 Thank you, Dr. Hahn. Oh, let's move that, because I've got this guy here. He showed me the bio. And it was actually an out-of-date bio that had been written a long time ago. And I said, that's all out of date. I verbatim told Dr. Hahn, just tell him, I do the things. I do my things. And I've got, I'm married for eight years, three wonderful children. The longer I've been doing this, the more I see that that part of my curriculum, Vitae, is really the most important part. But because your vocation comes first, your vocation comes first. Well, looks like, I think my wife needs me. You all enjoy the rest of your afternoon. No, it does happen from time to time. Let's open a prayer in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for gathering us here today in fellowship, in person. You said we're two or three or gathered in my name. There you shall also be. Lord, we ask that you be present with us. Open up our hearts and minds and especially send us your Holy Spirit to give us a conviction to be courageous and gentle and kind and persuasive to those we share the gospel with. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Amen. So I was asked to come and give a presentation on the Beginner's Guide to Defending Your Faith. And I'm super excited, by the way, to see so many people here who are interested in apologetics. How many people here know what apologetics is? What do you guys know? Okay, that's really good. A lot of parishes. It's usually one person in the back and then later somebody comes up to the table and tells me, why are you an apologist? You shouldn't apologize for being Catholic. Always somebody. No, the word apologetics comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to give a defense, usually in a court of law. You give a defense or a reason for what you believe in. 1 Peter 3.15 says, always be ready to give a reason for the hope within, but do so with gentleness and with reverence. And it's interesting here, being at Franciscan University and with Dr. Hahn, to see the trajectory of apologetics. If you look at it from a historical perspective, because actually you go back to 1920s, 1930s. It's a big heyday of American apologetics. You had the Catholic evidence training outlines. You had Frank Sheed, the Catholic evidence guild. They'd had people just go out to hide park, go out to parks and debate people. Then debate, usually it was fellow Protestants, but on Catholic Protestant issues. Then you had the Second Vatican Council and after the implementation of the council, apologetics kind of took a nosedive for an unfortunate unintended application of the council saying that, well, we should really focus on ecumenism reaching out to other religions and not be triumphalist apologists. And I agree, we shouldn't be triumphalist in the sense of, look how great I am and how not great you are. Rather, we should see the world as a kind of field hospital to minister to others. And so apologetics kind of faded away a bit. Until you have in the 80s and 90s, I have a T-shirt I go out and wear to see two kinds of people in the world. It has a drawing of a cassette tape on it. And there is a certain age demographic that does not know what that is. My children don't know what that is. Even their older peers don't know. If I was to hand them a cassette tape and a sharpened pencil, they'd have no idea what are you talking about? How do these two things go together? But some of you may have remembered during that time, you had a little cassette tape called Rome's Sweet Home or a Protestant pastor's journey into the Catholic faith. Some guy named Scott Han, Scott Han? The Scott Han guy sounds really good. You listen to that or maybe listen to Pat Madrid or the story of Jimmy Akin. And I think that lit a fire in a lot of people to show, hey, we've got really good reasons. We've got really good arguments and a wealth and a treasure trove of them. During that time, Carl Keating started Catholic Answers. Well, how he started Catholic Answers was one day he went to a church, his Catholic parish, and then he comes outside and the local Baptist church had left flyers on all the cars talking about how wrong Catholics were. So Carl goes home, pulls out his typewriter, writes a reply, and puts it on all the cars at their Baptist church. And he didn't want to get grief, so he rented a mail box, a post office box, PO box. And he said, I'm gonna call myself, these are, I wanna give them answers. These are Catholic Answers. And then he went back and checked the PO box several weeks later, thinking there'd be nothing. It was full of replies. Some of them angry, but others saying, we love this, could you please send us your catalog? And he replied to them in a very jesuitical way. Everything we have is out of print. And then that's where that began. And then we have Catholic Radio. You can listen and tune in. And that's reached a lot of people. When I do Catholic Radio, I'm always amazed when we do shows like, why are you pro-choice? Why are you an atheist? Why are you Protestant? We'll have full lines of people who are not Catholic, who are listening, who are interested in this. And so in this, and then you have the internet where people are interested and apologize and gather together to learn these things. And it's great. But sometimes I worry we've been a victim of our own success. And that some people will go listen to Catholic Answers Live, they'll listen to my colleagues, Tim Staples, who can pull any Bible verse or Catechism passage like right out of the air. He's got it all right here. Jimmy Akin, who I think is a robot that church