 Well, I have time to speak today about something I know a lot about and that's the I was there Message I want to share with you about what we've seen and roughly the last 40 years in the world of apologetics I was thinking last night how many of these events I have spoken at and although I don't know exactly the number I think it's 22 23 times the very first Defending the faith conference I attended and spoke at was in 1990 in this building wasn't even here We spoke down in the JC William Center And it was all about the occult and new age and I don't remember now what I spoke about but as I was thinking the difference between even 1990 and 2023 the things that concerned us then are not typically the things that concern us now and Many of the things that concerned us now. We're not even things people Could conceive of and I'll talk about a few of those things as well In fact, I mentioned a deacon Harold before I came up here How grateful I was that he talked about some of these big picture issues Like in vitro and other issues that I'll talk about because it helps introduce some of the Things that I have seen along the way that I want to share with you Now I was raised Catholic just a few things about my own background to give you a sense. I was raised Catholic I'm oldest of eight children And I remember even when I was growing up that there was something different about my family and that is that we We we lived the faith in our home and my parents without really saying it to us They showed us that being Catholic being a follower of Jesus Christ Involved all aspects of life and even though I didn't live up to that You know from time to time in my life as most of us tend to wander here and there it certainly helped me Maintain a clear identity that I belong to the Lord. I'm a follower of Jesus. I am a loyal son of the church And as I look back on it now, I see how unusual that was I'll give you another example of what I mean here all these years later Not a single one of my siblings ever left the Catholic Church all of them remain Catholic Church going Catholic and I don't say that To to brag about my parents although I am very proud of them for doing what they did But they did something that got lost in Translation for many other people and I've spent most of my life trying to figure out. What was it that they did? how did they do this in a way that so many other families were not as fortunate and Chances are there's some pain even in your own family of family members who have left the church No longer pray no longer believe in God things of that nature When I was in high school, I think I knew of an atheist But I didn't know who he or she was I'd never met him and I never really thought of atheism as a thing It never occurred to me that there would be whole groups of people who just don't believe in God anymore And of course look at how much time how things have changed in that period of time When my mom and dad were growing up the world was different so my parents went to sock hops in the 50s they got married in 1958 and Their world was different in so many respects from the world that I grew up in in the 1960s and into the 70s And it wasn't just in terms of the social upheaval that took place in the 1960s We know all about the assassinations John F. Kennedy Robert F. Kennedy Martin Luther King Jr. The race riots the Cold War the anti-war movement the drug revolution the proliferation of mass media and many other things besides that were like continuous earthquakes in society and In the middle of those upheavals the Catholic Church held the Second Vatican Council From 61 to 65 and In certain respects that too was a kind of upheaval and it was something that caught a lot of Catholics off guard Those of you old enough to remember those days as adults you have a clear memory of mine But I do remember some of that as a child and being a little bit perplexed and confused as to why things were changing But I just went with the flow. I just not in the sense that deacon Harold said of course I don't mean in that sense But I was going along with what I saw around me But it occurred to me over time that my parents generation and their generation they learned the faith they learned about Jesus They learned about what it means to Follow Jesus in a way that I didn't really get and it wasn't my parents fault And it was through osmosis the way they received it because the world was relatively intact Relatively calm it doesn't mean that there weren't many terrible problems there were But there weren't so many social shocks to the system There weren't so many things going on all at once that created such upheaval and confusion So the same was true in the church You could go from one parish to the next parish to the next parish and you would see the same mass Celebrated the same way Maybe the preaching might be a little better at one parish versus another But you it was more or less the same everywhere you went there was a kind of continuity Among the Catholic faithful and parishes in those days And so you had a better chance and many people did absorb the faith By osmosis you just sort of Internalized it it became part of you became part of your identity By the time our generation for those of you who are in my age group by the time our generation came around You couldn't really do that anymore Because there was so much upheaval and so many conflicting voices and things that were going on So we didn't learn our generation didn't learn the