 Good morning. Thank you, Scott, for taking me down memory lane. It's a good memory, and I'll embellish a little bit more and tell you a bit more than what Scott told you just now. It was in 1989. My roots and apologetics go back a little bit before that into about 1987. But in 1989, I was working at Catholic Answers, and I had a stack of papers with names and addresses and phone numbers of people who had been given a gift subscription to our newsletter. And for some reason, they weren't receiving the newsletter because of a bad address or something like that. So I was told I needed to call these people and figure out what the problem was. So I'm about halfway through the stack, and I dialed this number in Joliet, Illinois. And I hear this voice, hello. I said, hello. Can I speak to Scott Hahn, please? And he said, well, this is Scott Hahn. And I said, oh, well, hello, Mr. Hahn. My name is Patrick Madrid, and I work at Catholic Answers, and we have an apologetics newsletter that somebody gave you a gift subscription to, and we think you're not receiving it. And he says, no, I'm not, but tell me more. So I began to explain apologetics to Scott Hahn. I began at the beginning, and I said, well, apologetics is defending the faith, and that's what we do, and we talk to Protestants. And he said, well, I just happened to be a convert to the Catholic Church. I used to be a Protestant minister, and as Scott said, for about the next hour and a half, two hours, I didn't say very much at all, and I listened to Scott's story the very first time I've ever heard it, but not the last, by any means. And so Carl Keating, the founder of Catholic Answers, he walked by my cubicle about two hours into the conversation, and I put my hand over the phone. Scott didn't notice, because he was continuing to talk, as I put my hand over the phone. And I said, Carl, you gotta talk to this guy. He's a former Protestant minister, and he really understands apologetics better than we do, because, you know, he's dealing with it. And Carl said, no, I don't have time for it. I said, no, really, you gotta talk to me. He says, no, really, I don't have time. I said, no, really, you gotta talk to this guy. So, okay, so he goes in his office. Two hours later, he comes out, and sometimes I felt like maybe it was like Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, you know, one giant leap for man, giant leap for mankind. And I remember saying the words, Scott Han, meet Carl Keating. Carl Keating, meet Scott Han. And as they say, the rest is history. And all those things that have happened in the world of apologetics in the years since then have just been wonderful and marvelous in my sight, I hope, in yours as well. I'm here to talk this morning about the proven techniques that you can master in apologetics. And of course, there are various needs for apologetics. Why don't we first begin by just refreshing our memory on what apologetics means? It's a word, we get it from the Greek, apologion. It means to give a defense or an explanation. Now, I propose that when we do apologetics, it should never be in an angry way. It should be patient, it should be respectful, it should be kind. We shouldn't see the other person as an enemy, but rather as somebody, as Scott said last night, for whom Christ died. And so we have a duty to follow those two greatest commandments, the first is to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength. The second is to love our neighbor as ourself. So when we do apologetics, when we give reasons for what we believe and say, here's why I believe in God. You may not agree with me, but let me tell you why I believe in God. You're doing apologetics. It doesn't have to be complicated. It certainly doesn't have to be laden with deep theological explanations or lots and lots of scripture. Those things can be helpful, but they're not truly necessary, certainly not for the average person who just wants to share the faith, as my senior pope told us last night, to share your faith, share your story with other people. At times you will meet with objections, questions, even challenges, and so a little apologetics can go a long way. It's at the service of evangelization. So sometimes you will have conversations with people who don't believe in God. Apologetics can cover that group, so atheists. It can cover people who maybe are theists in some way. They believe in a God or gods, or they're at least religious in some sense. And then there are people who do believe in God. They believe that Jesus Christ is God, but they may not agree with some of the beliefs that you have as a Catholic. So apologetics, you might think of it this way, could be divided into three areas. The first would be what we call natural apologetics, which is dealing with the question, does God exist? And how can we make a case for the existence of God? The next level would be what is called Christian apologetics. Christian apologetics is when you make the case for Christ. Why should we believe that Jesus is God? What is the evidence for that? How do we explain that in a way that is intelligible to other people? And then when you're dealing with people who already believe in Jesus, they read the Bible, then we get into the territory known as Catholic apologetics. And Catholic apologetics is where you make the case for those aspects of Christianity that are particularly, peculiarly Catholic, like the Holy Eucharist, et cetera. So when you're engaged in apologetics, you may be using different techniques in any given scenario. I want to begin with two techniques that I hope you don't learn, or if you have learned, I hope you will unlearn them as I had to do myself. So of the nine different techniques, the first two are negative ones. And I share this with you from experience because I myself have fallen into them. I'm happy to say long ago, and I unlearned some of these techniques, but I share them with you by way of caution so that you don't fall into them yourself. The first is what I call the search and destroy technique. Now, I wrote a book called Search and Rescue, how to bring your family and friends into, or back into the Catholic church. And it's designed to take you from zero to 60 in the space of one book in showing you how you can begin the process of sharing and explaining, and when necessary, defending your faith if you're called upon to do that, but to do it in a way that is gentle and respectful. But when I first got started in apologetics, I was, and even before I got started in apologetics, I was an avid listener to a fellow on the radio named Walter Martin. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Bible Answer Man program, Christian Research Institute. It was a huge deal, especially on the radio waves in the late 70s and the early 90s. And Walter Martin, he's since gone on to his eternal reward. I actually met him in person and chatted with him briefly before, not when he died, but before he died, some months before he died. And as a Protestant, he was fascinating because he took apologetics to the level of theater. He was quick, he knew the Bible very well, he knew how to debate people very well, and he was theatrical in the way he did it. So it was almost like a search and destroy program where Mormons would call in, Jehovah's Witnesses folks would call in, sometimes Catholics would call in, but he always managed to skewer the person and make him look like an idiot. And people loved it. It was, I'm sorry to say this, but I loved it. It was like a gladiator combat, and I loved it. And I lived for those calls when the poor Mormon fellow or the poor Jehovah's Witness fellow would just feel utterly trampled and humiliated. And I didn't realize it at the time, but I was imbibing, I was assimilating into myself an attitude toward defending the faith that was very unhealthy because the goal was not to do what Jesus said, which is to love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. The goal was to see somebody get squashed and to enjoy it. And little by little over the years, I became aware of that and I realized, we can't have a search and destroy approach to apologetics as to be a search and rescue approach, which is a very different tenor. So I had to unlearn all the attitudes and even some of the techniques that Walter Martin would employ because as I became active in apologetics, 1987 into 1988, when I started working at Catholic Answers, I didn't even realize it, but one of the things that fed into it was because at that time Catholics were so starved for good apologetics information, there really was not much available at that time unless you went to dusty old tomes like the radio replies volumes, the three volumes set from Father's Rumble and McCarty, I think it was his name, Cardi was his last name. And in those books from decades and decades earlier, there were apologetics answers to questions, but nobody really knew that those books existed. So at that time in the 80s, there was very little by the way of information. There were few tapes, few books, that kind of thing. So Catholic Answers was engaged in this work of apologetics at a time when people were very hungry for it. So what I didn't realize at the time was Catholics also enjoyed seeing the Protestant arguments get squashed because it was relief for them. Like, okay, finally, after my brother-in-law has been clobbering me all the time with these arguments that I don't know how to answer, suddenly now I know how to answer them and the verve can become something worse than that, can become something more than that where you actually relish defeating the other person in a debate. So I had to unlearn that and it took me a while to do so. The second of our nine techniques, and this too is a negative one, is the, it's all about me technique. Here again, I confess I know what it's like because I've done it myself. Thankfully, I've outgrown that, but when I was younger and less aware of the effect that words and the way we speak our words, the effects that they can have on people, I actually appreciated the fact that people appreciated that I knew how to do apologetics. And so there is the danger of vainglory, of doing it for the applause or doing it for the nice letters or nowadays, you know, Facebook and Twitter, the likes and the retweets and things like that. And if I can offer any heartfelt advice, it would be if you detect even a little bit of that in your motives, doing it for applause, doing it for somebody to say, oh, that was really great, boy, you sure showed him, then seek to avoid that, seek to root that out because it poisons everything. And it will make it such that people won't even listen if you try to share the truth. You may have the right motive or the right answer, but I'm sorry, you may have the right answer, but if you have the wrong motive, they'll pick up on that. I'll share with you a story that happened to me many years ago. This was even before my time in Catholic Answers. So probably 1986 or thereabouts, I was working in a secular company and there was a very devout Baptist guy about my age and he was really into evangelism. He really wanted to convert people to his brand of Christianity. So when he found out that I was a Catholic, he really worked on me and he gave me all kinds of arguments about what was wrong with the Catholic Church and why I should leave the Catholic Church. And it was about that time that I myself was becoming more immersed in apologetics and I was learning some things. Partly I was learning them because he was challenging me and I didn't want to left his challenges go unanswered. So I would go and find the answers. And the more I became adept at using some of those techniques I was learning, the more I began to turn my guns on him. And I'll never forget one particular car ride. We had to go somewhere to do something for the company and we had about a half an hour ride in the car. And I just really went after him apologetically. In other words, I started pressing him on something like Sola Scriptura. Why do you believe in the Bible alone? And where does the Bible teach that and so on? And I