How to understand the teaching 'outside the Church there is no salvation'
Summary
Eric Sammons is a father of seven children and the editor of one of the last Catholic, actually authentically Catholic, magazines in America, Crisis Magazine. He is an author of several books, and the latest one is called Deadly Indifference, which explores the controversial teaching that outside of the Catholic Church, there is no salvation.
Transcript
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Every good evangelist throughout history knows the only way that somebody will hear the good
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news, i.e. the gospel of Jesus Christ, is if they know the bad news first. Because why bother with
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good news if you think everything's hunky-dory already? You need to know the bad news. You need
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to know the bad news about hell. You need to know the bad news about error in this world. So for
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example, if you are Muslim, you need to know that Muhammad was a false prophet. You need to know
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errors like that. Because only if you know that will you then say, I need to find the good news.
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And that's when we give them the good news of Jesus Christ.
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It is an official teaching of the Catholic Church that outside of the Church there is
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no salvation. That is hugely controversial today. Almost no one talks about it. You probably never
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ever even heard that from a pulpit. And yet we have a book on it, a brand new book by a great author.
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It's called Deadly Indifference, and it's all about it. You're going to want to stay tuned.
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Eric Sammons, welcome to the program. Thanks so much for having me on. This is great. I really
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appreciate it. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father,
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and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. For those of you who don't know him, Eric Sammons
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is a father of seven children. He's also the editor of one of the last Catholic, actually authentically
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Catholic, magazines in America called Crisis Magazine. He is an author of several books, and the
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latest one is called Deadly Indifference. Eric, tell us a little bit about Deadly Indifference and
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what it is, first of all, and where people can get it. Well, Deadly Indifference is from crisis
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publications. You can get it to sophiainstitute.com website. Essentially what it is, it evolved out of
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my own work in evangelization. And then I realized that Catholics don't want to evangelize. And I
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realized because most Catholics don't think it matters to be Catholic. They don't think there's
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anything really that unique about it. I heard over and over again, all my work at the diocesan level,
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parish level, from Catholics saying, basically, it doesn't matter if you're Muslim, or if you're
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Protestant, or atheist even, as long as you're a good person, you're going to heaven. And I realized
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it's not that we don't have the right techniques for evangelization, because I wrote a book about that
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years ago, but it's more a matter of, we just don't want to, because we don't see why we should. And we
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see that with the collapse of missionary work over the past 60 years. I mean, think about our great
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history of missionary work in the Catholic Church. It's just gone. And so this book really explores
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It was a concern of Pope Benedict himself, who pretty well said that as well. But let's get into
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the heart of this, because it is a hard teaching. What does, it's famously in Latin, we used to
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remember it from our catechism, extra ecclesiam nulla salus, outside the church, there is no salvation.
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Well, essentially, it builds upon the fact that the Gospels make clear, the New Testament makes
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very clear, that only in Christ do we find salvation. It is impossible to be saved without
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the work of Jesus Christ. But then the question becomes, how does that get applied to the individual
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person? Okay, so Jesus redeemed the whole world, salvation is now available to mankind, but that
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doesn't mean we're all automatically just going to heaven then. We have to have that applied to us.
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And what the church saw very clearly was that there's this intimate bond, this identity really
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between Jesus Christ and the church. In fact, the famous scene from St. Paul, when he is converted,
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Jesus says to him, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Well, Paul wasn't persecuting Jesus
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Christ the man. He was already dead and rose from grave and was ascended. He was persecuting the church,
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but Jesus identified himself with the church. So that's what we have to do. We have to identify
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ourselves with the body of Christ, the church, which means we become members of the church through
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baptism. That's the means by which salvation is applied to us. And so the church in developing
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this finally came up with this great phrase, outside the church there is no salvation, meaning
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it is the ark of salvation. Think of Noah's ark. If you weren't on Noah's ark, you weren't saved
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from the flood. Likewise, if you're not inside the church through baptism, then you're not going to be
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saved. And this is a perennial teaching in the church. I mean, I was thinking about all the
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different teachings of the church, and there's very few that have been more consistently taught
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than this one over the centuries. I mean, it's amazing how you could go back all the way to the
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first century to the 20th century, and you have popes talking about theologians, saints. It just,
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it's a constant teaching in the church that just can't be denied that we have to believe this as
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Catholics. Absolutely. Right from the scriptures. It says, if you believe and you are baptized,
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you should be saved. So, okay, so we have this teaching, but of course, that brings up a very
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controversial question. Well, what about our, what we call sometimes separated brethren?
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What about Protestants? They have baptism, but they're not in the Catholic church. How does the
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church explain that? Well, essentially what it, first of all, it would say that they are,
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if they're validly baptized, they are in some way members of the Catholic church. They might not,
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I mean, I was baptized as a Protestant, and I converted later. So even then, I was a member
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of the Catholic church. But essentially what happens though, is you need the sacraments to
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remain in the church. Obviously, if you're baptized as an infant, you're not going to commit actual sin
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until the age of reason. But that's why at the age of reason, you start going to confession,
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you start going to communion regularly, because you need those graces to stay in the state of grace.