sent from the future to help us. It's a workable theory. It's one of many. Or he was just a very studied Catholic in the future caught in a time loop, time warp. And you think like, oh, I can't go out and do what they do. I'm not gonna go out and talk to people. I don't wanna talk to people. If I can't come up with the answers like they do, I can't do it. I can't be an apologist if I can't do what they do. Well, maybe you're not called to sit on Catholic radio and take whatever phone calls come in. But it's a lie, a lie from the evil one to say that you're not called to be an apologist. We are all called to be an apologist. An apologist is just someone who gives the reason for the hope within. Yeah, but I don't have all those reasons lined up. What I wanna share with you today is you don't need that. What I wanna share with you is that to be a great defender of the Catholic faith. Because sometimes we think, oh, just by osmosis, I'll go to all these conferences and I'll read all these books. And we think we're gonna read all these books. And then next to our bed night stand, we get this tower of babble that starts growing. Of all these books we were planning on reading. And we turn the ministry of evangelism into a spectator sport. We're like the people that enjoy watching the games, but we're scared to go out on the field. Because we only wanna leave that to the professionals. If only the professionals evangelize, the church will die. It will die. Now you say, but I don't have all the skills, but here's the great thing. God does not call the equipped. He equips the called. And in particular, I want you to remember this. To be a great Catholic apologist, you do not need to have all of the right answers. You just need to have the right questions. To be a great Catholic apologist, you do not need all the right answers. You just need the right questions. Sometimes we think you watch Catholic radio, you listen to talks, you think being an apologist means this guy has his objection and I've got my argument, my answer right here. When they say this, you say that. Well, we can't prepare for life and that's not how life really works. And we think I gotta have the perfect answer for every argument. But rather one thing we forget to do a lot is to say, wait a minute, people won't appreciate the good news of what we believe. Our faith will not be good news until whatever they currently believe is bad news. Right, if everything's fine, you're not interested in what you have to offer because everything I've got is great. I might humor you, you know, listen to you about your Catholic faith, all that stuff, but that's your thing. My thing is working just fine for me. We can't make headway until we show people the bad news that if their worldview is not Catholic, there is going to be something false, inconsistent, and sometimes quite ugly about it. And we have to gently show that to them. But how do we do that? Oh, you're not Catholic, your worldview is false, inconsistent, and ugly. Bet you didn't know that. Well, people don't hear that. Instead, we should use an approach made popular 2,500 years ago by a guy named Socrates. I heard of him, Socrates. Socrates, if you watch Bill and Ted's most excellent adventure, which by the way is one of the most sophisticated time travel movies out there, a lot of thought goes into it. How are we going to get them out of jail? We don't have a key. In the future, we'll go back in time and leave a key here. We did do that. We better not forget to do it. We won't, because we did. Yeah. I'm telling you, it's really deep stuff. Whoa. So Socrates, Socrates was described as the gadfly of Athens. He was also someone whose face was just so weird looking. It was like a car wreck. You couldn't take your eyes off of him. But how he really annoyed people was he always asked people questions and people said Socrates is the wisest guy out there and he said, I'm not smart. I just know that guy does not know what he's talking about and I'm gonna ask him a question to show that he doesn't know what he's talking about. You fast forward 500 years later, another very smart guy, uses the same method to great effect. His name is Jesus. You go to Mark chapter 11. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and they go up to Jesus and they try to get him in a trap. They say, Jesus, we have a question for you. Well, they're indignant actually. They go up to him and they say, who gave you the authority to teach the authority to do these things? Now, Jesus could have given a long theological answer or a short one. My dad, the guy who made everything. But instead, he said to them, and this is the dynamic Trent Horn Parallel Living Message Bible translation. I tell you what guys, I will answer your question if you're willing to answer one of mine, but you gotta answer my question first then I will answer yours. The baptism of John, is it from heaven or from earth? Answer my question and then I will answer yours. Mark tells us that the Pharisees got into a huddle and they realized they were in a bit of a jam. If they said it was from heaven, the people are gonna say, well, why didn't you formally endorse John in the ministry he was doing? The Pharisees had to kind of live and let live relationship with this crazy wild guy out in the desert. If they say though, no, it's from earth, then the people are gonna revolt because even if the Pharisees are a bit hands off, the people know John is the real deal, he's a prophet. So, they do what happens to me a lot on radio and people don't wanna answer one of my questions. We don't know. And then Jesus