I don't like to be ungracious but I like to correct introductions that use words like renowned by pointing out that U uh our Lord chooses very strange instruments to do his work uh when he entered Jerusalem to do the most important work that any one has ever done in the history of the world he wrote a jackass he still does I shall try to be short uh so that we Can leave some time for Q&A microphones can be passed around which is always more interesting because it's closer to the nature of Ultimate Reality which is
three persons in Eternal dialogue well at least two persons is better than just one which is why dialogue is always more interesting than monologue what are the seven reasons why everyone should should be a Catholic well to be very simple it's true it's good it's Beautiful uh the facts of History prove it uh it produces Saints it gets you to heaven and this is where you meet Jesus Christ let's start with the first three truth goodness and Beauty are the three things that everybody wants they're the three foods that every human soul is designed to
hunger for uh infinitely we're satisfied with other things we're not satisfied with any amount of Truth would you like to know the truth On Monday but not on Tuesday we're not satisfied with any amount of goodness we want it to just keep pouring out the only place that it does that from is the Infinite Source that is God and we're not satisfied with only a little beauty uh Beauty wets our appetite for more and more and more and the three theological virtues faith hope and charity which are the spiritual glue that sticks us to God
uh are the church's answer to those three Innate human desires how do we know the truth by Faith by accepting the word of Truth himself uh how do we uh know the Good by Love by charity that's the essence of good and you attain it only by doing it uh how do we attain Beauty what is the most beautiful thing in the world Our Hope of infinite Beauty in heaven isn't it interesting that whenever we have a long story An epic uh great novel or a movie or a great myth there's always three characters three
protagonists three Heroes uh and one of them is always a leader a king or a captain one of them is always an intellectual scientist or philosopher and one of them does the The Humble Spade work like a priest uh Prophet priest and King the three offices that God himself appointed in his chosen people and in our Souls uh for instance uh in The Lord of the Rings uh the three main characters all of whom are Christ figures because all of whom die and resurrect in different ways uh are Gandalf who's a prophet and Aragorn who's
a king and Frodo who's a priest in the brothers karanza the greatest novel ever written uh we have Ivan karamazov who is the philosopher a prophet he's a false prophet he's an atheist but he's an honest one uh and Dimitri who is like his father a strong willed he's a bad King but he's a king uh and alosha who is a confused priest but he's a priest uh in the most philosophical science fiction uh series uh TV ever had start track we have Captain Kirk who's the captain and uh Mr Spock who's a science officer
and Bones McCoy who's the humble Country Doctor even in the gospels Peter James and John uh Jesus handpicked Inner Circle of three correspond to that John as we know from his books in the New Testament is the great prophet the intellectual uh the mind uh and Peter is the rock the ruler the king and James is a practical moralist he's probably not the same James who wrote the epistle uh but the epistle is certainly very very practical uh the reason this is so this is everywhere you you find this in in even simple movies like
like Jaws here you have uh Captain Quint who's the Captain of the Orca and you have uh Hooper who's the visiting scientist and you have Brody who's the the local bumbling sheriff uh the reason this is so is that they reflect us they reflect the human soul and God who designed the human soul and designed it to run on the fuel that is nothing but himself which is why no other fuel works which is why our hearts are restless until they rest in him uh God wants to pour himself into all three of these powers
of the Soul and he pours himself into our mind by faith and into into our will by charity and into our our our well the third power is rather more difficult to define the mysterious heart uh or spiritual emotions uh he does that by hope faith is our relation to truth and goodness is the fruit of faith and joy is the fruit of the spiritual intercourse between between Faith and Hope between truth and Goodness between the intellect and the will and the two greatest Beauties in the world are truth and goodness uh they're beyond the
world the the Supreme beauty is the beatific vision of God the contemplation of Eternal truth and the Supreme goodness is in this world the most the most beautiful thing we've ever seen is the goodness of a saint uh nothing that we've ever seen with our Eyes can compare with the most beautiful thing that human eyes have ever seen 2,000 years ago on Calvary this is why the most bloody and ugly movie ever made is also the greatest and the most beautiful The Passion of the Christ well let's take these one by one truth why must
that come first because that's the absolutely absolute absolute even goodness and Beauty have To be true goodness and true beauty suppose you could get those other two things namely goodness and beauty and its fruit joy happiness suppose you could get them without truth truth and then suppose that you had to give up some goodness and some beauty at least temporarily to get the truth which would you choose suppose somebody invented a machine it's called a Happiness Machine And when you walked into that machine you would be completely happy uh and there would be no sin
and no guilt and no punishment and no pain and no suffering and no fear uh you would have everything except truth it would be a dream it would be an illusion but the illusion would be perfect and once you walked into that machine you would never want to walk out would you walk into that machine I hope Not we're trying to find one every day that's the whole problem with the world doesn't believe in truth if you think that that's too harsh uh I want to refute you I think you are honest enough and tough-minded
