00:04:46.000It was great to debate somebody that I looked up to for a while.
00:04:51.000But I don't know that Jerry still does apologetics.
00:04:54.000I think he has a website, but I haven't seen anything from Jerry Matatics in a long time.
00:05:00.000So I don't know what Matatics is up to these days.
00:05:08.000But I mean, You have to understand, too, that a lot of the Roman Catholic apologists don't know Orthodox theology.
00:05:20.000Oh, I used to have a lot of interchange with Jim Lacaudus, too, by the way.
00:05:24.000So Lacaudus, who is supposed to be the go to dude against Orthodoxy, is one of the worst apologists that they have.
00:05:33.000So you're talking about a guy who doesn't even know what, when we were interacting in emails, he didn't even know what I was talking about when I talked about the essence energy distinction.
00:05:42.000So that's the quality, that's the level of apologetics that you're talking about with Jim Lacaudis.
00:05:49.000And then a lot of people have said, Why haven't you debated E. Michael Jones?
00:13:42.000None of these mainline apologists are gonna be able to handle like a god history dialectic level argumentation, they're not gonna be able to handle it.
00:18:43.000I didn't think they were going to have him on because he's not really like a well known guy or anything, but he's been following me around for a long time and couldn't resist the temptation for a little blood.
00:18:55.000Yeah, I was listening, and when you got into the Liberty part, I was sitting there thinking, like, the president said, I want that GED ship sunk to.
00:19:06.000Aid the Israeli army's covert operation there.
00:20:49.000So let's start off with the main points here.
00:20:55.000So I said in my email that I see there being basically two different tracks of theology between the East and the West, and that it's not just an issue of the papacy.
00:21:10.000It's not just an issue of do we recognize the primacy of the Bishop of Rome, but actually that we get two different streams of thought.
00:21:20.000So for me, it's not just a juridical issue of jurisdiction, does this bishop have supremacy over here, but actually a question of what is the theological assumption or presupposition that would even lead to that kind of an idea.
00:21:36.000So for us, it's a divergence on the Trinity itself.
00:21:41.000So this is where the filioque comes in.
00:21:43.000It's not the only issue, actually, in our view, the filioque is kind of a logical conclusion of other theological views.
00:21:53.000And the most important of which, where we diverge, would be what's called absolute divine simplicity.
00:22:00.000And in the Roman Catholic view, and I've got my Denzinger and my Thomas Aquinas here, they're very specific about the radical nature of this claim and this view in Roman dogma.
00:22:16.000It's actually a dogmatic position that essentially the starting point for Roman Catholic theology in terms of God is that there's one essence that is absolutely simple without any real distinctions or differentiations within that essence.
00:22:33.000And so, this leads then to theologians like Augustine or Aquinas proposing that the way we distinguish the persons in God is through what's called relations of opposition.
00:22:44.000And there's a lot of problems with that view that we can get into later.
00:22:47.000But essentially, what happens is that God is approached as a kind of essence or a kind of thing first.
00:22:54.000It's like God is the highest level of super essence that exists.
00:22:59.000And then there's kind of like a super being that has an analogy to God.
00:23:04.000So, this is very common in medieval scholastics.
00:23:06.000It's very common in Aquinas, sometimes called the analogy of being or the analogia entus.
00:23:11.000Now, all of that to say that this scheme, this system, then results in a whole bunch of different views.
00:23:19.000Not just about God, but also it affects the ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.
00:23:23.000It also affects the social order and the relationship of church and state between pope and emperor or bishop and emperor.
00:23:31.000It goes on to reflect the notions of sociology, I would say, as many Orthodox theologians have argued, that the social order itself gets caught up in dialectics.
00:23:41.000And this is the dialectics that were introduced by Augustine and by Origen and other theologians that maybe went well, but the philosophical Presuppositions from which they came, trying to use Hellenism, trying to use and import ideas from the Greek philosophers to where we could start with God, not as personal, not as He, and not have a direct connection to God through our nous or to seeing God face to face,
00:24:12.000but rather through created analogies, through created beings.
00:24:15.000So, in other words, to sum up, my theological issue, and we can talk about the Pope and we can talk about the Bible text and all that in a bit, we can talk about the schism and the different councils, but my main theological problem is that this.
00:24:27.000Scheme, what I finally came to believe as a Roman Catholic was that this scheme kind of puts a wall ultimately between us and a direct deification or theosis with God.
00:24:39.000We have to then approach God through a bunch of created graces, created analogies, and created forms, and never ever a direct connection to God until the beatific vision in the afterlife.
00:24:54.000But as St. Gregory Palamas said to his Western opponent in the debate with Barlaam, if this is the case, This seems to lead ultimately to atheism because you never directly know God.
00:25:06.000You only know a bunch of created effects.
00:25:09.000And if you only know a bunch of created effects in time and space, then really you're just interacting with a supposed first cause.
00:25:17.000And if you're just interacting with a generic supposed first cause, then it kind of leads to perennialism or the Masonic idea that we don't know one specific God who is the Father who generates the Son, inspires the Spirit, but we know something that's like, A generic theism that we can kind of paste any kind of God onto.
00:25:38.000And so my final conclusion is that that is the end result of Vatican II.
00:25:42.000That's why the documents like Lumen Gentium, Nostra Aitate, why those documents in Vatican II actually propose that you don't need Christ, that it's okay to be Jewish, it's okay to be Islamic.
00:25:55.000That theology can still save you precisely because it's the outworking of a long train of rejecting a specific direct connection with God, theosis, or Hesychia, as it's called in the East, and replacing it with these kind of created forms, juridical forms, et cetera, et cetera.
00:26:15.000So, there's a lot more to that, but that's my initial opening statement.
00:26:20.000Well, I certainly think that's interesting.
00:26:22.000And admittedly, I'm not as well versed on the philosophy aspects of it as you are.
00:26:27.000And studying for this debate and reading up on scholasticism and on really the technical nature of the philosophy of our religion, I understand there's a lot that I don't know.
00:26:38.000I've only come around to really an interest in the religious aspects into Catholicism in particular pretty recently.
00:26:44.000But I always go back to, and we can go back and forth on.
00:26:48.000Divine simplicity, and we can talk about the nature of the Trinity and all these things.
00:26:52.000I think where I come from fundamentally, I think that's an interesting debate.
00:26:56.000I think that's something we could talk about.
00:26:58.000But I think when we get down to it, it really comes down to what is in the scripture, which is to say that the Roman church, the Latin church, the Catholic church has Peter.
00:27:08.000And I really find it hard to say that you can be an Eastern Orthodox person, that you could still be a Christian when there's so much in the scripture which says, That you have St. Peter and the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, as supreme over the other bishops.
00:27:23.000And so I think when you look at that, I mean, it could be an interesting thing that we could go down that avenue and we could say that does divine simplicity, because you don't have that personal relationship with God, you don't have that theosis, could that lead to, you know, in some way, shape, or form, secularism or atheism?
00:27:40.000I think that's an interesting tract, but I think it gets away from the fundamental point, the fundamental point there in Catholicism, which is that Peter was given.
00:28:09.000Well, two things I would say to that is that one reply to the issue of the claim that, well, if I go to the Bible, I can find these Petrine texts and therefore this kind of vindicates the totality of Rome Catholicism.
00:28:23.000That a lot of times, now you may not be making this argument, but I made this argument as a Roman Catholic apologist, and many Roman Catholic apologists still make this argument.
00:28:30.000They will say that the only way that we know what the Bible is, is ultimately because some councils, but ultimately Rome made the decision of what the canon of Scripture would be.
00:28:43.000This is a very common Catholic argument, and I don't deny that there's an aspect to which absolutely the church in time confirmed what the canon would be.
00:28:52.000I would deny that it was completely the decision of Rome, but it's very often made.
00:28:56.000Clear by Roman Catholic apologists that the papacy confirms the scriptures.
