Traditional Catholics still want a new Pope, and Joe Schmid is still Catholic

¶1Hello everyone and welcome. This is the place where on Thursdays we tell you what you need to know about things that is going on in the Catholic church. um specifically the things that sometimes make me a little bit annoyed because I try to um focus on Tuesdays about um the things that make me sometimes a little bit salty, a little bit upset. Um this past Tuesday was an exception, but I also was talking about the Bible with Dr. Kip Davis, which is always something that makes me very happy.

¶2Um, so >> today, um, I'm going to continue and hopefully, um, wrap up, um, the last part of Joe Schmid's uh, postcon conversion tour. And um hopefully uh but before I to um as a reminder the kinds of conservative Catholics that we are that we've been focusing on for the last few weeks here um are not the totality of the Catholic right and indeed are not even the um not even the most extreme people on the Catholic right. Um so I just wanted to take a moment to kind of um jump in to see what they're on about. Um the first video that we'll be watching is um I'm going to go into sharing now is going to be from um of um Life Site News, which is a Canadian um which is a um which is a political action group that um Excuse um that um 1990s and um has of late been platforming a whole bunch of um really um problematic Catholic figures. In this case, um he is going over a statement um issued by um excommunicated schismatic former archbishop um Carlo Maria Vegano who um if you're not um a real um pride head um Cardinal Vegano was the papal nunio to the United States and was eventually asked to resign um after he um basically called Pope Francis all kind really horrible things.

¶3Um so we are going to see what Archbishop Vegano has to say. Defense of Christ and the Catholic Church is doing a lot of work there. Um, Archbishop Vegano was initially recalled after it found out that after it came out that he had probably been involved in the cover up of um, Cardinal McCerrick's abuses um, abuses and by that I mean decadesl long pattern of abuse um, mostly directed at seminarians and young pri priests and um also was involved in covering up and mishandling um money. The video pause right now right now. Okay.

¶4I don't know what is going on. Okay, I stop and I'm going to do the screen sharing and I'm going Okay. Aha, there's a button that said share with system audio. So, um, yes, I Okay, there was a setting. So, um yes, you can notes that humanly speaking it isn't apparent today how this could happen since the entire hierarchy of the church he says is corrupt.

¶5He says however that this is what popes have always done correcting heresies. And he says indeed if we have reached the end and there is no longer a pope to accomplish this our lord himself will accomplish it in his glorious return. On the question of sedificantism and hyper papalism which he repudiates equally, Archbishop Vigos says Our task is neither to declare the sea of peace vacant nor to resign ourselves to an obedience that would make us accompllices in the modernist heresies of cidality. He says our duty is to remain Catholic and preserve the faith intact. He says we should celebrate and attend the mass of all time and form priests and bishop.

¶6Okay. Can you hear me when I am not screen sharing? I don't know. Okay. Apparently, my network is just really not happy today.

¶7I don't know what it is about Thursdays. Um, so I'm just going to have to um I guess um go screen sharing whenever I want to talk to you. Okay, so here we go. So basically in summary um what Archbishop Vegano wants is um but we'll we'll finish going through his suggestions because what he's hoping for is that he'll get a pope who will reverse all of Vatican 2 and bring the Catholic Church back to what it was when he was a little tiny lad um serving as an alter boy, but he's not ready for study the contism. So, now I'm going to go back into screen share and we're going to hear.

¶8What else? a message of inspiration saying that whoever remains faithful today prepares tomorrow's restoration like the monks during the centuries of barbarism. Finally, Archbishop Viggono points to a third cause and he says the certainty is supernatural and the most important. He says this crisis in the church is a trial permitted by God to purify his church and says like all trials it will pass. He says the human catacorn that which restrains can be removed but it is our lady who promised in the end my immaculate heart will triumph.

¶9Archbishop Vigo recommended us to pray the holy rosary to do penance and make reparation and ask the most blessed virgin to obtain for us a pope who is truly Peter. Archbishop Vegan's remarkable exclusive interview for life ends on an outstanding note. He says the papacy belongs to Christ and Christ what is his can and not destroy it. This is the reason why arch. So all right let me I've stopped sharing now I'm back.

¶10Okay. Um so basically this is Archbishop Vegano's new position that basically people who are that the that the traditionalists the people who um are um you know not fans of Vatican 2 really don't like the reforms that we've seen under Pope Francis and now under Pope Leo um are are now faced with the question of well what do we do next because during the pap there was always the possibility that after Francis we were going to get somebody new and different and more conservative but then we got Leo And Leo is, you know, um, a I I I I'm trying to say I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase this, um, without possibly, um, bringing bad luck on the Holy Father. Um, which sometimes freaks out my friends. Um, but you know, we we'll just say that, you know, we will continue to pray that God continues to bless Pope Leo with good health and that Leo, like his parents, lives a long and productive life and a long and productive papacy and one that would very well mean that I will be older than the Pope by the time we get a new pope. Um cuz we could be looking at, you know, a good 15, 20, 25 years of Leo without, you know, him um living to an absurdly old age.

¶11Um so what Vegano is basically suggesting is that um people in his camp continue to attend the Latin mass, pray the rosary, do penance, and hope that they get a pope that they like. Um this is yeah there there's a certain amount of hope involved in that. But what I think is interesting is that this is in a way, you know, this sort of okay, we're going to draw back and we're not going to push any further than we've already pushed seems to be popping up as a response more and more often on the extreme traditional right. Um, next Thursday I'll be um show you some other videos from some other people who have also sort of run up the white flag and at least temporarily surrendered. So these are people um yeah, somebody brought up that um the majority of Catholics would not appreciate the repeal of Vatican 2.

¶12And you're absolutely right. And that's why um ultim and I was just coming to that because that's ultimately why as a long-term strategy this isn't going to be successful, right? because almost all of the popes who um who who voted for Leo, not the popes, sorry, the cardinals that that voted for Leo were Francis appointees. By the time um Leo is no longer pope, the of the voting cardinals are going to be Francis appointees or Leo appointees. So, the idea that we're going to get this radical um you know, switch way back to the right.

¶13Um but um if you um but um if you are um so sorry I I got a private Um, okay. Sorry. Anyway, so but what this is going to do is for an awful lot of Catholics, it's going to kick the can down the road um a few years um at least until they can decide what they want to do next. Um, but it's very interesting to me that there are a lot of traditional Catholics who have basically including excommunicated schismatics like Vegano who seem to have decided that the best strategy is just to keep their heads down and hope for better luck next time. Um, however, I still think that it's remotely possible that this means that their next move might be to try to hold some kind of conclave and get an anti-popee because ultimately that's going to be the only way that they're going to get the kind of pope that they want.

¶14Um so now um I am going to go back into screen sharing and I am going to show you a little bit of Anthony Stein f friend friend of the channel um who was kind enough >> you says, "I have never lost hope and why I will not." The debate about this letter is well, he's talking about the new mass, but it clearly says we will not go at mass. >> Turns out, you remember the roach story couple was it last week, week before when he said uh that uh Pope Leo was not going to be rolling back to his custod and there was like a debate online about does he speak for Leo? I mean, we had that conversation right here and uh one of the things we said was he probably is speaking for Leo. A lot of people doubted that. Well, turns out that Leo did write a letter to Cardinal Roach.

¶15We'll put a link to that in the show notes. But joining us to weigh in is from Return to Tradition, Dr. Anthony Stein. Dr. First night, welcome back.

¶16Good to have you here. >> Good to be back. And I don't like being right about things, but here we are. >> Hey, someone's got to be right. You know what I'm saying?

¶17Someone's got to do the hard work of being right. This letter >> really like to be wrong about things that I that I care about once at once. That'd be really nice, wouldn't it? >> Well, just ask my wife. I'm wrong all the time.

¶18She'll tell you. Hey, the letter effectively undercuts that Roach was freelancing. At the end of the day, two things. I want to start with this one, though. He was telling the truth and I guess we just many people just didn't believe it because we just I don't know maybe we don't like his personal church politics.

¶19I guess I I tend to think that anybody who has a senior position in the Roman curia the kind of person who can get an audience with the pope probably meets with him on a regular basis since he's working directly for him. If he's saying something on behalf of the pope, if he is saying that the pope believes X or will or will not do X, you should take him at his word because if he is making things up, he is going to get caught doing that and will probably be punished. The debate about this letter is well, he's talking about the new mass, right? If you read the letter he's addressed to, it's it came out in light of the fact that Cardinal Roach is at Mount Angeli and Cardinal Roach was speaking and this letter, if you read it, talks about the celebration of the mass and how there should be respect for the celebration of the mass. The thing about this letter is that it says almost nothing new.

¶20But the giveaway that this is about more than the novasordto me and offering it as if the priest believes what the church professes happens at the mass is that it quotes a document called deservo deserti. I hope I'm saying that right. It was Pope Francis's document that came out the year after tradition custod. And if you've read that document, there are phrases in the new letter that are par. >> Greetings.

¶21Hey, Apostidelis is here. >> Hey there. What's up? >> Not much. I I I always um worry that I get too upset and uncharitable when I it's just me yelling at people.

¶22So, >> someone is you a bit. >> Yeah. So, I decided, you know what? I I'll I'll I'll just, you know, ping David and see if he's available since um R.J. has been um having some stuff going on and wasn't able to make it today.

¶23>> Um so I uh just wrapped up showing um Anthony Stein, friend of the show, um person who thinks about James Martin more than anyone else on the planet, like including James Martin. Um um and they were talking about how um Cardinal Roach has a letter um that had circulated at the last um at the last big cons at at the last big consistry that was basically saying yo we are not rolling back tradition we're not rolling back tradition custodas we're going to keep the current status quo on the Latin mass. >> Well, I I could say, >> right? >> And um yeah, and um a lot of traditional Catholics are like super big mad about that. >> Um so I was just making sure that the people were um kept up to date.

¶24I was I go >> um on um the hope on the happenings on the um extreme traditional side of the Catholic Church. >> Um because you know you have other people who are um basically running up the white flag and sort of preparing to keep their heads down for however long Leo is pope. Mhm. >> Um, and then other people are not, but you're here for the main action, which I'm sure is why the people are really here. Um, which is to hear what Joe what Joe Schmidt had to say on Pines with Aquinus.

¶25And, um, if we get to it, hopefully the Council of Trent when he was making his big I'm now Catholic tour. and is talking about the problem of evil and the problem of hell. So, um without further ado, I will go into screen sharing um and then if you can just tell me um when um you want me to pause and we will do that. Why Uh, this is being incredibly stupid and annoying. Okay, I am no longer screen sharing because this is just being dumb.