enough to put truth first I think you all deep down agree that the only honest reason anybody should ever believe anything is because it's True uh and I'll prove that to you do you believe in Santa Claus literally I mean the the the fat jolly man in the Red Flannel suit comes down your chimney and and gives you Christmas presents of course not but when you were about 2 years old you did right at that point you didn't know the difference between myth and fact and your parents probably told you the myth the story which
is a a nice story because it its point is that that Generosity is fun giving is fun that's a profound truth but of course Santa Claus isn't literally true so I hope that by the time you got old enough to make that distinction and ask your parents is Santa Claus true they said something like well not the way you think it but there was a real St Nicholas and he really was generous and so on okay fine but when you believed in the Mythic Santa Claus at 2 years old how happy you were and how
well you behaved at least The day before Christmas now how come you gave up belief in Santa Claus why don't you just go back to that belief if you literally believed in Santa Claus you'd be very happy and you'd be very good or to take an even more ridiculous example why don't you believe that this room is heaven and that I'm God if you believed that and you see me you'd be in the beatific Vision well because that's really really Really stupid it isn't true oh who cares about truth it was it would make you
good and it would make you happy ah yes I guess truth is an absolute it's not the only thing it's the root of the plant it's not yet the fruit charity and joy and those other things are the fruit but without the root you don't get the fruit so we've got to start by being infinitely tough-minded truth is an absolute no compromise with truth Cardinal Newman once said uh if I could get to Heaven by telling one little lie I wouldn't do it because a heaven that's based on a lie is really hell all right
the honest motive then for being a Catholic and the only reason why everyone should be a Catholic is that it's true because everyone needs truth but truth has fruits and one of the fruits is goodness and the essence of good goodness is Charity and just as truth is the only honest reason for believing the Catholic faith so charity is the only irrefutable reason for being a Catholic a saint is what we're destined to be it's the meaning of life if if you don't attain that you are a failure even if you get a in all
your other courses uh if you're not a saint you've flunked life the two always go together faith and charity faith and the works of Faith uh which are the works of love the greatest tragedy in uh in the history of visible church is certainly the Protestant Reformation which split it far more r ically than the split between East and West did in 1054 because the Eastern Church preserved all the dogmas and sacraments intact and hasn't further split whereas protestantism gave rise to a number of very different uh sisms and heresies and Has split into somewhere
between 20,000 and 30,000 different denominations now if you ask any biblical Protestant any Protestant who hasn't abandoned the faith altogether and I think most of them haven't uh if you ask them what was the most important issue that justified Luther in splitting the church at the Protestant Reformation they would say well Catholics didn't know how to get to heaven they believed that uh you had to do good works to get to heaven and Luther rediscovered what the Bible teaches namely justification by faith well as long as you don't add the word faith alone in a
sense that's true we know the Bible we wrote it for good and sakes uh actually justification by faith alone is mentioned in the bible it's a heresy it's explicitly denied by James A man is not justified by faith alone well wait a minute uh isn't there uh an absolute contradiction between Those two Notions that uh the ticket to Heaven Is A one- Part ticket faith alone and the idea that the he the ticket to Heaven is a two-part ticket faith and good works uh and the Catholic Church excommunicated Luther and Luther declared the church to
be in heresy uh and you can't compromise with truth so you can't possibly negotiate that without compromise right wrong God performed a Miracle the decree on justification which went through three stages in the 1990s uh in all three stages including its final stage age was approved uh by the Vatican officially and by the worldwide uh conference of German not just German worldwide Lutheran Bishops and a lot of other Protestants hung on too nobody thought that could happen 50 years ago that's the greatest ecumenical achievement in history without Compromise each side said well we both believe
in the Bible so we've got to somehow agree how how do we agree well we're speaking different languages when Luther said a man is justified by faith alone he meant by Justified just getting to Heaven uh and if you don't have time for good works like the thief on the cross he could still get to heaven oh and what Luther meant by faith was not just intellectual Faith but what Catholics call faith hope and charity together the very life of God in your soul and Catholics can buy that and when Catholics say you're not justified
by faith alone but you need good works too they mean by justification not just getting to heaven but becoming a saint and of course you need good works for that and what they mean what we Catholics mean by faith is one of the three theological virtues not all three Faith is that act of the mind or the intellect prompted by the will by which we believe everything God has revealed on the authority of the one who revealed it so once we understood that we're both saying the same thing in different words we said oh now
there are all sorts of other issues that have not been negotiated without compromise for instance the authority of the church and the relation between the Church and the Bible and the sacraments uh and many other things and nobody today can see how God can possibly bring order out of that chaos but nobody could see 50 years ago how he did it with the the biggie so if Goliath has fallen the other Philistines can be slain too because we didn't do it God did it wow there can't be a contradiction between faith and love Faith and