says, then neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things. And then Mark tells us this interesting detail. And then Jesus reached into his tunic and took out a microphone and he dropped it. I'm just, it's in some manuscripts. Codex Bezay, it's a variant manuscript. So notice just by asking a question, he revealed that he allowed the Pharisees to reveal their own hypocrisy instead of simply saying the Pharisees are hypocrites, which they were. Instead of saying it, he let them reveal it to themselves. One last example of this method. One time I was snowed in in Wichita, Kansas. When I was a missionary, I just graduated college. Our home base was in Wichita. I was snowed in at a friend's house. He wasn't home. No internet, no cable TV. There was a DVD player and in the entertainment cabinet there was one collection of DVDs. The entire series of Columbo. Just Columbo, and I watched Columbo for a week. It's very repetitive, but I mean, it's interesting stuff. Ah, see, and I just have one more question. I just have one more question for you. Columbo's a really cool show because it's a crime show, but you know who the killer is right off the bat on Columbo, so where's the mystery? The mystery is not who is the killer. The mystery is how is Columbo gonna catch him? And he always catches him the same way when you watch the entire series in a week. He just relentlessly asks questions, and he comes off as this like disheveled, not quite altogether there guy with his hat and his coat. Ah, I'm sorry, I'm getting ashes everywhere on your nice rug here. Ah, something's just been bothering me. Tell me this, because he doesn't go in puffing his chest. Kind of lures the guy into a false sense of security, then asks him questions that become more and more awkward that dissolve the suspect's alibi. And so when we speak to others, that's the tone we need to have. Not, I'm here to defeat you. When I, back in several months ago in Austin, there was a conference for priests. Dr. Han was speaking at it. And I decided to drove down with my five-year-old, Matthew, our first dad son alone overnight trip. Super fun, stop that is all the fast food places we wanted to stop at. Like, he got to go and meet all the priests, meet Dr. Han, and I remember in the hotel room, he's like, can we watch a movie? And I was like, yeah, sure, your mom's not here. You're with dad. And we watched the movies that are on TV and they had Matilda on based on the Roald Dahl book. And you know, there's the dad in Matilda details, Matilda. I'm big, you're small, I'm smart, you're dumb. And sometimes we don't wanna, we have that same kind of attitude when we wanna say, oh, you believe this about the Bible? Well, I'm right, you're wrong. I'm biblically literate, you're biblically illiterate. And Ephesians 4.15 says we should always speak the truth in love. And we should have an attitude where we gently ask questions and with an attitude not of I'm right, you're wrong, but I'm trying to figure out the truth. Can you help me to get there with you? I just wanna understand you. That the one thing you can do in a conversation, get rid of the goal of I'm gonna convert this person. Sorry, you're not going to do that. You can't do that. Only the Holy Spirit can do that. But if you start with the goal of I want to perfectly understand this person and they perfectly understand where I'm coming from, anybody can make that goal. If you listen and ask questions. Let me give you an example. I was at a Catholic high school giving a pro-life presentation. And I could tell there was a girl in the back who was not happy that I was there. And she's folding her arms and sneering. And so at the end I said, does anyone have any questions? And her hand goes up and so I call on her and here's her question. Mr. Horn, what gives you the right to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies? I mean, I don't like abortion, but I don't go around shoving my beliefs down people's throats like you do. Now, when people kind of come at us in attack mode, there's two extremes. Some of us are velvet glove. We say, I'm not shoving my beliefs, I just want people to understand, I didn't mean to offend you. There's velvet glove and then there's iron fist. I'm not pushing anything on anyone. It's people like you who push these beliefs on little babies that are the problem. Velvet glove, iron fist is something in the middle here. So instead I asked her a question. Instead of even giving an answer, what gives you the right to do this? I asked her a question. And you can always ask one of two questions when you're in a conversation with someone. Those are, what do you think and why do you think that? A lot of times when we just ask those questions, what do you think and why do you think that we can get the person to see, maybe they don't have a good reason for what they believe. What do you think I asked this young girl? Here's what she said again. Mr. Horn, what gives you the right to tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies? I don't like abortion, but I don't go around shoving my beliefs down people's throats like you do. What do you think I asked her? I'll give you a hint, it starts with why. Why not? Well, here's what I asked her. I'll call her Kelsey. Kelsey, I have, can I ask you a question? You said you don't like abortion. Why? Why don't you like abortion? She said, well, isn't it obvious? I said, well, pretend I'm like a five-year-old that never heard of this before. Like, how would you explain it to me? She said, well, you know, it's taking a life out of the world. I said, okay, help