How This Bible Scholar Became Catholic

追加: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]I've been lied to my whole life. And though you start digging and realizing that everything you've ever been taught was a lie told by people who hate Catholics and then repeated by people who just didn't check the footnotes. Um because the person telling the lie was somebody they loved and trusted and they internalized that lie. And then becoming Catholic was the first time I was talking to somebody where oh I feel like a child in the room. Uh because the average the average priest um time in seminary for through discernment, you know, into before they get their orders is like seven or eight years. Um so they're coming at it at like with a doctor's level of training and then they go be babysat by other priests.

[00:00:40]>> Robert, welcome to the podcast.

[00:00:42]>> Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:00:44]>> Yes. Today I am so excited to get into your conversion story and I wanted to start off with asking you about this new trend of the rise of Catholicism in the United States. People are saying that Catholicism is a fad now and that it's not that people have been massly, you know, converted and people are waking up to the truth, but rather people are jumping on a trend. And I've even seen Protestants argue that naive agnostics are being deceived in mass to become Catholic and that this is like some type of great deception. What is your understanding of this rise of Catholicism in the United States?

[00:01:22]>> I've got an interesting perspective because I am a new convert, but I did it slightly before it was cool. The numbers right now, you could sort of parse it either way. U but there there's a rising tide of younger folks that are looking for something just more genuine. um and and with better like history and grounding and tradition and that it doesn't exist in the preponderance of uh Protestant land. Largely Protestantism is unmed from history. Just 1500 years ago, suddenly they figured out the Bible again and they move forward without without ever really looking back and they just assume whatever they're doing is precedented in the book of Acts.

[00:01:56]>> Right? And it's so interesting because the book of Acts has so it is it's the beginnings of the Catholic Church when you look at it through not just the lens of what do I want it to say for me but what has the church taught for millennia before Martin Luther before 1517 before everybody who came after Martin Luther who just furthered his ideals and furthered this notion that we're are basically everyone's their own pope we don't have a singular leader that was handed the keys by Jesus Christ. Um, that's how we get this nest that we're in today. And I I agree. People are looking for something ancient. We're looking for something reverent. We're looking for something true, good, and beautiful. And people have found that in the church that Jesus founded. They're not finding that at the non-denominational church down the street or the even the Lutheran church down the street. It's a watered down form of Christianity. I think people are starting to realize that.

[00:02:51]>> Yeah. My uh my oldest daughter put it best when we first started attending a Catholic mass that it it feels real now is what she said because she had been going to uh you know Protestant Sunday schools um Protestant Bible studies and it just never she would ask like why are there banners on the wall that you know it would have the banners of um the fruits of the spirit you know love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness all on the in the gym and all these real like amorphous pictures of things or you know maybe have a cross somewhere and it just never never had the same gravity as like an entire building built in the shape of a cross and then very unambiguous crucifixes everywhere. There's this feeling the sense of weight that like everybody that's had a hand on making this building from day one has believed that this stuff is real and that everybody who shows up every day continues to like actually you know believe that this is real.

[00:03:44]>> Yes. And and that's a big parallel that I have seen with Protestantism.

[00:03:50]And in light of Catholicism is that more and more the more and more that I hear conversion stories, the more and more I hear this common theme that with Protestants, everything is a symbol.

[00:03:59]Baptism doesn't really save you. That's a symbol. The Eucharist isn't really Jesus. That's a symbol. Everything is a symbol. And with Catholicism, everything is real. Baptism really saves you. The Eucharist is really Jesus. Marriage is really a sacrament. Holy orders are is really a sacrament. Last rights really, it's really a sacrament. confirmation.

[00:04:19]It's not just some imaginary coming of age thing that's kind of just symbolic.

