise of the unbelievable capabilities now that with the internet and cameras and surveillance. And of course you all realize you carry a 24 seven surveillance device on your person at all times. And if you look closely at my phone I know it sounds kind of silly. I have little stickers that you can buy on Amazon that cover the cameras. Because on my radio show I do stories about how time after time after time we find out that there are apps on your phone that can remotely turn on your camera. You wouldn't know it. There are ways in which the microphone can listen and the cameras can listen. And I only mentioned that in passing to say that we've now reached a point technologically where it's possible now to monitor virtually everybody. And we've never had that before. China has a social credit rating system where all 1.3, 1.4 billion people in China are now in this database with facial recognition, credit scores, all these other things. And they actually are determined by the government whether or not they can buy things, get it on an airplane and go someplace. And all of that now is capable in a way that it wasn't even 20 years ago. Even 10 years ago it wasn't. But I would rather not be living in the end times. So I'm hopeful that we're not living in the end times. And one thing we know for sure is at some point some generation is gonna be living in the end times. Is it this one? I don't know. I try not to think that this is the end times. And I suppose that when the end times do roll around the people who are alive at that time will realize it. And so at this point it seems to me that maybe it is, maybe it's not. There's no way to know, at least not for the moment. So I'm just gonna keep doing my job. I wanna keep being a good husband and a good father, good grandfather, I wanna do a good radio show. I want to be a good friend. I wanna just stay busy about all the things that I know God wants me to do and not worry about all that other stuff because I can't change it anyway. There's nothing I can do about it. And if it's God's will that you and I are alive when the end times happen, that's his will. So glory hallelujah. We're that generation if that's what God wills for us. But maybe it's not. And earlier generations have thought that they were in the end times and it turned out that they weren't in the end times either. So my response to your question is whether we are in the end times or we're not in the end times doesn't affect us either way. If it is the end times, God wants us here. If it's not the end times, great. Somebody else has to deal with that mess, not us. So we just stay busy doing what we're supposed to be doing. I think that's the only real Catholic answer to that question. And when people get so wound up and so agitated and fearful, it's just not good. And then they wind up devoting all their energies to that stuff and they neglect maybe some things that they really should be taken care of. That would seem to me to be a great trick of the devil to get people sidetracked that way. Yes, sir. Purgatory, for this gentleman who's got family and friends who are Protestant. Tell them Revelation 21, 27 says, nothing unclean can enter heaven. Do you believe that? Well, of course I do. So are you at this very moment, absolutely pure and clean, free from any lusts or selfishness or grudges or any, is your life entirely in perfect conformity with God's will or not? No, nobody and nobody I know, certainly not I can say that we are perfectly spotless. So say, okay, so if the Bible says that nothing unclean can enter heaven and you in some way are unclean in some ways, whatever those ways may be, the effects of sin, if you died at this moment, what would happen? Well, I go to heaven. Okay, but you just said that you're not perfectly ready to meet God face to face and the Bible says that nothing unclean can enter into heaven. So what happens? Well, if you really think it through when you wanna be consistent, something must happen to you either as soon as you die or in some interval that makes you clean and able to meet God face to face. We Catholics recognize that that's purgatory. That's what the word means, you purify. If you want a Bible passage that explains it without using the term, it's 1 Corinthians 3, beginning in verse 10, where St. Paul says that he describes a man who built his house, his temple on the foundation of Christ and in his life there are works that are likened unto wood, hay, and straw, and gold, silver, and precious stones. And he says on the day that discloses it, that's referring to the day of his death, the particular judgment. Hebrews 9.27 says it's appointed to a man to die once and then the judgment. And that's what he's referring to when he says the day will reveal these works. He says the wood, the hay, and the straw will be burned in fire and he says the man will suffer loss and he will be saved. He's not in heaven yet. He will be saved, but only as though passing through fire. So although the term purgatory is not used, the description of what the church teaches about what happens in purgatory is very blatant. It's very explicit. So those are three verses. You can mix and match, but I think that might be one way to do it. Okay? Yes, sir. Okay. How can we equip people in faith formation at the parish level to be better at defending the faith? I'm not joking when I say, invite them to come here in the summertime and attend this conference. It's a great way to jumpstart people. There are many great apologetics videos on YouTube and you can maybe have, if you're doing meetings every week or however often, you could play some of the videos. There are tons of mine, tons of Scots. There are just many to choose from. There's a great series of workbooks that were written by Jim Burnham and Father Steve Chacon, I think it's Steve Chacon, Frank Chacon. They're called Beginning Apologetics. Those are really good workbook style and each one covers a specific topic. Mormonism, Chauva's Witnesses, the Eucharist, Mary and so forth. I teach apologetics at the academic level. So if somebody in your faith formation class or maybe the whole class, maybe get a group discount or something, they could enroll in the academic program. I teach at Holy Apostles College and Seminary and the website with the info on my class is holyapostles.edu slash patrick. So if they want an academic credit or just for personal enrichment, in which case the tuition drops by 50% if they wanna do it for personal enrichment, then they will have a 15 week academic, hardcore study of apologetics and that would be maybe the most formal way of doing it. Practicing in your group setting, have a discussion each week about some topic, however often you meet, maybe choose a topic and then learn together