¶26>> Why? I don't know. >> Yeah, I I don't know what it's doing and I don't know why. And apparently Thursday is just not my day because Tuesday everything went beautifully and now it's Thursday and um >> is what is YouTube working? >> Um >> yeah I I don't know.

¶27YouTube is just being super weird. So let me just get into back into my playlist. Okay. Okay, here we go. Okay.

¶28In his You're muted. Hey, you're muted. Hey. Okay, we can pause share and then people will hear us. >> So, um now we can go back to screen sharing and this is just Joe sort of talking about what um was going on with him.

¶29Okay. my last remnants of trying to hold on to non-atholic explanations. Like I was already aware of lots of difficulties for various accommodationist models, for various demonic models. Um >> and uh Ethan was just like reallyounding me on like yeah, Matthew 16 and like uh church history and like the early monoiscopacy and various reasons why like Protestantism probably is not it. uh and like all the the the the Catholic vindicatory implications and like it would almost seem like betrayal if like the thing that's convincing me of Christianity is like distinctively Catholic miracles to then not become Catholic.

¶30Um, so then I don't know, it was the last remnants, the last fight, the last battle, 30 to 60 minutes conversation. I was like, "Okay, I got a Christianism." And then the next day I was like I was sort of basically snapped into my senses and I was like, "Okay, there aren't plausible alternative explanations of the data. I've got to become Catholic." So then uh looked up when the next confession time was >> and made a decade long confession on Saturday, I think February 7th. So on Friday, the night before, I did like a two or three hour examination of conscience and just made this huge document. And >> did you let the priest know that this was going to be long?

¶31>> Oh. Um >> did you show up? >> No, I I showed up and yeah, I shouldn't have done that. I should have like scheduled one, but um no, I showed up and it was going to be long and it was long and it was very difficult, but I don't know. taught me a lot about myself, you know.

¶32>> Okay. I I I I I'm just going to say on behalf of you know, all Catholics who have ever sat in line for confession and you know and and I have given some long confessions like not gonna lie, right? I I have given a confession where the priest very gently said, "Is there anything else?" Because there are a lot of people in line. I was not in there for 45 minutes. Please, if you are Catholic and you're coming back to the church after a decade, schedule an appointment, please.

¶33Please. >> I second that, too. as a as a former priest who's heard thousands of confessions in three languages. Uh that but the thing is that I I we were taught and trained to kind of expel people gently cuz I mean there you're right there's only so many hours in a day. But also the best ones were people who would come like 5 minutes when the block was over and be like can you hear my confession real quick?

¶34And it's like bro I literally got to celebrate mass. So I feel you Katie from the other side. Yeah. And it's just like Joe, you know, please please like just schedule an appointment or or like even just, you know, go like go and like confess for like, you know, confess like your top five and then keep coming back. >> But you can't.

¶35But you can't because Catholic teaching says you got to do your grave sins in number and kind. But then it also has a loophole. If you genuinely forget, you can always say, "For these and all my sins, I forget." And be absolved. It's not the end of the world. >> Yeah.

¶36Exactly. And there's also a like specific version of the um of the act of contrition that covers, you know, and any sins that I might have forgotten about. >> Okay. >> You know, >> because there's stuff that's not always top of mind. I'm just saying >> you know just just as a public service announcement don't be like Joe.

¶37I I mean be like Joe in that you you know go to confession. Don't be like Joe in that you hold up the line for 45 minutes. Especially if there's only one priest hearing confession. Okay, I'm going to go back into screen sharing now. Just practically speaking, although this is clearly the least important thing about what you're saying, did you just go in and say, "Hey, just I haven't been here in 10 years.

¶38This is going to be long." >> I said, "Yeah, I this is a like I I said I my last confession was a decade ago or something like that." That's what I said. And was he welcoming? >> Yeah. Oh, yeah. He was welcoming.

¶39>> Um and he just he was like just listened in. >> Wow. >> Um >> how long did it take? >> I don't remember exactly. It's probably like maybe 45 minutes or something.

¶40>> Yeah. >> People loved you in line. >> I'm so sorry to people who >> No, they can go and confess if they judged you. >> Yeah. No.

¶41And No, you know what that Let me I was like whenever I'm in confession lines and now I'm going to be like, "Oh, praise God that it was a long confession because it means like someone was returning to God, you know?" >> Yeah. Yeah. >> So, gee whiz, what was the phenomenological experience of having your sins forgiven and walking out and going about your day like? >> I mean, I don't know. It was It's just a new beginning.

¶42It was beautiful. It was peaceful, you know? >> It was like a a sense of kind of comfort and peace. Um, knowing that I'm a child of God and that God loves me and that he's forgiven me of all my my decade of debauchery and >> decadence and how wonderful. >> Okay.

¶43>> You know, I I laugh at Katie. You and I are a little longer in the tooth, but I always laugh at these young converts who are like they so they so dramatize their own depravity. It's It's just like we all have things we regret when we were young, but geez, like get off the cross, Joe. We need the wood. You know what I'm saying?

¶44Like it's a lot. >> Yeah. Well, I was going to say the thing that gets me too is like, okay, like Joe was raised in a devout Catholic family. Like his parents went to Fulton Sheen's beatification mass. >> Now, I mean, I'm not saying that like if there was a beatification mass, you know, in my reasonable area that I wouldn't go to.

¶45And you know there are you know certain um people um that you know like you know shout out to you know um servant of God Julia Gley who's buried in Denver um who when she gets beatified if I can reasonably make it there I would make it there. But the point is is that you have to be pretty hardcore to go to a beatatification mass. >> Oh yeah. >> Like this is the soil from which Joe Schmid has sprung. >> And so I can't imagine that he got away with very much when he was in high school.

¶46And when he was in college, I I mean he's only 26 and he was in a philosophy PhD program like you know and and in the philosophy department. I have known philosophy majors. This is not a hard partying crowd. >> I mean again we're not here to cast judgment on anybody. We don't even know him person but makes you wonder like >> Yeah.

¶47like yeah it's like when you're saying I was doing all this debauchery and it's like a at a certain level it's like okay Pixar it didn't happen my guy right >> well I I know you wanted me to talk about the new cat someday but in my extensive runins with them but they have a tendency to overshare like this in public like I remember a guy saying literally in front of his wife how he would cheat on her and then like Jesus saved him and I felt so bad for the woman you know cuz it's like you know you have your killing me softly with his song you got you know him telling all this stuff and and in to some degree for some of these people I'm not saying Joe's doing this but like the sins they're talking about are some are more fabulous and and and and interesting than the salvation they're supposed to be getting you But don't do that here. I'm very happy to hear he got such a good experience of confession. >> Yeah. Well, no, no. And I mean and you know and I and I do have to say that you know when he was talking about you know walking out of the confessional and feeling cleansed >> you know I mean that is I think a very relatable experience like that that is you know that's part of his experience that you know is a you know very common Catholic experience like um you know that I I I hear a lot of people, you know, who do make a habit of going to confession, you know, say like once a month or like every six weeks, >> you know, they talk about it as, you know, like it's almost like taking a shower, >> right?

¶48>> You know, like you do stuff, you're not >> Yeah. Yeah. It It's like spiritual hygiene, right? And in the same way that you know you're you know brushing your teeth, you're putting on clean clothes, you're thinking about you know what have I done, what have I not done and you know really coming back and you know confessing and you do feel better >> but you know you know again >> well I I appreciate what he's saying because also I've written about this too in one of my recent articles on moral theology. You know, what is what is moral theology for?

¶49What is confession for? And you know, the fact that he felt rel he was relating to God as his loving father is really good. And and it it doesn't seem like some cuz that as you know that can degenerate so many times in scrupulosity and absolution almost becomes a psychological release valve or mechanism and that's not good either, right? Um, so this is good to hear that he feels this way, you know. >> Yeah.

¶50Yeah. Yeah. And like I say, I mean, you know, and that's part of the reason why I find Joe interesting, like just sort of as a case study almost, >> is because there's a lot of his experience that is absolutely typical and there's a lot that's not and there's a lot that's problematic. And I think it's useful to kind of separate out, okay, these are the things that are becoming problematic with the things that aren't. Um, I will say that I think that this emphasis on sin and redemption and depravity and that kind of stuff is coming from this kind of conservative Catholicism that Joe is embedded in right now.

¶51that is um that's very converheavy. >> Yes. >> And they're bringing in a lot of these Protestant attitudes where it's like it's not enough to be born and raised in the tradition. You have to have this personal coming to God, this personal conversion experience. And if you've done some really juicy sinning before you converted, so much the better.

¶52>> Well, I I agree with you in terms of the sociology of that. What I think although in the mystical literature, so for instance, Regginal Garagu Lrange or um St. Ignatius of Leola, many of our traditions talk about um a second conversion, right? Baptism being the first, right? But then this idea of like a deeper coming to Jesus, a deeper awareness of his love for you or some sort of spiritual process like that.

¶53And so that that's not alien to the Catholic tradition at all. Like you talk about usually that's considered a transition either from you know sin to the purgative way or the purgative way to the illuminative way. But conversions of that nature, you know, as you I'm sure you I'm sure you agree. I mean there it's part of our vocab too. And maybe and maybe it should never have passed so much from our our lips because personal conversion matters, right?

¶54Well, personal personal conversion matters, >> but at the same time, um I I I do think that there's a specific and I agree like I think that it's important that people sort of develop their own personal commitment and their own personal spirituality. What I'm saying is is that this like very particular, you know, I was sunk into the depths of debauchery and decadence and all of this kind of stuff. And he never specifies exactly what he did, which, you know, is probably just as well. Um, because it would probably be either really shocking or really boring. um depending on you know you know depending on whether you're you know Joe's mom or um >> right >> you know anybody else in the world >> but I also I also said this on my article about about sin and it's funny how it's funny how people act you know I when I was in seminary many moons ago um there were many priests who would rapsidize eloquently about you know the beauty of confession to be, you know, but then I'd hear other priests who had been, you know, added a while who are like, it's so boring.

¶55It's like taking out the trash. Um, and like I would say both perspectives are actually correct, right? You have some people who really have a profound moral and spiritual awakening in the context of confession. There are other people who aren't. Um and and and and really they're it's like going to take out the moral trash and you're just a midwife of that to put it in a way.

¶56Um to mix a metaphor. Um you know, it's it's not it's not that extraordinary. I mean, and and there is such a thing as like the benality of evil of sin. Like it's not as interesting often as we make it out to be. Um sin is sin is kind of like standard fair.

