¶1Heaven is cheering that Joe Schmidt of Majesty of Reason has returned to the Catholic Church. He had left for a while, had become an atheist, and he converted back. Really exciting stuff. So, let's talk about that. We're going to talk about why he chose Catholicism, why Sean McDow and Fred Sanders chose Protestantism, and more.
¶2You've come to the right place. Let's go. Christ is Lord and he established the Catholic Church. I'm not kidding. I just converted to Catholicism.
¶3Well, actually, Joe, you're just a revert, so that's technically misleading. I dude, conversion is a change of heart and mind, and that just happened. For those of you who don't know me, shame on you. I'm Joe Schmidt. I'm a PhD student in philosophy at Princeton University and I've been an agnostic and public critic of theism and Catholicism for quite some time.
¶4But earlier this year that all changed. So today I'm just going to share my personal journey. Uh if you want my hours long comprehensive case for Catholicism, stay tuned. >> How exciting is that? That is the best news ever.
¶5And I'm sure that heaven is cheering and heaven's probably been working for a long time on Joe coming back to the church because he apparently was raised in a very devout Catholic family and they probably have been praying for him for a very long time. And so he talks about Catholicism and why he returned and I can't wait to see his exciting video about Catholicism. But before we do that, let's take a look at something else. We're going to take a look at what Shawn McDow and Fred Sanders had to say about why they chose Protestantism because then I'm going to give you some quotes from early church fathers that refute what they have to say. And so we're going to take a look at that.
¶6And so let's take a look and listen. Here we go. >> So that word's out. So Fred, how g given the reformation was in the 1500s uh and that the sort of the birth of Protestantism was around that time, how should we view the church before the reformation? >> Yeah, that that's a great question and really important too because it's possible to sort of install a denominational grid on how you think about these things before you have a historical grid.
¶7And and I think you're right to say, oh, you know, they've got 2,000 years of history here. Divide it up into four quarters. And if you just want to think of your church as only starting in the fourth quarter, you're already sort of uh cattywampus, to use the technical term, right? Because you need to install the historical grid first and say, "Oh, this goes all the way back." And the church I'm in is the church founded by Jesus Christ, carried out by the apo by the apostles. And it didn't sort of go into a time capsule and vanish for 1500 years.
¶8And it wasn't a thin trickle of marginal kind of weirdos that were my church all the way back. I bring you good news that the entire Christian tradition belongs to Protestant Christians. >> Now, something big happened in the around in the 1500s, of course, and then that's where it's legitimate to talk about distinct sorts of confessions or denominations. At that point, you could put the denominational grid in place and start thinking that way. But you don't want to let that grid trick you out of owning threearters of the Christian tradition.
¶9So be say a little bit more about you when you said basically most of church history is essentially the Protestant tradition. >> Spell out a little bit more what you mean by that. >> Yeah. So if you're trying to get your bearings on this you could think okay at some point in the early 1500s somebody kicked out Martin Luther for teaching justification by grace alone through faith alone and solos scriptor. Someone heard him teaching that stuff which I like and said anathema you're out.
¶10We're not going to reform and take that on board. we are instead expelling you. Now, whoever did that is not on my team >> to speak denominationally to speak in terms of teams and and and that. >> Um, but if you try to think back before that, well, okay, that was 1517. What about 1417?
¶11What about 1317? What about 1217? Are all those people also not on my team and against the reformation teaching? Well, and then you start realizing, oh, well, Thomas Aquinas was 1274. Now, denominationally speaking, he agreed agreed with some things that we would call Roman Catholic.
¶12now, but historically speaking, he was before the reformation turning point. And so I'd like to say I think Aquinas is mine. And you see where this is going. You go further back. Hey, Bernard of Clairvo.
¶13I think he's mine. Says some things about Mary that are not the way I would put things, but that guy is completely my intellectual property. Part of my Christian heritage, part of my birthright. If you jump all the way back to like Augustine of Hippo, you know, um, Athanasius of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Leon, the apostles, you kind of see where this goes. >> Yeah.
¶14You you see what he's doing here. He's totally co-opting the early church fathers. Now, here's the problem. And this is a person coming from me. I I will let you know that I was born and raised in the Catholic faith.
¶15I left, married into the Lutheran faith in 2003, became a Protestant at that point. I was a Lutheran. Then I was also a Baptist. I was baptized in the Baptist church. I was not supposed to do that but I was baptized in the Baptist church in 2011 and then I came back to the Catholic church in 2022.