me a little bit more. When you say take a life out of the world, what do you mean? Like, if I step on a spider, is that abortion? I took a life out of the world. She said, well, no, obviously it's taking a human life, but I can't tell women what they can and can't do with their bodies. It's okay. Well, Kelsey, help me, and you see the Colombo here. Help me to put all this together. This doesn't quite make sense to me. You're saying you don't like abortion because it takes a human life out of the world. By that, I think you mean it kills a small human being, but you can't tell women that they can't kill small human beings. I don't see how that connects. Can you help me see maybe what I'm missing? And then all the other students turn around and look at Kelsey, and she says, well, sure, it sounds bad when you put it that way. I said, well, I didn't put it that way. You did. I'm just trying to see where you're coming from. So notice what I'm doing in this conversation. I'm connecting, and all I had to do was ask questions to get her to see what she believes and to see that maybe she hasn't fully thought it through. This can help in a wide variety of people that you're talking to. Maybe you're talking to a friend who's an atheist who says, oh, you went to your Steubenville conference? Well, I'm an atheist. Prove God exists. Oh, I went to that great Pat Madrid talk on the existence of God, but suddenly my mind is a blank. Like, he had all that great stuff, and it sounded so awesome when I was there. And now all I see is a tumbleweed rolling by. But instead, you can ask questions. Okay, so, well, can I ask you a question, though, about God? I just want to see what you think about all of that. So, do you believe in God? No, I don't believe in God. Oh, okay. Do you think there is no God? Or there could be a God, but maybe there's no good reason to believe in God. Nine times out of 10, they'll say, yeah, maybe there could be a God. I'm saying there's no good reasons to believe in a God. Okay, well, can I ask you another question? You say, there are no good reasons. What's the best reason you looked at? Like, I'm sure people, do people give reasons for God? Yeah, of course they do. Okay, well, of the reasons people give, what do you think is the best or maybe the least bad reason? And what's wrong with it? I don't know, they're all equally bad. Well, could you just pick one? I don't know, they're all, it's all just, you know, nonsense. Okay, well, I just kind of find it interesting. Like, if you're so confident there's no good reasons, why can't you even share one of those reasons with me? I'd be happy. Could I maybe send you a debate that I watched? You could maybe send in the debate I had with Alex O'Connor on The Existence of God, a lovely atheist from Oxford, a very nice chap. I'm gonna be debating him again at the end of August. If you wanna go to Matt Fradd's Pints with Aquinas channel, he's sitting over here. You'll hear from him pretty soon. Maybe, or this book maybe, and then maybe you could look at the reasons and come tell me what you think about them. The Protestant apologist, Greg Coakle, once said, when you ask questions, it takes you out of the hot seat and it puts you into the driver's seat of the conversation. Isn't that right? When someone's asking you questions, you feel like, oh, you got your grill, the third degree. But when you ask the questions, it guides the conversation where you want it to go. Now you're in the driver's seat, they're in the hot seat. Not to grill someone to make them uncomfortable, but I believe when we are in conversations with people, we should provide a comfortable level of discomfort to encourage them to talk. And then once we've reached kind of an impasse, to say, hey, if you ever wanna talk about this again, send me an email, give me a call. I'd love to be able to chat about it. I'll give you one more example that we can ask questions, what do you think, why do you think that? Let the person restate their view. And then we should try really hard when you've done this enough, when you've got practice, you can say, wait a minute, there's something they believe that undercuts their belief. It's self-refuting. Sometimes it's easy to pick up on. I was at a talk once and a guy stood up and he said, the reason you're wrong is because you think that there's absolute truth. You think everything's just black and white, but there is no absolute truth. If you think about it, do you see an inconsistency there? So then I just asked as charitably as I could, I just have one question, I don't mean to be snarky. Are you absolutely sure there is no absolute truth? And notice, because you could do it, you could turn up the snark and it's not pleasant. Let me ask you this, are you absolutely sure there's no absolute truth? That's kind of a jerk thing to do. I mean, it's entertaining to people. Are you not entertained? But tomorrow my friend Matt Frad will give a talk called How to Win an Argument and Lose a Soul. And what will God say? Hey, I'm so glad you got to have a nice laugh at that guy's expense and humiliate him so he never wants to hear about the gospel again. I don't want God to tell me that. That would put a real crimp in my day to hear God being mad at me, wouldn't it for you? We'll put that as a quote. But to say in a sense of like Colombo, gentleness, are you sure? That doesn't quite make sense to me. I was once at Balboa Park in San Diego and we were doing a documentary about people not liking the Catholic church. So we asked people what they disliked about the church the most. A very pleasant afternoon. 