¶57It's it's it's God the God God's goodness and grace entering a person's heart. That's interesting. Um but to your point earlier I just briefly before we keep watching this um one part I find interesting about all this that too that maybe I would have something to say about in a negative way would be and this is a good criticism we get from our more atheistic interlocutors is to say well you know isn't Christian morality a a a a solution in search of a problem right you know Christianity makes you feel bad about your sins. Therefore, you it necessitates a redeemer. It necessitates moral a need for moral cleans.

¶58>> So, like at the same time, I am very sympathetic to atheistic or naturalistic arguments about the autosuggest autosuggestivity, if that's a word, um of like the sin complex or the conscience. Um I mean, I don't believe that. I believe the conscience is a thing, but there's certainly a part of it that's conditioned. >> Yeah. The the thing is though is that I I think that even people who don't believe in a personal God, >> you know, do believe that there do believe that there is, you know, some need where if you do something wrong, you do need to atone.

¶59I mean, you know, whether that's, you know, what form that takes can be debated. Somebody mentioned that 45 minutes seems pretty short. Um the thing is is that generally when Catholics are offering confession, it'll be like um you know um I did you know this and that you know approximately this many times. I did this other thing approximately that many times. And generally the person hearing the confession will not ask you for like a purient amount of detail, right?

¶60Like for example, >> yeah. Yeah. Like like for example, if you know um somebody mentions, you know, like I stole. Well, the confessor might ask them, you know, well, did you shoplift? You know, like could you expand more?

¶61Because obviously someone who shoplifted a pack of gum is going to need to hear something different than somebody who committed armed robbery. >> But the biggest >> I'm sorry. Go ahead. >> Well, the big the biggest You're right. The biggest danger zone obviously is sexual sins, right?

¶62because people because people have such shame about them and they are often intensely private, you know, you don't want to the the the the priest confessor is often discouraged from asking. So someone says, you know, I was impure, right? That's very vague, right? Like impure how? And and so there's a balance to be struck, right?

¶63You don't want to be asking these purely in details, but you do need to know what you're dealing with because, you know, you got to confess the standard line is number and kind. What you did that's serious and how many times you did it. Um because of course, as you just say, it's different. It's different to commit armed robbery robbery once or to committed it a dozen times, right? Um, but there's this fine line, right, where people you just don't want to ask too many questions because if you do, um, people complain or, uh, people get offended.

¶64So, there's a balance. But you're right. Yeah. Generally speaking, >> right? And of and of course like that like particularly with sexual sins there's always the possibility that sort of the priest is getting his jollies by asking too many details.

¶65Um you know because that does you know that that is something that can happen. And to be fair the majority of priests are like I do not want to know the details. I do not care to know the details. Yeah, mostologically normal priests are exactly that way. Yeah.

¶66>> Yeah. Exactly. >> Am I too much information? >> Yeah. Exactly.

¶67It's like no. But anyway, so the point is is that you know 45 minutes for a confession assuming that we're ba like w with the understanding that you know that confessions are basically bullet points. 45 minutes is a long time. Like really long. Okay.

¶68I'm I'm going to go back into screen sharing which is being overly complicated today but that's all right. We got it sorted out and we will start listening again. It's being I'm reading the comments. It is decad 16. That's funny.

¶69Is it Is it working? Katy Ky, >> nothing is showing. >> Did Did you say >> nothing is showing that I can see? >> Oh, okay. I'll Apparently the screen sharing is deciding to be a little bit of a jerk today.

¶70Okay. Okay. >> Yeah. Got to do back in union with the church. >> Yeah.

¶71And then back into the sacramental life of the church. >> Yeah. So did you just start going to holy mass or >> Yeah. started going to mass, started, you know, I mean, it was right before Lent, which was great. Um, and uh, I definitely made that like a special end, you know.

¶72Um, and yeah, just started then praying the rosary every day. And I mean, even before then when I was like, you know, inching closer and closer, I started maybe praying like a decade of the rosary a day on Ethan's advice, which is like something that I would advise like all everyone who's listening to this. Like, dude, a decade takes two to three minutes. The stakes are massive. pray a decade of the roary every day.

¶73Just like do it every single day, two to three minutes >> and grace will flood your life. And do it like honestly with sincerity. You can even meditate on a mystery or something like that. Um but even if you don't believe, if you're Protestant right now, please like pause this >> and commit to praying a decade of the rosary. Now, I I just have to say as far as the like, you know, advising everyone, including the Protestants to pray a decade of the rosary every day is one of those things that really makes me question how fallen away Joe was because if he's going to if he's praying and and as he mentioned earlier, right, he was praying these conditional prayers He was um you know on Ethan's advice even before he came back to the Catholic Church he was praying a decade of the rosary which would be one our father and five and um 10 Hail Marys.

¶74>> Yeah. Um every day. Plus he was still going to mass when he was home with his parents. Right. I mean, the more I'm hearing about his life, the more that I think that he's um, you know, sounding more and more like a typical Catholic college student much more than someone who is living a life of atheistic debauchery.

¶75also like you like by the time you're praying a decade of the rosary, I mean that's a pretty heavy um Catholic commitment, right? And I mean, and I don't know. I I mean, like I I'm not going to discourage anybody from praying the rosary, but like that's also like you're already well on the path to Catholicism at that point. >> And and and there's there's a really good book out there. Um I forgot the I it's on my wish list, but I'm going to read it eventually.

¶76uh how God becomes real, you know, about the psychology of religion. And this one psychologist is looking into um how people realize, so to speak, in a literal sense um God in in divine experience. And what she found is that people who pray, I mean, a lot of mental effort goes into making God feel real. Um and I'm not an atheist, right? I'm not.

¶77But I also I know that that's true. Um that you know that he if you pray you often will begin to experience some sort of numministic presence. If you don't pray you won't. Um but that leads us to a problem of course right like why would God need our uh kind of our channels open for him to be able to speak to us if that makes sense. But >> yeah.

¶78Yeah. Okay. Anyway, I'm gonna go back into sharing. Oh, um actually before we do, um I I I I do I um I I want to respond in the chat um because this I think kind of relates to confession a little bit. Um um somebody um mentioned that u George Carlin had this routine about how when he was a teenager all the teenage boys would go to the uh Spanishspeaking priest because he didn't understand what they were saying as well so that they could get away with more.

¶79Um yeah I again that that is very relatable. Um, you know, >> technically you're not supposed to do that. If you if you can't understand the penitent at all, you can't absolve them technically speaking. >> Um, yeah. >> Yeah.

¶80Um, however, um, there are there are ways around this. Um, I I the um I I've gone to confession where the priest had to have like a translation app open. >> Wow. that was like helping him along. Um but um I I I think it's also the case that most Catholics, if they're being honest, will have admitted to having venue shopped for a priest at least once.

¶81>> Oh, hell yeah. >> Yeah. um you know whether that's just because it's like >> I do not want to have to go to my parish priest and say this you know or you know they know that you know that there there's one priest is you know yeah he he if you tell him you haven't been to mass in a while he's gonna really get in you so you know he's gonna really got get on your case >> when I was in the parish Um I was my line was full and I heard I heard from someone that the my the other uh priest who was living with me who served with me he was giving people the rosary as a penance and I would only give like one our father or whatever and people were mobbing me because they didn't want to have to do all that penance. Totally makes sense. I totally get it.

¶82And then I also heard down the line that I was wellliked by religious priests who needed to go to the confession. So they would go to me. I was a diosis priest because I was like really I I was always a soft touch with other clergy. >> Um I I let the brothers off easy, you know. Um but like because I mean I felt like that was what Jesus would do, right?

¶83Um is just be kind like that. Uh but there were others who would be like how how could you possibly do that and when you make battles and like chill >> on the other on the other hand I have to say there there are people who are like really like like disappointed when they get a light penance >> because they're like but I confessed all of this stuff and I got like one our father and I have to say there are times when like doing that penance if it was for especially if it was for something that was hard to confess. One, our father can be harder than a whole rosary. >> It really can't be. >> But um anyway, I I'm gonna go uh back into screen sharing.

¶84And >> by the way, people also tried that on me, but they often found I spoke Spanish and Portuguese, so they couldn't get away. every single day. >> Well, I think they've got to overcome prayers to the saints before they do that. >> Right. But that's why we went through all the evidence that prayers to the saints is efficacious and God has basically put a stamp of approval on it.

¶85>> Although I would say fair enough. Although I would say that just praying the first half of the Hail Mary, the angelic psalter, that's how the rosary used to be, right? The half the So like you could start with that. >> Yeah. I always like to conquer to mention those words that the angel >> I I'm sorry.

¶86Go ahead. I I have Whenever we want to talk, I have to stop sharing. So, it's a whole It takes a second. >> Oh, no. It was a nitpick.

¶87I think you meant to say an angelic salutation, not psalter. But >> yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that that that's fine.

¶88We we we this is nerd church. >> We are we we are here we are here for the nitpicking. But yeah um and actually just as a side note originally the Hail Mary was just the sal was just Gabriel's salutation. The pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death got added later on. >> Right.

¶89>> Um for reasons. >> Okay. So we will go back in. We will do our thing. No.

¶90Yeah. I mean you know uh Protestant could also do is um listen if you have objections to saintly intercession. I mean again like I think that God is sort of yeah you shouldn't but >> talk about hell. Let me throw an objection at you. >> It seems unreasonable to think that someone should suffer for all, you know, eternally for a finite number of sins.

¶91Why would a loving God exclude someone from his presence as it were for all eternity for 5 years? Sure. Okay, I can be down with that. Someone might say, but this just seems unreasonable. It seems like it was a belief born out of a more brutal time.

¶92Especially when you read the likes of Dante and others that we've kind of we've actually progressed in we we realize now that uh that God's love is greater than our sin. And if God's to be victorious then surely it's not going to be the case that most people are going to be or even many people are going to be damned. And then have you read uh I don't believe any of the things I'm saying just to everyone who's watching. Uh have you read uh who's the uh orthodox philosopher? >> David Bentley Hart.

¶93>> Yeah. brilliant fellow but who clearly is a staunch opponent of eternal conscious torment. What would your kind of response to what I said be? And then maybe if you can flesh out maybe a more sophisticated argument that David Bentley Hart has put forth and why you disagree. >> Yes, I mean I haven't looked into David Bentley's David Bentley Hart's stuff in too much detail.

¶94Um I've looked into some of like the um like more mainstream like philosophy of religion academic literature on this. Um but yeah, so I mean hell was one of my biggest barriers, one of my biggest objections along with various other moral problems, you know, with homosexuality and things like that. Um so yeah, how did I work through this? Well, two things to say at the outset. one is that even if I don't have a response to the problem of hell, um >> there's just so much evidence that just utterly inundated me for Catholicism that basically I just felt like it was irrational for me to cling to those objections.