¶16Why did I come back to the Catholic Church? Well, many many reasons but among those reasons were the early church fathers and there are specific quotations against Protestantism. They were very early on saying things about the Catholic faith that affirmed the Catholic faith and the Catholic traditions. And I'm going to mention a few of those. But before that, I also want to mention the value of Mary.
¶17Catholics believe in Mother Mary. We believe in her perpetual virginity. We believe she's the mother of God. We believe that she was assumed body and soul into heaven. We believe that she was the is the is the queen of heaven.
¶18She was crowned. And we see that in Revelation 12. And we believe she is also the virgin counterpart of Eve. She's a virgin counterpart who undid the curse of Eve. And of course, we know what Eve did.
¶19And this is all mentioned in Genesis 3:15. Mother Mary and her prominence is one of the reasons why I came back. A second reason I came back is because I noticed that the Protestants had removed seven books of the Bible. And I found that really astonishing. It happened in the 1800s officially because when Martin Luther was around those seven books of the Bible, what they referred to as the apocryphal texts were there.
¶20They were called uh the dudero canonical books. And if you listen listen to channels like Petristic Pillars by William Alrech or you'll listen to the apocryphal apocrypha by Gary Machuda you will find a lot of confirmation of the seven books the books such as first and second Mcabes which affirm purgatory and some of the other Catholic beliefs. So it's pretty important to take a look at that kind of a thing. The other reason is the ancient church fathers. Now listen to what some of them said.
¶21One really large reason why I am a Catholic is because of the seven sacraments. Now they have the high churches, the high Lutheran and Protestant churches like the Anglican and the Lutheran church. They tend to affirm more of the um sacraments than others do. By the time you get to the Baptists, they've pretty much washed out the communion, the Eucharist, which is probably one of the most important things. Now, what did St.
¶22Ignatius of Antioch in his letter to the Smyrnians around seven uh around 107 or 108 AD. Now St. Ignatius of Antioch was a friend of the apostle John. So he would have first insights into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. And here's what he said about people who discard that belief.
¶23quote, "They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ." You see, Catholics believe in seven sacraments. We believe in baptism. We believe in holy communion where that we take the body and blood of Jesus Christ. And how do we do that? We do it because the wine and the bread at the communion when the priest consecrates the wine and the bread it becomes the body, blood, soul and divinity in each mass.
¶24So this occurs it's the most wonderful miracle that occurs all throughout the world and it occurs at every single time in the world because the mass is held every single day of the of the week. It's amazing. So the Eucharist is transformed, transubstantiated we say every single day of the week. So you can go and ingest the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. You want to be in good standing with the Lord to do that.
¶25And it's a truly amazing thing that occurs. Now, why should we do that? Well, it says in John 6 quite clearly, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you. And then we see in the gospels when Jesus is at the last supper, he shows us exactly how we can eat his flesh and drink his blood. We do that by ingesting the body and blood of Jesus through the consecrated bread and wine.
¶26Now what if the else did St. Ignatius of Antioch say about the church? Well, he spoke of the importance of the hierarchy. He said, quote, "See that you all follow the bishop even as Jesus Christ does the father and the prespetry as you would the apostles." And then he says, "Let no man anything connected with the church without the bishop." Now, who is the bishop? The first bishop of Rome was Peter.
¶27And Jesus was the one who affirmed the role of Peter. Peter's mentioned more times than all of the other apostles combined in the Gospels. And what does Jesus say about Peter? He says, "And you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." That's in Matthew 16. and you are Peter.
¶28Now Peter was a word that meant rock and he built his church on the bones of St. Peter. Peter is his bones are at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. Big confirmation for the Catholic Church.
¶29I mean I don't know how anybody could deny that. So we have the succession of papal duties starting from Peter mentioned as early uh mentioned many times but also mentioned by St. Irenaeus of Leon around 170. He actually named all of the popes up until his time. And if you go today and you look at Pope Leo the 14th and the succession from Peter to Pope Leo, we have a succession of popes.
¶30This is an unbroken succession of popes because they were given the keys to the kingdom. That is affirmed in Isaiah 22 the importance of that. But also in Matthew 16, you're given the keys to the kingdom through the church. Excuse me. Now, what else did St.
¶31Erynaeus of Leon say in against heresies? He said, 'We are in a position to reckon up those who were the apostles instituted bishops in the churches and to demonstrate the succession of these men to our times. Here's what he also says. He names Rome. He says the very great, the very ancient and universally known church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul.
