Why We Aren't Catholics

Catholicism is having a comeback moment, and we get why. When church starts to feel like entertainment, a liturgy shaped by centuries can feel like oxygen: reverence, structure, tradition, and a sense of history bigger than your own timeline. But a hunger for roots can’t be the same thing as a commitment to truth, so we slow down and ask the hard question: what are you actually believing when you step into Rome?

We start with common ground. Protestants and Catholics confess the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, sin, grace, heaven and hell, and the authority of Scripture. Then we move straight into the real dividing lines: authority and salvation. We unpack sola scriptura versus a framework where sacred tradition and the magisterium function as equal authority, and why that shift opens the door to doctrines Protestants say are not grounded in the Bible. From there we dig into the five solas, justification by faith alone, grace alone, and what’s at stake in “forensic justification” versus an ongoing system of infused righteousness through the sacraments.

We also talk through the practical flashpoints that make this personal: confession, prayers involving saints, Mary’s expanding role, purgatory, indulgences, the Mass, and transubstantiation. We close with the Council of Trent, papal infallibility, and a simple challenge: don’t pick a church because it feels ancient or trendy; test everything with Scripture and the sufficiency of Christ’s finished work. If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a friend who’s wrestling with Catholicism vs Protestantism, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Why Catholicism Feels Trendy

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey guys, welcome back to King's Banner Podcast. I'm here again with Justin. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Good, buddy. Good. Ready to ready to crank and get after it.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I am.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hopefully today we just this whole thing is just a soliloquy. You know, it's just beautiful and captivating and poetic, and it probably won't be that good.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

It's that's a lot of words to say what we're not gonna be, but we can try. That's good. Agreed. So I agree to I have had a I'd have had a burning question on my mind. So you have five kids. Yes, I do. But you're not Catholic. Why? Correct. So we we had a long time listener um reach out and and ask a little bit about Catholicism. And yeah, I wanted to I wanted to bring it up because it seems like there is more of a pervase Catholic insidious nature creeping into our culture.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

So um some of that I'm upset about, some of it I'm not upset about. Like I would rather people run to Jesus, go to church, fix some stuff, get some things right. Although I gotta dig into it more. There is a massive movement from faddish types of churches and uh people moving from nothing to uh eo, Eastern Orthodox andor Catholic churches. Yeah, I think a lot of that is because there's roots. I think we live in somewhat of a fatherless generation that's disconnected from our families, from our history. In a lot of ways, we've um uh the whole American, you know, idea itself has been under attack. And instead of finding roots in your identity as uh as an American, people are longing for something that's deeper and maybe richer than that. And so a lot of people are looking back to the church to find their tradition and their heritage and who they who they are. I think that's kind of a burning question a lot of people. And you can go to a lot of churches today when there's smoke and there's um entertainment, and it it doesn't feel rooted in identity, it feels more like a a high octane TED talk.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

And man, I agree. You know, like I agree. I think there's something rich and beautiful about the liturgy, um, iconography of Eastern Orthodox and the Catholic Church and the how they put things together. Instead of coming in and it's jumping and yelling and all the things, there's a there's a solemnity to it. Yeah, there's uh a respect and reverence for what is actually happening, even if people don't always understand all of it. They understand that something that is deep and rooted and has been established for thousands of years is there and still happening and still affecting people. And so I think there's um it's a little bit of a a trend right now. Yeah. And let me say it this way. All right, this might be a hot take, but deal with it. A hot take on this podcast? I don't know that seems that that seems unexpected. So a lot of people are like, I don't want to go to the big, you know, noisy mega church kind of thing. Um, they want something more quiet and solemn and respectful, and they would look at the larger church and say, in a lot of ways, like, oh, I don't want to be this bombastic thing that's going on. I I want to be over here. I also think that's a trend.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

You know? Yeah. So like this was a trend for a while, people were going that direction. Now that this has become overly trendy, you know, now it's like, oh no, now we want this particular thing. And some people are like, oh, I like this, and now I like this. And I I think it's you know, it's like nickelback. Everybody loved Nickelback, and then everybody hated Nickelback, and now everybody likes Nickelback, or maybe Creed. Maybe Creed's a better one. Everybody hated Creed and Love Creed, and then hated Creed and then love Creed. There's these cycles that we go through, and it seems like some of it is valid, some of it is not, and it's worth sorting through what's actually going on there. There are some reasons that I am not a Roman Catholic that I think are really important, and I think most people who dig into this or maybe not digging into it as thoughtfully as they should. I will say this the last three people that I know that joined the Catholic Church is because they met a girl that was Catholic and ended up Catholic and suddenly had a lot of doubts about their, you know, their Protestant theology and why they believe what they believed. This also happens with Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses as well. Beware of the Jezebel crumb cakes that are taking you to places you should not go. Which way will you go, Christian man? Which way will you go? So um we can kind of jump into some of this if that would be helpful.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