90% of the people, it was issues of sexual ethics. 90% of them. One guy said, I don't like the Catholic church because it says gay people can't get married. I think that's unfair and unjust and that's why I don't like the Catholic church. Now what do you do? Remember when you ask questions, what do you think and why do you think that? It takes you out of the hot seat and puts you into the driver's seat. So I said to him, I'll call him Craig. Craig, can I ask you a question? So you're mad at the church because it won't let gay people get married. Yeah, that's right. What is marriage? Like when you use the word marriage, what do you mean by that? Well, marriage is when two people get married, right? You know, it's when it could be a man and woman, two guys, two girls, I don't care. It's two people getting married. All right. And you think it's bad the church won't listen to that. Yeah. So then I thought a little bit more about that and I asked him a question. I said, Craig, I've watched documentaries about a guy who's legally married to one woman and spiritually married to three other women. All five of them would like to be married. Now it's interesting, in the Bible, Jesus is very clear a man cannot have two wives. If you remember in the scripture where he says that in the Gospel of Matthew, he says, no man can serve two masters. No, I'm just, we'll just leave it right there. He's very clear, you can't have two wives. So I said to him, well, I know these five people get married. He said, well, that's not marriage. Then you have to pull it together. I said, well, Craig, help me to understand where you're coming from. You don't like the Catholic church because it says that marriage just is a man and a woman. So two men or two women, that's not what marriage is. So that can't be a marriage. But you say marriage is two people. So this group of five people can't get married. When you say this is what marriage is, so this union is not a marriage, aren't you doing the same thing you don't like about the church when it says this is what marriage is, so this union is not a marriage? Aren't you doing the exact same thing? And you thought about it for a minute and I kid you not, this is what he said. I know this is a double standard, but it's my double standard, so it's okay. And I said, well, here's my email. If you ever want to talk about it, be happy to do that. Here's some other resources. Because here's the thing, when we talk to people, we can't expect conversion right on the spot. It takes time. Some of you who are converts or reverts, how long did it take you? Months, years, decades? But the goal is to be able to walk along with someone through that process. Our goal is not to win arguments, though that is helpful. Our goal is to really just plant a seed, put a pebble in someone's shoe, so it rattles around in their head, that conversation, that question that Catholic asked them that they're still bothered by. And that plants the seed. Now, a lot of us are scared to be in these conversations. There's three words we don't want to utter. I don't know. We don't want to look foolish or silly or ignorant. So, if you're in a situation, maybe someone will use this technique on you. What do you think? Why do you think that? And you'll want to say, I don't know, but I don't want to be in that situation. Instead, you can say, that's a really good question. And I want to think about it more. And I want to go look at other people who've done even more work on it so I can get you a really good answer. Could I call you or email you? That's really good. I want to think about that more. Because in our conversations about the most important issues, it's not a race, it's not a boxing match, it's journey. We're all walking there together and we want to always be able to accommodate people so that we're not fighting toe to toe, we're walking shoulder to shoulder. So what I would like to do now is I would like to have a little fun and a little bit of audience participation. We're going to get the microphone up here. We should have an attendant to be able to walk around with it. I want to try to model this approach with you. If you have a volunteer, any volunteers would like to. I would like you to take on the role of a critic of Catholicism. Maybe you're an atheist, maybe you're a Protestant. Maybe you disagree with a moral teaching of the church. And I'll ask you, what's your objection to the Catholic faith? Or what do you think of Catholicism? My goal is I'm going to try to respond to you using these methods, but only by asking questions. So I'm going to try to show you using this method and try to set aside what I've learned as an apologist over these years and show how you can use this method in conversation. So let's see, we've got the microphone. Who would like to try to voice an objection? And it could be maybe one you've heard from a friend or a family member. Let's see, I think we have some individuals here in the back. And we'll try to go through a few. And I will ask each of you, what do you think about? And we're going to role play. You're going to take on that role. Feel free to stand up. Go ahead and stand up. And so, sir, what do you think about Catholicism? I want to know why the Catholic Church is always focused on abortion and not immigration in the environment. That's what turns me off. Okay. Why, what makes you think that Catholic, so you're saying you feel like the Catholic Church focuses too much on the issue of abortion and not on things like immigration? Yes. Okay. Do you think every issue deserves equal attention? Yes. Every issue? You're