¶32Now this also goes against the Greek Orthodox Church because the Greek Orthodox Church does not highlight the value of Rome a against the other important churches of the ancient times. Rome is the place where Peter and Paul were the ones who instituted the church, the Catholic church. Capital Catholic church is universal but it's capital C. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Here's what else it says in against heresies.
¶33It is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church on account of its preeminent authority. And then he also highlights the succession of the Roman bishops. He names them and he says the blessed apostles then having founded and built up the church committed into the hands of Lionus the office of the episcopet. Now these ancient church popes many of them were martyed. Many of them were martyed.
¶34Imagine that. How crazy it would be to have your leader, the bishop of Rome, be martyed. And not just the first one, not just Peter. Many of them were martyed after him. And they were named by Irenaeus.
¶35He says it went from Lionus to Anacletus to Clement to Avaristus to Alexander to Sixstus, Tellesorus, Hygenus, Pious, Anacetus, Soder, and Aluthius. And then he concludes in this order and by this succession the ecclesiastical tradition from the apostles have come down to us. Okay, so that's pretty important stuff and that's in the second century. And here's what else he says. He also says pretty important things.
¶36Well, basically he says that he also named the four gospels. So those people who dispute that. And then we had the Catholic Church bring us the Bible and its 73 books. It was affirmed in numerous local councils in the fourth and fifth centuries like at the council of Rome and Hippo and Carthage. It was also affirmed later on by Florence in the 1400s and then of course it was really affirmed because it was disputed in the 1500s starting with Luther kind of discounting those extra he calls them the extra books and that was affirmed at the council of Trent.
¶37Now here's what Clement of Rome said. Now Clement of Rome lived even before St. Ignatius. Uh he was in his um around 96. He described the apostolic origin of the hierarchy in this way.
¶38The apostles have preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ from God. Okay. And then he says, "Preaching therefore through countries and cities, they appointed the first fruits to be bishops and deacons." And that's in 1 Clement 42. And in chapter 44 he says, "Our apostles also knew through our Lord Jesus Christ that there would be strife on account of the office of the episcopet." And he also explained that the appointed ministries and provided after.
¶39He explained that they appointed ministers, I should say. He says, quote, "Other approved men should succeed them in their ministries." In other words, the passing down of the apostolic line and the appointment of the priests, holy orders, one of the sacraments that also has been discarded by the Protestants. So, they have discarded that. They don't believe that you need to confess your sins to a priest. That's a problem.
¶40That's a sacrament of reconciliation. And they also, many of them do not hold the marriage to be holy matrimony. So my husband and I had to had to revalidate had to convalidate our marriage in the Catholic Church when I came back. We did that in December of 2023. I did not realize we had not uh been recognized by the Catholic Church before that.
¶41So we convalidated the ma the matrimony sacrament in the church. Really important stuff to do. So what else do we have? What now? He mentioned this Fred Sanders mentioned Augustine.
¶42Augustine explained why he remains with the Catholic Church. Now he lived around 397 saying this. The consent of peoples and nations keeps me in the church. So does her authority established by age. And then he said the succession of priests keeps me beginning from the very seat of the apostle Peter down to the present episcopate.
¶43And he also says and so lastly does the name of itself of Catholic which not without reason and so many heresies the church thus has retained. Okay, that's a pretty strong stand against what Fred Sanders is saying. He can't just co-opt the Catholics um and take our church fathers. Okay, Augustine in his answer to Petilian the Donatist in around 400, he says, "What has the chair done to you of the Roman church in which Peter sat and which Anastasius fills today?" Okay, that seems pretty Roman Catholic. Okay.
¶44And then he also tried to co-opt Thomas Aquinus. But what did Thomas Aquinas said say? He said the pope is the head of the whole church during the time of his pontificate. And he explains Christ is the head of the church by his own power and authority while others are called heads as Christ taking place. Okay, so we've got some pretty strong quotes from the ancient church fathers and I didn't name all of them.
¶45There's many, many, many more I could have gone into, but I wanted to point out the importance of not co-opting, not trying to take our earliest church leaders and claim them for your own. That is not something that you can do. That's what the Protestants does. That's a problem with solar scriptura. Now, solar scriptura is a belief of the primacy of the Bible.