You you talked about, you know, um, you know, people coming from a uh household of no faith in the Catholicism. Um I know I've seen like other than other than Christian, ostensibly Christian men who meet a girl in the Catholic faith, uh, I've seen some others who uh would have professed you know Protestant faith go into Catholicism too. Why why would you think that would be?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Uh like I said, I think there's um there's a reverence there, there's a depth. Uh on our last podcast, we were talking about people who are introverted or extroverted and how that being a construct that has not been helpful to the church. Yeah. Well, I do think that people who are a little bit more quiet, um, reflective, could be intellectual or could just like the idea of intellectualism, um, might drift into the Catholic side because of the comfort that exists in that versus the comfort that exists in a high-energy environment. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. So, like if you tend to be a little bit more of a, I'm not maybe as amazing with people, but I believe in family. Uh, I think there's roots here, I think there's truth here. Um, that there's there's there is a lot that's attractive to it from uh from uh from a normal perspective. And in our world where things are fading, uh things that you know glimmer and shine, but are don't have a lot of depth in our AI, CGI world, I think people are like deeply wanting something that's rooted and real. Yeah. And you gotta say that the Catholic Church has been around for a long, freaking time. Um, and there's a lot there that is really good. So what is it doing well then? Like, okay, like so let's say it first. Okay, so I would say at least theologically, yeah, uh Catholics and Protestants, and by the way, we're called Protestants

Roots, Reverence, And The Pull

SPEAKER_01 7:00

because we're protesting a Roman Catholic soteriology, yeah, which is the way in which we are saved. So if you're called a Protestant and you know why you're a Protestant, it's because you're protesting. You're you're a protester. That's what you're doing. Okay. Um, we believe in the Trinity. The Catholic Church believes in the Trinity in the same way that Protestants believe in the Trinity. Um, we take very seriously the deity of Christ. Catholics also take very seriously the deity of Christ, uh, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the virgin birth, um what the authority of scripture. We're gonna talk about that a little bit more. They believe in the authority of scripture, uh, um, and we also believe in the authority of scripture. There's just more there that we can get into. Uh the reality of sin, the the lostness of man, the necessity of grace, um trying to think the reality of heaven and hell. Okay, like they're going to agree on. So a lot of the big, serious issues, who God is, the fallness of man, the necessity of the work of Christ, uh, the final resting place of all things, all those things we tend to agree on. So there's less a conversation about um uh we agree on Jesus. Does that make sense? Like we we're generally going to agree on Jesus. The the primary difficulty is what you do, what you believe about salvation. Yeah. Again, we're Protestants, we're protesting a Roman Catholic soteriology. Soteriology is the study of salvation itself. How does that help us? It's it's it's salvation. How are we saved? And the the reformers who in their camp, I would generally, well, uh, I would land there with a lot of the things with regard to the Roman Catholic Church in this area. Sure. The reformers had some different perspectives on different things. They were even, I would say, uh, a lot of people say the reformers were closer to Catholicism than any other part of the Protestant religion. And I would actually agree in a lot of ways, like because they've just come out of the Catholic Church. They still had some beliefs around Catholicism that were interesting. Like Calvin, whom I love, um, has some thoughts about Mary that I just don't I don't know why you think the way that you do there. I don't, I don't get it. I'm like, you just weren't far enough away yet. I don't I don't totally understand. But there's different things. But they came up with something called the five solas. So the five solas were kind of these Latin for singular. Yeah, yeah. Only this. Only this, this, this alone, right? So they had these different solas, uh, sola fide, sola gratia, sola scriptura, uh, sola crista, sola gratia, sola de la gloria. Like all of these two. What what I each of those mean? Okay. So the five solas, the first one, which is really important, is sola scriptura, which is like scripture alone, as the final authority. Yeah. So the Protestant view is that scripture is the final infallible authority. Uh 2 Timothy 2, I think it's 316, makes this point that the Bible is breathed out by God. Um, the the Greek word here is theonustas, like literally theos, like God. Nusta is in like breath. Like it literally is breathed out by God. It is his word. Uh, Peter tells us that uh people were carried along by the Spirit to give us the word of God. This is from Him, this is for us, this is the final authority in all things. Uh, Roman Catholic view is that yes, Scripture is inspired by God, it is infallible, all those things. They would also say that there's other authorities. All right. So um scripture is an authority, the traditions or sacred traditions are also an authority, and the teaching of the magisterium. By that I mean the the larger Catholic um school of thought or uh teaching on a particular topic is also equally authoritative, which functionally means this if there is an interpretive difficulty in scripture, uh, we're not going to allow for uh different takes on this particular thing, even if it's within orthodoxy. Generally, what's going to happen is the magisterium is going to say this is how you were to interpret this particular text. And that is now to be taken as just as authoritative as scripture itself, which is problematic. Yeah. So it's like yikes. Do they love the Bible? Yes. Do they teach the Bible? Yes. But there's other authorities that are equal to the Bible. And most of them would say because we put the Bible together, even them putting the Bible together is evidence that there had to be an authority behind the Bible for the Bible to exist. And that authority still exists within the church, which is why we are the ones who get to speak on what the Bible is. It's a little bit messy. I would say, yeah, that the word of God is definitely authoritative. Uh, he sovereignly brought these things together and made it happen. That does not make whoever the next pope is or whatever this particular pope's opinion of this text is uh infallible. They'll even say, like, ex cathedra from from his throne, whatever he speaks is infallible. Yeah. And that's scary to me. I'm like, uh no, we we can get into that uh a little bit more, but the the church ultimately determines um authentic interpretation in the Catholic Church. And I would say that's a scary thing, which means whatever the commentary is, that's that's where the Catholic Church is gonna land. In the same way, we see this with the Talmud in Judaism.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