dealing with human life and you're dealing with our world. So yes, I think these are issues of equal weight. Mm-hmm. What do you think is the wrongness of abortion? Do you think abortion is a moral wrong? So a woman's right to choose. Okay, so that's interesting. So your concern is not so much inconsistency. You would, would you rather have the Catholic Church deal with immigration and not with abortion? No, you just deal with them in an equal way. You seem to put more emphasis on one than on the other. Do you think the Church should try to help make abortion illegal? Tolerated. Excuse me? Tolerated. Okay, can I ask you another question? What is abortion? So a woman's right to choose. Right to choose what exactly? Well, if the Church looks at its conception, but this early beginning of maybe a child, I don't think they have the right to tell me what to do with it. Okay, so the right to choose to do maybe a child, what thing are you talking about? Like, are you talking about a pregnancy? Well, that's what, to be the start of it, yeah. What's the difference between someone who's pregnant and not pregnant? Well, it depends on how far along they are. Right, what does it mean to be pregnant? Well, there's some indication that there's a beginning of life. What kind of life? Oh, hopefully human. Have you ever heard of someone being pregnant with life that's not human, like a dog or a cat? You look what's happening in China, it's a possibility. All right, why don't we, we'll put a time out right there. Thank you, sir. Let's pass them, let's find our next volunteer and let me. But what is some things that you noticed even our, and I was appreciative for our volunteer showing an appropriate level of feistiness, if you will. But notice in my response, I did not try to make a lot of declarative judgments back. I sought to really understand him, where he's coming from, and notice what I, in asking questions, I helped to understand his position I could have misunderstood, because I could have thought he was against abortion morally, but he feels politically things should be treated equally. But in finding out he thinks abortion is not a moral wrong, I move the issue in the dialogue to what's more pressing to talk about, not the prudential judgment over where the bishops should allocate their resources, but is abortion right or wrong? That's the more important conversation, and the more fruitful one to have. So when you have conversations, it's better to move away from areas of politics or prudent judgments of prudence to what's true about our faith and the main big moral issues. All right, let's try our next one. I don't believe that the Catholic Church is true because Catholics worship Mary, and I believe we're called to worship one God alone, nobody else. Why do you think, what makes you say Catholics worship Mary? They're bowing down to her all the time and putting things in front of statues of her and treating her like she is more important than Jesus. What makes you think, well, do you see Catholics bowing down before statues of Jesus? It seems like they treat Jesus as pretty important, too. Well, I don't think they should be treating them the same. Jesus needs to be more important. Okay, so it's not that Mary's more important, it's that Mary and Jesus shouldn't be given the same worship. Yes. Okay, so what do you mean when you say worship? Like, what is worship? Worship is giving the highest possible honor like that you would give to your God. Okay, well, as a Catholic, what's like the highest, most important thing a Catholic could offer God or anyone? Their lives. What do you think the purpose of the mass is for? Like, what happens at a, do you know what happens at a Catholic mass? I'm not too familiar. Okay, have you heard about the sacrifice of Jesus being offered to the Father that the mass is for Jesus? I think so. Okay, I feel bad here. I'm starting to stray away from just my asking of questions to give a theological explanation, which can be helpful. Let me see if I can try just a few more questions here. Do you, what kind of, let me ask you this. What kind of respect do you think the Virgin Mary should, do you think the Virgin Mary should be respected? Well, yes. Okay, do you think the Virgin Mary should get more respect than just other people? Well, I don't know. I think she was human like the rest of us. Do you think she played an important role in salvation history? I mean, I suppose. Why would you say that? She was the mother of Jesus. Is Jesus God? Yes. So if Jesus is God, would it be fair we can call Mary the mother of God? Yeah. Let's, do you think that the mother of God would deserve, we shouldn't worship, we shouldn't put the mother of God above God, but it sounds like we agree she should get a decent amount of respect or veneration. Yeah. Okay, so I think we agree we should venerate, have respect for the mother of God, but not treat the mother of God as if she were equal to the Father, Son, or Holy Spirit. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay, but it sounded like you were, are you concerned about things like statues or bowing before someone? It just seems like there are some Catholics out there that go beyond venerating Mary. It seems like they're worshiping her like they worship God. Do you think we should judge a religion based on its best teachings or its aberrant practices? The best teachings. Okay. And then, well, why don't we put a time out right there. Thank you so much for that, for your addition to that. All right, let's, we'll try some more. This is fun, see, this is fun. Giving talks can always get kind of old. You feel like an audio animatronic. Having these live discussions like this I think is very fruitful. But notice there, also when I ask people questions, I try very hard to find common ground with the person. And also to shift the disagreement. So notice, and what was your name? Kimberly. So notice Kimberly started with Catholics worship Mary more than Jesus. And I said, well, and then in our discussion she conceded, well, maybe not more, but equal. And I don't like that. Okay, but should we give Mary some veneration? And so there, part of this when we ask questions and give examples, sometimes our best goal in a conversation is to make something intelligible. We may not fully convince a person, but they might say, okay, that makes more sense to me. And to clear up misconceptions. And of course, I've got some hands tied behind my back. I would give some theological explanations here. But notice that any of you could ask questions like that, right? There's nothing I ask that's beyond what anyone would say to understand, well, why do you think we do what we do? Let's try another one here. Let's see, who do we, how many mics are floating right back here? Okay, here we go. Hi. So I don't understand why the Catholic church isn't allowing gay and lesbians to be part of the church or why they think it's wrong. Love is a good thing, so why can't they just love who they want? Okay, let me ask you a few questions. And first, my name's Trent. What is your name? Jami. Jaleen? Jami, like put on your Jammies. Okay, Jammies, I love it. Jami, let me ask you a question. You said the Catholic church doesn't let gays or lesbians be a part of it. What do you mean? Like the Catholic church says like they can't even enter the building. What do you mean by that? Yeah, they don't really let them take part in communion and they just really like just say that they can't live the life that they wanna live. When you say they can't live the life they wanna live, are you talking about like the church is saying there's a specific behavior? Like what part of their lives is the church saying that they can't do? Well, they can't get married, they can't love the people, like the man or the woman that they love. If they feel like a man or a woman, they can't like dress like that person. Well, when you say they can't love that person, I'm not, where does the church say like they can't bring them their medicine if they're sick? Or does the church say like they can't help them if they're in a really difficult financial spot? Does the church say they can't love them in that way? No, but like one way to express love is through sexual union and the church says that they can't do that. Okay, so what you're saying is it's not that the church is saying they can't love each other, but you're saying that the church has said they cannot engage that two men or two women can't engage in sexual behavior with each other and you think they should be able to do that and that's kind of the beef you have with the church. Is that, am I getting that right? Yeah, I mean, what are they doing wrong? It's the privacy of their bedroom and they're not hurting anybody. They're just loving each other. Well, can I ask you a question? What is sex for? Pleasure. Okay, so do you think sex is totally normal as long as it's consensual and for pleasure? It's fine. Yeah, I mean, it's just a way to express how much you care for someone and seek pleasure. Well, can I ask you a question? Would you have any problems with, let's say, two family members expressing love for each other in that way or like an adult and a child? Do you think that sometimes sex, if it's just for pleasure, it seems like there's sexual behaviors that are pleasurable for people but we agree that they're wrong, right? Yeah. Okay, so and you're saying it's only for pleasure? Well, I mean, I don't understand why they can't. Like they're just saying I love you in a physical form. Sure. Is there a limit to how many people you can? And it's consensual. Sure, could I ask you a question? Can we love lots of people? Yes. Sure, okay. Let's say a married couple, the husband wants to show his secretary how much he loves and appreciates her. Would it be wrong to have sex with her? Yes, it would be wrong. Well, but if sex is just for pleasure, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is what's the big deal. You know, like what's the big deal? I don't get what you're saying. Well, why is it wrong? If he's just doing something pleasurable, why should his wife care? Well, I don't mean to box in, what I'm saying is it seems like sex is for something more than pleasure to me and so if it's for something else, if we misuse it, like I think, would you and I agree, misusing sex can be a really bad thing? Yeah, absolutely. So in order to know how it's being misused, do we have to figure out how to use it the right way? Yeah. Okay, so what I'm trying to listen to your understanding of what sex is for, it sounds like the use under your view would lead to a lot of misuse. I think sex is for something more than that, so why don't we do a timeout right there? So thank you, Jami, very much. Give her a hand, everyone, that was helpful. So notice a few things in that conversation. It's also very helpful when you ask people questions and you're having a dialogue to strip away the euphemisms as much as you can because what was the very first objection that Jami made? Anyone? They can't love each other. The church says these people can't love each other and sometimes we kind of let that stand or we use that language, but that's not true. And