Catholic faith in the same way and a lot It was lost in the translation. I Was very fortunate. I went to grammar school at the mission San Juan Capistrano in Southern, California Those of you who are from Orange County. I'm sure you know it. Well Beautiful old mission where St. Juniper O'Sara celebrated mass in the 1700s And I had the privilege and and really the great good fortune of Serving at the 7 a.m. Traditional Latin Mass every weekday before I would start classes My mom would bring me to school early and I was at the Latin Mass as an altar boy And then on Sundays at our parish. I was in What I have come fondly to refer to as a kind of happy-clappy kind of parish where it was anything But well, I had a mass in the morning utterly opposite of that and Yet I grew up with a sense of well This is still the mass the mass is the mass and people might prefer one version or another But it helped to deepen in my mind an appreciation for the mass as such Regardless of what the trappings and the aesthetics might be it was helpful to me But I noticed as I got older That many of my peers were falling away. I went to my eighth grade Class reunion and I don't remember how long ago it was now 10 years ago. Maybe more than that Well, that wasn't the eighth grade year reunion, but it was about 10 years ago that I went to the reunion and and I think eighth grade was you know 40 years in the past at that point. I Was the only Catholic there. It was a Catholic school all of the people most all the people who were there a couple had Passed away, but of our class of about 30 people. Maybe 2728 attended this class reunion. I was the only Catholic Everybody else at least to my memory. I don't remember Here maybe oh no, I take about there was one other girl then a woman now who remained Catholic And very devoutly so I do remember her but everybody else fell away and they had the same education I had they went to mass where I went to mass They had the same Baltimore catechism they had all those same things and yet it didn't stick for them And I don't entirely know why but I do think going back to what my parents did is that they didn't have a chance to Live as a Catholic a follower of Jesus as if it were their identity, which it should be for all of us so now we have my generation growing up having children and Across the board there is less to give to the next generation because our generation my generation Didn't receive as much. I think you follow my logic here, right and then my children's children generation We have now 28 grandchildren. So the oldest of whom is now married. I cannot believe that it's just Impossible to imagine but soon enough. I'll be a great grandfather. I don't know how that happened, but Even less now it seems is able to be passed on so I'm setting the stage here Because I don't want to depress you, but I want to say here is the situation that we find ourselves in what do we do about it? What's the hope and encouragement in the middle of all this? so back in 1983 I was married. I had a couple of kids I'm still married and as you know, we have 11 kids Nancy and I My hair then was entirely dark So I've learned a lot over the years about human physiology In fact, I've learned to appreciate Proverbs 20 verse 29 quite a bit It reads the glory of young men is their strength, but the beauty of old men is their gray hair The world was different then when I met Scott Hahn for the first time in 1989 Yeah, it was 89 The delivery system to get his talks into the hands of people. I'm sure you remember it the good old cassette tape Thankfully we weren't handing out big clunky eight track tapes. You know here's a Scott on eight track tape We had moved beyond that but it was you know the millions upon millions of cassette tapes that were in circulation there And it was a good sturdy delivery system, but that was about all we had there were no websites There were no means of distribution on apps or anything like that all the things that we take for granted today in terms of technology We have so many options now to share and spread the faith and I'll return to this theme in a few minutes I'd like to share some suggestions on how you can bring some hope and encouragement into the lives of people who may be Floundering people, you know who have lost their way, or they no longer believe in God I've got some things that I've learned along the way that work very well Of course in those days the internet didn't exist So whereas today on my radio program if somebody calls in needing a particular kind of Article or a tract maybe or something that could be available to them Instantaneously I can now refer them to the Catholic Answers website Catholic comm and say here's where you can instantly download this or you can Print it out and send it to your friend. We didn't have those opportunities in those days There were no apologetics conferences in 1983, which is just a few years before I began my work at Catholic Answers I didn't begin my work there until early 1988 But in those days there was there were virtually no books that were apologetical in nature I recall when I was growing up the summer between my junior and senior year of high school I was going out with this lovely girl who happened to be from a very staunchly Protestant family and they were very nice to me they would come I would come to her house and they would feed me and There's a swimming pool that was nice But there was also her father who was very adamantly concerned about my salvation