I was gonna say that sounds very similar to Talmudic Judaism.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

It's it's almost like a one-for-one. You have the Talmud, which is basically saying this is the commentary we have on the text that God gave to us. Yeah. And there's actually a whole like story about God telling the Jewish people, um, this is how you're supposed to uh interpret my word. And they say, No, God, you gave us your word, and you told us that we're supposed to understand it. So we're going to take our interpretation, not yours. This is your fault because you gave us your word. So they're they're literally blaming God and saying it's your fault. So so we get to interpret it the way that we want to. Um, so the the the problem that I have with the Catholic Church is there's a lot of stuff that isn't scriptural that makes it into um their belief. Like uh purgatory. Yeah. I I look, there's uh there's one Protestant guy that I know that buys into this particular idea. I think he's crazy. Uh look, uh you can write some really cool theology around it. I I just I don't see it in scripture. No, uh, all the Marian dogmas, all your beliefs about Mary, boy, really hard to get there scripturally.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

You talk to a really ingrained Catholic, you're gonna hear some wild stuff about Mary. Yeah. Like I uh an old co-worker of my wife was very Catholic, and he he would talk on about how you know Mary was actually immaculately conceived. Yeah, and she was perfect, and Christ was only perfect because she was like, and it's weird.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Yeah, the Immaculate Conception is not talking about Jesus, it is talking about Mary. So there's the there's a whole conversation there, but you have you have all kinds of stuff about her her permanent, you know, virginity, yeah, um, which is kind of wild. Um, you also have papal infallibility, like I said. So if he's speaking ex cathedra, these are things that are problematic. Like you just don't see anywhere else in scripture where people are allowed to just speak, and it's oh, that's that's the Bible. That's not how it works. We don't add to the canon, we don't remove from the word of God, we don't take away from the word or add to

Scripture Alone Versus Church Authority

SPEAKER_01 15:00

the word of God or take away from the word of God. The canon is the canon. We can get into the uh uh the deutero canon or the deuterocanonical if you want to, uh, which is kind of the extra books in the Bible. Uh there's some argument around should these books be in, should these books not be in. Ultimately, where I would land is that these books were around, but they were not considered authoritative or part of the canon of scripture uh early on by the majority of people. Now, that is the argument that goes on for forever. Some people are like, no, some churches were using. I agree, I agree. Some churches early on were using these, the majority were not considering them canon, and I will fight and and die on that hill just to go there. All right. Um, the other one is is sola sola fidae, which means faith, faith alone.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

All right, so um this was a central issue in the Reformation. Like this was this was kind of a big dinner. All right, so uh a sinner is justified by faith alone, which means that good works are evidence of salvation, they are not um they're not something that is constantly required as part of your salvation. Yeah, salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, uh Romans 3.28, uh, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith um apart from the works of the law. So so this idea that um when we place our faith in Christ, it is a what's called a forensic justification. Right? Forensic means like it's courtroom language, it's declarative. Um even the word to telesty, Casey. I don't know if you know this. The word to telesty is a word that would be used on like court documents.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Oh, to mark completely.