was relentless and I was not very polite about it. In fact, what I was doing really was I was trying to do to him what he had been doing to me. And my discomfort in what he was doing to me previously came out as a kind of an anger on my part while I was turning things back around on him. So it got to the point where he was so flustered and so angry that he just shouted loudly. He says, shut up. I said, what do you mean shut up? He says, shut up. I don't want to hear that anymore. I said, but I thought you were interested in talking about the Bible. Yes, I am, but I don't want to hear it the way you're doing it. I don't want to hear it because you're not even listening, you're just quoting Bible verses. Now I didn't say to him, yeah, but that's what you were doing to me. But I realized that I completely slammed the door on any possibility that I might have an effect for the good with him because I was being obnoxious in the way I was doing it. I've never forgotten that. And I can still hear him shouting, shut up. And so sometimes when I'm tempted to maybe get a little more aggressive or a little more pushy, I hear him saying, shut up. And I think that might be the Holy Spirit saying to me, shut up, just cool it, okay? Third is the technique of finding common ground. And this is a great technique because you can find common ground with just about anybody. Now, if you're talking to Charles Manson or somebody like that, maybe you'll have a hard time finding some kind of common ground. I've never done that, but I would assume it wouldn't be very easy. But most of the time, almost always, you can find some kind of common ground with people and then build on that common ground. It's a great way to get started. So some examples here. Biblically, St. Paul said in Acts chapter seven, 17, rather, we were told that he was in Athens and he was visiting on the Areopagus. He was sort of grabbed and taken there. And he noticed that there were, on this one boulevard, there were many different shrines and temples dedicated to different gods. And he noticed there was one dedicated to an unknown God. So he's in the midst of paganism. He knows the one true God. Virtually nobody there, maybe nobody there knew the one true God in Jesus Christ, his son. And so St. Paul begins by finding some common ground. He says, men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription. To an unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, I proclaim to you. So I've always appreciated the fact that rather than go in with guns blazing and tearing them apart and telling them why their idolatry was so wrong, he began by praising them, hey, it's good, you're religious, and even better, I see that you at least have made room for an unknown God. Guess what? I'm gonna tell you who that unknown God is. And then he goes on to preach about Jesus. And as we're told, some people were willing to listen. Many people were not. And some people said, you know what? We'll come back and hear you again. We're not quite sold at this point, but we'll come back again. That is the perfect outcome when you're doing apologetics, is by finding common ground, give something to the other person to build upon. And you may not close the deal, more often than not, you won't. But by you're preparing the groundwork by finding the common ground, somebody later on, or five or 10 people later on, will be able to quote unquote close the deal, so to speak, because you had done your work by founding some common ground for that person to build upon. Also, if you're looking at an apologetics interaction with a Protestant, for example, the Bible is your common ground. And you can impress upon the other person, you know what? I realize we have a difference of opinion on how we interpret the Bible, but I love the Bible, I read the Bible, I take the Bible seriously, and I just want you to know that I appreciate the fact that you do too. So at least we have a common language that we can speak, and that is what God says in his written word. And although we may have a disagreement about what those words mean, I respect the fact that you love the Bible just like I do. It's kind of like what St. Paul did in the Areopagus, and you get things started on a good foot. If it's not a Christian, maybe you're talking to a Buddhist or a Hindu or somebody who says I'm spiritual, but not religious, well, you can find common ground with that person by acknowledging, you know what? I like you, recognize there's a higher power. There is somebody above me and above you, and isn't it great that we're aware of it when so many people nowadays deny it? And then perhaps you can begin building on that common ground by explaining why you believe in a particular God and who that God is. And let's say you're talking to somebody who doesn't even believe in God. So that person doesn't think the Bible is authoritative, doesn't care about that. That person doesn't think that Jesus is authoritative. He may think Jesus never even existed. Is there common ground? Sure there is. You can appeal to the person's desire to know the truth. Even if what he thinks is true is the exact opposite of what is really true, you can appeal to that and say, you know what? I appreciate the fact that you're a thinking person. I'd like to think I am too. And I, like you, am really serious about pursuing the truth. I really want to know what the truth is, don't you? Well, yeah, sure. And although I think I have the truth and I know you think you have the truth, don't you think we should be opened a new evidence if it should present itself? Yeah, so you found some common ground and you can build on that. It also keeps the conversation calm. You know how it is when somebody attacks your Catholic faith. Have you ever been in that position? And somebody just starts insulting or tearing down your Catholic faith, all of us because we're human beings and we have emotions, we begin to get irritated by that. And it's a natural phenomenon, but we have to fight against it as best we can to control that irritation so that it doesn't