and he told me right up front He said, you know no offense or anything, but you're not a Christian and I said of course. I'm a Christian I'm a Catholic. He said that's the problem Catholics aren't Christian and I said well, what are you talking about and in over the course of the next month or so every time I would go to her house her father Made it his business to to try to take me out of the Catholic Church And he was raising a lot of different arguments I had never heard before and I had never read any apologetics books that I that I could go to So thankfully my mom and dad had some apologetics books in their in their library But they were old books from like the 1920s and before that One that really helped me that summer was radio replies It's a three-volume book written by two priests one in Minneapolis and one in Australia and they would receive challenging Eat or not they were not emails They were challenging letters that were written Challenging some aspect of the Catholic faith and they would read the challenge on the air and then respond to it And then all of those responses were compiled into these three volumes known as radio replies Well, I would come home and tell my father about the challenges I was getting from this girl's father and he said oh no problem And he would pull books down off the shelf and he would say the answer to that question is in this book He didn't tell me where it was in the book I had to find it for myself But it was a great benefit to me that those kinds of materials were available, but they were very few of them There were no conferences like this. There were no Huge amounts of books that had been written as they have been now So it was like in inventing the wheel all over again when I was working at Catholic Answers in their early 1988 Because we didn't have much of anything to do. We had to produce it as we went along And I thank God to this very day that one of the biggest things that came out of the Catholic Answers in the broader Catholic apologetics world at that time was Scott's conversion testimony How many of you have actually heard or watched on YouTube Scott Hans conversion testimony? I'm glad to see that most of you have but for those of you who haven't You need to listen to this and it's available on YouTube because it was electrifying It was unbelievable that this this very articulate knowledgeable Protestant minister had become Catholic first of all that in itself was such a great surprise But also the way in which he very calmly explained his reasons for becoming Catholic in the space of one hour It revolutionized the minds and the hearts of countless Catholics I know because I was one of them and I saw how this began to grow and gain momentum And this is one of those things that was so so strikingly different than compared to now and that is In those days the number one problem that most Catholics seem to have at least those that would Write into us at Catholic Answers or attend an event or something was the biblical case for the Catholic Church That was the burning issue and some of you here remember that I'm sure How do I talk to my brother-in-law who thinks that we worship Mary? Or how do I explain the Eucharist or purgatory or how do I talk about the papacy or what about the Mary and doctrines like Mary's perpetual virginity or her immaculate conception it was palpable how Excited and happy my fellow Catholic brothers and sisters were when they suddenly now started getting Materials on cassette tape tracks the books that began to be written Scott and Kimberley's Rome Sweet Home, which was their first book explaining in book form their conversion the surprise by truth phenomenon it Was it was like water in a hot desert people were so thirsty for it and so We were very busy Providing writing preparing these materials so that the Catholics who needed to know how do I explain my faith? Biblically, how do I how do I demonstrate that? Constantine was not the one who started the Catholic Church in the early 4th century things of that nature How do we disprove the notion that the Catholic Church in the mass and the Eucharist and so many Central things about the Catholic Church are just simply holdovers from paganism How do we demonstrate that Well, it was being done in places like Catholic Answers at that time in other places as well That was Catholic answers just happen to be one of the ones and I was associated with them So we were very often invited to do debates And it was always on the Catholic Protestant thing and people would turn out in droves It was amazing. I remember one time the founder of Catholic answers Carl Keating he was challenged to do a debate with a Protestant sect from the Philippines and it was to be held at a large high school and when we got there It was like an hour before the debate was to start There were already over 2,000 people waiting in in the gymnasium for this and by the time the debate started There were over 3,500 people there because they wanted to see a debate on the Bible between a Catholic and The representative of this group. It was astonishing so debates were very popular and As time wore on I began to discern that this challenge that the Catholic Church at least in the United States this challenge that the church was experiencing and the the need for good solid biblical and historical answers was being met and Met not just adequately but being met abundantly to the point where I Wondered in the 90s maybe the late 90s I began to wonder