00:29:01.000So, but what I'm hearing is that at the same time, the Roman Catholic apologists will say the papacy confirms the scriptures, but to prove the papacy, I can go to the scriptures and find a few verses here and there, and that therefore I can extrapolate the universal jurisdiction, both spiritual and temporal, of a Pontifex Maximus, universal monarch for the office of Peter, a bishop in the early church.
00:29:29.000To me, that's very strained and circular.
00:29:31.000Now, I do believe that ultimately we can talk about questions of ultimate presuppositions or worldview beliefs being circular because at a certain point you're going to hit the highest authority and it's going to be circular.
00:29:47.000But the problem is that in Roman Catholic theology and epistemology, they have a view that's called classical foundationalism.
00:29:55.000Now, this is a term that's given later in time, but it's essentially the idea that you can't have circular arguments.
00:30:01.000You have to have a kind of a A foundation and then a self evident maxim, and then you kind of build on that, and then you build on that, and then you build on that.
00:30:09.000So, for most Catholic theologians, it's been things like the law of non contradiction or this kind of thing, a modus ponens.
00:30:18.000These are self evident maxims, and then we can build our system on top of that.
00:30:21.000So, what I'm saying is that the problem with that view, Nick, is that you can't, on the one hand, have the Pope being the reason that we know what books make up the canon, and at the same time, Going to the canon of scripture and saying that this is what justifies the universal jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome.
00:30:42.000So, and one other point to your argument is that Peter was in Antioch.
00:30:50.000And so, if I attend an Antiochian Orthodox church, that descends from Peter.
00:30:55.000So, in other words, there's not, in our position, any specific reason why Rome has a universal jurisdictional primacy beyond it just being.
00:31:07.000And in fact, when you read the ecumenical councils, we would absolutely agree with the Petrine Sea being given primacy in terms of what's called the, Peter was called the Coryphaeus of the apostles, the mouthpiece of the apostles in the Greek tradition.
00:31:24.000So, but we don't believe that that necessarily means that he has like this universal jurisdiction over all of the church precisely because when you read the book of Acts, you don't see that.
00:31:34.000You see Peter going to the council in Jerusalem in Acts 15.
00:31:40.000And it's James that presides at that council because it's in Jerusalem, and James is the bishop of Jerusalem.
00:31:51.000We see Peter basically submitting to the decisions of the council in Jerusalem.
00:31:55.000And so, my final point would just be look, if the Petrine position of Vatican I was literally what the scriptures taught, then why don't we see that process and that modus operandi actually happening in scripture?
00:32:13.000We see Conciliarism, we see, let's have a council, let's get together, and we because the whole church has the fullness of the spirit, the whole church has the mind of Christ.
00:32:21.000It's not just one bishop that has that, the whole church has it.
00:32:24.000They have the fullness in the Eucharist, therefore, we don't need a supreme Pontifex Maximus.
00:32:32.000And the fact that the Orthodox Church has continued to exist after the schism with plenty of people shows we don't need that.
00:32:41.000If it was absolutely necessary, why didn't we just completely obliterate like the Protestants into a million schisms?
00:32:47.000Well, I mean, to answer the first point, I'm not making the argument that you argued in the first point that because the Catholic Church decided what was canon, you know, I'm not making that argument.
00:32:58.000I'm making the argument based on scripture that Peter was given this primacy, he was given this authority.
00:33:05.000So, for the first point, I'm not really going to answer that because that's not really my position.
00:33:10.000But to the second point, and sort of to answer that last part, just because it's the most fresh, you say, you know, why, in terms of Orthodoxy, are we not fragmented into a number of different Churches and everything.
00:33:21.000Well, I think it kind of is, is it not?
00:33:23.000I mean, you have the Greek Orthodox Church, you have the Russian Orthodox Church.
00:33:28.000If you go on the phone book, you can look, and there are a number of different Orthodox sects.
00:33:32.000Whereas, you know, Catholic Church, you just have one, right?
00:33:36.000Okay, but that's a little bit of a slippery slope here because, first of all, the Orthodox Church operates the same way that the church operated for the first millennium.
00:33:47.000So there were always national churches.
00:33:50.000Anytime the apostles went out when they converted people, what they would do is they would translate the scriptures and the liturgy into the vernacular.
00:33:57.000And that's why you have these historic churches.
00:33:59.000Going all the way back to these nations.
00:34:02.000Now, it wasn't always a whole nation, but eventually, over time, under the Imperium, you would have, for example, at an ecumenical council, the bishops of the various nations would meet and make decisions.
00:34:14.000They would debate, so forth and so on.
00:34:16.000So, the fact that there are vernacular local liturgies, and even the Roman Catholic Church accepts 16 different vernacular liturgies as part of her liturgy, shows that just saying, well, because there's a Russian Orthodox Church and because there's a Greek Orthodox Church.
00:34:32.000That doesn't mean that there's necessarily a split or division because Roman Catholicism has that as well.
00:34:39.000Secondly, I would say there have always been disagreements and dissensions in the church.
00:34:45.000You see this all throughout the first millennium of the church.
00:34:47.000So, dissensions and divisions and a whole nation even going into schism, that's all throughout the councils.
00:34:53.000But I would just repeat the words of Pope Benedict Ratzinger in Introduction to Christianity, where he says, for the first millennium of the church, they operated in a conciliar fashion.
00:35:05.000And not according to the Vatican I papal monarchy position.
00:35:09.000So, even at Vatican II, you've had this recognition.
00:35:14.000I think it was ultimately kind of a dismantling of the Western tradition, which is sad.
00:35:18.000But I'm saying you had this tacit agreement that, oh, we need more collegiality.
00:35:24.000We need more conciliarism because maybe we went too far with our ultramontane position at Vatican I.
00:35:31.000But again, to your first point, you in that argument may not have argued that.
00:35:37.000That we know the canon because of the papacy.
00:35:40.000But this is almost always the Roman Catholic apologist's position.
00:35:43.000And as far as I know, I've never heard a Roman Catholic apologist deny that they know what the canon is because of the papacy's final decision.
00:35:52.000I mean, don't you believe that it was the magisterium of the church that decided, in your view, that decided what the canon of scripture was?
00:36:06.000But I don't know if that's, you know, I think we're kind of gish galloping here a little bit away from.
00:36:10.000No, no, I'm asking you a question of a Authority.
00:36:13.000Well, no, but wait, but I started out from my position, which was the reason that I'm a Catholic is because the scripture gives this authority to Peter.
00:36:21.000It gives authority specifically to the church in Rome.
00:36:24.000And you answer with, well, there's this argument about canon.
00:36:27.000I don't think that's a very strong argument because I can't answer this contest.
00:36:31.000But I can talk about, for example, you know, you talk about how, oh, well, you know, the papacy operated differently in the first millennium and actually it was more of a, you know, a conciliar approach.
00:36:44.000True, to get to the fundamental point, and we could go back and forth about whether or not having a Russian and a Greek and all these other different Orthodox churches in the United States and all operating with a certain degree of autonomy that is not present in the Catholic Church.
00:36:58.000To get to the fundamental point of that, which is, did the first millennium, was it operating under the more Roman type or was it operating in the more autonomous Eastern type?
00:37:18.000Well, I will agree with you that, for example, in controversies where we would have, say, at the Sixth Council, St. Maximus the Confessor, a famous Eastern theologian, he would actually have recourse to Rome and would speak of the longtime orthodoxy of Rome against his monothelite opponents.
00:37:39.000And I have absolutely no problem with the hallowed orthodoxy of the first hundreds and hundreds of years of Rome.
00:37:48.000No orthodox person disagrees with that.
00:37:50.000But again, I think you're missing the point that.
00:37:53.000That the fact that there are ecumenical councils shows that we don't need a papal monarchy.
00:38:00.000I mean, why not just write a letter to Peter or to the Apostolic See and ask them how to solve the problem?
00:38:06.000Why do you even need an ecumenical council?