¶95Especially when I mean like again, imagine that you're sitting there with our Lord before he's crucified at the last supper. You've seen all of his miracles. He's raised people from the dead. You've seen them with your own eyes. He's raised people from the dead.

¶96He's given sight to the blind. And then you watch him get crucified in bloody fashion. Maybe you even watch him get interred in the tomb. And then you're sitting there in the upper room with the apostles and he's there in bodily form. And he invites you to touch him.

¶97And you reach out and you literally poke his side. You're feeling his side >> and he's breathing on you. He's like literally breathing. It's a very bodily thing. And then he's with you for 40 days and he's eating fish and he's going out there and he's like, "Simon, do you love me?" And like you're hearing all this.

¶98there and you you've seen all of this. Imagine that happened. >> And imagine as is the case that Christ teaches that there is everlasting punishment in hell for people who are unrepentant mortal sinners. I think if you saw all of that, it would be ridiculous to think, "No, I'm not going to go with this Christ guy because I've got some like high flulutin abstract theoretical objection that I can't quite work through with hell. Even though I've seen this guy raise people from the dead, give sight to the blind, I've now just like indirected with him after I saw him interred in the tomb.

¶99Like, okay, maybe maybe there's some sort of story that I'm unaware of that, but I've just got to be docel to this guy because he has been manifestly vindicated by God. Okay, so Joe is going to keep going on like this for a little bit. um basically talking about how it was the vindicator these miracles that overcame his objections to hell. And you'll notice that one of the things that he brings up is like, oh well, the apostles saw all this stuff and you know, how could they possibly question Jesus or the doctrine of hell? The problem is is that eternal conscious torment in the sense that you know for example Dante is describing it is not in the Bible there's some kind of you know like some people go to heaven some people go to hell right there there's some idea of punishment after death but what that looks like is not entirely clear and you don't get from the miracle of the sun at Fatima to eternal conscious torment.

¶100Like there's not a causal relationship between those things. And it seems to me that what Joe is doing with this miracle evidence is essentially using it as almost a thought terminating cliche. >> So that he can say, "I don't have to worry about the logic. I don't have to worry about all this other stuff. I just have to believe." M >> and to me that's sort of um an interesting strategy because you know in the Catholic Church hopeful universalism exists as a position that people are allowed to take.

¶101And it see and it seems to me that for a Catholic who is because there's there's the idea of hell, right? There's the idea that hell is a place that exists that some people go there, right? That's not masa. Masa damnada is the idea that the overwhelming majority of people go to hell. Catholics are basically required to believe in the theoretical possibility of eternal damnation.

¶102They are not required to believe that everybody goes to hell. You're allowed to believe that hell is empty or is like, you know, like has like not very many people in it. Um, you know, some pe sometimes people will ask me, you know, well, how can you be how can you square, you know, the belief of in eternal conscious torment with like the belief in a loving and merciful God. And I just say, well, like, you know, um, Masiel Martial, right? The, um, you know, the the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, he was also um someone who basically spent his entire life finding ways to harm other human beings and apparently regretted none of it.

¶103Where else is a just and merciful God going to put someone like that? >> But there are very few people like him. >> Okay. I mean, but but Joe's point well, first off, Joe Joe doesn't a doesn't have a point about hell because he doesn't arrive at >> he doesn't arrive at it other than through an appeal to authority essentially, even if that authority is ultimately benign. And I I can see his point.

¶104Um, but again, these are hypotheticals, right? I mean I if if I were an apostle there's no part in the gospels unless you want to say his remarks on gehenna and stuff which are far from clear in terms of like that is where you're going to go forever right um I mean Jesus does talk about something like hell I mean whether it's the hell of internal conscious torment is something we can debate but the fact is that we're not at the last supper we're not at the crucifixion and this isn't an abstract question like you're you're saying that our loving God and the problem isn't even just that people are tormented and that we're too sensitive today and that affects offends our moral sensibilities. The And I just I just got done rereading David Bentley Hart's book because I actually did a review on it that was quite popular I might add. People shared it all over. Um, David Banley Hart makes a really good point that to believe in eternal conscious torment in any capacity diminishes God because we really make him out to be something very bizarre.

¶105Um, and and not necessarily benevolent. Um, and he he asked some really difficult questions that I think that need to be answered. You know like if you say that for instance that Jesus wills to damn people I mean is it and the re the traditional answer being to to that whole problem being you know well that's how radically God respects human freedom but then David Benley Hart will say what about like what and I saw this all the time as a priest you know you had a poor kid with a drug addiction right or another serious problem. I know parents who would chop off their right arm rather than see their child, you know, be addicted to heroin. Right.

¶106>> Right. >> So, you're telling me that I mean they they they'll spend tens of thousands of dollars physically removing their child from um stimuli to addiction by via a psychological treatment or a halfway house or rehab. And you're telling me that the God of the universe who loves us would would be less benevolent than a human parent. And then and he also raises the point in this book about how there's um the ascended beings, so human beings in Buddhism who attain a certain degree of enlightenment that that that they say they say in that tradition that they'll spend their eternity in part making sure that everyone goes to bliss. >> Right?

¶107And so he asked a really good question. Are you telling me that the um the uh the masters of Buddhism are more benign than the biblical God? >> That's that's really provocative. Yeah. Well, and and and Joe, and I'm going to skip over this part because his definition of hell, he then goes to this like coping mechanism where it's like, well, after you've been in hell for a really long time, you're not really completely suffering.

¶108You're just deprived of the beatotific vision, and it's really not that bad. And it's like at that point, you're it's like you're project >> I I don't know. I I'll I'll I'll just hit play and you can hear what he starts going on about. It's >> um >> coming up just next >> sort of evidence that we have for these Catholic miracles. Like we are like one person removed from palpating a reduplication of Christ's passion wounds.

¶109We have direct eyewitness testimony from like a bunch of people. We have photographs. We have videos of Padre Pio. We also have a photograph the day that he died and he didn't have scars despite the fact that it was like deep wounds for 50 years naturalistically inexplicable. We have photos.

¶110So I had to accommodate myself to the facts. >> Mhm. >> I had to accommodate myself to the facts. And so basically the evidence I thought was very similar in kind uh and very forceful, very similar in kind to the sort of evidence that I would have if I saw Christ basically with my own eyes. Uh and then Christ taught hell.

¶111And in that case, I should not be clinging to my own um objections. I just would think, okay, there's some way to respond to this. Maybe I don't know how. Maybe it's difficult. But listen, philosophy is difficult.

¶112You put a 100 philosophers in a room and you're going to get 307 answers to a philosophical question or puzzle because and you know they're applying methods with applying their uh taking their intuitions and trying to get to verdicts. But did that but fundamentally >> Mhm. >> how I got over it was I am a finite limited fallible creature. Um God has manifestly vindicated his church and maybe I don't know exactly how to respond to it. It's like we have the very various finite sins while on earth.

¶113Um how does that merit a kind of infinite punishment? Doesn't that seem disproportional? Right? So the objection would just be like hell is a disproportional punishment. God wouldn't inflict a disproportional punishment um because that's unjust and God is just.

¶114Therefore there's no such thing as hell. So that's like probably the steelman version of of the argument. And what what Brian Cutter points out in that paper. So I mean there are a few there are a few ways you could go. one um you could say that basically no the sins actually aren't finite in terms of their gravity.

¶115They are infinite in terms of their gravity because the one that they offend has infinite mer inf sorry infinite dignity infinite glory. >> Um and like just it is an intuitive common sensical thing that like >> the kind of thing that you harm uh matters a lot to the gravity. So like think about stepping on the the head of an ant. >> Yeah, there you go. >> Uh listen, you shouldn't wantly step on the heads of ants.

¶116Okay, don't do that. But that's not that's no that's nowhere near as bad as stepping on the head of a puppy. >> That's much worse. You should not step on the head of a puppy. You know what's much worse than stepping on the head of a puppy?

¶117Step stepping on the head of a baby or a grandma. That's much worse because of the kind of dignity or the kind of the kind of being that you're wronging. Right? >> And so if you just extrapolate this to God's case, this is being of infinite dignity. your biggest.

¶118>> Yeah. Okay. Go go go go go ahead cuz >> well I mean this whole argument from Lee Majest which is really what it is wounded majesty is is so abhorent because you don't injure in the analogy he's giving you're not injuring God because God by den definition in Catholic theology is impassible he is invulnerable he cannot be brought to suffer suffering or to grief because you can't hurt him. Um, you are not doing injury to God. Now, you could say you're doing injury to his majesty or whatever that means.

¶119Uh, but that's such a fragile God. And that's what goes back to David David Bentley Hart's comment. What type of god are we claiming to worship here? who cannot. And also for a god of wounded majesty, I might add, he seems to be really really patient.

¶120Um, you know, there's a lot of people out there doing a whole lot of crazy all the time. >> Um, and he seems to just let it happen. >> Yeah. And and and and it also just seems to me to be such a messed up argument because I think that most people would say that just sort of instinctively that the reason why it's, you know, bad to hurt a baby or a grandma or something like that. It's not because those are people who have a greater degree of dignity.

¶121It's those are people who are more vulnerable. >> Exactly. >> Right. And and I also raised the point of John Henry Newman uh you know talking about animal cruelty you know there's something to be said he said you know can can you can you I don't know chop off the leg of a cow right and eat it right morally sure some would disagree I guess if they're vegans but um generally speaking yes but he says what does it say about the character of the person who does it their moral tenor if they're willing to inflict cruelty on another sensient being, >> right, >> for no reason, right? And that's a very interesting argument that it may be morally listen, but it certainly says something about yourself.

¶122And when I think about that, I think again, what does it say about God? >> Yeah. If we take it Yeah. And again, I mean, even if we're taking it back to like, you know, talking about stepping on an ant, right? I mean, I think that, you know, most people would, you know, like obviously inadvertently stepping on an ant or, you know, slapping an ant that's bit you or something like that, >> but to like, you know, torture the ant, >> right?

¶123to, you know, like sadistically destroy an antill and take pleasure in that is something that I think most people would find abhorrent. >> So this person a little touched, you know what I'm saying? Upstairs. >> Yeah. Yeah.

¶124Yeah. Exactly. Like like you would worry. It's like, okay, if that's what they do for fun, what else would they do to, you know, what would they do to a puppy? What would they do to a baby?

¶125>> Yeah. And um you know >> and that's why these aren't philosophical questions. And Joe wants to put Joe and I understand this tendency, but he wants to interpret everything as if it were philosophical question or even if they're theological, but there's some really important >> right >> personal questions that these interpretations give rise to. And I just don't think he's taking them seriously. Yeah.