SPEAKER_01 16:50

So it's literally saying it is finished, this is done. It's a completed work. So even the words that Jesus utters on the cross to telesty, it is finished, is a is a forensic kind of language which is communicating this is done. It's it's over with. And so when you have the the Roman Catholic view, they believe in something called infusion. All right. So forensic justification is God declaring a person righteous uh who has placed their faith in him. He is declared this, it's done. Your sacrifice is complete, any past, present, and future sins were on the cross, taken care of. Uh, infusion, um, oh uh and an important part of this too is your uh Christ is giving, imputing his righteousness to you. Yeah, you are made righteous once you place your faith in Christ. Uh infusion is this idea that um faith uh and and Catholics wouldn't say uh this is a uh a mistake people say. Um people will say salvation for Catholics is works and it's not faith. And I would say, no, no, no, they would say that faith is the basis for this. I just want to be fair here. They wouldn't say there isn't a need for faith, you just work no no no, absolutely faith is the basis. But their belief is that through the sacraments, you are infused with righteousness. So when you take the Eucharist, you go to confession, you do these things, you're having inf you are having Christ's righteousness through the church infused into you throughout your life so that you're staying saved. Okay. So their idea would be someone can shipwreck their faith by not continuing to take the sacraments. And if you don't continue to take the sacraments, you're not having Christ's righteousness infused into you, and you can become something else entirely, you can make wreck of your faith. So the idea is am I declared righteous through faith? God justifies me, or am I justified starting with faith and then through taking the sacraments, having Christ's righteousness infused into me so that I can stay righteous and stay saved?

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Sort of sort of it it kind of sheds light on the idea of last right.

SPEAKER_01 19:06

A little bit, yeah. Yeah. So they're they're coming in to make sure I'm righteous before I go into purgatory. Yeah. You know, which is funny because purgatory is for those who are not totally righteous yet, need to go through some more suffering before they get to heaven. Yeah. No, so think about it this way: if you have been in the Christian world for a while, the um the Protestants would say that Catholics are confusing justification and sanctification. Justify justification being Christ has declared me justified, he's imputed his righteousness to me. I am righteous because Christ has conquered this. There's nothing else anybody else can do. He's done this for me. And sanctification is my walk with God, where I am slowly not just uh called righteous before God, but beginning to live righteously out of the new identity that Christ has given to me, so that I would walk in righteousness. Uh Hebrews 10:14 says um he is perfected for all time, those who are being made perfect. In fact, that's such a great picture, right? Like so you're you're already perfect, and now he's perfecting you, meaning you're already declared righteous before God, and now he's cleaning up the way that you walk your life. And I would even say this sanctification is synergistic. Justification is monergistic, meaning justification is something God does. He saves us. We're not, I didn't save me. No, I'm not that awesome. Sanctification, synergistic, meaning something we do together. I'm working with the Spirit to bring about more freedom, liberty in my life through what God has done. So when we talk about sola fide, we're talking about faith alone. Faith is the means by which we are actually saved and we're declared righteous before God. This was uh this was a big deal. So we're righteous because of Christ, then we grow in holiness. The Catholic Church kind of brings the two together and says you have to do both, or else you're not actually righteous. And this is what maintains your your righteousness. Okay. Um Christus. All right. This is the belief that Christ is the mediator between God and man. Yeah. Like there's one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, 1 Timothy 2, 5, I think is the text there. And it's it's making this point that you don't have to go to a priest for confession. You don't have to go to the church necessarily to get sanctified before God. You bring these things to Jesus. Jesus is the only savior. Uh, Catholics believe that the saints intercede for you and that you can pray to the saints. Now, this is important because I have Catholic friends and they'll roast me on this if I say this wrong. So listen Catholics generally don't pray to the saints because they're praying to God. They would say something like, Have you ever asked your friend to pray for? I've heard this argument. Yeah. Well, it's the same thing. Our our brothers and sisters in Christ are alive in heaven, and I'm asking them to pray for me.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

And I'm like, that's pretty weird. I don't think we're supposed to talk with the dead, even if they are alive in Christ in heaven. That's probably something we shouldn't do. Um, they would say you can pray to Mary, and she's another mediator, uh mediator. Um, the Catholic Church recently tried to clarify some of the teaching on the doctrine or the dogma of um trying to think of the language here. It's uh Mary is the co co-mediator with Christ. Yeah. She's also like, if you're not good with God's mother, you're not good with Jesus. You better make sure you're good with Mary or you're not good with Jesus. Like it gets a little bit weird. So you see her as like another mediator, and she some some language in Catholic teaching even will say, I go to Mary, who then goes to Jesus for me. And Mary is the one who at uh at the wedding of Cana, you know, told Jesus, hey, you should do this. And he was like, I'm not gonna do it. And then he was like, Do it. She oh, so I want to go to her because she'll make Jesus do what I want him to do. It's really jacked up. Like it's it's not good. There's even portions in scripture where um somebody calls out from a crowd and says, Blessed is the lady who bore you. And he's like, No, I say, Blessed are those, you know, like who actually hear and believe what I'm saying. Like his point was it's not about that. Don't miss the point of what I'm trying to communicate to you. So you have this idea that there's other mediators, there's other people that we go to to help make us righteous, to commune with God, to get healthy. And the Protestant church is saying, we don't see these other forms anywhere in the Bible. Yeah, we're not supposed to go to uh a priest is a mediator for us, we're supposed to go to Jesus. We're not supposed to go to the dead saints, we're supposed to go to Jesus. Jesus is the one that intercedes for us, he's the one mediator between God and man. We take this very seriously. Uh the reformers believe that um the these kind of these practices, the extra stuff that they're adding, obscured the glory and perfection and sufficiency of Jesus and began to make it about other people. And I will go ahead and say, in a lot of other countries, um Mary has all out become a god. Yeah. You know, uh, especially the farther you go into some of the Catholic uh stuff that like Mexican Catholicism, it can go down the wormhole of like what saint am I wearing? Why am I wearing this? Because they give me this unique, like yeah, the necklaces that they wear suddenly become a talisman, and oh, this is the this is the saint that I pray to that is giving me this particular strength, or pray to Saint Jude if you're going through this particular thing. That is not something we see in scripture at all. Yeah, and I would say, again, most of these things come from I started with sola scriptura because if you don't believe that the Bible is the final authority and the ultimate authority, suddenly other stuff starts to come in that's not supposed to be there, and we we end up with all kinds of weird dogmas. Um you have any questions so far? I mean, I'm gonna go to Sologratia