good Works faith and goodness those are two the fundamental demands of the human heart and we don't have two hearts we have one heart the faith that is indifferent to charity and the charity that is indifferent to Faith is not true Faith or true charity so somehow that's doable so I'm a great Optimist for the future as was St John Paul II he said the first Millennium was the Millennium of Christian unity and the second Millennium was the Millennium of Christian disunity and the third millennium must be the Millennium of Christian reunity because we've got
to approach the world unified in the truth you can argue with the most brilliant Theologian who ever lived not everybody is a toist Thomas aquinus was certainly the most brilliant mind that ever Lived but nobody ever could argue with Mother Teresa impossible I mean even even pro-choice people when they hear her say what you're justifying abortion because there's too many children that's like saying there's too many flowers how do you deal with an argument like that one of the most brilliant Intellectuals of the 20th century Malcolm mugrage who was an atheist for most of his
life uh he was the editor of punch one of the funniest humor magazines in the world was very British uh he made friends with Mother Theresa he made her famous there was a miracle which convinced him that she was a saint but he still wasn't a Catholic he was only an Anglican one day he was walking around Mother Teresa's Hospital uh talking uh and mother said Malcolm You're a good man why don't you see your way all the way through to to swim the Tyber and Malcolm said this is in his autobiography I replied well
mother I'll answer you in your own words I guess God uh sees me here doing some good work like making you famous and he says well Malcolm's a good man and I need some good men outside the Catholic Church as well as inside and then Mother Teresa made me a Catholic by three words no he doesn't and I couldn't answer That that's the wisdom of a saint you cannot argue with a saint nobody ever wanton an argument with Mother Teresa nobody so you want to convince the world there's only one way be a saint because
if not you're a failure the 19th century French Catholic writer Leon blah uh snuck into most of his plays and novels align that he loved to repeat in the end life offers only one tragedy not to have been a Saint the highest Authority in the world demands nothing less in The Sermon on the Mount most popular sermon ever preached I don't know why it's so popular because if you take it seriously and then you look at yourself uh the gap between what Jesus himself demands and what you are is immense you must be perfect as
your father in Heaven is perfect well I don't know how Pro most Protestants deal with that but we Believe in in purgatory we're going to need a lot of extra baking but the end is a cake that is absolutely perfect if you saw with your eyes right now the person you are destined to be in heaven you would probably commit idolatry You' probably fall down and worship it and say it's a God that's why God doesn't let you see that and God is not going to satisfy himself with anything less he is a perfectionist He's
infinitely compassionate and infinitely merciful and offers forgiveness to the worst sinner for all the sins of his life and the worst sins and yet at the same time he demands Perfection he's like a good father he is both Stern and kind he's both tough and tender now these two things together truth and goodness produce Beauty the the greatest beauty and that is our Supreme Joy and we're destined for nothing but joy nothing less than Joy not just pleasure we can get that we can control that at least on a on a physical level and part-time
uh and even happiness which is more spiritual and inward uh that's not our destiny merely happiness also comes and goes and it's subjective it's it it's a feeling it's the satisfaction of our desires whatever they are and they're not necessarily wise and besides Happiness gets boring which is why we need to to act up once in a while which is the reason why little boys love to to use bulldozers here little girls make doll houses and that's fine and little boys smile and and bulldoze down the dollhouses that's not just wickedness that's surprise we love
to be surprised happiness doesn't surprise us because happiness is the satisfaction of the desires we already have but God Wants to satisfy desires we don't even know we have surprise that's Joy Heaven never gets boring when I was a teenager I had a crisis of faith I have ADD and therefore I get bored very easily and I was afraid I'd get bored in heaven because I thought it was an internal church service and I usually got bored in church the only only thing that saved me was that verse in the Book of Revelation Where it
says I saw no temple in heaven because God himself is there so I said to myself okay I guess God's not boring one of the most impressive things about Christ in the gospels is that he never bored anybody I think he's the only human being in history who never bored anybody he's always surprising you he never says or does or even is exactly what we expect and I think that's going to go on In heaven forever and ever that's why we're never going to be bored in heaven the some aspect of God that you discover
a new every single day forever and then once you discover it you tell everybody else about it by Heavenly means that we have no idea what they are all Earthly philosophy and Theology and Art and Science is simply a a pale copy of those means we're destined for nothing nothing but that and if that's not so then Something better is the Bible defines Heaven this way Eye Has Not Seen Ear Has Not Heard nor has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him all right truth
goodness and Beauty now let's get concrete what truths well the fundamental truth that made me a Catholic was the fact the historical fact that Jesus Christ Established the Catholic Church to be a Christian is to accept Christ as your lord and if Christ said here's the church I designed for you you take it you don't say well I want to edit your mail just a little bit instead of faithfully carrying it you don't do that if you believe that Christ is God incarnate and if not you're not a Christian that's the the bright Line in