00:38:13.000If you look at the case with the heresy of Arianism, which I believe the Pope was Dionysius, the ecumenical council was called long after he had already made the decision.
00:38:24.000Long after he had made the decision to create the word, was it homo uvis, which was in substance?
00:38:34.000He called the ecumenical council as a means of translating that to the church.
00:38:39.000But if you look at in every case, for the most part, with these seven ecumenical councils, in each case, the pope had already decided before the council even met.
00:38:48.000And I wasn't even referring to the councils, but I was even referring to the times when other heresies arose, when other things happened.
00:38:56.000The example you gave, but if you look in, for example, with Clement in 96 AD, which I'm sure you're familiar with, where they, to heal that schism in Corinth, they could have appealed to the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
00:39:09.000They could have gone to the Patriarch of Alexandria.
00:39:11.000They could have gone to Apostle John himself, who is alive, but they deferred to the Pope.
00:39:16.000And there are other examples of this as well.
00:39:29.000Paul, but Paul writes letters to the Roman church and he corrects errors and even threatens the Roman church in chapter 11.
00:39:37.000He says that you can be grafted out if you don't obey.
00:39:41.000This is a real threat when he's talking about Gentiles being grafted in, Jews being grafted out.
00:39:45.000The letter is written, yes, to the whole church, but also to the bishops of the church of Rome.
00:39:49.000So it's not just written to threats to the lay people.
00:39:52.000So, in other words, what I'm saying is that Paul very clearly warns the Roman church.
00:39:56.000So, somebody writing a letter to another church does not necessitate that, therefore, this was an appeal to the ultimate authority in the church.
00:40:03.000Any more than Paul thinking that he can write a letter to the church in Rome and that therefore the Roman church can be grafted out necessarily means that there's universal jurisdiction for this one.
00:40:13.000If there's universal jurisdiction for Rome, Paul wouldn't have written a letter rebuking them and warning them about being cut out.
00:40:19.000Secondly, no, every ecumenical council was called by the emperor.
00:40:26.000The popes and their legates were the first to sign it, yes, because that is, again, the position of the Corypheus of the apostles, the mouthpiece of the apostles.
00:40:35.000And that's our view of how Peter is treated.
00:40:37.000So, but we don't see any position where Peter is treated as if he has universal jurisdiction.
00:40:43.000In fact, there are so many examples to the contrary that it's very, it's a strained mental gymnastics to try to pull it off.
00:40:49.000So, and I can prove that by merely pointing out that the sixth ecumenical council condemned Pope Honorius.
00:40:56.000Now, I'm not saying Pope Honorius was wrong.
00:40:59.000Actually, he ended up being vindicated.
00:41:01.000However, the mind of that universally accepted council was that they could condemn a pope of old Rome, and they did in the acts of the council.
00:41:11.000So that shows you that their mindset was not Vatican I papal monarchy.
00:41:18.000But Jay, who interprets the results of the councils and who executes the results of the councils?
00:41:32.000So your ultimate authority is the papal office, but originally you appealed to the scriptures to prove the papal office.
00:41:41.000So I'm asking you which one of these is the way that you prove it?
00:41:46.000And in your worldview, in the Thomistic worldview, the classical traditional Catholic worldview, you're not supposed to have circular arguments.
00:42:10.000But if you look in every case with the ecumenical councils and you can try and go back to, oh, well, this is circular logic.
00:42:16.000But the conciliarism didn't work unless there was a pope to interpret and then execute the results of those councils.
00:42:22.000So you can go back to canon, but the fact of the matter remains that it is necessary that for a single dogma to be enforced, for it to be interpreted, it has to proceed from one church.
00:42:34.000It has to proceed from the Church of Rome.
00:42:40.000Well, number one, I would completely deny that that's true.
00:42:46.000So the revelation of Scripture, for example, Did not proceed from one pope or one church.
00:42:53.000It proceeded from the many apostles going out to the many nations, and they had everything that was sufficient for them to set up these churches.
00:43:00.000And many of them were sent out with no connection to Peter.
00:43:04.000Peter didn't have any direct knowledge of every single guy going out to the different nations in the first three centuries of the Roman Empire before it was Christianized.
00:44:27.000In the 8th century, you have a divide that's actually a predecessor to 1054.
00:44:33.000So there were two councils at this time.
00:44:36.000There's the Latin Council that's related to the Patriarch Ignatius in 858.
00:44:43.000The East rejected this council precisely because of the Filioque.
00:44:49.000In the East, there's a later council called the Council of 879/880.
00:44:54.000And the problem with the reason I bring this up is that if we want to talk about, again, papal jurisdiction and all this stuff, Pope John VIII, it is known, every Roman Catholic admits this, signed the Eastern Council, which forbade the use of the filioque in the Creed.
00:45:10.000Now, when you read Dr. Carroll, the famous Catholic historian, when you read Philip Blosser, another famous Catholic apologist and philosopher, they are at pains to explain this.
00:45:20.000They all admit, yes, the Pope signed this.
00:45:27.000But again, it's just another example of the fact that the mindset of the church in the first millennium is not Vatican I. Why else would so many Vatican I apologists like Cardinal Newman be at pains and have to come up with this theory of doctrinal development?
00:45:44.000And oh, the doctrine is like a tree and it grows and it kind of morphs into all these different things.
00:45:52.000If this was, I mean, so is it a thing that evolves that we understand only in 1890?
00:45:58.000Or is it a thing that is present and clear at the beginning?
00:46:02.000Well, you know, I think if we're going to go back to the original point where you say that there's no scriptural basis for patron supremacy, and you keep citing Acts, which is interesting.
00:46:12.000I'm kind of wondering why you don't cite, you know, for example, the book of Matthew.
00:46:16.000I mean, Jesus Christ specifically says that he will build his church on the rock of Peter, he gives Peter the keys.
00:46:24.000And again, you keep saying, oh, well, this, you know, Paul was able to advocate and There's this, you know, it's not deriving from just Peter.
00:46:32.000It's not deriving from just Rome, but the other apostles were there and they were spreading the gospel as well.
00:46:37.000But it was specifically said, I don't know how you can continue to discount the fact that Jesus Christ said, I will found my church on you, on Peter.
00:47:01.000You know, and also people might say, oh, well, he was referring to the local church.
00:47:04.000When he talked about building the church on the rock, which was Peter, people say, oh, you know, maybe this was the local church.
00:47:10.000This was the church of Jerusalem, which, of course, can't be true because James was the head of the church of Jerusalem.
00:47:16.000So when Jesus Christ said, I'm building my church on the rock, which is Peter, and Peter's name, of course, is a pun for the rock, I mean, this is very, this is clearly, I think it's hard to deny that Jesus is saying that that would be the church.
00:48:15.000But you can go to many church fathers in the days of the early church who all confirm this.
00:48:20.000There's actually not a single testimony in the days of the early church from the church fathers which denies the primacy of Rome.
00:48:26.000I mean, you could go to Patriarch St. Menes of Constantinople who said, We follow and obey the apostolic throne, we are in communion with those.
00:48:35.000With whom it is in communion, and we condemn those with whom it condemns.
00:48:39.000You could go to Metropolitan Sergius of Cyprus, who says, O holy head, Christ our God hath destined by apostolic see to be an immovable foundation and a pillar of the faith, for thou art as the divine word truly saith, Peter, and on thee as a foundation stone have the pillars of the church been fixed.
00:48:58.000And you could go for hours citing the early church fathers who affirmed the primacy of Rome, but you cannot find a single one who rejects it.
00:49:07.000So, again, I think there's a lot of evidence that's being left out here.
00:49:12.000Okay, so I'm familiar with the kind of throwing out machine gun catena approach of quotations.
00:49:20.000The first thing is in regard to Peter, actually, many of the church fathers do debate the meaning of Matthew 16.