spill over and poison the whole conversation. Sometimes the most important part of apologetics is what you don't say when you're tempted to let fly. I know from experience. The next technique I call question authority. Maybe you've seen that bumper sticker, question authority. Now in modern parlance, I think most people who say question authority, what they mean is don't let the church tell you who you can have sex with. Don't let the government tell you how you can live your life, that kind of thing. It's sort of a challenge or almost a rebellion against any notion of somebody telling you that something's right or wrong. But I'm saying this in a very different sense. What I mean by question authority is question the other person's authority claims. What is it you believe, if you're talking to an atheist, what is your authority to believe that God isn't real? Well, some might say science. And you could say, well, if that's the case, how do you expect science to tell you whether or not God exists when, by definition, God exists outside of time and space, he's not susceptible to any instrument or way of measuring things, because science, of course, deals with pre-given realities that are material. So since God, if indeed he exists, because he's outside of time and space, if he exists, he's a pure spirit, he's not material. How on earth could science actually tell you whether or not God exists when that's completely out of the realm of what science is able to certify one way or the other? It's just a question. And by asking this question, you may get the person's thought process going along a different avenue that he may never have thought of before. When you're talking to Mormons, and I know that Mormons are not, you know, necessarily prevalent in every area, but in some places, if you're from Phoenix, for example, chances are you know some Mormons, you may live in a neighborhood with Mormons. One of the things that I've found is a very helpful way to engage with Mormons is they like to bear their testimony. They would have loved Monsignor Pope's talk last night. They would have loved it. They will say, when they conclude a discussion with you, they'll say, I testify that the Savior lives, and I know that the gospel is true, and I testify that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the true church, and they'll give a series of different points that they testify to, and then they say, and I seal my testimony in the name of Jesus Christ. So at first when that would happen, when I would talk to Mormons, I wasn't exactly sure what to do with that. So I figured out a handy technique and apologetics that has worked well for me, you can try it. When a Mormon gives me his testimony, and he goes through all those things, I believe that my Savior lives, I believe the gospel is true, et cetera, and then he says, I testify this in the name of Jesus Christ. Then I say, well, I testify that my Savior lives, I testify that the gospel is true, I testify that the Catholic Church is the one true church, I testify that Jesus Christ is truly present in the blessed sacrament, and I will give my own rendition in a Catholic sense, and then I say, and I seal my testimony in the name of Jesus Christ, and then I'll ask, did that convince you to become Catholic? No. Okay, so my testimony didn't prove to you that the Catholic Church is true? No. Well, neither did yours. Yours didn't prove to me that the Mormon Church is true. So what is your authority to believe that it's true? And the answers will vary. It could be Joseph Smith, could be the Book of Mormon, could be the interior witness of the Holy Spirit, they call it the burning in the bosom. There are any number of things that could be said, but by engaging in this thought process, you're getting the other person to at least consider that perhaps what he or she regards to be an authority worth heeding may not, in fact, be a legitimate or sound authority. Now here's where it gets interesting. A great deal of my work has been spent working in the area of apologetics with Protestants, with whom we have a tremendous amount in common. And invariably, what will happen is, especially when they find out that I'm a Catholic, is they'll say, oh, well, you know, you Catholics, you add stuff to the Bible. Or your tradition, you know, that that's condemned, don't you? Jesus condemns that in Mark chapter seven and Matthew chapter 15, traditions of men that nullify the word of God. Well, one of the things that I have found works very well and you can keep things calm this way, is just simply turn the question around and question the authority of your friend or the person you're talking to and say, well, what do you believe in that regard? Do you believe in going by the Bible alone? Yes, I do. Huh. So you believe that if somebody comes to you and says, believe this doctrine, and if this doctrine cannot be shown to you in the pages of scripture, if this teaching cannot be shown to you in the pages of scripture, are you saying that you're not going to believe it? Yeah, exactly. Oh, well then where is that teaching in the Bible? Just ask that question. Where is the teaching in the Bible that the only teachings you are to accept are those that are in the Bible? The answer is nowhere. Now, what's interesting is whenever I share this with the Catholic audience, the Catholics in the audience don't look particularly impressed by this. It's like, all right, whatever, please understand. When you're talking to a Bible-believing evangelical Protestant and you're trying to share your Catholic faith, this is a very helpful area to get into right away by you're not questioning the authority of the Bible. You're not questioning God's inspired word. What you're questioning is the way in which a person might say, I go by the Bible alone when in fact, that's an unbiblical doctrine. It's not in the Bible. It's nowhere even suggested in the Bible. And when Catholics understand this very simple technique, it can pay great dividends, not only in keeping the conversation focused, but also in