[00:04:25]It's an actual thing. Like it's an actual saving grace that you get from each of these seven sacraments. And um yeah, I just there's so much I want to get into with that. So much I could get into with that. But I want you to introduce yourself to the audience today. Robert, uh what do you do? Where were you before you were Catholic? And why are you on the show today? All right. Um, my name is Robert. Uh, Bluecollar Bible Scholars, the name of a blog slash uh, sometimes podcast. I'll get back into doing I do YouTube videos and I rip the audio and turn it into a podcast. Um, but I haven't done that in three years now. Um, since becoming Catholic. Um, so I started the blog back up and then now I got to find time in my my normal content routine to do the uh, start the podcast back up. But the the goal though is to make highle theology accessible to uh just the average guy because largely it's just a vocabulary gap and when you break the ideas down or you parse the jargon you wind up with just very approachable concepts. The favorite one that I have is suturiology which sounds very big and impressive. So you just mean it's getting saved stuff and talking about what it means to be saved and getting into some of the nitty-gritty details. And so the high level of that on like what kind of justification is it? Yes, you can get lost in the weeds and it is very complicated. But just approaching that though and starting to learn that very very easy. Um and then also too if you have the magic words to Google then you can start educating yourself on things and um finding other breakdowns. But if you don't even know that that world exists, you're just John 3:16 and that's all you know. You don't have the ability to even like approach that information.

[00:06:01]So I I do my best to try and bring that information, break it down, and then disseminate it. Um, and then also, uh, style myself a little bit of a bluecollar advocate, uh, because so much of the Christian media space trends white collar, um, in it's not intentional, but it's it's, uh, a byproduct of the the way the media is.

[00:06:23]Um, and so it's tacitly leaving bluecollar guys behind, and uh, the bluecollar crowd just doesn't care, and they'll just ignore stuff that bothers them and keep moving on. And, uh, they don't complain. And in this world, squeaky wheel gets the grease. So I'm trying to kind of push in both direction to try and do blue collar education, but also try and annoy enough white collar people to get them to pay attention that blue collar people are being missed.

[00:06:45]Blueco collar Bible scholar, you can find me just about anywhere.

[00:06:48]>> What you're saying is so true, and I've witnessed this firsthand with breaking into the podcasting scene independently is I have my my bachelor's degree is in criminal justice. I am not a journalist.

[00:07:00]I am not a media personality. I was really not even on social media before doing the podcast and it is so gatekept you know it is like you said it is Catholic media is an offshoot of the bigger umbrella media and I am very thankful now that we live in an era in a time where YouTube is the new TV and people don't even watch TV anymore people watch YouTube the people have seen oh this is authentic I am I do this independently And you do the same. You know, you are drawing attention to the fact that a lot of a lot of scholars whether they mean to or not speak at a level that the majority of people are overwhelmed by and intimidated by and making theology accessible to everyone is very needed.

[00:07:51]How did you get to this point of doing blue collar Bible scholar and how did you even become Catholic in the first place?

[00:07:58]>> The two are connected. So I I was born and raised in church, went to church my whole life and then um approaching high school, right? Everybody has to make this choice like what do I do with my whole life? Uh as though a teenager has the the grounding and basis to even make that decision. Um which you realize in hindsight the further you get away from high school. Uh but in the in the moment though, I kept thinking about stuff I wanted to do and go, I'll just be a Christian that. I'll just be a Christian that. And it started to feel like I was dragging Jesus along like an unwanted little brother on whatever I wanted to do. And so I thought, well, let me reverse this equation, see where that lands. And that at the time felt like being a missionary was the most like, let's Jesus take the wheel and drag me along like an unwanted little brother and we'll see what happens. Um, and so I found a Bible college that due to financial circumstances was incredibly appealing because it had uh free tuition. Uh I don't I don't think they still do that, but um at the time though, yeah, it was very appealing. So you just had to pay the room and board and you were in. Um and so I wound up at this little 500 person Church of Christ Bible College in the middle of Missouri and uh just dug right in. And after an entire year of missions major classes, um everybody kept talking about pause for a second. My approach to faith has always been very intellectual. I've never really like felt at church where oh the music and oh it just doesn't it just never like clicked for me. Um I was almost all of the time just sitting in the back judging the theology of the the songs they were singing. I'm like that's not right. That verse is misused. Um and so Bible college was a very natural fit.