00:49:27.000So they don't all say that it was specifically Peter, and I don't have a problem with it being a pun on his name because any of these arguments is 100% night and day removed from the arguments made, for example, in the Galatian or the papal decretals.
00:49:44.000So, if you're familiar with this, this is a later concoction that was all about the temporal power and supremacy of the Roman bishop over all monarchs in the world, so forth and so on.
00:49:57.000This eventually led to Unum Sanctum, the medieval No Salvation Outside the Church dogmatic decree.
00:50:04.000So, none of this is anywhere closely connected to universal temporal supremacy of a single bishop.
00:50:14.000Everything that you said about Peter is true of all the apostles.
00:50:18.000Now, again, being the mouthpiece of the apostles is not a universal supremacy.
00:50:25.000That's two totally different things, right?
00:50:27.000So, for example, Jesus at the end of John breathes on all the apostles and he says, Whoever sins you remit, they are remitted.
00:50:34.000Whoever sins you retain, they're retained.
00:50:36.000The very thing that he said to Peter, he gave to all of them.
00:50:40.000He didn't tell Peter, breathe your breath on them because it comes from me to you to them.
00:51:25.000And the papal decretals are universally admitted to be forgeries.
00:51:29.000The Vatican admits they are forgeries.
00:51:31.000They're not real because they obviously, the church in the first and second century was not writing about the Roman bishop having temporal supremacy.
00:51:39.000That's preposterous because they were still being persecuted by the millions by the Roman emperors.
00:51:44.000By the way, Jesus is the one who holds the keys to death and hell in the apocalypse, not Peter.
00:51:51.000The one who descended into hell, the one who descended into hell, the harrowing of hell, that is our feast day, right?
00:51:57.000The harrowing of hell, the descent and the ascent.
00:52:00.000That's who has the keys to death and Hades, Jesus, not Peter.
00:52:06.000Here, let me try and find the specific quotation here that I was referring to in Revelation, because I don't have it here in front of me.
00:52:13.000Here, he says in Revelation 3 7, he says, Fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one.
00:52:19.000I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore.
00:52:52.000Okay, but then why did he give the keys to Peter?
00:52:54.000Why did he say that Peter is the rock on which he founds the church?
00:52:58.000I don't understand how you discount the importance here.
00:53:01.000If Peter is, wait, are you arguing that, well, Peter is, he's the dominant personality, he gets the keys, he's the rock on which the church is built.
00:53:09.000But that is merely of a symbolic, like first among equals, having a table?
00:53:14.000I just said that he gave the same power of remitting sins to the entire group of the apostles.
00:53:48.000And then Peter is the first to make the divine confession.
00:53:51.000So, it's not the man Peter, it is Peter and his confession, and it's deified Peter that is, you could say, a foundation stone of the church.
00:54:05.000When you read the apocalypse, the New Jerusalem, it's a big new temple.
00:54:11.000That's a big chunk block built on all of the names of the apostles, they're all there, right?
00:54:18.000So it's not like there's only Peter and then all the other little apostles are stacked up on top of him, like Qbert or something.
00:54:24.000It's a giant New Jerusalem temple with each foundation stone being the names of the apostles.
00:54:55.000This is what bishops have always done, and priests or presbyters as their helpers.
00:55:00.000So the East and the West agree on that.
00:55:02.000Now, all I'm saying is that Jesus says the exact same thing to all of the apostles.
00:55:09.000He says in the Gospels, He says that when I enter into my kingdom, He says, you will all sit on 12 thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.
00:55:16.000And that's always been interpreted as.
00:55:18.000The authority of the apostles to judge the various churches.
00:55:23.000And again, we don't deny that there is, as the East has always said, the corypheus of the apostles, the mouthpiece of the apostles.
00:55:32.000And that's why many of the quotes that you're referring to, for example, if there is a controversy in the church, and a lot of those controversies were in the East, there were a lot of heresies in the East, and Nestorius was the patriarch of Constantinople, you would have Eastern bishops that were correct believing would appeal to Rome.
00:55:51.000Okay, but appealing to Rome is not being appealed.
00:55:53.000They're not appealing to Rome just on the basis of the fact that that's because Peter was there one time.
00:55:59.000It's because the confession of Rome was always Orthodox throughout those centuries, except for the period in the there's a little bit of hairy area during the Arian crisis where one of the popes is forced to sign an Arian confession, but nobody accuses him of being an Arian just because he was forced to do it.
00:56:17.000But the point is simply that the power of jurisdiction and remitting sins.
00:56:22.000Throughout the rest of the gospels, it is given to the whole corpus of the apostles.
00:56:28.000It's not just to Peter, or it's not Jesus giving it to Peter who then gives it to them.
00:56:32.000It's Jesus giving it to all of them, breathing on all of them, and then they go out as a body.
00:56:39.000And this is reflected in the early church makeup of, in the ancient world, what were the primary seas or pentarchy, right?
00:56:52.000This is not the basis of Orthodox theology.
00:56:54.000We don't believe that you have to follow like five historic seas, like they're little bitty popes or something.
00:57:00.000It's just that these are the big cities where it was.
00:57:03.000Prominent to have the bishopric of Rome, the bishopric of Alexandria, right?
00:57:44.000We would say that high priest is Jesus.
00:57:47.000We don't need, because of the coming of the Holy Spirit, we don't need the giant jurisdictional monarchy of Rome.
00:57:53.000Again, I just think it is a lot of, I think what's happening here is a lot of rationalization because you have here, I mean, right in front of you in the scripture, giving the keys and building on the rock.
00:58:09.000And Peter, the dominance of his personality throughout the New Testament and how he is first in everything, how he's referenced separate from the other disciples.
00:58:18.000When the angel comes to, wait, but when Mary comes to Mary Magdalene, he says, go tell the disciples and Peter.
00:58:25.000He's always, in every instance, in every instance when the apostles are listed, he's always listed first.
00:58:31.000And you chalk this up to, well, this is simply a mouthpiece.
00:58:36.000I mean, you can, and you draw out a lot of the Latin phrases and you draw out a lot of these, you know, these little events and this and that, but I think it is fundamentally a distraction from what is in Matthew.
00:58:46.000It's fundamentally a distraction from the fact you say, oh, well, he breathed on everyone, and well, that's interpreted as they will all sit and judge the churches, but Peter was given the keys.
00:58:55.000Peter was the rock on which the church was built.
00:58:58.000Jesus Christ said, I pray for your faith, and you are supposed to fortify the faith of the others.
01:00:37.000I don't think you understand the extent of the claims of the papacy.
01:00:41.000The papacy, after the rise of the papal states and after the early centuries, after the false papal decretals, literally claimed that the bishop of Rome had universal supremacy, not just over spiritual issues in the church, but over all princes.
01:01:12.000By the way, this is the time period when things change in the church.
01:01:16.000There's no more icons, there's only statuary, there's no more pedo communion.
01:01:20.000You see, the early church universally gave children, babies, communion.
01:01:26.000Now, isn't it interesting that Rome stops doing this?
01:01:30.000At the period when the filioque enters, when we have a new emperor in the West, Charlemagne, all of these distinctions, when we already had a God ordained emperor in the East.
01:01:40.000The fact that there's a God ordained emperor in the East that's recognized for all of these ecumenical councils, who calls the councils, not the Pope, shows that Peter doesn't have universal temporal jurisdiction.
01:01:52.000So I don't have a problem with confining and debating the meanings of Matthew 16 to the church and to what it meant to the first century church.
01:02:08.000But what I said to you in response specifically was that all of the things that you claimed were special to Peter are also given to the other apostles directly by Jesus.
01:02:18.000He gives them the power to remit sins.
01:02:20.000He says they will sit on the thrones judging the church.
01:02:55.000Jesus is the king, and the prime minister is Peter.
01:02:58.000That's why he gives the keys to Peter.
01:03:00.000Peter is given the authority as the prime minister.
01:03:04.000If that's the case, then what happens is, and this happened in the history of the church.