helping the other person see. You know, this is actually a precept position that arose at the time of the Protestant Reformation. In terms of being a thematic or a systematized way of looking at Scripture, it really began to emerge in a thematic way at the time of the Protestant Reformation. You can see glimpses of it in various groups before the Protestant Reformation. But here is when it really got a name and it became known as Sola Scriptura by Scripture alone. So with a few basic apologetics techniques, you can help the other person see there may be something more to this than I realize. So one question is, where is that doctrine taught in the Bible? How about this one? I'll never forget a debate that I had with a guy by the name of James White. He is a reformed Baptist. He's debated, I don't know, a billion people, maybe more. And I did two debates with him. The first one was on the topic does the Bible teach Sola Scriptura? And during the cross-examination period, I think he thought this is where he was going to really get me because he said, Mr. Madrid, can you show us any tradition, anything that's not in the Bible that is necessary for us as Christians, that we must have that's necessary, even one thing. And I think he was expecting me to say something about our lady or maybe purgatory or something like that. And so with theatrical flair, I just placed my Bible in front of him. And I said, here you go, Mr. White, the canon of the New Testament, the canon of the New Testament, those 27 books from Matthew to Revelation. And there's nowhere in the Bible that tells you that those books belong in the New Testament. As Scott Hahn said long ago, I'll never forgotten it, there's no inspired table of contents in the Bible. The Bible itself does not furnish you with that information, does it? It doesn't say which books belong. So just taking the New Testament, you can ask the question, how did these books get here? Who decided? And it's interesting when you see how the other person might see for the very first time that there's more to the story than just saying, I go buy the Bible alone. In fact, the truth is, he wouldn't even have a Bible if it were not for the Catholic Church through whom God revealed that these scriptures were inspired. As it says in 2 Timothy 3.16, all scriptures inspired by God, not by the Catholic Church. We don't claim that is the Catholic Church. We do claim, however, that the Bible does not tell us which books belong in it. Therefore, how do we know this? We know this from the trustworthy testimony of the very church that people say is not trustworthy to interpret the books in the Bible that the church determined should be in the Bible, if that makes any sense to you. The next one would be to talk about the interpretation of the Bible and that would fall into this category of questioning authority. A quick example, I have a very fond memory of one evening after a talk in San Diego. There were two Calvinist fellows who came up to me and they said, you know what, almost everything you said tonight is wrong and we would like, if you would be willing to meet with us for coffee, we'd like to show you from the Bible why you're wrong. I had given a talk on Our Lady. So I thought, you know, to me, this is like excellent. Thank you, yes, I do wanna do this. Some people like to watch TV, some people collect stamps. I like to talk to people like that. And so we went to a Denny's. I don't know why I was drinking coffee at 9.30 at night, but I did. And so picture the scene. So the two fellows are on that side of the booth. I'm on this side of the booth. They have their Bibles open. I have my Bible open. And they started off by saying something like, well, you interpreted the Bible, or you were adding doctrines to the Bible that aren't there. You're adding doctrines about Mary's sinlessness and her bodily assumption, things like that. That's unbiblical. And I said, oh really, any particular one you wanna talk about? So they threw one out. Might have been Mary's perpetual virginity. So I opened to the passages in the Bible that speak to this topic. And I began to share from the Bible why I believe in that doctrine. And their argument changed from you're being unbiblical and you're adding doctrines that don't belong in the Bible. So as soon as I started quoting scripture to them, then they shifted and said, you're misinterpreting that. And I said, no, I'm not. You are. They said, no, we're not. You are. I said, no, I'm not. You are. And for the better part of an hour, the whole conversation was like that. It was very frustrating for all of us because I wasn't giving an inch. They weren't giving an inch. And it just was unproductive. And they weren't getting anywhere with me and I wasn't getting anywhere with them. So I had this idea and I took a pen out of my pocket and I took the napkin on the table and I wrote six words on it. And if you're taking notes you might wanna write them down. The words I wrote on the napkin were, I never said you stole money. And then I turned the napkin in front of the two guys and I said, okay, you just saw me write this in our common language of English. I wrote it in your presence. Do you understand what I mean by this? And they looked at it and said, sure. I never said you stole money. I understand it. And I said, are you sure you understand? And they said, yes, of course. Then for emphasis, I said a third time, are you sure you understand what I mean by this? And they said, of course we do. What is your point? I said, well, my point is, did I mean I never said you stole money? Suggesting that somebody else said it. Did I mean I never said you stole money? I thought it, but I never actually said it. Or did I mean I never said you stole money? Somebody else did. Or did I mean I never said you stole money? Maybe you accidentally lit it on fire. I don't know. I didn't say you stole it. Or did I mean I never said you stole money. Maybe you stole something else. So I said, which of these five distinct meanings did I intend when I wrote the six words on the