the Sand that distinguishes all Christians from all non-christians the First and earliest Christian Creed is in the New Testament in two places in Paul's letters it consists in three words Christ is curios Lord the Greek word for Lord is a word that no Christian ever uses for Caesar or any other human being all right the Divinity of Christ is the definitive Christian doctrine if you don't believe that you're an apostate not a Christian if you do believe that you're a Christian however Confused you may be about anything else all right so if Christ is divine
and if Christ established one visible church and authorized it to teach in his name and he did the Bible itself says that he said to his Apostles he who hears you hears me and the apostles the New Testament made this clear ordained successors to carry on that visible authoritative teaching and all Christians believe That for 1500 years well then how could I possibly be outside it here's Noah's Ark and I as a Protestant uh loved Jesus Christ and and was probably going to get to heaven but I was in this little Lifeboat uh following in
the wake of Noah's Arc and I was going to get to heaven only because Noah's Arc made that wake well why didn't I jump aboard here are all the great Saints Inviting me uh and of course there are a lot of animals on the ark and that means a lot of poop uh and there's a lot of a lot of poop in the church's history sure when I was at Calvin College uh some of my friends gave me some anti-catholic literature to read and uh one of them was a very funny book by a Renaissance
uh short Storyteller bachio it's called the day camaron and it was Stories about clerical corruption he was Italian and the Italians are close enough to the church that they they see a lot of the dirt that we don't I mean ride in any taxi in Rome and they'll tell you the latest Scandal uh this was during the boria papacy the boria family basically was like the mafia they controlled the papacy and the pope at the time was was I'm not sure it's Alexander the 22nd or John the 22nd one of these scandalous popes who had
uh a public mistress and about 13 bastard children and was filthy rich but he never changed the doctrine he never said okay popes can do this now he was a hypocrite he didn't practice what he preached thank God that means he didn't preach what he practiced uh anyway during this time there is a Pious Bishop of Paris who has a Jewish friend Abraham who's a intelligent businessman and they have Theological discussions and the bishop thinks that Abraham is on the verge of conversion uh and one day Abraham comes to him and says wish me good
speed Bishop I'm on my way to Rome I got to do business with the Vatican bank and live with the pap family for a couple of months I'll see you in the spring and the bishop says look why don't you get baptized before you go down there the air isn't very clear down there and Abraham said look I'm a practical Jewish Businessman one of my rules is first business then pleasure so I got to do my business there if I come back uh and I get baptized that'll be my pleasure goodbye the bishop said I've
lost him he'll see what goes on down there he'll never become a Catholic comes back in a couple of months oh you went to Rome yep you live with a Papal family yep you did business with the Vatican Bank yep oh I guess you're not interested in baptism oh yes I am I'm convinced What you saw what goes on now there and now you're convinced I don't get it Abraham says look I don't know that much about theology but I know a lot about business I know for sure no earthly business that stupid or corrupt
could last 14 days yours has lasted 14 centuries it's a miracle I thought that was a great argument the facts of of History what other visible Human Institution has kept its teaching Absolutely pure even though the the teachers were far from absolutely pure it's a miracle it's a visible Miracle it's an in yourface Miracle facts of History okay had to be on board the next thing that made me a Catholic was reading the Saints I'd never read Catholic saints before as a teenager I started this was a mistake but a providential mistake I started With
St John of the cross I didn't understand anything except that this was real this was true this this was Everest I had been dealing with anthills this was a mountain wow you can't argue with the Saints I think we should spend a lot more time and attention on the lives of the Saints because they're a tremendous teaching device especially with young people adolescen are growing into Adulthood and they need models and we of course as as their fathers are are models models of God God designed that Jesus's word for for God his father but they
need more than us they they need balanced models every one of us has has fault somewhere and they need to be corrected but not by us by somebody else where there's the Saints there are an incredibly wide variety every conceivable uh human psychological type with all sorts of of of weaknesses And problems and and disorders uh you can't argue with a saint show them the Saints show them great movies like a man for all seasons which is my favorite movie of all time I classify The Passion of the Christ as more a liturgy than a
movie what would a saint in the modern politically correct world look like he'd look exactly like St Thomas More all right I've gone through five reasons faith hope charity facts of History Saints Hope Of Heaven be a Catholic because it's Noah's Arc and Noah's Arc is going to the land of life and you're in the land of death be a Catholic because that's the god ordained way to get to heaven that's what the church is for it's an arc it's going somewhere it's his way of saving you from a flood and preserving you for a
new World and as I said before Heaven is something far better than we can dream see as leis puts it in these memorable words all your your life an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your Consciousness the day is coming when you will wake to find beyond all hope that you have it or else that it was within your grasp and you have lost it forever what could be more important than that Nothing why are we so Bland so passionless there is something about which to have infinite passion namely infinity and if
that's not true it's the world's biggest illusion it can't be just a nice ideal it can't be just a myth it can't just be a helpful Dream It's either true or it isn't and this brings me to my seventh reason which is I think the most logical Uh let's start with the existence of God if God doesn't exist then about 95% of all human beings who have ever lived in the history of the world in all times places cultures and religions have guided their lives by the biggest illusion in the world maybe some of you