¶46And we do believe the Bible's very important as Catholics, but it's kind of like the feast. It's kind of like the wedding feast. The Bible is the turkey sitting at the table and a big feast. and all of the dressing, all of the beautiful stuff with the sacraments and our beliefs and the catechism of the Catholic Church, all of that stuff is sitting around as uh, you know, in addition to the Bible. And so, and we also look to that, we look to the church being the pillar and bull work of the truth.
¶47It says that in the Bible, it tells us to hold to our traditions. That's really important. So, these are things that Catholics do. And why do we do it? Because we believe in the apostolic succession that ran right from St.
¶48Peter to today. And so people who try to discount that, it's it's kind of sad. Now, I want to get back to our good friend uh Joe Schmidt. I'd like to invite Joe Schmidt on my channel. I actually put a message for him in his uh thing.
¶49I said, "Joe Schmidt, I would like to invite you to my channel. I would love to talk to him, but the problem is I have a small channel and so a lot of times I can't attract some of the bigger names." And that's okay. But let's listen to a little bit more of Joe Schmidt. He says he is going to give us a great video on why he's a Catholic and he probably is going to include some of the things I just mentioned and he's probably going to say something about Mother Mary because Mother Mary's a big reason and that I actually when my friends Protestant friends on Twitter at the time now it's X when I asked them who the woman in Revelation 12 was the woman who uh appeared just after the ark of the covenant appeared. Think of that.
¶50The woman is the new ark of the covenant. She's the ark of the new covenant. Okay, that's Jesus. She in her belly held Jesus. She held the divine Lord and ruler of the world.
¶51Okay? And that's the one who scares Satan the most. She scares Satan. He can't stand the fact that she never ever ever questioned uh Jesus in a in a way that you know she she basically was without sin. She was immaculately conceived.
¶52That's another belief of the Catholic Church. when the angel Gabriel came to her and he said that you know he said hail you know hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee and in the way that's that's uh it's it's kerattomin and that means fully graced having been graced she was full of grace she was without sin she was perfect and when she had Jesus in her in through the uh microchimmerism he released his cells into her which protected her and guided her and so she has divine cells within her now I'm not saying she's divine I'm saying she has divine cells she has Jesus cells within her and that's something scientists have discovered today with mothers when you have a baby inside of you the cells of the baby remain even after you give birth to the baby and they fight disease pretty neat stuff to imagine having Jesus within you She is the mother of God and she was immaculately conceived free from original sin. She's unlike all of the rest of us and she is somebody that we should elevate and that's one of the reasons why I came back. But let's hear what also Joe has to say. Let's keep going here.
¶53>> That's coming very soon. Oh, and I also have some cool things later on in the video. So stay tuned. So I grew up in a devout Catholic household. I went to private Catholic school from kindergarten through 12th grade.
¶54I frequented the sacraments. I prayed all the time. I was totally into Catholicism. Everything was like smooth sailing in my faith. In fact, I was like really devout until maybe around like seventh or eighth grade when I had the first wobble.
¶55So, in seventh or eighth grade, my Catholic school taught us evolution. And thankfully, Catholics are totally down with science. So, they're like, "Yeah, we can teach you guys evolution. I mean, there's like so much scientific evidence for it and it's totally compatible with Catholicism." But it did cause me to start wondering like, how do I mesh this with my commitments concerning Adam and Eve and Genesis? Like, how do I make sense of that?
¶56That bubble didn't last too long because I came across the work of people like Francis Collins and the Bologos Institute defending theistic evolution. >> So a lot of times this happens to a lot of people. They listen to a um they let me put it this way. A scientists many times are uh doing the work of God. And throughout history there have been many good scientists who wanted to be scientists because they wanted to discover the way that God made nature.
¶57They wanted to understand the natural world and many of them put supernatural explanations on po portions of the natural world. When you look out the window and you see the trees, to me that's evidence of God. When I look at mountains and the beauty out there, the immense beauty. When I go into a church in Italy, for example, like the pata dwello in Milan, you experience the beauty and something that men put together over hundreds of years. These churches and in Europe especially, men put these together to be beautiful because we're supposed to be in awe of God.
¶58And it puts us in a place where we he feel that sense of awe. Beauty is another good reason to come back to God. And God told us in book of Romans, people are without excuse. You know, you see the beauty out there. You see in nature, you see his fingerprints in the sky.
¶59You see fingerprints. The se the Fibonacci sequence also gives us great evidence that God exists. He's got his Fibonacci sequence in seashells. It's in sunflowers. It's in the galaxies.
¶60It's in our fingerprints. Wow. Many, many good reasons to believe in God. But then you say, which God? Which specific God should we believe in?