01:03:10.000Then local bishops are eventually viewed as lacking something, right?
01:03:16.000So, in other words, you can be at a church in Ephesus or whatever, and you can have the Eucharist, but it's not the church of Rome where Peter was.
01:03:28.000And so, therefore, what you eventually get, and this is in Unum Sanctum, the papal decree actually says that Peter and the Petrine office, because of this prime minister view, It actually has a superior special super union with Jesus beyond what any of the other bishops say.
01:03:50.000Now, there is a famous argument and dialogue that Pope Saint Gregory the Great has with a person who was claiming something very similar.
01:04:01.000These are in his letters, and he rebukes this as the claim of antichrist, right?
01:04:07.000Because they were claiming to have sole jurisdiction over all of the churches, right?
01:04:32.000It's a dumb argument, but it does prove the point that obviously Pope St. Gregory the Great didn't, Gregory the Dialogist, that he's called in the East, he didn't view this as temporal supremacy over all princes and so forth.
01:05:49.000This gets heavily debated in later medieval.
01:05:52.000Catholic theology, where they debate exactly whether or not you can attend a schismatic mass, whether or not you can attend a bishop's church who has no jurisdiction.
01:06:04.000And so the loss of keys means loss of jurisdiction.
01:06:06.000This all gets debated in Roman Catholic canon law.
01:06:09.000So what I'm saying is that there's not really a whole lot of debate as to what exactly having the office of the keys means.
01:06:17.000And as far as I'm aware, it's always explained to be the power of jurisdiction over your area.
01:06:25.000And the power to remit and retain sins.
01:06:27.000And then, of course, the power to perform sacraments later will be added onto that throughout the book of Acts when the apostles and so forth go out and they do chrismations.
01:06:40.000Now, so as far as I'm aware, that's always been what's conceived of as the meaning of keys.
01:06:49.000It's usually described or referred to in terms of jurisdiction.
01:06:55.000I never denied that Peter was given the keys.
01:06:58.000No Orthodox person has ever denied that.
01:07:38.000And I ask for this direct answer, and you tell me, oh, well, people kind of agree that it actually just means jurisdiction over your area, which I don't even believe that because there are so many examples here in the days of the early church where the bishop of Rome, where the church in Rome is deferred to when it shouldn't have been.
01:07:56.000If what you're saying is true, it should have not been the case.
01:07:59.000Like I said in the example with the schism in Corinth, where if it was just all the apostles have jurisdiction, why didn't they go to St. John, who was closer to Corinth than Rome was, than the Bishop of Rome, but they deferred to him anyway?
01:08:13.000In the second century, Pope Victor I excommunicated a number of Eastern churches, and nobody even doubted his authority to do that.
01:08:20.000Why was the Bishop of Rome able to threaten to excommunicate all these different Eastern churches unless they ceased their heresies?
01:08:27.000And nobody even questioned his authority to do that.
01:08:31.000There was, in the third century, the Pope who wrote to Patriarch Dionysius of Alexandria demanding an explanation of reports from other Egyptian bishops that Arianism was spreading in his church.
01:08:42.000I mean, there are so many examples of this.
01:08:45.000In the third century, in the second century, in the fourth century, where people defer to the Church of Rome, and you're trying to make it out like, oh, actually, people interpreted it this way, and really, it wasn't that.
01:08:58.000I think the historical case is against you, and I also think you're ignoring the significance of the fact that Jesus Christ, he breathed on the other apostles, but he prayed for Peter's faith.
01:09:09.000He gave the keys to Peter, he built the church on the rock that is Peter.
01:09:13.000And you're trying to say, well, I'm not.
01:09:14.000He prayed for Peter's faith because Peter denied him three times.
01:09:16.000That's why he confirmed it three times.
01:12:47.000Because, again, you're trying to say that the mere existence of a council is proof that the council is what determines what is true and what is not true.
01:13:00.000No, I'm saying that's not the argument.
01:13:03.000The argument is that ecumenical councils show that the Vatican I view of the papacy is not true.
01:13:10.000And that's why Ratzinger says that the first millennium of the church didn't have the papal monarchy view of Vatican I.
01:13:16.000But then why is it that nobody questioned the authority of the Pope to intercede in every one of these affairs whenever there was some kind of a schism?
01:13:25.000I just gave you examples of rejections.
01:13:27.000No, you didn't give me examples of rejections.
01:13:30.000You gave me examples where people persuaded the Pope to exercise their jurisdiction over the other.
01:13:35.000No, I gave you an example of St. Athanasius convincing Rome to give this book to them.
01:13:52.000So I'm not saying that because St. Athanasius convinced Rome to put the apocalypse in the canon, that that's why the whole world has the apocalypse.
01:14:02.000There were already churches using the apocalypse.
01:14:14.000The bishops of Alexandria are still called that.
01:14:17.000And he showed the Roman bishop where he was incorrect because they were going to, in their jurisdiction, remove the apocalypse.
01:14:26.000Okay, but again, you are, I think the language betrays the fact that the bishop in Alexandria was not the executor of who put what in the Bible.
01:14:42.000It's a very different thing to say that people came to the bishop of Rome.
01:14:46.000In many instances, whether it was a schism in Corinth, whether it was a bishop who was not vacating the episcopal residence, whether it was in the instance where, who was it?
01:15:02.000In one instance where two Eastern councils evicted somebody and the Pope reestablished it.
01:15:07.000I mean, there are so many instances where the churches at the time, in the early days of the church, deferred to the ruling of Rome, deferred to Rome giving authority, having jurisdiction, than to say that.
01:15:20.000Somebody in Alexandria persuaded a bishop in Rome to put something in the Bible.
01:16:14.000So, what I'm trying to explain to you is that, listen, the way that the early church functioned was that it had a Pentarchy, it had where there were heretics in the Pentarchy, correct?
01:18:02.000Everybody in their jurisdiction appeals to their bishop.
01:18:05.000That's no, but in that's a no brainer when it comes to a schism, when it comes to a heresy, when it comes to somebody needs to be evicted, when it comes to somebody who's been wrongly evicted.
01:18:16.000In each of these cases, you simply just.
01:19:56.000If your bishop was Arian, you might appeal to either Rome because you knew that Rome was Orthodox, not just because it was Rome, but you knew it was Orthodox and it also had Rome as the honor of old Rome, or you might appeal to Alexandria to St. Athanasius because you knew that those two places did not teach Arianism.
01:20:20.000So the appeal is not based on juridical authority, the appeal is based on correct doctrine.
01:21:44.000It arose in the first four centuries because of prominent cities.
01:21:48.000And there might be different reasons why those cities were prominent.
01:21:51.000So, Alexandria at this time was prominent because of it being Egypt, because of it having a large library, rumors of that large library, right?
01:22:31.000So when there's a large heresy that spreads, and this happens many times, and it could spread in the East or the West, if you were in an area where you didn't have access to a correct believing bishop, you would probably appeal to any places.
01:22:47.000That were prominent and that had a lot of prestige and that had a reputation for orthodoxy, and that would be Old Rome, it might be Alexandria, it might be Antioch, it might be any of these places.
01:23:00.000And that's what you see in the councils.
01:23:02.000The councils will list Old Rome, New Rome, and they will give new titles to people.
01:23:08.000This is how, listen, this is how the Pentarchy system developed.
01:23:48.000Let me ask you about this example and tell me what you think about this.
01:23:52.000I don't know if you're familiar with this one, but in the third century, Paul of Samosata, a bishop of Antioch, he rejected the personhood of the Logos.
01:24:03.000That was condemned by three synods that consisted of the bishops of Syria, Palestine, and Asia Minor.
01:24:13.000And who was named as a replacement for Paul after he stopped, after he refused to stop preaching this heresy?
01:24:22.000He was excommunicated, but he refused to vacate the episcopal residence.
01:24:27.000Dominus was named as his replacement, but of course, Paul, he didn't leave his residence.