Faith Alone And How Salvation Works

SPEAKER_01 25:10

next.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

No, um it's it's a lot of interesting stuff. Um confession is another one I think. Like going to a priest for confession. Yeah, it seems very like on the surface, confessing your sins before the brothers in Christ.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

Like James 5.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Confess your sins to one another. Good thing, and yet uh there's just something you know perverse.

SPEAKER_01 25:41

During during COVID, uh there was this um uh this thing, this statement that came out from the Catholic Church, which is if you are not able to get to confession because of COVID, you can go ahead and just take your sins directly to God and you'll heal your hear you. And I was like, huh. That's uh the first thing you said I'd agree with in a long time. That's really that's really funny.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

I I thought it was ironic. Um another another just random question because I've never actually been to a a Catholic Mass or anything. Yeah. Do they have like sermons? Or do they like Yeah? So they'll have a homily. But is it like is it unique or is it like like do they open up like the book of Catholic homilies and like read one?

SPEAKER_01 26:26

So it does vary from you know parish to parish. Uh it does vary from church to church. Um but generally they're kind of on the same teaching schedule and same stuff. So each priest is gonna have the ability to do kind of his own thing with what the topic is that they're talking about, but generally they're kind of on the same calendar. Does that make sense? Now there might be variation there that I'm uh missing out on, but I think most places are actually teaching the same stuff, and that's actually part of what they're trying to accomplish, which is kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Yeah, there's a certain consistency there.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

Yeah. Like it's been weird. So I've gone to a couple of um uh there's this thing that goes on here in Tyler. Um I'm trying to think what it's called, but they all show up outside of this bar and they do this uh I don't know, it's not really a bar, it's like a pizza pub thing, but there's a big old outside area and they show up. I've gone to a couple of these things, and there's a bunch of people that come. The scripture doesn't come up like more than maybe one time in like a 30-minute teaching. A lot of teaching from saints and other people or father or whatever's name about this particular teaching, and here's the different structures and the ways. Um, there's not the deep love affection from, and if this doesn't come from scripture, it's not authoritative. That doesn't exist as much there. So you're gonna hear some teachings that are different. Now, certainly, they're still gonna teach from the Bible, you're still gonna get you're still gonna get scripture. There's some, like I said, uh I should make this clear. There are some Catholics that I know that uh I would say are certainly saved. Yeah, they love Jesus, care about him deeply, and I think they're saved pre precisely because Protestants are right.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah, they're saved in spite of their Catholicism.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yes. When they get to heaven, they're not gonna be handed a questionnaire on justification. It's gonna be because grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone is true, they're gonna get to go in. However, I think there are some people who are rigid adherence to the doctrine of uh to the Council of Trent, to the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church specifically, that I I don't I don't know, and some of them I don't think so.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Um, because they really do understand the depth of the mass, they really are deep into um praying to saints, they really are um deep into the language around salvation and believe that it's something that they are bringing about um kind of through their own works rather than through the sufficiency of Christ. So I think it depends on person to person. I would say I think a lot of Catholics are very much saved and would be my brothers or sisters in Christ, but I think there's a lot of stuff that uh why I'm not Catholic that I think are problematic. One of them being the Mass.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:18