so, or people will say in the other example earlier, women should have a choice. I don't think women should have that choice. Well, I mean a choice for what? It's very helpful and notice in a reserved help me kind of way, I'm saying, okay, well, you're talking, I think, not about love general, but you're talking about something very specific. Then when we talk about something specific, I try to get to something I call a key question. So in that case, we're talking about sexual morality. I'm asking her if someone says a certain behavior is right or wrong and they disagree with the church, sometimes instead of saying, here's why the church is right on this, I might ask them, well, wait a minute, let's look at your worldview, your sexual ethics. How do you know what's right and wrong with sexuality? And if you can't coherently say that's what is normally understood to be right or wrong with sexual morality, and I feel like your sexual ethics is very shaky, maybe something you shouldn't trust. Maybe mine makes more sense of the world. Bad news before good news. Let's try one last one. Yes, right over here. Well, I've got a bunch of Catholic friends that are saying that churches just knock out enough priests. So I don't understand why priests can't get married if that seems to be what other Protestant religions do. Have married ministers. I mean, and yet they seem to also talk out of both sides of their mouths since there are married priests in the Catholic church. Okay, let me ask you a question. I'm Trent, by the way, what's your name? Mark. Mark. So Mark, you have Catholic friends but you're not Catholic. No, I'm Catholic too. Okay, so you're just wondering about the teaching on celibacy? I'm wondering why priests can't get married. When there are married priests in the church. Why do you think they can't get married? I don't know. Do you think there might be some benefits if priests in the church do not, do you see some benefits of priests not being married? Oh, sure. Like what? Well, they don't have to answer to two masters. Ha ha. First Corinthians chapter seven. First Corinthians seven. The unmarried man is anxious. The unmarried man is anxious to please the Lord. The married man is anxious to please his wife. Then I digress there. Okay, so you see there could be some benefits but do you think the benefits don't outweigh what you think are the cons? Well, I guess I look at it more simply and say why are there married priests in the Catholic church, and then why does the church say priests can't get married? Do you think priests should be like Jesus? Sure. Did Jesus ever have a human wife? Not that we know of. So it sound like if priests don't get, so Jesus just spends his whole life serving the body, right? Yes. So if a priest were to not get married and spend his life serving the body, it seems like he'd be acting a lot like Jesus, right? Yes. So maybe it's a good thing to have priests act like Jesus in that way. I think that's true, but that wasn't really my question. My question then is, but there are priests that are married, aren't they also serving the body? Sure, and then we'll put a time out right there. Now that's actually correct. And so here this would now notice we've clarified the conversation. If Mark had said that he was Protestant, I might have asked him, if the church changed its teaching on celibacy, would you become Catholic? And then if he said, yeah, maybe it would be an interesting conversation, but in many cases they'd probably say no. That's also helpful when you have these conversations, when you ask someone, if someone says I'm mad about X, I disagree with X. Sometimes it's helpful in a conversation to say, if the church changed its teaching on X, would you become Catholic? Nine times out of 10 they'll say no. And so for example, women priests is a great one. If the church allowed women priests, would you have any problem with Catholicism? Well, would you agree with every other single teaching of the Catholic faith if women priests were ordained? No, because then there's contraception, abortion, homosexuality. Sometimes it's helpful when we have these discussions and someone raises an objection, we can say okay, sometimes I offer that as a test. If they changed X, would you be totally on board with everything the church teaches? A lot of times by asking in that way, it's helpful to get away from the side issues and get to the main issues, which is authority. Who is the ultimate authority? Is it God? Is it the church he established? Or is it you? And that's something we always have to ask ourselves too, to be able to humbly serve. Are we the ultimate authority? Or are we going to allow God to be that and to operate in that way through the church that he established? So I'm very grateful that you all are here. If you would like to learn more about this method, I haven't written a book on this one yet. There's a book called Tactics by Greg Kokol. He's a Protestant author, but a lot of the skills in there might be very helpful, the method that I've been describing here. You can also go to Catholic.com and listen to our Catholic Answers Live radio shows. If you listen to me on there, engaging with Protestants and atheists, you'll see the method in action and you'll kind of see how I engage you. Although I often include theological explanations, but I try to make about 70% of my replies questions to find out what people think, why they think that, where we can agree and how we can shrink the disagreement. So I'm very grateful that you all are here and I hope you all enjoy the rest of your time here at the conference.