01:24:32.000Now, the emperor could have easily installed Dominus if what you're saying is true about the Pentarchy, and oh, well, you know, a church that is not false could have intervened in this case instead of the bishop of Syria, instead of the bishop of Palestine, instead of the bishop of Asia Minor, all three together, or the emperor.
01:24:52.000Who did the emperor go to to ask who should be the next patriarch?
01:24:57.000They went to the Bishop of Rome, and the Bishop of Rome installed Dominus as the patriarch.
01:25:02.000So, why is it then if, you know, actually the emperor has the authority or actually every pope that is preaching good doctrine are appealed to in the age of the early church?
01:25:11.000Why was it in this instance that they went to Rome?
01:25:14.000Well, this just illustrates a very basic misunderstanding of Orthodox theology.
01:25:19.000No emperor has authority in the church, and no emperor.
01:25:24.000Now, many emperors persecuted the church and even like iconoclast emperors persecuted Christians, but they were later defeated and Orthodoxy triumphed in 787 at the Seventh Council, for example.
01:25:36.000So, no emperor has the say so in the spiritual jurisdiction.
01:25:40.000We agree that there is a kind of a temporal and a spiritual realms.
01:25:55.000And so In other words, a decentralized system that will appeal to patriarchates that had primacy is something that we still see today in Orthodoxy.
01:26:09.000So, for example, if somebody in Russia You're not answering the question.
01:27:56.000But in this particular example, I fail to see how this is merely.
01:28:01.000You seem to chalk everything up here where people defer to Rome, where churches go out of their way to send their rulings on this to Rome, where they go out of their way to clear things with Rome, where Rome intervenes in the schisms.
01:28:14.000Where Jesus Christ gives his keys to Peter, he builds the church on Peter, and in every instance it's, oh, well, that's a place of honor.
01:28:22.000Oh, well, that actually has a lot less significance.
01:28:26.000It seems to just be, it's apologetics, it's a rationalization, it's a denial.
01:28:33.000The wording that I use to you when I talk about the honor of old Rome, this is the wording of the council.
01:28:42.000So when Nicaea, And then later, when Ephesus, when Constantinople, and Constantinople too, when they talk about these bishoprics, that's their language.
01:28:55.000So it's not me deferring, it's not me making up, it's not me talking about it.
01:28:58.000No, but you're saying that when Rome does this, they are acting in their capacity as in a place of honor instead of in their place as having jurisdiction.
01:29:09.000And I'm saying, you know, to say that's the place of honor, I think that's jurisdiction.
01:29:13.000I think you're chalking that up to, you know, because Rome does have a place of honor, but.
01:29:18.000For the Catholics, they also have jurisdiction.
01:29:20.000And you're saying, well, in each of these cases, this is merely the capacity of Rome as having honor and not having jurisdiction, right?
01:29:29.000Now, and again, I don't accept that, but if that's all that Roman Catholicism said, there might have never been a schism.
01:29:36.000But what happened is that Rome didn't stop at just saying, well, I can intervene and help in a conflict that's 2,000 miles away.
01:29:45.000It extended into a vast claim of universal.
01:29:49.000The entire universe that the pope has total authority over all temporal and spiritual matters, there's no way to get from what Peter says to what Jesus says to Peter to the pope being able to like have a giant Rothschild run bank.
01:30:05.000I mean, that's just how do we get from that to that?
01:30:09.000How do we get from where from from that to the Rothschild's bank thing?
01:30:13.000I think that's that's kind of a little bit of a distraction there.
01:30:18.000I mean, you're kind of getting away again from the point where.
01:30:26.000Yeah, no, I think we could just as easily say that if Constantinople had the same honor, why did they bow to pressure from the Ottoman Turks and withdraw from the Council of Florence?
01:30:37.000I mean, we can throw a lot of things in there, I think.
01:30:41.000But we have no problem saying that any of those Pentarchs, any of those patriarchs, could fall into heresy.
01:30:47.000And in fact, I mean, Bartholomew seems to be heretical, he could easily be a heretic.
01:30:53.000Don't you think, though, that that seems pretty?
01:30:55.000I mean, that if the highest degree of authority in the church is just the patriarch, just the highest degree of authority is, you know, maybe the first among equals, which, you know, if there wasn't a schism, would be Rome.
01:31:09.000If they can all fall into heresy, don't you think that's kind of a weak argument that Jesus Christ would leave his church?
01:31:15.000And Jesus Christ specifically said that his church would never be taken over by the gates of hell, and yet you Say that, oh, well, bishops are subject to heresy, and I guess you think that Rome is subject to heresy.
01:31:29.000How can the gates of hell never triumph over the church if the highest degree of authority has been triumphed over several times in many cases?
01:31:36.000This is a mistaken presupposition about how to hold together the body of the church, and that it must require a single imperial papal monarchy as the only means by which the church would hang together.
01:31:50.000And I'm saying, first of all, the fact that Orthodoxy still exists, teaching the exact same thing that we've always taught everything that St. Basil says, we say, everything that St. John Damascus says, we still say.
01:32:01.000And this is a thousand years of not having communion with Rome.
01:32:05.000The fact that we still exist and we are still spreading, we are.
01:32:08.000Converting people shows that we don't need what you're talking about to continue to exist.
01:32:39.000And I'm saying there's no way that you could know that what you're saying is the truth if you don't have an infallibility, if you don't have a pope.
01:32:48.000If they could fall into heresy, who's to say that your patriarchs are not heretical?
01:32:53.000Who's to say that they will never not become all heretical?
01:34:48.000This degree of separation between the Pope who is infallible saying it and you reading it, well, you could interpret the infallible dogma any way you want and the way it's supposed to be interpreted.
01:35:08.000But objective truth is different from saying that an argument for the existence of objective truth is different from basic empiricism.
01:35:17.000So, Roman Catholic Thomistic theology is.
01:35:21.000Kind of naive empiricism where they say that, well, you just read the papal document and if you're honest, you'll come away with what's true.
01:35:29.000But I mean, this is not what happens in praxis.
01:35:32.000There's all of these different groups who read the papal documents, and there's a lot of disagreement in Roman Catholicism.
01:35:39.000I'm not denying there's disagreement, but to think that what I'm saying means that there's no absolute truth is a bit crazy.
01:35:46.000Well, I mean, it's also kind of just yeah, go ahead.
01:35:50.000We believe that individuals who participate in Christ, we have participation in the logos.
01:35:58.000So we have a direct perception of the things.
01:36:01.000Of God in the world, of the truths of God.
01:36:03.000We don't have to go through a bunch of mediators.
01:36:07.000That doesn't mean that there's no church.
01:36:09.000The fact that Christ became incarnate shows us the need for the church.
01:36:12.000But Roman Catholicism's basic empirical answer to how to solve all the problems by saying that, well, we just go with what that guy says over there.
01:36:20.000That just moves the problem back a step because the question is not can we have an empirical juridical office over here that tells everybody what to do?
01:36:28.000You're asking a question of how do we know what's true?
01:36:31.000And I'm saying that you can never escape.
01:36:35.000Otherwise, you wouldn't be a Roman Catholic.
01:36:37.000How do people convert to Roman Catholicism if they don't study and learn these things on their own individually, led by the Spirit, obviously?
01:36:43.000And if they do, then you already admit you don't have to have a single Bishop of Rome.
01:36:49.000I like how you say that guy over there said it.
01:36:52.000You know, earlier, earlier when we started, you said, Oh, how could that guy say, Oh, some guy was just the president of the Secretary of State.
01:36:59.000And now you're saying, Oh, because that guy over there said it, you know, the Bishop of Rome, the successor to St. Peter.
01:38:00.000And to compare SSPX with the autonomous different churches of Orthodoxy on a systemic level, Is disingenuous because what you hold in the Orthodox Church is that, well, you know, one guy, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Greek Orthodox Church, they are autonomous and none of them have, neither of them are infallible.