Like I could not in conscience go to a Catholic Mass. Like the so there's a belief in transubstantiation and consubstantiation here that is a big difference of the city. Which has to do with communion. Yeah, so so the belief is that the mass, um the the bread literally turns into the body of Christ and the wine literally turns into the body of the children. And you're using the words literally, yes, accurate, basically actually turning into this particular thing. And the language in the mass, especially in the Latin, very much is that we're crucifying Christ again. This is a problem for me. Yeah, Christ was sacrificed once for all, like this is a done deal. Remember what I was talking about in fusion, like this belief that I'm getting Christ's righteousness again through the sacrament. So the language around the mass very much is that we're crucifying Jesus again, and then we're drinking his blood and eating his body, and this is what is giving us our righteousness. And if you believe that that is what is making you righteous and saving you, see, those are the areas where I'm like, dude, I don't know. Yeah. Do I think the average Catholic thinks that that is happening? I don't know. Yeah. I hope not. You know, I hope not, but I think it's a dangerous thing. Now, uh, some people believe in consubstantiation, which is the presence of God is there with the elements themselves. Uh, some people believe in something called pneumatic presence, which is the spirit of God is present in the elements. The word pneuma. Yeah. If you're if you're a Baptist, your belief is um that the the significance is in the remembrance of of Christ and those elements, that there's nothing significant about those elements themselves. That's probably the predominant view of it. If you're a Lutheran, you're probably going to take the uh consubstantiation or uh literal presence approach to some of these things. But Catholics uh and the Eucharist, it's I saw this um Matt Maher video where he was singing, did a whole concert. Matt Maher is Catholic, and they had the bread and the wine in uh like on a thing, and they had thousands of people at this concert all bowing down to the bread and wine because they believed it's the literal body and blood of Jesus. So they're all bowing down and worshiping Jesus because his body and blood is literally there, right? So if you believe that now we're in like idolatry, I see this and I'm like, ha, yeah, cringe. Like, I gotta I gotta get out of here. Um, so the back to the the the solos, the whole idea here, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

So um the after we hit on the solos, I do want to ask you about the council of Trent too.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

But so no, after let's let's finish if we if we get there, yes. I mean, yeah. So uh sola gratia, great grace alone. Salvation is entirely God's work, dead sinners are made alive by grace. The Roman Catholic view is that grace initiates salvation, and then the believer then cooperates with grace to finish their salvation. There's some similarity here with the faith grace combination. Protestant concerns here are usually something in the lane of um Catholics, they'll say Catholics deny grace, Catholics don't deny grace. Um the question is how much human cooperation um is needed to sustain justification? How much do I have to continue to do? Is this a work of grace that Christ is accomplishing? It's his gift to us so that we would have faith to be able to be saved, or is grace something that starts our faith and then we have to finish this work out? Um the the reformers saw this as undermining what the Bible was talking about with grace in general, which kind of takes us back to like the whole idea of mass in general. Like these are things that I have to do to stay in good standing with God. No, it's grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone. That's what's actually takes care of us and brings us before the Father. Um so Mary being a perpetual virgin, like we talked about, uh, the

Saints, Mary, And Other Mediators

SPEAKER_01 33:30

um that she's immaculately conceived, that she's assumed into heaven, uh, that she's the queen of heaven. Uh Catholics will also pray for her intercession, right? Like we talked about. Mary, I need you to pray for me. I need you like these are these are things we don't see in the Bible anywhere. Yeah. Like obviously, the Mary's assumption into heaven is not in the Bible, but that's taught clearly. She didn't die. Why? Because she didn't have to. Why? Because she was sinless. Um, that she was literally it was like she was immaculately conceived so that Christ could have uh Christ wasn't corrupted by sin, so he needed a perfect person. Which so it's taking the doctrine of what happened with Christ and taking it a step further back, but then you have to But yeah, exactly. But it's like, well, hold on a minute here. Why don't you have to keep going? Like, yeah. So the Protestants see Mary is she's blessed among women, she's the mother of Jesus, she's worthy of honor, she's not an object of prayer, she's not somebody that is a mediator for us, she's not sinless, she did have children, like she wasn't a perpetual virgin. We have other family members, his you know, his brothers and sisters come to get him at some point. I don't think they're from other kids. These are, I mean, Jude and James are brothers, and they try to get around this. They're like, well, these words could mean cousin or brother also mean like friend or cousin, or we don't know exactly what it means. But anywhere else that that language is used, we're like, no, he's talking about family. Yeah, we just ignore it here and want to use a different aspect of it. I would say this is where context is really important.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

Yeah, this goes back to our our syntax and and lexical context.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

Yes, just uh sometimes if you if you have an agenda that you're bringing to scripture that the rest of scripture doesn't bear out, then you'll go to there and change things or read it in a particular way to try to get the outcome that you want. This is eegesis, not exegesis. Jesus had brothers, uh at least one sister, maybe more. We should acknowledge those things and not be weird about it and create a bunch of uh other random shenanigans. I brought up purgatory before. Uh Christ's atonement completely cleanses believers. Like they're it's finished. Yeah, telesty. Purgatory is this belief that before you can actually come into the presence of God, there is a second sanctifying portion of time where I can then get clean before I go into the presence of God.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Which belittles the work of Christ. When he says that is finished and his final sacrifice, it is a very strange thing to me that we would then say, Yes, but you're not clean yet. Yeah. Yes, but you're gonna have to go through some suffering. Yes, but you're gonna have again, this is a conflation and a mixing up of the justification sanctification idea.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