¶126Because he doesn't have to anymore. or he submit he submitted his intellect to Rome and and and is convinced of its divine origin and that's it. >> Yeah, exactly. Um but he's also, you know, submitting but I don't know if he's even submitted his intellect to Rome as much as he's ex submitted his intellect to, you know, a combination of what he was taught by his parents and what his good buddy Ethan is telling him, >> right? of it's hard to adjudicate what you know what isn't isn't but yet but I I would agree there's definitely that going on too.

¶127>> Oh okay. So anyway I'm going to hit play again. He is due a kind of honor that is utterly incompatible with the decisive rejection of him and the decisive turning away towards something that you know is gravely wrong and opposed to his law, opposed to love of him, your biggest benefactor and someone who is infinitely valuable, infinitely worthy of honor and dignity. and you say no to that. You valued, let's say, stealing a pack of gum over relationship with this infinite being.

¶128>> And I don't know, it wouldn't be given that principle that like, you know, the gravity of wrongs may very well scale in some way with the dignity of the one being. >> Sorry. No one's going to >> Yeah. Exactly. It's like Yeah.

¶129the the and and that's the the the thing it's like again it's the idea of scale you know and I don't know I just Yep. You know, if you decisively reject with full knowledge and deliberate consent, >> with fully knowing that you're doing something gravely, seriously wrong, you stared clearheadedly at evil, something opposed to God, which evinces a hatred of God, and you chose it. you chose it. Maybe maybe I'm just wrong in my intuition that that doesn't have maybe >> I have to pause it and stop sharing before you know I'm sorry but I mean that's that is a serious question but the but it still begs the question can a human being do that in any meaningful sense because even I mean most most ancient Christians conceptions especially of morality uh state as a as a fact that people all human sinfulness is in part due to ignorance. >> Right?

¶130>> So can you can you correctly say in any point that you know you have willfully knowingly chosen evil que um because even Aristotle would say that you know and to Thomas to some extent no one chooses evil qua evil. We always choose something because we believe it's a good even if that belief is incorrect. So you just have to ask how that's internally coherent. But so that's >> right. You know >> Yeah.

¶131Well, and that's the thing is I I don't I honestly think that a lot of what he's saying isn't coherent. >> Yeah. >> You know, he's just found propositions that he um has chosen to believe. wouldn't be the first time my intuitions were wrong about things. So that's one way you could go.

¶132>> Mhm. >> Of course, there are lots of objections to that, but okay, you have objections to that. Then there's this huge disjunction of other things that I could say. So this is where hell and proportionality, Brian Cutter's paper, comes in. Maybe indeed over the course of the afterlife the sufferings of hell are only in aggregate finite.

¶133How could that be? Well, maybe the intensity of the suffering decreases by a geometric proportion at certain periods. So that maybe you have like I don't know how to I don't know how to calculate but maybe you have a you know let's say a thousand units of suffering for the first hundred years >> then you have 500 units of suffering. Then you have 250 units of suffering for the next portion. then you have a, you know, 125 and you just decrease it by half over time.

¶134If you add that up, you it's provable mathematical fact that that only adds to 2,000 units of suffering. So notice it is everlasting suffering. It is everlasting because you've sort of decisively rejected God. You've stared clear-headedly at evil and you've chosen that. You've conformed your will to evil.

¶135So God will respect your freedom to do that. Um, but if we adopt this model where the suffering geometrically decreases, then this total suffering is finite. And so if you think that the crimes are only finite in gravity, the punishment is only finite in gravity as well. So you can get around that. Or you could think that maybe uh I don't know what the church says about the following.

¶136So I fully submit my intellect and will to the magisterium. If what I say is against the magisterium, then take a lighter and burn it. Put it on a hard drive. Burn it. And I will be the first there to celebrate the burning.

¶137Okay. So maybe um hell is like a timeless state. Maybe it's not temporally endless. So it is endless. It is kind of like in some sense uh it doesn't end.

¶138But if it's timeless and you only have a finite amount of suffering, then uh it's never ending. >> The the the thing that always strikes me about those arguments is that it's ultimately it it it ends up sounding like purgatory with extra steps. It's like you're imagining a hell that functions the way that in like say if you read um Katherine of Genoa, which everybody should, she's great, >> but if you read like the way that she's describing purgatory as this place where you're suffering, but and because you have to make reparation for your sin, but you're joyful about it because as you suffer, the the suffering decreases as you're purified. Um that's the model of hell that he's arguing could be acceptable. So, it's kind of like what does getting massadam what does believing in masadam natada get you that just believing that the majority of people just go to purgatory doesn't I I don't see it masata is a numerological issue not a problem not not the possibility a prior eternal hell >> so so we got to be careful about that because of course no one is required to believe in masate Even in a pessimistic.

¶139>> Yeah. But what I'm saying is is that Joe and Ethan are arguing for hell as though mased nada, the doctrine of hell and and eternal conscious torment are all the same thing. >> Yeah. But they're not wrong in that magisterium is pretty clear that hell is eternal and conscious according to standard magisterium. >> Right.

¶140>> But what they don't also recognize and David Benley Hart once again does this very well. He's like even the ancients so Augustine and others note that a very sizable minority of Christians definitely believed in um some degree of a pocket of stasis or universalism. There is there is a there are there is a paper trail for that. Um and and and that this tension between what what he calls infernalism and what you know what what Christians have believed in historically it the tension exists. >> Oh yeah.

¶141And I and I don't want to imply that the tension isn't there. What I'm saying is is that he it seems to me that if your problem with hell is that eternal conscious torment seems to be unjust, that rather than softening your definition of what hell is to make eternal damnation somehow okay, so that you get damnation without torment, that it makes a lot more sense to just say that the majority of people go to purgatory. >> But even but even he's working off in an a philosophical thought ex look at what it is a thought experiment which has no basis in theological data whatsoever. Um it it it's basically no not to use the expression but it's it's intellectual masturbation. Um >> so there's no there's no groundedness to it.

¶142It's simply a an assertion um of units of suffering like where where where are you even getting that >> and then also I would also argue the phenomenology which is really where the problem is is not even addressed. I remember when my father used to say to me, "Come outside." And if you just work with me for, you know, 20 minutes, you're cutting grass, you know, it'll only take 20 minutes. Come work with me. And then 20 minutes became, you know, 5 hours. And, you know, you think to yourself, "Dad, when is this going to be over?

¶143Oh, it'll be over soon. It'll be over soon." Like, that in and of itself is its own form of torture when you don't want to be somewhere and >> you you have another day and another day and it just keeps adding. Um I I the phenomenology like I I think of t like you are you familiar with uh Terresa Babula's vision of hell >> um in general terms but please share it for the people. Yeah, from her autobiography of a fascinating document in its own right and I love Teresa Fabula, but she talks about how God reveals to her a vision in which she is sent to hell and she is she describes it as being in a red hot sewer almost like a sewer pipe and no matter how she turns her body it's scalding her like it's burning her and and she feels intense despair and and loneliness and darkness and it's filthy. It's covered with filth.

¶144It it's this horror depiction quite frankly. It's it's it's it's it is horrible. Um but at the end of the day, she gets out and and you know, God says, "This is where I was going. This is where I would have sent you if I didn't save you essentially, I think, is what Jesus says to her." But I mean, the vision itself is terrifying. Um >> yeah.

¶145And so when I think about you saying, "Oh, well, if it's units of suffering, that it's completely and utterly irrelevant to the to the lived experience of the creature." >> Yeah. >> You know, they're not thinking, "Oh, maybe this unit is, you know, n 999 out of out of 10,000." It's irrelevant. That excruciating pain, which again is more than just physical torment, is incomprehensible. Like even I think I think even when we talk about the vision of Fatima, we always talk about Fatima. I mean the children were absolutely mortified by what they saw or they claim to have saw.

¶146>> Um >> and I to be and I mean whatever we think about Fatima, I'm not I'm not crazy about God having to terrified little children to make his point. But >> well we we we'll we'll get into Fatima at a at a later date >> as we do. >> Yeah. Because Yeah. FA Fatima is one of those like Fatima is the big one.

¶147Um there there's going to be weeks and weeks on Fatima. Um >> so um anyway, so I I'm gonna um hit um play again so we can hear. I I've I've jumped a little bit ahead because he w wasn't saying anything else about hell that he hadn't already said. >> But basically his argument is the Catholic Church is divinely inspired >> mistakes in the past >> where philosophers applying their their philosophical methods to the same stock of intuition to reach radically divergent conclusions. So we already know that we're kind of unreliable at this sort of reasoning.

¶148It's just different in quality the evidence here compared to >> So anyway, yeah. Yeah, that's helpful. What about gay stuff and LGBT stuff? >> What has been your opinion of the Catholic Church's teaching on these things? I presume you've looked into them in greater detail >> cuz I think I mean I'm sure you were too smart and wise to realize that the church >> didn't have the character she's often attributed as having people.

¶149Yeah. >> When you read what the church teaches, it's really beautiful about our love for to samesex attraction. The idea that we're all in this together. We all struggle with disordered sexual desires that we have to re in and >> and just improperly ordered desires in other cases as well. Um I mean you know when you when we say disordered right I mean Catholics are talking about it's not properly oriented toward the good right so it's uh you know all of our actions they have a kind of direction or orientation.

¶150Are we orienting ourselves toward the good or and even our desires have a kind of orientation. Are we desiring an object which is genuinely valuable or genuinely good or is it disvaluable or bad? So that we're not, you know, we're not trying to like or at least I'm not trying to medicalize things at this point when we're this is a moral category. This is a moral category whether you're directing something to the good or whether you're directing it away from the good. So >> yeah, I mean at the outset whenever I talk about this >> I just want to emphasize that I would I would die.

¶151I would take a bullet for anyone in the LGBT community. >> The hell out of here. take a bullet for them. And I'm not lying. >> The hell out of here.

¶152>> That's how much I want to love them. That's how much I do love. >> Yeah. Um >> I I had forgotten that we were coming up on this. >> Yeah.

¶153I I I didn't realize that this set of I I had forgotten that this set of clips was coming up next. And now I'm really glad that you're here because I saw that and it's like okay he a and this is the thing to that's really that that really got me interested in Joe's like brand of Catholicism right because I was raised in a Catholic parish that had a lot of those same attitudes right you would be amazed at how many of the gospel reading give the priest an an occasion to preach about the evils of abortion, divorce, and homosexuality because apparently according to this dude, it was like 90% of them because that was what 90% of the homalies were about when I was a little kid. So like I recognize the kind of Catholic church that Joe grew up in. And it is not a Catholic church that makes life easy when you're a queer kid. And when you have people that you love who are gay or lesbian or trans or by or what have you.