01:38:23.000If the bishop in Rome says something is true and the bishop in Greece disagrees, well, you know, that'll just have to stand, I guess, into an ecumenical council and then, you know, the council will decide basically by a majority and then that'll be the case.
01:38:36.000But that's a far cry saying that nobody has authority.
01:38:40.000Is a far cry from saying that somebody has authority, but it can be misinterpreted, or a priest could misinterpret.
01:38:47.000There was a bishop in Germany just this week who said, Oh, actually, priests can marry homosexuals.
01:38:54.000And everybody in the Catholic Church said, No, you're wrong.
01:38:58.000We do not have the autonomy to do that kind of a thing.
01:39:42.000We can either say there's an empirical, external thing that we can appeal to and interpret, and maybe we get it right, maybe we don't, or we have a direct connection to what's true.
01:39:53.000And every Roman Catholic apologist, as you've done throughout this debate, exemplifies this constant circularity of how they know what's true.
01:40:00.000At first, it was appealing to the Bible.
01:40:02.000For the Petrine text, that's how you know Peter is true.
01:40:05.000Now it's the only way that we know absolute truth is what Peter says.
01:40:09.000So, you in this debate have exemplified that dialectic, that constant circularity that I've been pointing out the whole time.
01:40:19.000At a certain point, I mean, do you think that specifically in terms of God and in affairs where the human intellect is not even capable of fully understanding, do you think it can rely on?
01:40:33.000On this alone, that we, well, maybe this patriarch gets it right, or maybe the ecumenical council gets it right.
01:40:40.000I mean, we say at a certain point that the buck has to stop somewhere.
01:40:44.000I don't think that happens in Orthodoxy.
01:40:55.000And that results, that rests on a misunderstanding of what we say about man, man's anthropology, God, and what the church is.
01:41:04.000So for us, the church is the body, the icon of Christ.
01:41:08.000It has the fullness, everything necessary in the local church.
01:41:12.000There's nothing that's needed outside of it because if it didn't have it in the local church, then what is the point of going to the Eucharist and being a part of the body of Christ in the local church if it's lacking?
01:41:23.000Jesus didn't set up a church to be universal that's lacking.
01:41:27.000So we believe that man has a body, a soul, and a noose that is a faculty by which God made him.
01:41:33.000Paul talks about body, soul, and spirit, this tripartite view that God gave us this faculty for knowing him.
01:41:41.000The way that we come to know him is not just like a Platonic thing where I sit and I meditate or something like that.
01:41:47.000You have to be joined to the body of the church.
01:41:50.000So there is a juridical aspect to the church, but there's not a juridical imperial aspect to the church.
01:41:57.000That's what we reject, and that's what's nowhere in the Bible.
01:42:00.000And that's why it's had to be propped up by papal decretals and forgeries like that to lead to Unum Sanctum and the Pope creating new emperors and so forth.
01:42:17.000So, as a Roman Catholic, what happens in the view of the world that you have is that you don't have a direct interaction and confrontation with Christ.
01:42:28.000And the way that you answered my questions shows that that presupposition is in your worldview because you don't see how what I'm saying could allow for a church to hold together.
01:42:40.000Jesus, the Logos, is preeminent and he is.
01:42:45.000Is imminent in everything through his logo.
01:42:48.000That means that he is in him, we live and move and have our being, as Paul says.
01:42:53.000We don't need a human power source like super high priest to keep the church together because Christ has the power to keep the church together.
01:43:53.000I think that kind of reliance, kind of in the decentralized way that the Orthodox is, that reliance on this quote unquote personal relationship.
01:44:03.000I think Catholics do believe in a personal relationship with Christ, but we understand that it's mediated by a clergy, by somebody with authority.
01:44:11.000I think for somebody to define what is in the faith and what is not in the faith, you have to have authority.
01:44:16.000I mean, who's to say, again, who's to say that if.
01:44:59.000I just don't know if that logic is pretty sound in terms of you keep saying juridical, but I don't know if that's totally sound that we can rely on that.
01:45:07.000But I have to ask you before we proceed, because this is an important question.
01:45:14.000Throughout this debate, you say things like Catholics like to do this, Catholics generally do this, Catholics have that.
01:45:21.000You speak with sort of this derision for Catholics, or I don't know if it's a condescension or something, but I mean, you said yourself that you were a Catholic for 10 years.
01:45:30.000You were a Catholic and then you were Orthodox, and then I guess you were Catholic after that.
01:45:37.000And so, how can you be so, I guess, condescending?
01:45:40.000How can you be so derisive towards Catholics if you yourself were not only a Catholic once, but also were an Orthodox and then came back to Catholicism?
01:47:07.000So, the first point I would say is yes, 10 years ago, when I was a Roman Catholic and I was interested in a monastic life and things like that, that's when I first got into Orthodoxy.
01:47:19.000And I had a lot of debates with Orthodox guys.
01:47:21.000I went to Roman Catholic apologists and had debates.
01:47:34.000I dialogued with Jim Lacaudus, a lot of famous Roman Catholic apologists.
01:47:37.000So, I spent about two Years from about 2007, 8, and 9, 10, where I was kind of really having a hard time with the Uniate position, with the Roman Catholic position.
01:47:50.000I was very, very dedicated to Thomism.
01:47:53.000And I didn't want to give up that system of Thomism.
01:47:57.000But I was also confronted with a lot of people who were former Thomists and people who were very intellectual and very well studied in Orthodoxy.
01:48:05.000So, yes, I had absolutely had a crisis period and I went back and forth for a long time.
01:48:10.000And so basically, I took a little time and stepped back.
01:48:12.000I focused on I focused on my grad work and then came back to the theological issues, got involved in the church again.
01:48:23.000And that was probably, I don't know, four years ago.
01:48:26.000So it took me about, I would say, a period of about 10 years to really chew on this and to really work through it for me.
01:48:35.000So the derision, I think, is a response to a lot of the smack talking that a lot of Catholics will do, but they won't ever come on and debate.
01:48:46.000So that's the, the, the, Derision is that it's not directed personally at you.
01:48:52.000I mean, I'm not mad at you, but I don't.
01:48:55.000I feel like I'm debating myself when I was like 20, and I'm not being a dickhead.
01:49:18.000One last point on that is that I think that.
01:49:20.000For me, one of the other Trump arguments, dad of Trump arguments, will be the point that what was so hard for me ultimately was the documents and the teachings and the papal encyclicals after Vatican II.
01:49:37.000Now, ultimately, when I started reading a lot of the pre Vatican II papal encyclicals, and I probably read 500 pages worth of those, I came away with just a constant inner struggle with how to try to reconcile.
01:49:53.000The very clear statements in Vatican II, and you seem to say that the councils and the documents are clear.
01:50:04.000I don't see how there's any possible way.
01:50:06.000And I've listened to all manner of Roman Catholic apologists trying to mesh and make sense of the documents of Vatican II and how Nostra Tate can say that we're united with the Zionists and with the Jews and that Islam can also provide a way to heaven and how that we don't need confessional.
01:50:27.000So for me, there's so many things in Vatican II that are just so obviously a complete apostasy that I got to the point where I just could not defend it anymore in honesty, right?
01:50:40.000So for me, that's the end of the line.
01:50:42.000I mean, there's no way to accept the ecumenism of Vatican II.
01:50:47.000For example, the 19th, I think it's 28th encyclical of Pope Pius XI called Mortalium Animos.
01:50:53.000When you read down in that encyclical, and encyclicals in Rome.
01:50:56.000Catholic theology are part of the ordinary magisterium.
01:51:01.000In Mortalium Animos, he says that the kind of religious ecumenism where we're praying with all of the other religions and we go into the mosque and pray like Benedict and Francis have done, when we go in the synagogue and we pray like Benedict and Francis and John Paul have done, when we do these actions, he says these are apostasy.