And the uh Paul says to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:32

And then we have I was reading in Romans 4, I think, where it talks about if you if you work for it, it's not grace, it's a wage, it's owed to you, it's not given to you. Well, this gets into indulgences, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:45

So kind of part of the fire that came out of the Reformation, what Luther was writing about is this idea that I could give money to the church and they could pull from the treasury of Mary, the treasury of grace from these people who had stored up such an immense amount of grace because of the way that they lived their life and the way that they did things, that I now have um a bank account full of grace that I can extend to people at any given moment if the church decides to dispense some of this to get somebody out of a bad situation. So you had people being told, I can get my loved ones out of hell, I can purchase them back, I can save my brother who's not going to repent himself by giving money to the church. They've never recanted any of this doctrine. The belief is still I can purchase salvation through financial means out of the treasury of Mary. That's a problem.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

How could they recant it without having a huge legal nightmare with all of that money?

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Or, well, or undermining their own belief about what the magisterium says being authoritative. Yeah. You can't go back and blot out what has been said. So they have to further clarify and further clarify, but they've never recanted these things. And so even the belief about indulgences undermines the sufficiency of grace alone. There is no other means of salvation. You can't purchase someone out of heaven, you can't purchase someone's life without the means of grace and faith in Christ alone. Um, and if the church is able to just dispense um grace through uh another dead person who they think was immaculate or whatever other saint to purchase someone's salvation, well, that that actually removes the entire narrative of uh the the work of Christ and people placing their faith in him to actually attain salvation, and it goes a totally different direction.

SPEAKER_02 38:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:37

Uh papal authority, like I said, this is a massive problem for me. The idea is that when Jesus said uh to Peter, uh, I'll call you Peter, right? And upon this rock I will build my church. And their idea is that Peter is the first pope and a long line of unbroken succession, where the Pope today is of the same line of anointing that has never been broken, where that person is the father and the rock upon which the church was built. Um, Protestants will say, No, read the context. The context is the profession of faith that Peter made, yeah, that Jesus is the Son of God. Yeah. And he's saying, Um, your your name is rock, and upon the rock, what you just stated is how what what what this church is going to be based upon, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Not Peter himself, but Peter's confession of faith being the substance of what is said there. And so if you have a bunch of people who believe, and by the way, historically, papal succession is a joke. Oh, it's a mess. I'm sorry, it's a joke. You had ladies who are popes at certain points, you had people, you had sometimes you had three popes at the same time, which one's the real one? We don't know. Well, it's all fine. Like it's it's it's not. No man possesses infallible authority. They just they just don't. Scripture alone is infallible. I don't care if he's sitting on a throne or not, he does not speak for Jesus unless he's it's the word of God itself that is being communicated

Mass, Purgatory, And Indulgences

SPEAKER_01 40:10

in that moment. So I would say the doctrine of papal infallibility was um, I think it was formally defined in the late 1800s, and it has been held to um for a long time, and it has basically, in my opinion, I think scripturally, just no grounding for it. Yeah, so this goes in line again with the magisterium and the teachings of the church and traditions, and a bunch of stuff gets brought in that that doesn't need to be there. So um we there's a lot there.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

Yeah. Um, I think unless I'm counting wrong, I think you've hit on four of the solos. What's the fifth one?

SPEAKER_01 40:46

Oh, Christ alone. Well, we did solo Christus. We did sola fide, sola christus, sola sola gratia, grace, uh, sola de la gloria, all of the glory of God. Solo de la gloria. All of the glory of God. Okay. All of it is about, thank you. All of it ultimately is about Jesus and making much of him. And anything other than that is being a glory thief. We're taking away from who God is and his finished work and what he has done, and we're adding it to other people, other mediators, other things. And the Protestants really wanted people to understand, no, everything was accomplished for us in Christ and His finished work. And anytime you're adding your own works into this mess, other mediators into this mess, other means of grace into this mess, you know, other teachings that are not from the Word of God, not the Anustas, breathed out by God, you are stealing glory from Christ and you're stealing it for yourself. And oh, go there, man. So you like you look at the Vatican or Vatican City, because they obviously they have their own city. I love it. It's funny because you got giant walls and they love to preach about the how bad walls are, and that um I I shouldn't even I shouldn't even go there, but it is a massive, massive trove of wealth and opulence, and I mean it's some areas, it's just garish. You know what I mean? Um, and there's a side of me that's like, man, when we're talking about God not giving his glory to another, and you are the person who is supposed to be a representation of Christ, um, it's a little bit weird. You know, it seems like a little bit um the opposite of what you would want to communicate or how you would want to do those things. I'm not saying the Pope has to drive a civic because he has his own Pope mobile, I think. But uh the the reality that Christ is the one that is supposed to be getting the glory, and when you see people bowing down to the Pope, you have problems. You got people, yeah, it's just it's a giant thing that in a lot of ways is stealing glory from Christ and what he has said, and and I think taking people directions that they don't want to go, or you have other authorities, other teachings, other mediators, other means of grace, other means of justification. Um, it's it's really messy. So, for all of those reasons, I'm very much not a Catholic and could never be a Catholic. Yeah, I can't imagine how that would happen. Um, I've read a lot of books on Catholicism. I've had a lot of Catholics that have uh recommended, you know, Scott Hahn and um Trent Horn and some other guys. I've read some literature. Look, there's some good arguments, there's some good apologists out there who I actually like watching in uh good debates against people with things where I would very much agree with them. Like I said, there's a lot of things we have in common. There's just a lot of things that I would say, yikes, we do not have in common. Yeah, and we got to be careful about landing in some of those places. So I I know we don't have a ton of time left, but like, are there particular questions?