are old enough to remember the old Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey Jimmy Stewart is a nice reasonable apparently rational uh Middle-aged man uh who has one very strange fixation he believes in Harvey who is a 13 foot high invisible rabbit that only Jimmy St can see nobody else can see him and he's the most important person in Jimmy's life well Jimmy is nice and he's good and whatnot but he's insane there is no Harvey he's just a delayed adolescent who's playing with an invisible friend now if God doesn't exist then 95% of the human beings in
the history of The world have been insane as insane as Jimmy Stewart at least one atheist explicitly admits that Sigman Freud in his most philosophical book uh civilization and his discontents he labels religion Insanity uh not many people will go that far but Freud explains why well the insane don't know that they're insane they think people outside the insane asylum are insane but if there's no God Then all believers in any kind of God any kind of uh Superior superhuman being are insane so you got to be a snob to be an atheist oops that's
a short Act of Contrition then you come to Jesus who claims to be God incarnate now that too isn't either or that's either true or it's not true if it's true you have to worship Him and if it's not true what do you have to do well if you're a good Jew you have to Crucify him actually only the Romans crucified uh the Jews use stoning but when Jesus uh in the eth chapter of John's gospel explicitly said to them I'm God he didn't use those two words but he said something even more shocking truly
truly I say to you which is the rabinal formula for take this as seriously as possible it's not a myth don't negotiate it don't don't be subtle about it don't do a little dance around it truly truly I say to you before Abraham was Yahweh those words had not been heard since God spoke them to Moses from the burning bush that was God's Own Name so holy that no Jew ever dared to pronounce it well if he isn't who he says he is he is the world's worst blasphemer and liar and if anybody deserved to
be killed it was him people read that passage and they say well I like Jews you're supposed to Jesus is a Jew therefore I'm not going To say nasty things about the Jews so they they just sort of misunderstood him no they didn't they understood him perfectly clearly and they were being very faithful to Mosaic law which demanded execution for blasphemy if Jesus is not Lord then he's either a liar or a lunatic one or the other the one thing he can't possibly be is the thing that all non-christians think he is namely a good
man a man who claims to be God and demands Your worship is not a good man he's a bad man he's either intellectually bad insane or he's morally bad a wicked liar the same kind of argument applies to the Catholic church only the Catholic Church claims to be the one infallible divinely authorized visible institution on Earth no Protestant Church claims that so if that's not true then of all the Christian churches the Catholic church is the most wicked and blasphemous and Arrogant but of course if it is true then everybody ought to join it it's
Noah's Arc and then finally what the church gives you is of course truth and goodness the Saints but also Beauty especially in the Liturgy in the mass in the sacraments the real presence of Christ the one Catholic doctrine that moved me most powerfully to become a Catholic against my will I read the church Fathers in order to convince myself that they were Protestant you know that's an honest mistake and God uses honest mistakes and you know the rest of the story uh when I read the uh all the Christian writers before the Reformation I found
that not a one of them denied the real presence of Christ in the sacraments especially the Eucharist not one of them even the enemies of Christianity said well of course that's what the church Teaches and that's ridiculous that's cannibalism that's horrible that's blasphemous nobody said it's only a symbol the first one who ever said that was bearinger of Tours in the 10th Century he was immediately labeled a heretic he repented he was reconciled to the church he didn't found a movement uh later you get movements especially the waldensians and alians in the 13th century oh
by the way what's the the difference between a Dominican and a Jesuit Dominicans were founded by St Dominic in the 12th century to combat the heresy of albigensianism Jesuits were founded by Ignatius of alola in the 16th century to combat the heresy of protestantism now tell me please how many alians have you met lately Jesuit joke Jesuits have a great sense of humor I love him okay here's this idea that you can meet God incarnate personally body and blood soul and Divinity in the Eucharist that looks like Bread and Wine it's not Bread and Wine
that's Christ's body that's Christ's blood after consecration after transubstantiation now that's not true that's the stupidest and wickedest idolatry in history these stupid Catholics are bowing down to bread and worshiping wine thinking it's almighty God was the Holy Spirit asleep for 1500 years how could he have let all Christians in the world be subject to that ridiculous heresy oh yeah it's another either or just like God just like Christ just like the church well if he's really present there then that's like the closest you can get to the marriage bed in dating now I'm not
going to ask the question about sexual morality here I'm just using the same same sexual image That the Saints use for uh the spiritual marriage uh if Jesus Christ is fully present in the Eucharist then when you receive the Eucharist that's the closest you can possibly get to him that's the most perfect union with Christ that you can possibly get that's the closest you can get to heaven on Earth and Protestants say well no it's only a holy symbol well here's Jesus knocking at Your door and if you say well I don't believe that's you
I just believe that's a holy symbol you're missing out on something astonishing by the way I think this is the main reason Catholics come home Catholics who have been baptized and then left the church are the the the second largest religious group in America next to Catholics who are still in the church uh and we got to get them home America is our primary Mission field and I think the Eucharist is the primary thing that's going to draw them home it's a magnet it's it's a light in the window it's the fire in the fireplace