napkin? Can you tell me? And they just sort of shrugged, it's like, all right, parlor trick, you got us on this one. And I said, well, it's not a parlor trick. It's an honest question. And I held up my Bible. I said, you're telling me that you are automatically guaranteed to accurately understand the meaning of these passages in scripture, whatever they may be, and that you're going to be correct in your understanding of them. And I as a Catholic will necessarily be wrong. And yet you can't tell me what I meant by six words written on a napkin? How does that work? And that's when the conversation came to a conclusion. I don't remember who paid for the coffee, but I do remember that that's where things sort of ground to a halt. Well, here's the happy ending to that story. Months later, maybe six months later, one of the two guys, he was the former Catholic, by the way, he shows up at another event that I was at. And he says, hey, you remember me? I said, I sure do. And he said, do you remember that napkin thing you did? I said, yeah, I remember that. He says, well, that was like a key unlocking a locked door of my mind because I was a former Catholic, and I was no way ever gonna consider the Catholic Church. But when you did that little, I never said you stole money thing. It got me to thinking, maybe he's got a point. Maybe there's a different interpretation than what I believe. And he said, he turned to the church fathers to see what they said. And he said, that's all she wrote. And it didn't take long before he found his way back to the Catholic Church. And it all happened because of six words on a napkin. Isn't that amazing? It's so simple. It's so simple and anyone can do it. You can do it. Anyone can do it. The next technique is what I call look for hidden clues. And I'll give you just a brief example. There was a conference I spoke at and a woman was near the book table where I was signing books and she was glaring at me and couldn't figure out why. It's like, am I dressed in a weird way or something? But she was just looking at me angrily. And after I was done signing books, I turned to her and smiled and I said, hello? And she said, don't even try it. And that's, those were her first words to me was don't even try it. And I said, oh, try what? She said, don't try to make, turn me into a Catholic. I know what you do and I know what you're here for. She said, I am an evangelical Protestant. I used to be a Catholic and I hate the Catholic Church and I'm only here because my husband dragged me here. And I'm like, whoa, okay. And I said, well, you said you're an ex-Catholic. What happened? She said, well, do you really want to know? I said, sure. She said, all right. So then she blasted me. She was really angry. She blasted me with vehement arguments against the Catholic Church. They weren't even really arguments. They were just statements. Catholics worship Mary and you try to earn your salvation and you worship statues. And she was just letting fly with everything, including the kitchen sink. And I could see that there was a lot of emotion underneath all of this. So it was like a Western movie where the two guys are gonna have a gunfight in the middle of the main street there. You know how they throw back their big jacket and the hand is just trembling, waiting to grab the six shooter and go, that's how I felt, but not with a gun. I was waiting to get my Bible and open it up and just destroy her arguments. That's all I wanted to do because she was irritating me. And so I was waiting for that moment. And at some point I felt an intuition, might have been my guardian angel, it could have been the Lord. And my intuition said, just be quiet. Just zip it is what I heard in my mind, you know. And that's not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to zip it. I wanted to go full force against her arguments. And so I didn't say anything. I kind of bit my lip and didn't say anything. And I could see when she was finished with her soliloquy that she thought I didn't have any answers. That made it even worse for me because I'm thinking, she thinks she's got unanswerable arguments against the Catholic Church. And so we had this awkward few moments where I'm like not saying anything and she's feeling like, okay, well I showed him. So then after a few moments when I couldn't take it anymore, I said, well you mentioned you used to be Catholic and I understand these arguments that you have but what happened? And she said, well, I'll tell you. So we went off 20, 30 feet away, sat down at some tables and there was really nobody in the vicinity so she calmed down and she spoke to me very openly and she said, well, I was raised in a strict Catholic home and I was kind of like the perfect Catholic daughter and I was in Catholic school and all that. And when I was in my senior year of high school, I got pregnant and she said I was really terrified because I knew I couldn't tell my parents because they disowned me, they kicked me out and I didn't know who I could share this with because it would get back to my parents and I was scared and my boyfriend was pushing me to have an abortion. I didn't want to have an abortion. I knew that was wrong but I didn't know what to do and I didn't know whom to tell. And she said she went to a different town and went to a parish rectory where nobody knew her, knocked on the door and asked to talk to a priest because she wanted to see if he could give her some advice and as she's telling me this story now, she's starting to cry. And she said, and the priest, he didn't have any time to talk to me. He said, listen, these pregnancy tests, they're typically inaccurate. Take it again in a week or two. No big deal, it's probably nothing and I gotta go, I don't have time to talk to you. So he didn't counsel her, he didn't comfort her, he didn't give her any help whatsoever but he did tell her that her problem was not his problem. He didn't say it in so many words but that's what he said. So by now she's sobbing as she says that she left the rectory and tears completely