¶61And we can come to Jesus Christ through that. Jesus is the only leader of a religion that has said, I am. and you will see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven and seated at the right hand of the mighty one. He said that in Mark 14:62. He affirmed to the Pharisees that he is the son of man.
¶62He is the one that was prophecied in Daniel 7 Psalm 110. And he is also the one who came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey as they said he would in Zechariah 9:9. He is the one who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities. And that's mentioned, of course, in Isaiah 53. His hands and his feet were pierced, mentioned in Psalm 22.
¶63He was up on the cross. And he was looking down at people who divided up his clothes as predicted in Psalm 22 around a thousand years before by King David. He is also the one who was coming in the clouds of heaven. We're going to all witness that he's going to come back to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. Now, when we say his kingdom will have no end, that is something Daniel said was going to happen.
¶64Daniel who wrote around 600 years before Jesus walked the earth five to 600 years right around maybe 530 540 Daniel wrote this the prophet Daniel and it's mentioned in his book that 77s less seven sevens would pass after the call to rebuild Jerusalem went out when the anointed one was going to be cut off that's in Daniel 9 who's the anointed one who is the one that Malachi 3:1 said was going to appear in the second temple the temple that was destroyed in the year 70. Who is that? Well, that's Jesus. Jesus was cut off and the call to rebuild Jerusalem went out around 444 and 457 BC. So those two times we had a call to rebuild Jerusalem.
¶65It had been destroyed by the Babylonians and it was to be rebuilt under the Meo Persian kingdom and it was it was so 70 490 years after that we have around the year 33 Jesus was crucified. Okay. And then the temple that he appeared in was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70. This was all predicted. It was predicted.
¶66And Daniel also had a little something to say. He said there was going to be there were uh going to be four kingdoms. He lived during the Babylonian kingdom. He also lived during the Meoersian kingdom that followed. Okay.
¶67In 539, King Cyrus and Darius the me were able to conquer the Babylonian kingdom. And King Cyrus gave permission to start rebuilding the temple around that time which was completed the temple that was destroyed in the year five oh what was it 584 I believe that was that was or 586 it was that was uh rebuilt by 516 it was completed in 516 the temple in Jerusalem and then the city of Jerusalem was rebuilt and that again was affirmed around 457 and 444 and then following that it was named that there would be the Greek Greek Empire. Daniel named the Greek Empire that came about hundreds of years after him. So you have around in the year in the 300s basically you've got Alexander the Great in the Greek kingdom. So he conquered the Meo Persian kingdom and then Daniel said there would be a fourth kingdom out of which the anointed one was going to be born and his kingdom would never end.
¶68And that of course was the Roman Empire. We still are in the ashes of the Roman Empire, but Jesus kingdom, Jesus came in that time, and his kingdom will never end. We've got some great stuff. And as Catholics, we've even got more. We've got the fullness of the truth.
¶69We've got the ability to go to church and ingest the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus every single day. Wow. Think about that. You can go to church and ingest the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus every single day through the Catholic Church. You can also reconcile with the Lord formally through a priest.
¶70And you know in the book of James, it calls on us to confess our sins to one another. Jesus doesn't say confess your I mean of course you confess them to Jesus too, but you can do that through the church in the privacy behind a screen going in the Catholic church. You should really go once a month. Okay? And I do go once a month.
¶71The other thing that Joe mentions in his video here that's pretty important is the Marian apparitions and the beauty of some of the miracles of the Marian apparitions. And so you can look into it if you haven't yet. Look into the miracles of Lords. I think we're up to 72 that have been fully affirmed by the Catholic Church. But many claims of miracles, more like thousands of people have claimed miracles at Lords where they've been healed.
¶72You've got the miracles at Fatima. Fatima was 1917. Lords was around 1884. You've got these tremendous miracles, but you also have other miracles and other things that Mary has said in other Marian apparitions. Joe mentioned Zaiton, which is pretty important.
¶73That's a one that appeared Mary over a long period of time to thousands of Muslims in Zune, Egypt. Really important one to think about. And then of course there's some other ones like the lady of Akita who in 1973 she affirmed the Fatima apparitions. And uh she also warned that something terrible could happen to the world if we did not uh repent. We need to repent.
¶74She said a great fire. And that's a pretty scary thing given that we live in a nuclear world. So I hope you enjoyed this video. If you do, I hope you'll like and subscribe and do come again. And just remember whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.
¶75May God bless you and keep you. Thank you.