[00:09:47]But the the more um the missionary teaching is still on the very soft side of here are interpersonal skills. Here's how you learn about other cultures and you know you have to know what country you feel called to. And everybody kept talking about feeling called and I was like I don't I don't feel anything. Um so either I'm doing this wrong or maybe missionary is not it. Um, how about I just switch to I just want all of the information about the Bible and then I'll figure out how to apply it uh if I feel called or how whenever I get there I can do research on a particular cultural language then uh because it was a lot of just general intercultural communication and these types of cultures and it wasn't very specific because you had no idea where everybody was going. Uh they're trying to equally equip somebody going to Germany or Japan or you know Mexico in the same uh course structure. Uh so I I switched majors, terrible idea, from missions to biblical research, which are just diametrically opposed fields. So I wound up spending five years at Bible college. Uh at the time in that time, I met my wife. Um and then started a family also diametrically opposed to succeeding at college. Um and so I I knew I wanted a large family early on. Um, and I had learned really all that I came to learn from a biblical research major. Um, I was just missing like a couple of papers and stuff to like push across the finish line. Um, and I just didn't like I didn't have the time and the wherewithal between taking care of my family and doing the school work required to succeed that I wound up dropping out and getting a job and just entering the workforce because the only long-term career path with the biblical research major is uh to just go to more school and spend the rest of your life reading and writing books, which I'm not particularly adept at. The one book I did write, BlueCollar Blind Spot, find it at bluecrawlerbiblecolar.com/book.

[00:11:42]I'm getting better at the self-promotion thing. It's barely a 100 pages and it took me four years to write. Uh I'm not I'm not great at producing lit uh written works. So I I try and figure out what do I do from here and enter the workforce, but I have five years of Bible college. I'm not like a bad student, you know? I can read and write Greek and Hebrew. I'm smarter than the average bear. I know a ton of, you know, biblical content and stuff. At least the 66 book cannon. I'm still catching up on the extra seven that were hidden from me. Um, so I I join the work for force and I try and figure out what I'm going to do then for the rest of my life again for the the last time. Uh, so I wind up moving towards law enforcement and I become a corrections officer for two years. And then due to some medical dental issues that would make it a huge problem if I ever got punched in the face, um, I wind up moving to a less potentially kinetic job to construction. Uh, we moved from Missouri. I wind up in um the NOVA area and then I I fall into the electrical trade um in and around data centers cuz Nova area is data center central. Um and so this whole time I am now an electrician learning you know the bluecollar landscape a new um you know as a as a new viewer but I have you know 5 years of Bible college at that point I've you know 10 years of family life and marriage as I'm I'm trying to find my way in this landscape elbow to elbow with like random apprentices who are all 20 year olds um and I'm you know 28 almost 30 at the time and so As I'm moving into that, I start the online thing. I had a different name eventually after a couple years. I rebrand under BlueCollar Bible Scholar.

[00:13:26]It starts as follow the leader, which was delicious, like tongue and cheek and a picture of Jesus on everything. So, the logo is the same, but I I switched the name. And I just keep as I'm on construction sites and doing stuff, I'm still trying to use this blog or, you know, YouTube videos as an outlet to try and use my Bible college schooling. Uh it's use it or lose it a lot of times, but also but the average Protestant pastor only has a 2 or three year Bible schooling education. A lot of them don't have anything at all. But the average they only have about a 2 or three year like training, seminary, Bible college.

[00:14:01]It just depends on where you're at. Um the Bible college I was at uh were four-year bachelor degrees and then you would go on to a higher level seminary to get like your your MD, your masters of divinity and um the higher level stuff to go like be the people to write books that could then be used at Bible college to teach that whole ecosystem.

[00:14:18]But yeah, the guy in the pulpit though maybe two to three years tops. Maybe anybody who has more than that is is closer to being unicorn territory.

[00:14:26]>> Wow.

[00:14:27]>> That's so shocking to hear.

[00:14:28]>> Yes. But when you're a Protestant, you know, non-denominational where it just wasn't weird when I was a Protestant to be like, "Oh, someone just decided they wanted to be a pastor and they went and did it."