at the mercy of the boyfriend who's out of the car at the curb waiting and it's at that point that he talks her into going to the abortion clinic and having the abortion. At this point now, her head is down on the table. She's sobbing uncontrollably, she can't talk. I'm sure she must have been very embarrassed. I'm feeling terribly awkward, I didn't know what to say and so in the middle of this deeply personal revelation about this horrible thing that had happened in her life, she's trying to sort of gather her emotions so she can continue talking and she said, that's when I really began to hate the Catholic Church because the priest sort of represented to me the Catholic Church that didn't care about me, that didn't help me and my angry parents when they found out how could you have done this, that kind of thing, she said all that began to, in her mind, it symbolized the Catholic Church so she said that's when I began to hate the Catholic Church and so I wish I could share with you some deeply insightful or wise thing that I said to her at that point or some soothing pastoral statement that I shared with her that helped, that's not what happened because the next words out of my mouth were, you need to go to confession. Now, she looked at me as if I had said, here, hold this rattlesnake. She looked at me with a look that said, what do you mean go to confession? I just told you I hate the Catholic Church. She didn't say that but she was giving me the death glare and she said, but didn't you listen to anything I said? I hate the Catholic Church. I said yes but you need to go to confession because Jesus can heal you. She said, I don't believe in that stuff anymore and by the way, I'm done talking to you so she kind of basically said, thanks a lot. I gave you, I revealed something to a total stranger that few people in my life even know and you tell me I got to go back to the Catholic Church so she got up and she left and I thought, oh my gosh I just destroyed this opportunity to help this woman not only with the pain of the abortion but maybe even coming home to the Catholic Church. I said, what a doofus I am. I didn't do anything to help her and I kicked myself and I just tried to put it out of my mind. That's all I could do. Well, weeks and weeks and weeks went by. Couple months went by. She sent me an email. She said, the very first line was, dear Patrick you were right, I needed to go to confession. What happened was, what I thought was the stupidest thing I could have said turned out to be exactly what she needed to hear. Only God knew that, I didn't know that. I just blurted it out. And what I found from her email was, she said that it so angered her that I would say that that she couldn't stop thinking about it. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized maybe, just maybe this is what God wants me to do. And she said at one point she just said, okay Lord if this, you know I don't like the Catholic Church but if this is really you telling me to do it I'll do it but I won't like it but I'll do it. But I won't like it but I'll do it. And she did it. She went and made a good confession. She was able to get the healing process started and she came back to the Catholic Church. Now the hidden clues, the hidden clues were only available to me because I closed my mouth at the moment when I was ready to steamroll her arguments. And what this taught me was I was nearly blind to these things but since then I've really woken up to the fact that if you look for the hidden clues often you'll find them. It could be a past hurt. It could be an abortion. It could be a run in with a parish priest. It could be any number of things and those aren't the things that people will volunteer to you when you first meet them. Maybe you're gonna meet the brick wall of their hatred for the faith or their dislike for the faith but if you're careful and if you ask questions you can get behind that and maybe discern what the real reason might be. The next one, ask vital questions. I'm a big proponent of what's called a Socratic method which is Socrates he was known for teaching his students not by lecturing them but by asking them questions that would help them see either the error of a position that they held or the truth of the position that he wanted them to see. And there are great books that talk about this. I'd like to think that two of those great books are ones that I wrote, one called On a Mission. Lessons from St. Francis to Sales, I believe it's in the bookstore. Another one is that book I mentioned earlier called Search and Rescue. I talk about this method there as well. Just simply ask questions. Another really good book written by a Protestant author, his name is Greg Kokol, the book is called Tactics and it has nothing to do with theology. It simply deals with how do you talk to somebody and not get put on the defensive? And here are two quick examples. The first one is when somebody challenges you, you can say, what do you mean by that? In other words, you're not putting yourself on the defensive, you're putting it back on that person, what do you mean by that challenge? And then when the person restates it, then you could say, how did you come to that conclusion? You see, you've done it again. Now you've put the burden of proof back on that person. He won't even realize what you're doing. And now he is the one defending his position. And then you're in a position to help keep the conversation calm and direct it in a way that will help you share the truth with that person. You can ask, have you ever considered the alternative to your claim? Someone challenges you. Have you ever considered the alternative to that? And he may say, well, yes I have. Really, well, what exactly did you consider? And then ask questions about that. The seventh is to relativize relativism. If somebody says, you can't force your morality on other people, then you can say, well, what do you mean? Are you saying that people don't have a right to their opinion? Yeah, I believe people have a right to their opinion, but no