if maybe had it run its course Had it served its purpose and now like all things eventually Maybe this will fade away and I was pleased to see that not only did it not fade away Catholic apologetics But it got stronger and it had to go into new territory because the next big thing that was coming that I didn't see I don't think any of us saw it at the time. I didn't see it in the 80s But the next big thing was atheism and The huge challenge that the new atheists began to present to believers in the form of their books Richard Dawkins book the God delusion Sam Harris Daniel Dennett Christopher Hitchens They came on in force and they seem to be everywhere They were doing YouTube videos. They had websites blogs books. You name it They were doing it. So I thank God that the apologetics movement that I saw sort of rise spontaneously from nothing or so it seemed in the the mid to late 1980s Now we had something there and people were not only able to get material and resources from these apologetics Organizations, but they had by that point learned to some extent how to do apologetics They had learned that one should do apologetics if called upon And as you know, St. Peter said always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you But do it with gentleness and respect So it's not just what you say in response to a question or a challenge It's just as important if not more so how you say it One of the things I've noticed on my radio program I'm on from 9 to noon Eastern on relevant radio And if you don't have a relevant radio station near where you live You can always download the relevant radio app and lend listen at your leisure But one of the things that I've noticed over the years and this is to me is another one of those changes in the in the issues And how we responded to those issues in the early to mid 1980s versus now is How I've got how I go about apologetics in those early days I will confess to you that I was I Was aggressive or at least I could be aggressive especially in debate mode because there was a certain kind of you know Cage fighter mentality or combat mentality and it shouldn't be that way But you can't help but play to the audience at times At least that was a failure that I detect now as I look back on some of my own Efforts in that regard not that the material was necessarily a problem But when you present it in an aggressive way an adversarial way It might be pleasing to the people in the audience who are there to root for your team But it doesn't have as much effect as it would and does when you adopt a more Serene and and reasonable approach I don't want to give you the misimpression that I was you know constantly Aggressive or anything like that, but the tone I could see now could have been a little less edged So one of the things I noticed on the radio program is how many people they write in emails or they'll call into the program I don't have guests. I don't do interviews. It's just commentary for three hours and talking to you If you call me on the phone We talk on the phone and it's amazing to me as I consider the changes that have taken place in the last 40 years or so How true it is that people respond to as Deacon Harold was saying and as Kimberly was saying after Deacon Harold's talk to speak the truth in love To present the truths of the faith in a way that is not combative Not adversarial and people love that so much so That they're willing to listen to it and even if they don't believe in it if they don't even necessarily agree with it They're at least listening and thinking about I got an email last night In my hotel room and it was from an agnostic who says, you know I'm an agnostic but I listen to your program every day And he said one of the things that I really appreciate about these kinds of programs is that you present the material even though I don't agree with it. You present it in a way that is reasonable So that's for me personally at least one of those lessons that I've learned over the years from the mid 1980s until now We see now in the ways that the world has changed things like the internet things like technology So we have apps we have websites we have ways of delivering this information that we didn't have before One thing that I met with all the time is the anguished parent who says my son no longer believes in God And what do I do? What do I tell him? How do I convince him to believe in God? And I don't have the answer for that. I wish I did I'd share it with all of you And we could all go out and bring everybody back to their faith in God But one thing I do know that really does work and that is I suggest go to the the YouTube channel for the The Thomistic Institute which is an enterprise by the Dominican friars of the eastern province and They produce Aquinas 101 videos which are typically about seven eight minutes long And they take a specific topic like why should I believe in God or things of that nature and they break it down There's some illustration that's very well done and my advice to parents This is my advice to you is to grab the link to this video and just text it to your son or daughter Or friend or family member the person that you would like to see Helped in the area that they need help in because everybody is looking at their phones anyway And if you text a link to somebody that's got YouTube on it, you know, they're gonna click it You know, they're going to watch it and if the video is short and sweet as these ones tend to be The likelihood of them