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And unfortunately for Protestants, they don't have those sacraments, so they don't have those
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graces available to them. Thus, if they commit a mortal sin, for example, they have no means,
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no real means, sacramental means, to have that forgiven through the sacrament of confession.
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So really, we know if you're Catholic, if you're living a Catholic life, that you will be saved. It's a
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promise from our Lord. But for those who are not inside the Catholic church, who are not fully in
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the Catholic church, I guess you would say, through like Protestants or something like that,
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we just would urge them to become Catholic. And if they don't, and they die, we hope for their
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salvation through some mysterious means of God, which of course, he can use. But we can't presume
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upon their salvation. That's the real issue here is, we have to assume that they need to become
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Catholic before they die. And that's why the obligation is really on us, obligation on us to
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evangelize them and tell them why, how important it is to become Catholic.
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It's an amazing thing about your book that because you're laying out the problems, but you're also
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giving solutions. I think that's a, that's a huge thing. If you can give us a listing of few of the
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biggest problems that are really impeding the success, if you will, or even the work even of
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the new evangelization, why it's not working, and then give us a few best solutions to bringing it
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about. One of the biggest problems of the new evangelization is it, it ignores the bad news.
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Every good evangelist throughout history knows the only way that somebody will hear the good news,
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i.e. the gospel of Jesus Christ, is if they know the bad news first, because why bother with good
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news? If you think everything's hunky-dory already, you need to know the bad news. You need to know the
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bad news about hell. You need to know the bad news about error in this world. So for example, if you
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are Muslim, you need to know that, that, uh, Muhammad was a false prophet. You need to know errors like
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that because only if you know that will you then say, I need to find the good news. And that's when we
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give them the good news of Jesus Christ. So I think that's the, probably the biggest flaw of the new
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evangelization is it, it just ignores the bad news. It just wants to be friendly with everybody. It
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says, oh, if we just give a positive message, then people will somehow just be like, yeah, that's great.
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But really what it does, it causes people to say, well, that's good for you, but what I'm doing is
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good for me. And that's not evangelization. And so what we need to do is we need to really bring back
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a lot of, uh, preaching about the bad news. I know it gets a bad rap as, you know, hell, hellfire and
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brimstone, things like that. But there's a reason that's the way Catholics preach for 2000 years.
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I mean, if you look at St. Peter's first sermon on Pentecost day, the first papal homily,
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what does he do? He gives a story of salvation, but he also tells his hearers, you crucified the
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Lord. He tells them the bad news. And when they ask him, what must we do to be saved? He doesn't
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say, oh, just be a good person. He doesn't just even say, be baptized. He says, repent and be
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baptized. Well, if nothing's wrong, there's no need to repent. So we really need to, I think,
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bring back more of the bad news in order to really make the good news clear to people that this is
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what you have, this is the way you have to live. Let me stop you there because I know that people
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are going to be thinking, bring back the bad news. We are living bad news every day. What, what? It's
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a tsunami of bad news. This is insane. But what bad news specifically, I know you mentioned hell,
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and this is the thing I think that, you know, again, Pope Benedict himself said, and publicly
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so, that we're not talking about hell anymore. And that bad news of the four last things, maybe if
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you can go into that a little bit to explain more of what you mean by the bad news.
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The bad news is, is that original sin exists and that each one of us, every individual is impacted
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by, and everybody in history, other than our Lord and our lady, are impacted by original sin.
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What that means is we desire our own desire, our own will rather than God's will. And so what we're
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basically doing is we're living in a way that we're rejecting God if we allow, if we don't have the
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graces of God given to us through the sacraments. And so that's the real fundamental bad news, which
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means you are on a path to eternal damnation, separate, eternal separation from God. And I mean,
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when I say you, I mean all of us, if not for the grace of God through baptism, through the sacraments,
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we're all on that path. That's fundamentally the bad news. And so what happens is, is we don't talk
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about that anymore. And I think that's the reason we have so much bad news in the church
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is because then what happens is bishops and priests start, start preaching this, this,
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this worldly gospel of, okay, let's make this world better through working on climate change
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or immigration reform or something like that. But the real bad news of hell is ignored completely.
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And so these eternal destination, the four last things, as you say, of judgment, of heaven and
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hell. I mean, that's really what we need to be talking about. What our preachers, our bishops and
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priests need to be talking about, not about, okay, let's, let's be nice to our neighbor. Let's work
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together with, with Muslims on this, or let's affect climate change or whatever the case may be.
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Yeah. It is an incredible thing that the one main struggle, the whole reason, if you will,
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for our life on earth, that bad news that everybody knows and feels, but they must think,
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oh, I must be really weird because I'm the only one who's inclined towards sin. I want to do these
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horrible things. And I do end up doing them sometimes because I give into it, but that's not
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the focus seemingly of the church anymore. It's ridiculous because that's the whole point.