using the workbooks and maybe take a study book, Karl Keating's Catholicism and Fundamentalism, or pick any number of other books to deal with apologetics and then study your way through that. There are a lot of ways you could do it. Those are several, hopefully helpful. Did you? Yes. Yes, her friend asks her why women are, she says women should be ordained priests and her argument is that the church is just not ready yet for that, which is a rather patronizing condescending thing to say, the church, the bride of Christ, guided by the Holy Spirit for 2,000 years now has not been ready for something that she wants that Jesus said nothing about. That's a pretty condescending thing. You might point that out to her, that's rather pretentious of you, isn't it, to say that? So it really gets to the question of why can't women be priests? And I think that would help answer her question about the church being ready or not ready. You could say the church is never gonna be ready to do something that Christ taught otherwise. And Christ, as Pope John Paul II outlined in a very short document called Ordinazio Sacerdotalis, you've read it, good. In that document, he just gives some bullet points as to why the church can't do that. He says, A, Jesus did not choose women. B, the apostles understood him that they should choose successors who were men. The Blessed Virgin Mary, he says, is the highest, most perfect human person ever. Keep in mind that Jesus is a divine person, not a human person. So Pope John Paul II says the Catholic Church almost alone in the world says that the greatest human being, human person, is a woman, not a man, and extols Mary as superior to all men. And yet, Jesus did not choose Mary to be ordained a priest. And the unbroken custom of the church, always understanding this. And he concluded by saying, as you know, that the church has no ability to change the teaching that Jesus gave. And therefore, he said the argument should basically cease because it's never gonna happen. The church can't do it. It's just never gonna happen. Now a lot of people, they just ignored what Pope John Paul II said, and they're continuing to argue for it. And it may be that we'll see at some point a kind of sism in the church in which you'll have some bishops or groups of bishops or huge numbers of bishops, maybe, break away and say, well, now we're going to ordain priests. But all that would mean is it's just yet another sism, like so many others that have come and gone in the history of the church. So, and yes, ma'am, I'm gonna try to go quickly because we only have about seven minutes now. Good. How about just one, only because of the time? Can we restrict it to just that one? Okay. So the scenario is how do you talk to people who say, I'm personally opposed to abortion, but I can't tell other people that they can't do it, including my own children? Well, I'd say, are you personally opposed to slavery? Yes or no, are you? Well, sure. Do you think that you should tell other people not to own slaves? Are you perfectly, are you personally opposed to sex trafficking? Yeah, yeah, definitely. So would you tell a sex trafficker, stop it. Don't do that. Would you support lawmakers who enact laws to put sex traffickers in jail? She's gonna say, of course I would. Are you personally opposed to racism? Are you personally opposed to the KKK burning crosses on people's front lawns and lynching people and such? Of course I am, I'm opposed to it. And so you're opposed to it, but you're not gonna speak out against it? You're not gonna tell your kids, hey guys, racism is wrong. Of course you would. So just point out what's really going on here, what's really going on here is you're a coward. Because you believe that some, or you claim to believe that this is wrong, and why is it wrong? Because there's a dead body when it's all over. An innocent child dies. Let's face it, that's what's going on. So what you're really saying is you're a coward. You're not willing to stand up for what you believe for whatever reason. That's all that really means. Because you would stand up and speak out against slavery or racism or sex trafficking, et cetera, et cetera, so why would you be willing to do that for those issues and you wouldn't be willing to stick up for a child who dies in abortion? And that's the end of your friendship at that point. But you know what will happen? You will have gone right to the heart of the issue and even if she hates you and unfriends you on Facebook and ever talks to you again, she'll never be able to say she didn't know. She'll always know the truth, the reality of her position and please God she will repent of it and change. That's the best possible outcome, even if you're unfriended on Facebook, if she gets to heaven. Yes, sir, or yes, ma'am. How do you talk to somebody who says, well, you know, Catholic people, I'm assuming, right? My kids have grown up and they've said, well, we're not Catholic anymore and it doesn't really matter whether they're Catholic anymore because they're good people and good people go to heaven. So it really doesn't matter. That, first of all, is what's known as the heresy of indifferentism, which says that Jesus is really, he's just one option among others. And either Jesus is God or he's not. If he's God and he says to the apostles in Matthew 28, 19 through 20, go into the whole world, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them, all of them, baptize them, teach them to observe all that I've commanded you. So if he's God, that holds true for everybody, including your children. If he's not God, then let's all go have a party. I mean, because what is this all about anyway? If Jesus isn't God, Christianity is a sham. Well, yeah, and that's gonna take me beyond the time limit that I've got, which I think is now, actually. So how about that as a starter and then next year we'll pick it back up again and I'll give you the rest of the answer. All right, thank you everybody. I appreciate it. I do have one thing and I forgot to bring it. It's actually in my car. I have for you in the bookstore a double DVD set. It's called Where's That in the Bible? And in this double DVD set, I teach you from the Bible how to respond to common challenges against the Catholic faith. Now, it's not just me at a podium. It's professionally recorded multiple cameras. When I quote a Bible verse, the verse comes up on the screen and there's a lot going on in this. But if you, for your own study, or you wanna give it to your adult children or even high schoolers, great for high schoolers, they have that in the bookstore in a very limited quantity and they ask me to let you know. So if you wanna take a look at it, you'll see it there and I hope you get it. Thank you very much, God bless you.