watching it is quite high St. Francis de Sales back in the the 1600s He used the social media and the modern technology of his day which in those days was known as the printing press and one of the things that made him so effective in his effort to Re-evangelize the Calvinist folk of the area around Geneva where he had been Given the care of that area as a priest first and then eventually as a bishop what he did was he would compose Responses to the kinds of arguments that were being raised Especially by Calvinist folk he would compose the Catholic response with the Bible verses and all that and then he made use of the printing press to print up hundreds or even thousands of little leaflets that had the responses and then he would quietly go door-to-door with his helpers and they would put these leaflets under the door so that in the morning when The family got up to get going they would find this little Catholic tract under their door and they would read it and Lo and behold by the time St. Francis de Sales died It's estimated that he had converted back to the Catholic faith over 60,000 Calvinist people who had a deep antipathy because they were taught to have a deep antipathy To the Catholic Church and he won them over With the truth because he presented it to them in a very non-threatening non-confrontational way That's one of the beauties of the modern technology that we have nowadays Technology is also a resource for us when it comes to explaining and sharing the faith I'm thinking about many different breakthroughs. I was talking with Jeff Kavens at dinner last night His wife Emily is and has I guess for many years gone to Israel and done Archaeological digs. I understand she's getting her PhD in biblical archaeology very impressive and He I asked him about a story. I had read in a scientific journal Maybe two three years ago and he knew all about this and that was that scientists have discovered recently That there was something that came from the sky a couple thousand three thousand years ago that obliterated What they discovered were the remains of a couple of cities just north of the Dead Sea Where the Bible says that Sodom and Gomorrah once stood and With the scientific tools that we have now they're being able to discover wait a minute Something happened here that turned the sand to glass Because it was so hot and I see in those kinds of scientific explanations Not approved necessarily of the things that the Bible says But at least it's solid evidence that tends to corroborate the things that the Bible says and more and more now We're seeing discoveries that are corroborating these things. There was a long time that went by when many scholars just assumed that Pontius Pilate didn't exist and In recent years they have discovered now certain artifacts one in Caesarea Mamertime on on the coast and the other one I'm forgetting where the other one is but They have the inscript. Oh, it was a ring. That's what it was. It was a ring bearing the inscription Pontius Pilate So little by little in terms of scientific discovery a lot of the things that earlier had been questioned are now being corroborated DNA Sticks out in my mind is one of the really big things now Perhaps some of you here are scientists or physicians and you know far more about DNA than I ever will But I've read and learned enough about it to understand that this is a tremendous tool When it comes to helping our current generation who no longer believes in God to reconsider this and to Try to explain try to account for what DNA DNA is and what it does There's a book if you care to read a book-length treatment of this It's called signature in the cell by Steven Meyer And he has his PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge University It's a thick book, but it's very informative and I benefited from it greatly and to summarize the takeaway that I have from this book It's simply that DNA stores information It transmits information It reads information and then it executes the information in terms of what are the What are the commands that this information is giving very much like computer software and This DNA issue is something that we didn't have All that long ago. In fact, it was in the most primitive of stages as I understand it in the early 1980s so it didn't occur to me or to anyone that I knew in those days to Assert the DNA example as an evidence for the existence of God or at least pointing to the existence of God because how do you get information? If it's just random blind forces of nature working endlessly and in an undirected manner on each other over eons of time how on earth could that produce for example an iPhone if if eons of time went by when natural substances and amino acids and lightning strikes and a dinosaur steps on it and more erosion and wind and rain eventually no matter how much time went by you could never come up with an iPhone and human DNA or for that matter DNA in general is seems to me at least far more sophisticated and far more meticulously designed for the purpose of growing limbs and eyes and ears and doing all the things that the body does the human genome project only began in 1990 and It's described as an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA So the more we go into this brave new world with all of its many challenges that didn't exist in the in the time Where everybody wanted to know how do I prove the Eucharist from the Bible? We now have by God's providence. I do believe new resources and