the church is a fireplace and Christ is the fire and I've heard of countless Catholics who have come home for that reason they may have difficulties with the church's theology they may have difficulty with the church's morality They may have difficulty with the church's clergy but he's there that's my home that's the fire how can I be anywhere else I also know a number of Protestants who became Catholic because a Catholic suggested well look here you you don't believe the church is what it claims to be and you don't believe the Eucharist is really Christ
what but you're not sure right all right so I I challenge you uh go into a Catholic Church Sometime alone uh when nobody's watching you and you're not worried about what people think and uh go to the first Pew and see if that little red light is there and Catholics believe that means that Christ is really present there and you don't know whether that's true or not you think it's not but you're not sure all right so pray you're a Christian but you're not a Cath like go pray okay pray to Christ say you are
my Lord whatever you say is true wherever You lead I want to follow and I don't think that's you but maybe I'm wrong because I'm not God at least I know that much so if that's you draw me and if that's not you let me get the hell out of here it's got to be one or the other your will be done and if you pray that you'll become a Catholic Jesus promises it seek and you shall find all who seek find the only ones who don't find are the ones who Don't seek well that's
my answer to why everybody should be a Catholic and now we've got at least 15 minutes left for questions good uh I now invite your questions and responses I think we have microphones that can be passed around I was told that uh is that the man with the mic testing Good questions about anything anything I've said or anything I haven't said one one question yes how do you respond to the Lutheran theology on the Eucharist that it the bread is not changed but if you have the bread he'll come along with it mhm well as
an abstract idea it is probable and as an abstract idea the Catholic notion of transubstantiation is Al also probable and reasonable how do you decide between Two ideas that are equally reasonable well if both ideas claim to be divine revelation you test it by its source what does God say about it you didn't invent the Eucharist God did now Luther invented that idea 15 00 years after Jesus Christ invented the opposite idea and authorized the church to teach the opposite idea which did teach and practice the opposite idea for 1500 years so which is more
reasonable in other words the historical Argument Catholics don't believe each of the strange things they believe because they're great theologians they figured it out for themselves they believe it because they're little kids they're like the southern baptist formula God said it I believe it that settles it in other words baby doesn't examine the spinach uh and make Chemical analysis of it uh before baby eats the spinach because Mommy says it's good Even though it tastes funny baby trusts Mommy to put the right food on his plate Dr creef um thank you so much for your
presentation this uh morning I had a question if you could just address your earlier comment about uh negotiating without compromise and how that is compatible with your later comments about um the irreconcilable differences the either or option about the claims of the Catholic church and how that uh makes it either a lunatic or A liar rather than true well understanding your opponent and listening to your opponent is not compromis here are two parties that teach apparently contradictory things we're not talking about political compromise there that's necessary nobody can get Utopia and Perfection and everything in
politics so you got to make genuine compromises there but not in theology not IND Doctrine we want the truth Unvarnished all right so you got a contra an apparent contradiction here is it a real contradiction how can you find out listen listen to your opponent and have your opponent listen to you and then uh be sure that your motive is right your motive is honesty your motive is truth and if you're both Christians that's got to be Christian truth here you're playing an instrument In God's Symphony Orchestra and somebody else is playing an instrument in
the same Orchestra and the two instruments seem to be Out Of Tune they're either playing different pieces or they're on a different page uh how do you get them to be in harmony well the the Christian answer is only one possible answer Jesus Christ is conducting that Orchestra and if you only look at your Own sheet of music in front of you nothing's going to happen but if you look at his hand and his baton and you follow that baton and the other part he does too then you will agree because his will is Unity
we know that read John 17 the high Priestly prayer Jesus died for that Unity that Unity not only between man and God but also between man and man so if that's your deepest desire you'll find It Jesus gives an answer a challengingly simple answer to the question how do you understand and interpret his teaching John 7:17 he says to to the Jews who who question two things one what his teaching means it's very difficult and two whether it's authoritative whether it comes from God whom he calls his father and his answer is if your will
were to do the will of my father you would understand my teaching that it is From him and that's the secret of ecumenical reconciliation if the saintly Protestant and the saintly Catholic want with their whole will what God Wills then they will see what God sees the heart leads the mind the the heart pumps blood into the brain that's not true in science you don't have to love the guinea pig that you're uh dissecting in order to understand it but you do have to love the god that you want to understand and If you do
you will understand him that's that's infallible that's divinely authorized and guaranteed of course that doesn't mean that there's not going to be a lot of misunderstandings and difficulties along the way and that it might not take a long time God's a lover not a train he doesn't go by a timetable but it'll happen uh yeah my question um your comment about uh great literature Including three characters uh brought to mind uh a statement attributed to Mario PUO that I wondered you know if you knew if it was uh if he made the statement and if