01:51:22.000He says this is an apostasy from the truth and it teaches everybody indifferentism.
01:51:27.000Now, Roman Catholic canon law is very clear.
01:51:29.000About what kinds of things constitute apostasy in Roman Catholic moral theology and in canon law, it's a very specific sin like schism or like heresy that leads to certain conclusions ipso facto, as it's called.
01:51:45.000So, ipso facto excommunications in Roman Catholic theology result when a bishop or a layperson even does or teaches something explicitly heretical.
01:51:56.000For example, even the modern canon law will excommunicate a person who gets an abortion.
01:52:03.000And to be forgiven, technically, the bishop is supposed to be able to forgive the person upon confession and repentance and whatnot.
01:52:10.000So, what I'm saying is that actually in canon law, it's the same thing for actions of apostasy.
01:52:16.000When we go to Aquinas and we look up in the moral theology what constitutes apostasy in the Summa, he says if any Catholic were to pray at the tomb of Muhammad, that would be an action of apostasy.
01:52:34.000Alphonsus Liguori and his moral theology is very similar.
01:52:37.000He describes the kinds of actions that would be considered apostasy.
01:52:41.000So, my point in all this is to say that traditional Catholic theology being so clear about what apostasy is, what schism is, what heresy is, there's no way that any honest person could follow John Paul, Paul VI, John XXIII, any of these, especially Pope Francis, who just a couple of weeks ago said we don't need confessional states anymore.
01:53:14.000Like you're out of the church if you do this.
01:53:17.000And so for me, those people don't obviously represent traditional Christianity.
01:53:22.000Nobody ever would have thought you could do this until the flowering of Vatican II.
01:53:27.000So for me, it's just a no brainer that that's obviously not the office of Peter.
01:53:32.000That's not, Jesus didn't command me to go submit to a guy who goes in synagogues and prays and who.
01:53:40.000Goes to the mosque and pray, and who prays with pagans and who receives Hindu markings on his head and these Hindu rituals that he participates in.
01:53:51.000Yeah, no, and I certainly understand that.
01:53:52.000I get a lot of criticism for that on my show about Vatican II.
01:53:56.000And certainly there are a lot of things in there we're not wild about, especially the conduct of this pope, even outside of the dogmatic stuff.
01:54:02.000I think what's most offensive is just simply the conduct, like you said, the praying with the other people and the washing of the African feet and the political statements.
01:54:13.000I think that that, I think in many ways, that is a call for further faith in the church and that we have to get the church through these things.
01:54:22.000This is the one holy Catholic apostolic church, and I think we got to commit to it.
01:54:27.000You know, certainly there have been times in the past where popes have done these kinds of things.
01:54:32.000There have been corrupt popes and popes that have sold indulgences and have tortured people.
01:56:08.000And that's why that whole thing doesn't make sense to me.
01:56:11.000Like, why would Jesus command that I have to submit to a guy, not just who has concubines?
01:56:16.000I mean, there have been plenty of Eastern Orthodox people who sin.
01:56:20.000We're not talking about just sin, but specifically in canon law, a very clear sin that is mentioned, by the way, in Mystici Corporis.
01:56:28.000And it's also mentioned in Leo XIII's encyclicals, where he talks about what apostasy is.
01:56:33.000So if you want specific, Papal definitions of what apostasy is.
01:56:37.000You can read Mestici Corporis and you can read Leo XIII's encyclicals because he will define that apostasy, schism, and heresy are sins that automatically excommunicate a person from the body.
01:56:50.000And how can any man be ahead of that which he is not a member?
01:56:55.000I just don't think that he is committing apostasies.
01:56:58.000I guess that's where it differentiates.
01:57:35.000It's that the action itself signifies as a public act.
01:57:40.000Right, this is also distinguished in Roman Catholic moral theology private actions, public actions, conscience, and so forth.
01:57:46.000So, public acts by persons of authority carry much more weight and have much more significance.
01:57:52.000And that's why, in Mortalium Animos, the papal encyclical from 1928 by Pius XI, when he says that these actions are apostasy, he says this because they teach indifferentism.
01:58:04.000And we cannot, no Catholic, he says, can in any way allow this kind of a thing.
01:58:09.000Yeah, again, I don't think that qualifies as.
01:58:13.000As total apostasy, if they're out there doing that.
01:58:19.000It's a far cry between the Pope doing something which is a sin or an apostasy and the Pope saying something, putting something in dogma that is in error.
01:58:59.000But, but that was it put in dogma that that's apostasy, or was that just what papal encyclicals are considered ordinary magisterium?
01:59:09.000And it doesn't even have to be listed as dogma because everybody doesn't sound legitimate to me.
01:59:14.000I mean, if has anybody informed the Pope that he was committing an apostasy?
01:59:18.000I mean, are you the one that's taken issue with this?
01:59:21.000So, so anybody who has a like a basic sense of what the Bible teaches, the New Testament, what the way that the church operated for the first thousand years.
01:59:31.000There's no way that you could come away thinking that I can go and participate in Hindu rites and that I can have giant Assisi meetings with voodoo practitioners in the church, that I can cover the altar up where the Eucharist is to not offend the voodoo practitioners who are doing it in the church at Assisi One.
02:00:37.000The world emperor in a giant palace to have a Vatican bank run by the Rothschilds since the 1700s.
02:00:44.000That's why Vatican II happened, by the way.
02:00:45.000That's why the papacy changes position on usury, is because the Rothschilds are the Vatican bankers.
02:00:52.000This goes back to the Renaissance popes.
02:00:54.000Anyway, but again, I already made the distinction in Roman Catholic canon law between just sinning, mortal sins, and actions like schism, apostasy, and heresy.
02:01:06.000Yeah, again, I just don't know if I buy that.
02:01:12.000If you're making it up, yeah, you can't buy that, then there's a problem in the basics of Christianity for you because the Ten Commandments say we can have no other gods, yeah.
02:01:25.000No, and I well, when they go, so so tell me when they go and they they pray in the synagogues, do they pray to other gods?
02:01:33.000The way that the first the way that the councils when they talk about forbidding praying in synagogues, it's not the point is not that okay, but you said, but you said, thou shalt have no other gods, so you're.
02:01:44.000You're arguing kind of two different things here, right?
02:01:46.000If you're saying, well, it's in the Ten Commandments, but you're saying, oh, well, now it's not a matter of, well, it doesn't matter if they pray to the God, but only if they pray to the place of God.
02:02:57.000You need to read the New Testament if you think that participating in pagan rites is just diplomatic because you have no conception of basic Christianity here.
02:04:51.000No, no, I mean, I would disagree with them going and participating in the rights.
02:04:55.000I would say that you're right on that, that they shouldn't be doing that.
02:04:59.000But it's a very different thing from saying, do you personally find it against.
02:05:04.000The faith, do you personally find it in a certain way, or does that completely disqualify and delegitimize the foundations of the entire church?
02:05:13.000You know, which I think those are two different things.
02:07:05.000They're a group of a million people who talk about it all the time and have for 30 or 40 years.
02:07:09.000Well, I'll have to look into this particular example and we'll see if I'll look into this.
02:07:14.000And if I'm wrong, I will tweet about it.
02:07:16.000But if not, I'm not familiar with this.
02:07:18.000And I find it hard to believe because if that's the case, then you'll have, yeah, I will have to.
02:07:23.000Cast some aspersions, but uh, okay, let me let me say that the if you want like one book that really I think illustrates that, there's a book that Tan Publishers, which is one of the larger traditional Catholic publishing houses, they publish a book called The Popes Against the Modern Errors, and really all it is is just a collection of the key encyclicals of the last few hundred years.
02:07:49.000So it's only about two to three hundred pages, and I would recommend that.
02:08:20.000You know, I think at the end of the day, we're Christians trying to find the truth, trying to save the world from modernism, from Satanism.
02:08:27.000And, uh, Collegiality between the two churches.