tools to be able to help us in this area Some of the new challenges that we face. I Mentioned atheism a moment ago. I knew of an atheist when I was in high school. I didn't know any now It's hard not to trip over an atheist You know you walk ten feet you're gonna trip over an atheist because so many people now Have decided that they no longer believe in God And I believe that they're one of the key reasons for that is they never have heard the case for the existence of God They just don't know and maybe they stumble upon a book by Richard Dawkins or they see a video on YouTube And they are convinced by that We have a role to play in being able to give an answer to the reason for the hope that is in us when it comes to why we believe in God and Thankfully there are many many many resources now It's just like reaching down and picking up handfuls of diamonds and and and gold coins It's all right there waiting for us. We just have to pick it up and make use of it We didn't have those things in the early to mid 1980s. I'm so grateful. We do now we're dealing with the the age-old Problem of sexual rebellion but on a much grander scale now and it's celebrated in a way that never used to be Celebrated before this ties in not only with heterosexual Hedonism and the television programs and the movies and all the other ways in which this is glorified But it ties in certainly with the LGBTQ plus movement. I don't want to leave the plus off I'm not sure what it stands for but I want to make sure to leave it on there because as Time goes by more categories are added to this But this is an ideology that is is a steamroller and you know it as well as I do it has steamrolled its way through Academia it's at all levels of the school systems up to and including the the colleges and universities It's riddled throughout the government in many ways I never thought I would ever live to see the day when a gay pride flag was hanging in front of US embassies around the world next to the American flag But we're seeing that kind of thing now. We're seeing the way in which this ideology and other ideologies associated with it Are invading and colonizing and proliferating so we have to stand up against that Not in an angry way not in a defensive way But we have to speak the truth in love But the thing is is Kimberly said if we don't speak the truth they won't hear the truth so your role as a housewife a Grandma a Worker butcher Baker candlestick maker whatever it is you do and whatever age you may be You have a role to play in this it could be as simple as texting that link to a great YouTube video or The Patrick Madrid show or the Scott Han testimony talk on YouTube Don't hesitate to broadcast these seeds of truth Even if you say as many people I think find themselves saying I don't feel like I could say that I don't feel like I could explain this, but I know somebody who can Don't hesitate to broadcast these seeds of truth these seeds of encouragement Because you'd be surprised how many people out there are not even Aware of how close they are to embracing the truth if they could only find it somewhere family problems divorce in vitro fertilization These are all things that just Family problems existed in 1983. That's for sure divorce existed in 1983, but new birth technologies like in vitro fertilization Barely on the horizon medically speaking, but you didn't you didn't see this as a phenomenon Taking place. So how do we respond to things like that? Well Deacon Harold did a great job of explaining The fun the fundamentals of the purpose of procreation. I learned something with his use of the word matrimony I was not aware of that and these are little details that you can sprinkle into your conversations that can be very effective How about UFOs and aliens? That's a whole new thing now now there were UFOs reported back in those days But now you've got the federal government. You've got the armed forces publicly acknowledging. Yes, we have Evidence of UFOs and perhaps there are even bodies of aliens I was talking in the cafeteria in the lobby of the hotel yesterday evening with four ladies from Canada I believe and they were asking about aliens I said well, I'm gonna talk a little bit about that on my program not my program Well, this is kind of like a live program here. I guess but I said I'm gonna talk a little bit about that in my talk tomorrow morning And here's a little bit that I wanted to say about that. There is a real Concern Among a lot of people nowadays and all you have to do is look at the news aggregating websites or read some of the the main news Outlets on Twitter, etc. And you'll see that it's nearly a daily story now aliens aliens UFOs aliens Is there life out there? Are we are we communicating with somebody? Are they here? Have they crashed these kinds of things? This is a whole new challenge that we didn't have to deal with before at least not in quite the same way We're dealing with it now Because the government is saying that this is the case people are coming out and saying yes This is really a phenomenon. So it will happen Someday you're gonna turn on the television or you're gonna open up your browser and look at your favorite news station You're going to see a story That's going to say we have made contact with aliens. I'm certain of this I don't know when it'll happen, but I suspect it'll be sooner rather than later Don't let that shake your faith I'm not predicting that there are aliens out there. I'm just predicting that there