[00:14:39]>> And for someone who's Catholic, they hear that, they're like, "Oh my gosh, like what?" Like, that's that's insane.

[00:14:46]Anyone who's, you know, doesn't even know the Bible truly, like they probably they probably have never taken a, you know, biblical literacy course. They're preaching things that are well heretical and the their congregations are digesting that and taking that as fact because that's who their pastor is.

[00:15:08]>> They they don't know any better. There were a lot of Bible studies and sermons that I sat through where I had to just kind of like bite my tongue um and then very occasionally talk to the pastor afterwards and say that's actually like an old gnostic heresy or that verse doesn't actually say that cuz here's a I'm like scribbling Hebrew out on the the box as I'm cleaning up the mics cuz I was the audio guy for a little while.

[00:15:30]A lot of times it is just right sermon wrong verse is what we say. um where they're saying something that's true, but it's the probably the worst passage to pull it from. And there are eight better ones, but I I would usually like have to constantly gauge, is it worth burning every possible positive relationship I would have here to address this or not? Um and so I would stay silent in Bible studies until somebody, you know, pushed the wrong button and then the um the soap box would come out reluctantly and go, "Ah, actually, um and then I would um let loose and uh just sporadically say the the worst one that I came across.

[00:16:13]There's a thing called sacred name heresy, and uh you'll know you're near it when people start saying Yahusha instead of Yeshua." Um, and it it comes from some weird couple of YouTube videos that look too long into what's called Protohebrew or PaleoHebrew. Um, which is uh it it only exists in a couple of um it it doesn't really exist in a manuscript form. Um, and a lot of it's like conjecture and theoretical and a couple of inscriptions here and there.

[00:16:44]Um, but it's essentially the language that came before what we have uh currently as Hebrew. We would think of as a maseretic text. It only dates from like 1000 AD. Uh but it's it's been rather faithfully recorded and we have um pieces of it from the the Dead Sea Scrolls and stuff which are much earlier. Um, anyway, we're we're getting a little far field, but the all of the pronunciation for um the name of Jesus and uh for for the name of of Joshua, it's it's uh the longer form of what we get Yeshua, what becomes Jesus transliterated into the Greek is um from Joshua's name in the Old Testament.

[00:17:23]Yahosua is the longer form of that. Um, but for some reason this protoheebrew crowd pick up Yahusha without like from bad scholarship or just reading stuff that's written without understanding the Hebrew letter pronunciation. Um, so you you'll hear people say that and you can know, oh, they're they're on the sacred name train of, you know, God doesn't listen to you unless you say his name exactly right, perfectly. Um, and that's what matters, you know, and then they dig up all the verses in the New Testament that say, "Unless you follow the name of" and then they wind up being just modern day Judaizers. Um, so anyway, the the pastor started to mention the Yahusha being the original phrasing and I was like, "Oh, red flag alert." Um, and so yeah, I'm I'm picking up the mics afterwards and I pulled a Sharpie out of my pocket cuz construction workers just uh Milwaukee is the best brand of Sharpie, by the way. If anybody if you're in the market for Sharpies and they they go flat on you all the time or die, go to the hardware store and get Milwaukee Sharpies, the red ones, uh best. They're they're incredible. They'll last for months drawing on concrete. Anyway, um so I'm I'm sitting there at the cardboard box that I use to pick up the mics after the service and I'm drawing on it the Hebrew language. This is ywa, the yah, the tetetrogrammaton, and then it becomes here as the prefix for uh has saved. Yahoo Sha Yah who has saved and then this is how it becomes Yeshua. Oh, just his eyes glazed over immediate and I was like anyway the stuff you were talking about is heresy found in YouTube videos, you know. So >> that was the most I ever had to like intervene directly. Um but most of the time it was just well-meaning folks who just had picked the wrong passage to talk about still a biblical concept. Um but yeah, it is it is difficult um being more educated than the average pastor in the pulpit. Um and then becoming Catholic was the first time I was talking to somebody where oh I feel like a child in the room. Um because the average the average priest um time in seminary for through discernment, you know, into before they get their orders is like seven or eight years. Um so they're coming at it at like with a doctor's level of training and then they go be babysat by other priests and then the guy doesn't have a family. So his whole life now is still has all this time to read and research. Um, so yeah, I was going through um a way longer story, but my my wife was raised Catholic and then had fallen away in high school as everyone does and then was coming back to the faith um she she yeah Protestant faith um alongside each other in Bible college and then with me towards Catholicism because I would learn a new thing and I'd share it with her and then she'd struggle for the week and then she's like, "Yeah, that is right." And then we kept doing this this like leaprog thing as we were um moving closer to the faith. So we got convalidated um right right before I got confirmed.