he recognized the connection to the three virtues or I'm sorry the three vows but he said that all great stories were about money sex and power uh so i' I'd be curious on on your thoughts yeah money sex and power are the three sources of the three great Temptations pride and greed and lust and they're Opposed by the uh the three vows poverty Chastity and obedience uh so there's a war going on between Christ and Antichrist and Christ came to make peace uh with God and with ourselves and with each other Thomas meron wonderfully summarized
that in one sentence we are not at peace with each other because we are not at peace with ourselves and we are not at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God but in Order to attain that peace you have to be at war with the devil's War because the devil wants you to make peace with with money sex and power Pride greed and lust the World the Flesh and the devil so here are the three weapons that God has provided against that so we have to make a war against War blessed
are the peacemakers he didn't say blessed are the people who find peace easy and just swim in it blessed are the peac makers and in order to make peace you have to War against the sources of War and the church has always taught those three things and that also fits the threefold fault pattern and it's not just clergy who practice poverty Chastity and obedience they make special vows but they are like the iceberg above the water and the Le is that same Iceberg under the water um my question has to do with Paul the uh
Protestants um a lot of times will quote Um the teachings of Paul from the scriptures and I was just wondering when Paul would travel around um trying to teach everyone about Jesus in his um in his teachings would he give the Eucharist as part of his teachings well he said a lot about the Eucharist especially in Corinthians and word and Sacrament uh teaching and and the Eucharist are the two indispensable parts of of Evangelism uh and Paul's a great missionary who more than anyone else started it so the answer is a resounding yes although what
Paul says both about Theology and about the sacrament uh is not totally adequate and totally clear and it needs interpretation and James himself refers to Paul's letters which were apparently already in circulation when he says uh Paul is difficult to understand that's why we need a living teacher to teach that sacred book The Textbook is finished it's it's unchanged the Bible is not going to be added to but you need a living teacher to interpret it so the church continues to unpack uh the profound truths that are already packaged uh completely in the Bible but
you always get more and more that's true even of of secular Classics how much has been written about oh let's say hamlet probably the greatest play ever written thousands and thousands of books is there nothing new To say oh sure there's always something new to say because we're talking about the human Spirit which is in the image of God and therefore has a kind of infinity to it so you need proper interpretation that's why you need a living church because the alternative to that is 30,000 different denominations would you explain the dubia the lack of
a response and whether we are in Schism no I'm not a professional Theologian so I'm not sure about those categories sorry I'll tell you what I know tell you what I don't know I have a simple question can non Catholics get to heaven yes the Catholic Church says so very clearly in in Vatican 2 of course uh you don't get to Heaven by passing a theology exam at the golden gates if you did we'd all flunk you get to Heaven by by faith hope And charity and Protestants can have that yes and there's a lot
of Protestants that are a lot holier than we are and we can learn from them yes I I've been challenged with this question maybe you can answer it um why would I want to pray to the Saints and in particular pray to Mary when I can pray to Jesus directly well that's like saying why Should I ask my mother uh to uh persuade my father to give me this thing that I want instead of going to my father directly or why should I ask my Christian friend please pray for me when I can ask God
directly you know Heavenly realities and Earth realities aren't two totally different things one is the image of the other so because God designed this and God designed us to be in His image so if we ask our Earthly friends To pray for us and no Protestant denies that why shouldn't we ask our Heavenly friends to pray for us the only possible reason is because your heavenly friends can't see you anymore but scripture itself says that's not true we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses how many people are watching this thing that's going on right
now many more than a thousand your your grandparents your beloved and departed Family members uh do they not care about you anymore in heaven I mean when you get to heaven uh let's say you die before your wife dies and you love your wife dearly are you going to say to God please don't show me how well my wife is doing and please don't let me pray for her uh I'm I'm I'm in heaven now I'm not on Earth anymore of course not if you're a lover you're going to say God how can I help
her here and God's going to say you can do more For her now in heaven than you ever could on Earth I read I read a an autobiography of a a presbyterian Pastor uh he was an adult he's still a presbyterian he didn't become a Catholic but uh there's a chapter in it where his father who was also a presbyterian Minister died and he loved his father very much and he was about 12 years old when it happened and he said that night as usual I prayed for My father kneeling to say my prayers at
my bedside and my mother who heard my prayers said to me oh son we must not do that we are not Roman Catholics and he said at that moment an iron gate clanged shut between myself and my father his death didn't do it my mother's words did it so to this day I can't believe that she was right there's a deep Instinct that we have to connect with other people we're not we're not independent we're not Autonomous We're Not Angels we're in families and in non-biological Way Family continues in heaven the the gap between Earth