will be a claim That will be made that there are aliens and it could be something as simple as a Microorganism found in the soil on Mars. Maybe it's something like that, but even that has the potential if Left unattended to shake the faith of people who will say oh well then I guess all bets are off then how can God exist if There's alien life And what about Jesus in the gospel and what about Jesus dying on the cross for our salvation? How does it fit with them? Some thinkers anticipated this 60 70 years ago CS Lewis did for example He wrote a trilogy of books that hide his strength out of the silent planet in Peralandra these were novels that he wrote anticipating what if we were to discover that there were races of creatures in the universe Who were intelligent like we are and in one scenario? They were unfallen like a whole race of unfallen Creatures like Adam and Eve would have been unfallen before their fall So it's not as though this is not a topic that hasn't been thought about before But the potential for people to lose their faith if somebody says we have discovered in an intelligent alien Or we have a spacecraft or something like that It should not shake your faith in the slightest even if it turns out to be true and I have my serious doubts personally I doubt but even if it turned out to be true because why because Jesus is the Lord of the universe and Everything in the universe whatever it may be everything. We're told in the epistle to the Hebrews and in John chapter 1 everything that exists came into existence through Jesus Through the second person of the Trinity So there's nothing in the universe that should shake your faith or anyone's faith if they believe in God Because all of this comes from God Now I recognize that there is a controversy here that there's no time for me to delve into but there's a controversy between those Who claim that so-called UFO activity is actually demonic activity and I've reviewed the arguments and Sifted through the case that's made for for this way of explaining it The other possibility is I suppose would be that these are in fact actual creatures that they're not demonic But in any case if it should happen that the current Concern about UFOs reaches a boiling point because there's a claim that there's UFO You should not bat an eye Because it would mean then that if these are creatures who have an intellect and a will Then they would need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ And the church would continue its business day in and day out as it does now The Steubenville conferences would continue Might even invite some aliens, you know What's it like? You know becoming Catholic when you came to earth, you know, it's one thing to be to Come a Catholic. It's another thing to come to earth to become a Catholic and We need to send a We should start beaming Scott Hans conversion testimony out into the universe non-stop just to prepare them so There are these challenges and and I could go on at at length talking about the changes that of that I've seen since the mid 1980s until now, but I would like to kind of conclude my remarks with something That is equally as true and that is the more things change the more things stay the same Human beings are the same today as they were 500 years ago at the Protestant Reformation as they were a thousand years ago 10,000 years ago human beings don't change our circumstances change our knowledge of the world around us Grows that's true, but human beings as such are the same and we respond to the same challenges the same Temptations the same doubts the same grace that God gives us The same being drawn by the father that Jesus speaks about those things don't change So I'd like to get just slightly counterintuitive in the remaining couple of minutes that I have and propose to you a Kind of meta solution to all these problems, whatever they may be We've seen them from the biblical issues to scientific issues atheism and the various permutations of that But since human beings are the same and we operate in the same way and we also have the same goal Which is union with God forever in happiness in heaven. That's our goal. That's what we're made for That's our purpose in life Or as the Baltimore catechism says in response to the question Why did God make me God made me to know him love him and serve him in this life So that I may be happy with him in the life to come amen. Is that true? Yeah So here's a little counterintuitive advice Talk about what Jesus talked about Talk about the four last things have death judgment heaven in hell Hebrews 927 says it's appointed to a man to die once and then the judgment So we're all gonna have an exit interview sooner or later You are going to have your exit interview and the Lord is going to have a lot of things to talk with you about I would prefer fewer bullet points on his clipboard than more honestly So I really want to live my life in a way that reduces the number of bullet points that we need to talk about in my exit interview But sooner or later it's going to happen. We all have to contend with the reality of death and the afterlife So especially in a time of great lack of faith people who deny the existence of God my advice And I've seen this work is talk about what Jesus talked about and you know what Jesus talked about more than anything else Was the danger of going to hell he talks more about that then Going to heaven which of course is why he came to save us for God So loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever would believe in him should not perish but have eternal life That's the essence of the gospel in a nutshell you could say and Jesus is promising us eternal life But he's warning us at every turn about the dangers that can prevent us from receiving eternal life lack of faith lack of repentance lack of compassion lack of forgiveness We could go down the list. So as you read through the Gospels, maybe re-read them with an eye toward how can what Jesus said Help you help other people. I really believe that if you Talk to them at least to some extent about well, what are you expecting to happen after this life is over? On your deathbed are you gonna say man? I wish I had played more video games or if only I had seen more TV shows No one's gonna say things like that So let's help them avoid the inevitable regrets that will happen by helping them to see the Jesus has a plan for you and he wants you to be happy He wants you to be happy with him forever in heaven and the alternative leads to slavery and death ultimately leads to hell and So speaking of hell, I'll share with you This little technique that I have found to be very effective some years ago a Long time ago in fact one of my sisters was living a very wayward life She was a young adult living a very very wayward life. She hadn't lived the Catholic Church, but she had just sort of Put God aside for a time and I was concerned about her But I couldn't figure out how to approach her With some encouragement to come you know come back to God So I had the bright idea that I would give her a copy of a book published by 10 books called the dogma of hell And it's a red garish cover. It's got a scary picture of the devil on the front cover very sinister And I thought well, I'd like to give her this book because it's all about what did Jesus say about hell It's primarily scriptural passages and mainly Jesus talking about hell And I thought well, I can't give her that because she'll be offended So I had a bright idea and I bought like 15 copies and I gave one copy on the dogma of hell to all of the adults in my family one Christmas morning and we were Picture the scene We were gathered around the Christmas tree and Nancy and I we had our kids and my mom and dad and my brothers and sisters including that sister and I said hey guys, I have a gift for all of you Would you just open it all at once please and they said sure so they're we're unwrapping the festive paper and The dogma of hell seriously you're giving me a Christmas present on the dogma of hell So I was sheepish about it kind of turned into a bit of a joke my sister knew what I was doing and About a few months later. She told me it could maybe six months later. She told me she said when I opened that She said I knew that you were giving the book to me and to no one else And I was really irritated and I was offended that you would do this how dare you give me a book on hell and I said well honestly I Was thinking that if you're going to go there you might as well know what it's going to be like before you get there. I Really said that to her But she had already read the book by then and she thanked me. She said it scared her straight She said I was reading this book and I was seeing what did Jesus say About hell and she said it changed her it converted her She hadn't left the church, but she had walked away from God And so she gave me a big hug and she said thank you because that might have been the only thing that could have gotten through to me So I told that story on the radio program Which is on from 9 to noon Eastern on relevant radio Get the relevant radio app. I told that story many times And I'll share one final story with you pertaining to that and this is a solution. Try it I have done it many times and it tends to work. I Don't know if they have a copy of the book in the bookstore, but you can get it readily online. It's called the dogma of hell It's a little book. It won't take you much time to read it so I got a phone call from a young woman a couple of years ago and She said I was you know, I was raised Catholic. I left the church I was living a kind of a party hedonistic lifestyle and My brother kept bugging me to listen to your program. He just kept badgering me listen to the program Listen to the program. I didn't want to listen to the program. I wasn't interested in God She said and she said one day she said I'll get him off my back. So she tuned in What was I talking about this little book on hell? She said she was so non-plus like what? But something about the story that I told you about my sister peaked her interest enough that she opened up the Amazon app on her phone and she ordered a copy and Now she starts to cry a little bit as she's telling me this on the radio. She said the book came the next day She sat down. She read it. She had a profound conversion She went to confession. She came back to the sacrament. She thanked her brother She called to thank me and she said it was all because of this this Reminder that in due time this life will end. What's next? Where are you heading after this now? We know the answer for those who love God We're going to heaven For those who don't love God we have work to do to speak the truth in love So even if it means you give somebody a book on hell I'm not saying give him hell. I'm just saying give you know give them a book on hell Even something like that can be useful in helping that person come home. Thank you so much and God bless you