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You have also in, in your work, the solutions, give us the top three solutions that the church
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needs us to focus on right now in order to get back to where she should be.
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First of all, we need to preach the truth of outside the church is no salvation. We have to
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be unapologetic about that. We're, we, we diminish that so much that people end up thinking that any
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religion is okay. We're all religious pluralists. Ultimately we become that. And so we need to really
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preach that first of all. Secondly, we need to take seriously our faith. And what I mean by that is
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when you walk into your typical St. Suburbia Catholic church, what you find is a very unserious
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practice of the faith. It's a, it's a, from the architecture to the preaching to the community,
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everything is about, it's a social club. It's not really taking seriously. Like this is really what
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we need to do. Uh, we really need to believe in order to be saved. It's more just like, okay,
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this is a nice community center that we're doing. So take, take the faith very seriously at the parish
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level in, in particular is where we need to do that. And then thirdly, I would just say that we
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do need to really tell Catholics that you need to tell other people about your faith. Once you know
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the bad news and in the good news that solves it, and you take your faith seriously, well, now you have
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to go out. Now you have to go out and tell people about it and tell them so that, that they can be safe
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too. They can be part of this great treasure we have in the Catholic faith. And that's one thing
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I want to mention is because we don't talk about the bad news, we don't talk about the really good
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news. We, that's why it stays on this very surface level of just be nice and then you'll be happy or
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something like that. No, we are destined. St. Athanasius said that God became man so that man might become
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God. That sounds heretical on its face, but it's a Catholic teaching because what Jesus is by
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nature, we can become by grace, meaning we are united for eternity with God in heaven. I mean,
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my goodness, there's nothing better than that. But if you're not thinking about the eternal part
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of salvation or damnation, you don't have either side of it. We're missing, we're in this like kind
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of mushy middle where we don't talk about hell, but we don't really talk about the greatness that is
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heaven either. And so we lose on both ends. One interesting aspect of this, and I think we'll close on
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this point. You've got yourself seven children. It's always incumbent upon parents to bring their
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children first and foremost to the faith. And yet you're basically talking about going like door to
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door or evangelizing outside the family as well. How do you fit those together when you, as a father
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of seven children, how would you even think to go outside the family when, uh, you know, I, I'm not
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sure that you're complete on evangelizing inside the family. Really what you do is you evangelize in your
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sphere of influence. I don't want to diminish going door to door. I've done that in the past
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myself. I think it could be a great thing to do, but really every single person has a, what I call
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a sphere of influence people that you have an impact on their closest fear will be your immediate
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family. So my seven kids are either biggest impact on and my wife and my wife of course has it on me as
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well, but then also, uh, family members like your parents, your siblings, people, cousins, things like
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that. You might have, you have influence of them, your neighbors, your coworkers, all those people,
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you can evangelize. And it doesn't necessarily mean door to door. You're not going to door and tell
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them about Jesus, like maybe a Mormon would or something like that. But what it means is your
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coworker brings up some topic about the faith or related to it. Maybe something about Joe Biden or
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about abortion. There's your opportunity. You can talk about, about the importance and you can talk
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about these things. Maybe, I mean, I know, like, for example, I was just talking to somebody who said
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that her friend was with her Muslim neighbor and said, oh yeah, our Catholic friend said, oh yeah,
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our religions are basically the same. Well, there's an opportunity to say, well, no, there's
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actually some really big differences and they really matter for, for both on this world, but
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also for eternal salvation. Those are those opportunities. I mean, so we all evangelize
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in our own sphere of influence. It doesn't even mean you have to go to another country or anything
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like that, or even door to door. Now, the fact is, if we do really, the church really preaches outside
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the church and no salvation. What will happen is many people will hear the calling to go to other
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nations to do that really serious missionary work that we've been doing for 2000 years until about
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50 or 60 years ago. So it's all part of a whole. So we all, in fact, there's a, I was doing research
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for the book. There was a Catholic newspaper, like diocesan newspaper from like the 1920s. It was
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talking about the week of Christian unity. And it was saying, what can you do mean lay people? And
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one of them was tell your separate, your non-Catholic neighbors that they need to become Catholic or
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something to that effect. I mean, can you imagine reading that in a diocesan newspaper today?
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But that's the kind of stuff we should, we should really be doing.
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Amen. We certainly need to. One thing most people don't know about you, you wrote a book
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on Bitcoin. Can you give us 20 seconds on a Catholic perspective on Bitcoin?
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Essentially what I would say is Bitcoin is money that's free from government interference,
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because I would say as a Catholic, we'd have a real, we should have a real problem with the
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government controlling our money supply. Because what that does, it hurts the poor more than anybody
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through inflation and things like that. Bitcoin can help overcome that so that the poor don't
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have their money basically taken from them by the government printing more money.
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Eric Sammons, very, very interesting. Your book is Deadly Indifference, can be got it.
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Sophia Press, God bless you. And thank you for coming on the John Henry Weston Show.
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And God bless all of you. We'll see you next time.
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