one has a right to force their opinion on anyone else. And you say, is that your opinion? Yes. So you are forcing your opinion on me and saying I can't force my opinion on you by the way, I don't wanna force my opinion on anyone. I just wanna share it. Somebody says, you know, you can't tell people what's moral or immoral. Really, huh? Well, then how do you know what's moral or immoral? You believe in things being immoral or things being moral, right? Yeah, I do. Well, how do you know? She says, well, I believe everybody has to decide for themselves what's moral or immoral. You say, okay, great. I've decided that what you're doing is immoral. So what's wrong with that? I've made my decision. You see, by asking questions that way and you relativize it, or you take something that is important to that person and then relativize that, you'll find out very quickly that the person is not really a moral relativist. Now, I don't wanna spend too much time because I know there's a talk on moral relativism coming up, but that's an important one. The next one is called presuppositional apologetics. And briefly, this has to do where you go into an argument with the presupposition that God exists. This works wonderfully with atheists. And in a compact way, here's what I mean. When you're talking to an atheist who insists that the only things that exist are natural, are material, you can talk about, well then, how do you account for things like love and friendship and your memories and integrity or any virtue or vice for that matter? How do you account for those immaterial realities? What about truth itself? How do you account for that? My worldview, that God exists, easily accounts for these things. But as an atheist, how do you account for them as things we all know truly exist, but they're immaterial? Much more to be said on that topic, but I'll leave it at that. Let's talk lastly about the ninth one, which is to leave the results in God's hands. This is a technique that you can always do even when you feel as though all is lost. Quick story and then I'll be finished. I was speaking in Chicago and I had known this guy, his name is Bob, Southern Baptist, deeply anti-Catholic, but a very nice guy. And so when he found out I was gonna be in Chicago land, he asked me to come over to his house. He said, hey, bring your Bible, come over, let's argue. I said, I am there. I will be there with bells on, because I love that stuff. So I show up at Bob's house and we went at it for the whole day. I got there probably late in the morning. His pastor came over for a while and I argued with the pastor and that was great. And then we had coffee and I argued with Bob some more. And what was interesting was that the needle on Bob's anti-Catholic meter was definitely in the red zone at the beginning. And I noticed over the course of the day, because he had never really heard a Catholic explain many of these things, I saw the needle kind of moving in the other direction toward the green zone. So I had this brilliant idea. I thought, boy, this is working really well. I'm gonna get Bob to become Catholic. I just need something to push him over the edge. So I knew that there was a church in the area that had beautiful life-size icons. And I said, let's go to this church. I wanna show you these icons, because one of them was about the cloud of witnesses from the epistle to the Hebrews. And we had talked a lot about the saints in heaven. I thought, if I can get Bob into this church, he's going to be zapped by God's grace from the blessed sacrament. And he's gonna be impressed by the icon and he's gonna convert. So he agreed with me that he would go. So we got in the car, we drove to the church, it was in the afternoon, and we got there and it was locked. Now I was really anxious to make sure that I got Bob on board with the Catholic Church. If I had a contract or something, I would have had him sign it. It was getting that close. And on the way there, he told me that as a Southern Baptist, he had never even been in a Catholic Church before. He talked about how often Baptists will adhere to a doctrine of separation where they won't, in any religious context, mix with Catholics. And you probably know Southern Baptists. They don't smoke, they don't drink, they don't gamble, they don't dance. I mean, all the things they associate with Catholics, right? They don't do those things. So Bob is telling me that he had never been in a Catholic Church. So I'm thinking, I've got to get him inside here. So what happened was I saw a man walking into the church hall that adjoined the church itself. And I thought, perfect, he'll let us in. So we walked up to the double doors and I said to Bob, I said, Bob, you're gonna love this. And he said, yeah, I'm actually interested now after everything we talked about today. So I opened the door and it was in a large hall similar to this one, filled with hundreds of people playing bingo. They were just gambling left and right. The first thing that hit us was this billowing wave of cigarette smoke that came out. A guy walked by at that moment with four cups of beer pinched in the fingers of each hand. This man had eight cups of beer. Eight cups and a big smile on his face. And so here I am with Bob and it's like these Catholics are gambling and smoking and drinking. It was as if I had opened the gates of hell and said, Bob, come on into the Catholic church. I didn't get my convert that day. And here's the lesson I learned. That's a true story. The lesson I learned was I was trying to do it all myself. I was trying to convert somebody's heart. I have a hard enough time trying to convert my own heart. Much less can I convert anyone else's heart. So I leave you with that final technique. It always works and that's let God do the heavy lifting. You do your part, speak the truth in love, share what you know, be respectful, offer information, seek common ground, all those things, do all those things, but leave it in God's hands and that's where the real conversions take place. Thank you very much and God bless you.