¶154Um and it's ultimately it's like it's very easy to say, "Oh, I would take a bullet for them." But it's like but in everything else you do, you are setting up the circumstances in which say somebody would go to a to a nightclub or even an affirming church and shoot it up. >> You're giving aid and comfort to violence. >> Yeah. Yeah. And and Matt and Matt Fred's statement is is just again the phenomenon we always used to learn even in seminary when it came to preaching >> what how you sound to someone is no is no what you actually say is by no means as important as how you are perceived right and and how someone takes what you're saying and how they interiorize it.

¶155I don't know a single gay person who has ever said, "I feel so profoundly loved by this teaching. It's so beautiful because that's not what's being said." Yeah. It's completely It's completely ridiculous that he would say, "Oh, it's so beautiful and inspiring because you're like we we're all made for love." But then you say, "But not your love. Your love is invalid. It's disordered.

¶156It ought not to be ad. it's not admissible a priori without discussion, >> right? Um, >> and and and there's also the fact that like now now I will say that the one thing that I think is truly defensible about the Catholic Church's teaching on human sexuality is the way that the Catholic Church has consistently um like refuse to make a carve out for premarital heterosexual sex >> for divorce and remarage, for contraception, and and then make homosexuality this special other category that can never be redeemed, right? It's like, and like Joe was saying, you know, there's all kinds of stuff that the Catholic Church teaches are disordered. The reason why I think it's defensible is not because I agree necessarily with any of those positions, but it's because it's intellectually consistent.

¶157And it means that when people want to argue for um you know pastoral responses that welcome people who are cohabitating or that you know loosen things up on married heterosexual couples using contraception. That those same arguments have to also be applied to same-sex couples. But see, I don't agree with that. I don't agree it is sensible. It for this reason, it it completely distorts the meaning of human aeros.

¶158And it just does. I mean, you're a priori like like it's even back to those crazy debates they were used they were having on the internet about, you know, can you kiss your girlfriend? And there were and and there were some who were saying you absolutely cannot because it's near occasion of sin. blah blah blah. And I'll let them debate that.

¶159That's not my problem. But, you know, you're you you literally say that the the the most fundamental orientation you have to give and receive love. And and they'll try to say, "Oh, you're you really just want friendship with another man. You really just, you know, maybe your dad because they so psychologize it that maybe your father wasn't affectionate to you." They they find all these ways >> getting around it. >> Oh, yeah.

¶160Yeah. Yeah. But >> oh yeah yeah yeah and and like I say I I I agree with you because I think that the argument that for example like you know a couple where you know you know a heterosexual couple that they know for a fact that they are infertile right like you have you like two 75year-old people right their names are not Abraham and Sarah you know the odds of a child coming of that is not likely, right? But we recognize that there are goods, right? Like you say, like the erotic expression of love for your partner, >> which is not just sex acts, right?

¶161It's more than that, >> right? Right. Right. Right. Right.

¶162Which I mean, we aren't aren't just talking about, you know, genitals touching genitals. We're also talking about, you know, hugs and kisses and living together and sharing a life and building a household and all those kinds of things, right? >> Um those are all things that, you know, I think you can make a very good Catholic argument that those goods if they are indulged in moderately are genuine goods. What I'm saying is that I do think that it's a positive thing in terms of that like what I'm saying I I guess what I'm trying to say is is that I see where a lot of Protestant churches decided okay contraception is okay and divorce is okay and you know premarital sex is like we'll allow it right but you can't be gay. That's like the one thing that that's like the one forbidden sexual sin.

¶163And the Catholic Church hasn't made that move. Um, and I think that in the end that's what is going to force the Catholic Church to allow inclusion and affirming for for queer people, for divorced people, for married people who want to use contraception is the fact that there was no divide and conquer, right? Like everybody who has some disagreement with the Catholic Church's teaching on human sexuality has beef with all of it because it's all of a piece. That that that was what I was trying to say. >> Okay.

¶164I I see how that could be true methodologically, but the fact and we've had this debate before, but I don't think the church can the church would have to be a the church is very good at recconing itself. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Masterclass in recconing. We never believed this.

¶165You obviously did, right? Um or we because they reinterpret the >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Marvel Comics has nothing on the Catholic Church when it comes to a reccon.

¶166>> It really It's incredible. Um I actually just bought the famous book, The Church that Can and Cannot and Does Cannot Change. I think it was Okconor. I just got it. I got it sent in the mail.

¶167Um, but yeah, I just I just think that that's facious on its face. Uh, that there I don't think I don't think the church if the church ever does it, it'll be kicking and screaming. >> Kicking and the whole way. >> Yeah. I I don't know.

¶168I I I kind of feel like they've been kicking and screaming for about the last 50 years. And um I'm personally really optimistic about the stuff that came out of of study group 11 on the senate on cenidality. Uh you know I'm also really optimistic on the fact that like at least in my parish like the method is all very much you know like real like love the person but like truly love the person and welcome them and meet them where they are and you know make space for people >> and I think that there's a real potential for change there and you know baby. >> Oh, well, see that's that that betrays your ground, if I may compliment you, your grounded touching grass Catholicism, right? You know, because your Catholicism is not the Catholicism of mere proposition, you know, you're trying to live with these people.

¶169You're trying to talk to these people. Whereas, you don't you don't have to do that in this conception. You know, the propositions are the propositions and how it affects people is not your problem. You know, simply isn't. At least according to what some of these people say.

¶170>> Yeah. And that's why I'm actually like, you know, people have speculated on Joe's sexuality. I prefer not to do that. >> Yeah. It's not fair.

¶171>> Um but um I do I will say that for his sake, I very much hope that he isn't gay, >> right? >> Because if he is, he is hurting himself in really profound ways. >> Yes. Agreed. >> Okay, I I'm gonna do the thing again.

¶172>> So that's I want to start with that so that people know that like and this is just like this issue matters a lot to me, right? And I' I've thought a lot about this. So, and I struggle with it. I I I struggled a long time with it. >> So, how did I get over these hurdles?

¶173Well, one thing again, return to the I mean, it is a it is a good point. Like, return to the the point about Christ. If you're sitting there with Christ, you see his miracles. You see him miraculously duplicate all the loaves and the fishes and whatnot. You're like, you see him heal people.

¶174He's like, "Get up and walk." You know, he's like, "So that you know that the son of man has authority to forgive sins. Get up and walk." And the person gets up and walks. You see all that. You see him crucified. You're there next to the blessed mother and John at the foot of the cross.

¶175You see him and then later on you're interacting with him in his glorified body. You see all that and you know it just so happens that he has some moral teachings that great against your moral intuitions. >> It's ridicul I I think it's ridiculous if you're in that epistemic situation. It's ridiculous to cling to those moral intuitions and not submit yourself to Christ. He's been manifestally vindicated by God.

¶176He's been accredited to you as a divine legate. So submit your intellect to him. Right. Um, don't cling to your own understanding. Submit your intellect to him.

¶177And that's actually the rational thing to do in those circumstances. I think it is positively irrational if you see all of that to then be like, "Oh, yeah, but he had some teachings on morality that I just I sort of disagree with." >> Go against what popular culture. >> Yeah. Go get what popular culture says. And again like it's not like at least to me it's not like he's saying that um you know like good is evil or you know like it is per you are morally obliged to recreationally torture children for fun or like 1 plus 1 equals 12 >> like okay that that that's discrediting but when it's these other things where like I don't know the vast majority of humanity for the vast majority of time has thought these things are morally impermissible and uh I don't know like the arguments here are in a kind of speculative abstract domain and where really easy to see how our intuitions could be cognitively penetrated that is be affected by our prior beliefs and prior desires.

¶178So basically cognitive penetration is when you can either gain an intuition or lose an intuition um including in the moral domain um as a result of your prior beliefs or worldview or desires. Yes. So >> and moral intuitions are just overwhelmingly susceptible to cognitive penetration. I mean, I've just been able to like throughout this process, my moral intuitions have themselves just literally changed. Like the way things seem to me changed.

¶179They're so malleable, right? Yeah. They're so malleable. Like, previously, I have certain moral intuitions for or against something, but then just as a result of changes in my background beliefs, like okay, let let me make sure I've stopped sharing. Okay.

¶180So, so we are getting ve but before we get into the whole, you know, um, you know, you just want to sin part, which I I think is really what we're heading for at this point, >> is the fact that, okay, I've read the I I've read the New Testament several times. I I I don't have if I had been thinking I would have had a nice Dan Mlen clip to drop in here where he mentions exactly what Jesus says about you know sex and the B sex because Jesus didn't have a whole lot to say about sex except you know when, you know, he like kept the woman taken in adultery from being stoned. Um, you know, let alone, you know, so so, so it really it seems to me again that Joe is using these miracles as a thought terminating cliche. >> He's saying, I think this is wrong. I think that I am required to believe something that is wrong.

¶181So therefore, I'm going to find a way to convince myself that I should be believing this thing that I believe is wrong. >> Yeah, I agree. >> Yeah. And I mean, and that is just not a good way to live. >> No.

¶182Uh and know I wanted to scream at the t at the screen, but I don't want to interrupt the flow of his his thought, but he's like, "You've seen this. You've seen this. No one on earth has seen the miracles of Christ. No one on earth has heard him or talked to him unless they're, you know, off their meds. Um, it just doesn't happen.

¶183So, you know, he's saying these things as if the average person has seen Christ or can see Christ. And the fact is that people have not seen Christ. And he's talking and he's also talking about these miracles like you know like Padre Peio >> as though well seeing Padre Peio's stigmata is good enough right and one of the things that I will be talking about when I eventually get to Padre Peio because I got to get through Fatima first. But um with Padre Peio, there was a whole Vatican report that's like this thick in printed form that was written by a doctor who went there in the 20s and came to the conclusion that the stigmata were fake. >> Right.

¶184>> Right. And this was a believing Catholic who had been hired by the Vatican >> to go there and check this deal out. >> So this was not someone who was predisposed to like rejecting miracles completely out of hand. >> Right. Yeah.

¶185And as we've discussed before, up until John the 23rd even, I mean, >> they were very skeptical of Padre Peio. He was censured in all sorts of formal and informal ways. Um, it's only John Paul that the second that changed that >> because of his own experiences, which are mysterious to this day. We don't really know what went down. >> Um, >> yeah.

¶186What what what Yeah. What what all what we know is basically that John Paul II um I I I don't know if he was even a bishop at that point. I think he might have just been like just still a regular priest, >> right? >> Um I I I'm not sure where it fall exactly. It falls on John Paul's timeline, but um he went to um see Padre Peio and had some kind of a conversation with him that um affected him really deeply.