SPEAKER_00 43:47

High level, high level quick view. What is the council of Trent? When was it? Was it why is it so?

SPEAKER_01 43:53

Simply put, the Council of Trent was a rebuttal or um a further. Um a council that was set up to further rebut all of the things that the Protestant Reformation was saying. Okay. So they literally were just a giant council that came together to say, yes, we hard, you know, we heartily agree with all of the things that they're saying. We agree with or disagree with. Yes, this is what we believe. This is why we believe it from indulgences and um again, all the solas. It was basically a giant anti-sola fest. These are all the things that we believe. This is the Catholic teaching. And what I would want to tell people is like, um, I think the church has been putting its theology together for thousands of years. I don't see Augustine as Catholic. I don't see Thomas Aquinas as Catholic. I don't see um, you know, Clemente of Rome as Catholic or Polycarp is Catholic. And Catholics want to claim anyone that's old and dead is part of the Catholic Church. Yeah. And I would say, Christian, read far, read wide, read our roots, where Christianity has come from. Uh, Reformation is not schism. They didn't believe that they were going a different

The Pope, Trent, And Final Warnings

SPEAKER_01 45:10

direction than the true church. They believed that they were trying to align and call people back to true Christianity.

SPEAKER_00 45:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:17

Like the church is going a wrong direction in all these areas. We want to stay tight with what God has told us to do. So the Catholic Church will see themselves as the true strain that people should be following. And the Protestants are saying, actually, you guys are the schism. Yeah. We kept going with what was supposed to be the case, much like Old Testament prophets are calling Israel back to what they are meant to be. They're protesting what is happening in Israel and what it has become. Jesus shows up and is saying, You guys have walked off of the ledge. I'm right here. I'm trying to show you what it's supposed to look like. You guys are denying me, and I'm right in front of you. You've fallen in love with the teachings of man. You love the best seats at the table, your whitewash tombs full of dead men's bones. And he was trying to tell them this is what it's supposed to be, not that. Protestant theology is getting back to what we believe that the Bible has always been teaching. And we believe what the church fathers were teaching as well. Now there's some crazy theology and the church fathers too. Not saying everybody was perfect and had it put together again. We're talking about thousands of years of people clarifying and sharpening and getting to a place where they were able to articulate things fully. But by and large, I don't see myself as a Protestant as disconnected from all the early church fathers. No. I I like a lot of what I read from old church fathers, and anybody who loves Jesus should, and you can see how these people love the Lord and cared about it deeply. I like Thomas Aquinas. Yeah. Um, there's a whole conversation to be had there about some difficulties and problems potentially. But like uh I like uh old dead guys and and we should. We should go back to those people, enjoy reading them and learn from them. Uh Basil and uh all kinds of people. Um, but yeah, so so an encouragement on this topic would be if you're going to um if you're wrestling with this particular topic, I would urge you to get into some of the areas of contention and don't brush by them because you think it's a more convenient thing that you like. The goal should be that truth is ultimately leading you, yeah, not personal proclivity or propensity. Do am I actually studying what they believe, why they believe the weird stuff, the out there stuff? Am I is scripture my final authority, or am I saying there's other authorities that I'm also acknowledging? Am I okay with all the other stuff that they're saying? Can I, in good conscience, knowing what's happening in a mass, attend mass? Um, these are these are big deals. They're big deals. And I think too often people are just going to something because it seems rooted and liturgical and reverent. And so many of those things, like I said, are good things, they're not bad things. Yeah. But the teaching behind a lot of this stuff is more insidious and tricky and crafty. And I would just say just be very careful, keep your Bible close. And if you don't see it in the word, like a true Protestant, I'm going to tell you, it's probably not there and shouldn't buy it. So all right. Well, that helps Justin. I appreciate it. All right. You guys have a great week.