and Heaven is not an iron gate so of course there's the communion of saints and of course we can pray for each other even though we don't see each other we can pray for them and they can pray for us thank you for coming today and speaking I just wanted to say I recently enjoyed your uh recent Prager youu Videos um also I've read you for uh through college until today and one of the greatest things our favorite books is Christianity for modern pagans when you wrote about Blaze Pascal's wager uh and and that was
very meaningful to me and changed kind of the course of my life and I just want to ask you today uh what are some of your favorite books that you've read and that you would recommend to others well my best books are always the ones about great Authors uh because I'm a I'm a bug and I I have pretty good legs so I can hop on to the Head head of great thinkers like Augustine and aquinus and Pascal and and see uh maybe even sometimes a little farther than they see that's that's a plagiarism from
one of the cliches that medieval philosophers love to repeat we are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants if we see more than the Ancients it's only because we first have the sense and humility to jump on their Shoulders so I'd say St Augustine uh and St Thomas aquinus and Pascal uh and in the 20th century I think CS Lewis and GK chesteron are the two greatest Christian apologists so those were probably my five favorites Dr CRA How do you respond to somebody who says religion is not necessary but spirituality is all that one needs
well that's what the devil says the devil is very spiritual he hates Matter and religion means relationship a relationship with God and if you know who God is that relationship starts with humility but spirituality lacks humility oh I am very spiritual that's what the Pharisees said too I think that's ridiculous and dangerous I'm not spiritual I'm religious Dr crafe there are many non-catholic Protestants who deeply love the Lord MH and pursue truth and yet it is Impaired in their minds because of a strong cultural relationship to a denomination where they they they worship Yep they're
deeply involved in their churches they have a ministry that's very Dynamic yep to those people who pursue truth but are held back because of the cultural ties that that hold them back what would be the approach you would use try to See God's hand try to see the Baton and follow it CS Lewis is the prime example of that uh here is a brilliant honest and very very good Christian who never saw his way through to the Catholic Church even though he had deeply Catholic sensibilities he believed in purgatory he had a deep Devotion to
the Blessed Virgin Mary to the Saints he went to confession each week to a priest and yet he never became a Catholic tolken his best Catholic friend kept Badgering him about it and once he responded if you prize my friendship you will stop badgering me about this you couldn't possibly understand you were not born in Belfast so Lewis is aware of his prejudices I think in the case of Lewis God performed a miracle stopping Lewis from becoming a Catholic which would have been the most natural thing in the world so that the Protestants would read
him I know literally dozens of Protestants who became a Catholic first of all because of CS Lewis he greased the slide uh so God's plans are are strange for for some reason or other God does not do the simple obvious thing here is this wonderful truly holy and honest and Truth seeking Protestant and here is the Catholic Church uh why doesn't God just push him I don't know why are there Mosquitoes we just have to trust that God knows better than we do because we're not God my favorite sermon by the way of all time
is the shortest one this is probably because I have ADD and get bored very easily shortest sermon I ever heard a mystical vision of St Catherine late medieval Mystic God said I'm going to summarize all of divine revelation in four words this is all you need to know this is the Bible in four words two sentences one I'm God two you're Not we keep forgetting that second thing Dr Dr creef uh I'm teaching confirmation and to help kids kind of tie it all together I have God's phone number you call uh one one God three
persons five precepts of the church uh seven sacraments seven uh gifts of the Spirit Seven Virtues 10 for Ten Commandments 12 for fruits of the spirit the one part of the phone number uh that gets messed up is five the precepts of the church ma uh regular Mass attendance You teach the kids a confirmation great they're confirmed boom uh only one out of four come back in regular Mass attendance so can you speak to that in a Protestant culture the obligation to attend seems like a work okay and I can go to heaven without that
work so uh that particular uh precept if you want to enlarge on that thank you well you can get educated without reading books and you can be married without ever making love But that's silly I mean if if they understand what the mass is uh it's not an obligation so much as a privilege and the fact that God makes it an obligation is itself a privilege how how compassionate for God to to look down on us fools who are bored with the marriage bed and prefer something else uh let's say an indefinite courtship uh and
say no That's what it's all about go there uh he makes charity a duty most people think love is a feeling of course that's ridiculous you can't command a feeling but you can command love because love is an act of the will so God commands us to love thereby making it a duty thereby making it non-negotiable good that's compassion he does the same thing with mass attendance so I would say just if if you get them to understand and fall in love with Christ And believe his real presence in the Eucharist uh how can they
not go to mass and if you can get them to see that the church's rule is not simply one of control or order but one of of love and compassion we're so stupid we have to be reminded by commands to do the the the greatest thing we can do in this life the the greatest privilege we have in this life to get that close to almighty God if they see that uh how can they Not uh time is relative but not totally relative so I guess we have to end what kind of relative is time
well it's like an [Applause] uncle