¶187>> Um >> the rumor that said he, you know, he he prophesied in being elected the pope and who knows, you know, who knows? >> Yeah. Yeah. I I mean, we we don't know. I mean, you know, and maybe Padre Peio told every priest that he that came to visit him.

¶188I see that you're going to be elected pope one day. I I mean, we genuinely don't. >> I knew an elderly priest 10 years ago who said that he was slapped in the face by Padre Peio repeatedly in public. What? And and said that he was laughing as he slapped him.

¶189And when he asked Padre Pio why he did it, he said because I want after this I'll be excommunicated. And the priest in the priest interpreted that to mean that he had a vocation to the priesthood because in those days to strike a priest was an excommunicable offense. >> Yeah. And >> I mean he's crazy. >> Yeah.

¶190Yeah. And and the thing is is that like and and I will say that like based on the reading that I personally have done on Padre Pio. Um I I'm looking at the time. Um I'm good to go for like another half hour. Does that work?

¶191>> Yeah. I got to go in like 15 minutes or so. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

¶192Yeah. So we'll go another 15 minutes and then we'll we'll call it a day. >> Sounds good. But um anyway, my personal take on Padre Peio is that Padre Peio was probably um you know had um you know some degree of you know low IQ learning disability, you know, something like that, right? but was nonetheless a very pious and holy person who was, you know, given to, you know, behavior that seemed, you know, somewhat odd.

¶193And that, you know, he did have, you know, sometimes these insights, some of which are explicable and some of which aren't. And I don't have any problem with saying that Padre Peio was probably a saint, right? Or that he was a very holy person. I don't have a problem with that. But I do think that um you know the the the people who go all in on believing 100% of Padre Peio are kidding themselves.

¶194>> Yeah. And and and a lot of pious Catholics make the category error that just because you're holy doesn't mean you're sane. Um people there's plenty of mental illness in the in the among the saints. Th that could be true as well as his holiness. I'm not going to adjudicate that.

¶195Um it's beyond my pay grade. Um but back to but but getting to what Ethan said, it it still falls back on these things about the need for the miraculous and and and the miraculous being the as you say thought terminating cliche. I don't know if I'd call it that, but I would definitely say it is the um it is that form of evidence which basically says Catholicism is validated. Um and the and the fact remains is that if if it were millions of people would be Catholic, billions of people would be Catholic. But the fact is that they're not convincing for many people.

¶196And it's not fair to them to say it's because that they're of their infidelity or their moral weakness. It just isn't because even during the lifetime of Christ, people didn't believe in him because of miracles, >> right? >> You know. >> Yeah. And and and again, it's like at a certain point, it's like you don't believe in God, you don't believe in Jesus, you believe in Padre Peio's weird skin condition.

¶197Okay. Um I I I want to see if we can at least finish up this little chunk penetrated. They're super prone to framing effects. There's significant interpersonal disagreement with respect to moral intuitions. It's really easy to talk yourself into an intuition or talk yourself out of an intuition.

¶198Um, so like I don't know, this just does not seem to be the sort of evidence that stacks up against leg. No, sorry, no leg, you know, like that sort of thing. Um, so and given that uh they're so susceptible to cognitive penetration, I don't know, that's like a non-truth tracking factor that could easily be explaining why I'm going ary with respect to the moral domain. And I mean this is another thing. Catholicism seems to have an in like a plausible by Catholicism's own lights internal explanation for why I would have those intuitions and would go astray.

¶199Why would we have intuitions about the permissibility of homosexuality? So this is called like a debunking explanation of intuitions. Basically like if you adopt a theory which goes against certain intuitions, it's good to have a kind of explanation by the lights of your own theory why people would go wrong with respect to their intuitions. And that actually mitigates the evidential force of those intuitions because then it's not surprising under the theory that you would go you would go astray with respect to those intuitions. And I just think that Catholicism has plausible internal explanations, plausible debunking explanations of these contrary intuitions about hell and about homosexuality and whatnot.

¶200Namely, the knowetic effects of sin, both the original sin and personal sin. So it's just like I think it's unsurp we have darkened intellects. They're not totally destroyed, right? We still have a natural aptitude to discover things and to know things, but our minds are indeed broken. Our intuitions are indeed broken.

¶201And it's utterly unsurprising under Catholicism that some of our minds would be darkened in precisely these ways where it comes to like sexual sin and it comes to like my ultimate fate and other people's ultimate fate where it's kind of like not something I want to happen or I have to kind of stop engaging in certain behaviors that I find pleasurable. It's like it's not very it's not very surprising that the noetic effects of sin might kind of um manifest in these sorts of ways. So I started seeing that Catholicism has an intern and again this isn't even like you don't have to be a Catholic to recognize that this is a dialectically point. Catholicism by its own lights without having to add any additional posits that are ad hoc already has an internally coherent debunking explanation for why you'd have contrary intuitions to it for why some of us would go pretty pretty seriously astray with respect to some of our intuitions. >> Totally.

¶202So for why moral intuition is sometimes valuable. People just want to sin which you know it is on one hand. Yeah. I mean, people can come up with all kinds of justifications for doing things that they know that they shouldn't really be doing. Um, on the other hand, as a moral or philosophical argument, you just want you you disagree with me because you just want to sin is I I mean, Joe, my friend, that is weak sauce.

¶203That is really weak sauce. >> It's also extremely it's degrading and demeaning toward your interlocutor because you're basically saying you're equating well you're conflating moral rectitude with rational superiority because you now you've now attached you've attached a value to that. Do you see what I'm saying? So you're you're not you're not just you're my opponent in thought and the reason you're not on my side is because sin has made you stupid and that is not not only is it ineffective in helping to convince other people of your argument. It's a form of al homminum if you ask me it's a type of an ad homonym.

¶204Now I I heard that kind of argumentation in seminary all the time and it's based on St. Thomas in in teaching of concupisence that sin makes you makes you makes you stupid. But the fact is you don't need to have a theology a pharmmatology a theology of sin to account for human stupidity. Um but now you you you've attached this immoral program to this problem. Um and it just seems like it's it's very it's very invalidating without actually engaging the argument of the other person.

¶205um or whatever that may be. So, I just I just find this such a demeaning and >> unhelpful argument. It's a it's as I said, it's like an elliptical odd homing. >> Yeah. A and it and it's really refusing to engage with the content of what the person is saying and what the content of their objections are.

¶206>> It's just saying, "Well, you disagree with me, so therefore you're just inherently sinful. Okay. >> I don't think anyone I don't think anyone disagrees that moral intuitions are flexible. I don't think anyone disagrees that they're they're malleable and that people are fallible. I don't think anyone disagrees because everyone experiences it every day.

¶207But to say like you specifically are flawed because of and and and trapped in your sin is so so so deeply unfair. >> Yeah. particularly when the thing that the person is objecting to is like the idea that there are some people like like when I think of the logic of like the teaching on say you know samesex attraction it's basically like creating like predestination for queers right because it's like somehow the feeling that I have when I look at a man's butt could potentially become godly because I could marry that man and produce, you know, 15 Catholic babies and the feeling that I feel when I look at at a woman's butt um could not lead to the production could not lead to marriage in 15 Catholic babies. So therefore it's intrinsically disordered. And I'm sitting here at, you know, the ripe old and I was sitting there at the ripe old age of 15 and going this is the same feeling like internally this is the same feeling.

¶208So where's the you know how is this disordered right? like when I have a crush on my best friend and I could picture us living together in our, you know, happy little, you know, cottage with our, you know, puppies and adopted children, you know, how does it just it didn't seem very internally disordered. And Joe's argument would basically be, well, yeah, but you just wanted to sin. >> You don't know what was going on in your head. You your your affections were disordered, and it doesn't hold together.

¶209And it doesn't hold. >> I want to mention too that this language personally hurts people because it happened to me. I mean I I remember when I left the priesthood, I was literally written letters to by former colleagues of mine who were like, "You just wanted to cast off, you know, the priesthood. You wanted to cast out the Catholic faith." And I'm like, "No, like I I believe that. Like I I I very deeply believe that.

¶210So from a deconversion take, I know I know what it's like to feel um uh delegitimized by that kind of talk because like they doubt your your mental acuity and in your sincerity and that is such a bad way to argue with anyone, >> right? And and also you know now you know as we understand that you know like sexual orientation is you know basically innate and biological >> you're basically ending up with like this weird Catholic version of predestination >> but it's predestination for queers >> right and it's like it doesn't work >> but Joe has apparently found the perfect way to overcome that problem, which is just to say, "Nah, your moral intuitions are disordered. You just want to sin." And it's not cool. It It's just It's It's just very not cool. Okay.

¶211I I I want to see I We've got like about three minutes of video left >> and I want to see if we can at least >> finish up Pints with Aquinus. >> Let's do it. because th this this this Matt Frad is starting to wear on me. Okay, there we go. Responsibility for help helping each other come to knowledge of God and knowledge of the truth.

¶212Right? in order for you for us to be able to make a difference to one another to like actually be able to help each other unto salvation there have to be some people who are kind of in that state of obscurity or something like that right so that's another thing that you could say a still third thing you could say some people try to appeal to various models on which actually um people who don't yet believe in God can be in some kind of implicit relationship with God that maybe they're not aware of and that maybe can kind of come to fruition um at uh let's say the moment of death or something like that um >> and maybe that can enable lots of profound goods um for various reasons like I don't know there's something there's something beautiful about the fact that like you know when I was an atheist and an agnostic I still had this like adoration almost of like truth and like reason and whatnot that's why I called my channel the majesty of reason >> I was swimming in the logos without knowing it you know um and I in my book in my majesty of reason book that I wrote when I was like 19 or something I I had in there like I I included a line where I was like we should love dare I say adore or the truth or something like that. Uh, and that's when I was either an atheist or an agnostic or something like that. So, I don't know. I was sort of swimming uh in the depths of God kind of without knowing it.

¶213Um, and you know, now I've kind of looked back and I see, oh God, it was you all along, right? It was you all along who I loved and I adored. Um, and maybe, you know, even still then I was probably in a state of like mortal sin. So maybe I didn't have a kind of supernatural love of God. Um but even >> even even a kind of like natural love and kind of cooperating with pervenian graces I think can be um incredibly valuable and can form some kind of implicit relationship with God.

¶214>> So you know this argument from giant hiddenness assumes that people like can't be in a relationship with God or a valuable relationship with God if uh they don't believe. Um >> so >> that's good. >> Yeah that that's that's another thing that I would say. So I don't know there are lots of lots of responses to that. And then in terms of the problem of evil which we should briefly say because I gave a very forceful presentation to which we have not.

¶215to the problem of evil >> once and for all. >> Three basic responses. >> Okay. >> One, um it wouldn't be just terribly surprising given God given that God is infinitely wise. He so under theism, it just wouldn't be terribly surprising that maybe there are just reasons that God has of which we're unaware for allowing various evils that there are.

¶216>> And notice I'm not saying that we're just we're totally in the dark about God's reasons. That's not what I'm saying because my my various natural theological arguments for God's existence required me to make some judgments about um comparative judgments at least about divine psychology. So I'm not saying we're totally in the dark about God's existence, but we do need to have some kind of epistemic humility. And that requires us to assign a non-negligible credence or non-negligible probability to the hypothesis that maybe there are just reasons that God has for allowing various evils that I'm unaware of. And so long as that's the case, that will significantly dent the at least dent the evidential force of the problem of evil to the point that like it could it could really be overcome by like no leg.

¶217So that that's one thing to say. A second thing to say is that um well yeah I mean you could just say it actually is very very strong evidence but there's like very very very very very very very strong evidence for God's existence which just outweighs it. >> So that's the second second thing that I would probably make. And then the third point that I make >> is basically um I if if you've been on the Joe journey with us um you will notice that like one of the things that he was bringing up with as like you know this is what broke me. This is what made me deconvert was the pro problem of evil.

¶218>> And basically, you know, now he's like, "Oh, yeah. That just disappeared in the face of leg, right?" that all of a sudden I realized that it wasn't a problem because I could and and I mean and I do think you know I will say as a theist you know and someone who does think about the problem of evil sometimes you know I have you know sort of come to the you know conclusion that really in some ways the only oest the only honest answer to the problem of evil is probably the one that's found in the book of Job Right. >> Which is basically God says, "Okay, do you know how to make a hippo?" >> I'm paraphrasing. >> You said that before. Yeah.

¶219>> You know, and it's like, "Do you know how to make a hippo?" Because if you don't know how to start with the big bang and end up with a hippo, nothing I can say is going to make sense. And I don't know that that's necessarily a good answer or an emotionally satisfying answer, but ultimately, you know, I have to I I I do have some sympathy for just saying, you know what, you just have to trust God on this one. But at the same time, you're not wrong for wanting to know. You're not wrong for asking the question. I I love that's one reason I love um Julian of Noritch when God told her all will be well and all will be because she asks him very insistently like why evil why sin and you know he doesn't he what I find so this is a meta issue about the whole interview with Joe cuz I don't know him I don't want to be that unfair to him but he does speak as someone as I said that all these questions are simply intellectual ones >> and and you and and I both we have the benefit of age and experience and I as on the priest end of things like I I saw people endure unspeakable suffering.

¶220I think I told you about the one person who who saw all her children dismembered in front of her fled on barefoot across the border like crazy stuff you would never wish on your work enemy >> and just to say you know like you accept this proposition you're going to be okay. I I just think it's inhuman. I I I I know what other put no other way of putting it. It just seems so blind almost regarding the question itself. Um >> well and and and I think that part of this is that like you know Joe is operating in this very like sheltered privileged world that like in a lot of ways has been untouched by meaningful suffering.

¶221You know, it it it's like he he's been protected and insulated. >> We I mean, we don't know that for a fact, but well, >> speak as if he speaks as if he >> Well, okay. Based on the I I've listened to a lot of his interviews, right? and I've read a lot of what he's written >> and if he personally has experienced profound suffering in his life that is not something that he has ever spoken about publicly. >> Um and when he talks about even like this is what drove me into atheism.

¶222It was like it was the problem of like animal suffering, >> right? It was this very >> like abstract. It wasn't like, you know, you know, why did, you know, like why was, you know, it wasn't like, you know, why did my baby die? Why, you know, you know, or even, you know, like, you know, or even like, you know, why did my, you know, grandmother, you know, have this horrible, you know, like was like in pain the last year of her life, right? It's not even asking those, you know, like very like sort of simple human questions.

¶223It was always abstract and always abstracted. Okay, we've we've we've got one last little bit of pints with Aquinus and then we can um put that part of the Joe journey to bed. the I was drowning and you saved my life. >> Think about like if if that improves our relationship for all of eternity, that good can kind of aggregate and be an infinite good. So that can uh the the possibility the enabling that kind of infinite good can justify risking finite harms of us omitting to help other people.

¶224Now, so we already have in our background knowledge that this is kind of God's MO. This is something that like God um may very well plausibly be interested in doing giving us high stakes moral responsibility. But then just apply that to the evolutionary process. Maybe there are various beings, non-human agents who are delegated with the task of benevolently process away from pain and suffering to intervene and again the reason why so maybe these are like um angels for instance and some of them said no I will not serve and I will not guide the evolutionary process uh in the direction of in a kind of benevolent direction. Uh and so again this this can be justified by the fact that if they had done >> their divinely appointed task that could enable infinite goods for all of eternity.

¶225>> And again the point with these different theories isn't that they're the correct one or you're saying that they're correct one. >> Yeah. I'm just trying to give an accommodation, right? I'm just trying to say like sure maybe this is like this isn't Oh, and this another thing like this doesn't this story doesn't need to be plausible to the atheist. The point is like conditional on theism.

¶226>> That's right. >> Conditional on theism because we're trying to predict. We're trying to see how probable is the evidence of evil conditional on theism. Right? So given theism, >> is this at least a non-negligibly likely story to be true?

¶227And I think it is non-negligibly likely. For starters, we already have significant empirical evidence for the existence of demonic phenomena for these non-human intellects. Secondly, it's good to create good creatures. And you know what's up with this ginormous gap between us and God, right? Like the intellects of us.

¶228We're these puny intellects. It wouldn't be surprising at all if God created hordes of even more intellectually capable beings than us. so that even more beings can experience the beatific vision and help each other. We already know in our background knowledge that God gives people at least us this significant highstakes moral responsibility such that if we omit to take our moral obligation seriously that can have very drastic consequences in the lives of others. >> Uh and so like we already have in our background knowledge like significant testimonial testimonial evidence to demonic phenomena.

¶229This is not at all an ad hoc hypothesis. We already know from the Bible, you know that like it's already said in the Bible. So this isn't some ad hoc posit that like Satan is the prince of this world. He's the prince of the powers of the air and things like that. Um we know we know that like we can see why there may very well be infinite goods enabled by this differencem responsibility over the course of uh evolutionary history by giving these angels this kind of providential governance over the rest of creation.

¶230And even like Aquinus said that yeah God gave the angels uh certain tasks in the providential ordering or governing of creation. Um we yeah I mean so I think that like conditional ontheism it's not at all surprising that God might create beings like this. It's not to take a I I just wanted to let him cook for a minute because >> Yeah, he's cooking because it's like when you're talking about like, okay, first of all, blaming demons is just kicking the can down the road, right? Because then you get the question, well, well, yeah, but why would God make demons? Blah blah blah.

¶231But also just the idea that like I it's this kind of like you know mechanistic universe where whenever something bad happens it was because a demon like did it or like and and it's it's it's almost like a scientific model where it's like demons are influencing evolution >> so that >> but I I could see an evolutionary biologist ologists like grinding their teeth right now because he's literally do he's literally violating AAM's razor by multiplying these entities that are supposed to explain this this theological problem by saying that angels are responsible for evolution which is in itself a proposition that not even the Bible indicates um >> right >> like second second order caus causation is I don't even understand where he's going with that like at all. What is the purpose of vision? >> Yeah. Alth although I am kind of like from an intelligent design perspective, I I I am kind of like charmed by the idea of like angel of of of like you know earth being like this like angelic like um science experiment, right? >> Okay.

¶232It's like you just because >> I mean you do you but that doesn't in that is that isn't a comp that isn't by any means and I'm sure you'd agree. >> Oh yeah. Yeah. >> Theodysy. >> Oh yeah.

¶233Yeah. No no no. I'm not I'm not saying that it works as a theodysy. I I'm just saying that, you know, it's kind of like the part in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where Arthur Dent goes and he finds, you know, like the guy who like, you know, designs planets and it's like, oh, I love making I I love designing fjords, right? Or it's like, you know, or or the idea that um, you know, like there there's this, you know, angel who's just there's like this one angel who's just really into beles, so he keeps making new kinds of beetles.

¶234>> I I I mean, you know, you have to say like as like it would be a really fun science fiction novel. That's what I'm saying. Of course. But we're but of course talking about, >> you know, genocides in Rwanda, you know, so we we have to >> I know which it's charming. No doubt about it.

¶235But that Yeah. >> No, no. Yeah. Yeah. No, no.

¶236I I agree. Like like as a theodysy, it has major problems. I I'm just thinking, you know, that like I I I I don't know also, you know, someone who has actually given birth, the idea that I would have the ability to, you know, find the angel that, you know, designed the human reproductive system and like, you know, like give their wing a really good yank. um is somewhat appealing, >> but I I but but but I'm getting silly probably because at this point I I I've hit the if I don't laugh, I will cry. So, let's let's just listen to this last minute of Joe and then we can be gone.

¶237Okay. Okay. And and that is the that that that's the end of the problem of evil. Where' my screen share go? Okay.

¶238So, that that that was the end of the problem of evil part. Um, and then the rest of it was just Joe, um, you know, telling people where they could find him on >> on social media and, um, Matt Frad asking you to subscribe to Pines with Aquinus. Um, instead, I hope that you will like, share, and subscribe to this channel. Um, so, um, that is Joe on Pints with Aquinus. Um, and I think, uh, David had to go, so um, I will just close things out.

¶239Um, on Sunday, um, it will be the 28th Sunday in ordinary time. Um we will be coming back to talk about that. And on Tuesday um I will not be doing Fatima because um Renee Ae of um Lowel Massachusetts and the Ordinary Ruined Catholic YouTube channel will be taking a break from um telling Catholic kids to get off of her lawn. um and will be coming to tell to tell everybody about um the history of her parish um in like basically like from like about the 50s to the present. She's done a lot of work um tracking down alumni, finding out what's going on, and it just sounds really cool.

¶240So, she's going to come on and talk about that. And then on Thursday, we will be hopefully um ramp I I'll be doing Trent Horn talking to Joe and then we'll be moving on from Joe's triumphal tour of the Catholic world. Um David, do you have anything that you want to tell the people about um where they can find you on the web? >> Yeah, so my my my writing is on Aposada Fidelis. Aposada Fidelis, which is my handle on Substack.

¶241So, if you want to read my articles, I'm a little bit in a lull right now because there's a lot of work stuff going on, but I write a lot there about kind of issues that we talk about on this channel, like universalism and just a lot of issues. So, if you're interested in that kind of thing, if you like neurochurch, you probably like my writing. So, >> Okay. Excellent. Thank you very much and um I um hope to see everybody later.

¶242Bye. Bye.