[00:20:12]And yeah, the whole uh like preka convalidation process. I felt like a child in the room as this uh kindly old priest was just like oh yeah and correcting me and taking control of the conversation was like oh yes thank you.

[00:20:25]I'm finally in a room with somebody where I feel like I can learn now. Thank you.

[00:20:29]>> Yes. It's like it's like being in a desert >> and you've been told that this is all life is and then you see a well and there's the most holy people like all of our friends in heaven are drinking from this well and they're like hey do you want a cup do you you know this and it's never going to go dry and that is Catholicism like that at least for myself that is what it felt like coming into the Catholic church because we're communing with all of heaven with God you know with the saints and you know we believe that when you die, you you're not gone. You're more alive when you die.

[00:21:01]>> One of the big realizations uh coming to the faith was that the the saints in heaven aren't just like the acknowledged canonized saints.

[00:21:13]Those are only the people the church puts their seal of approval on to say, "Yes, this person's absolutely in heaven." But any faithful Christian who dies in a state of grace can be reasonably thought to be in heaven. And so that makes it a much more personal like on the feast of all saints understanding that your your faithful devoted grandmother it's reasonable to expect her to be in heaven and she's praying for you and like suddenly all of the the the faithful dead in your family you can understand are like have been praying for you this whole time. You can look back in your family a couple generations where you do see devoted Catholics and go hey they were probably part of the reason I'm back in the faith now. and you have this this more deeper and ancient connection. Um, being being Robert, I always felt kind of a weird dissonance because it's not a common name. Um, and it's not even like a family name. I was named for my dad's uh college roommate who Anyway, it's this reason. It was a good reason. Um, I have kids named after my college roommates.

[00:22:12]It's awesome. But, um, there's not there's not this like history or lore to it and it's not like a common name that you would find out in the world of like, oh, what is it's not a Bible name.

[00:22:22]there's no like Christian connection and it's only after becoming Catholic I learned about St. Robert Bellererman um who was um staunchly uh fought the the Protestant Reformation in his time and um was known for being a fiery preacher even though a little bit short and unimposing physically. I'm average height. I'm average height but still uh was there was a lot of connection points where I was like oh this is awesome that like no I I have a name that is a name of saints. It's a um has a long history of of trying to um you know bring people into the Catholic faith and away from some of the the errors that get called, you know, Protestantism. Um so I also want to soft pedal some of the Protestant bashing because there are some very educated Protestants out there and um meaningful people. Um and so it's it's a broad net to cast. Um but you have to generalize some or you can't have meaningful discussions. So I hope any Protestants watching would forgive our our overgeneralization in a in a negative direction because there are good people Protestants are very well educated. So we just want >> and and also to the audience I never bash Protestants on this show because my two of my best friends are Protestant.

[00:23:30]Pivoting a little bit into what actually made you Catholic. You go from Pentecostal to Catholic.

[00:23:39]>> So the talking about it, it feels real now, right? the um I the way I was raised and the the way I had always lived was that I am a Christian and I happen to attend XYZ church. Um and so my personal doctrine that I was just sort of you know as I read the Bible um and read different you know commentaries and stuff um was peacemealing together. I would then seek out a church that matched at least 80 to 90% of what I believed because you were never going to find a 100% match. Um, this is why I think truthfully the number of denominations of Protestantism are actually the number of individual Protestants. Um because you'll find that you either don't know enough of your own denomination's theology to find the places you don't agree on yet, or you haven't read enough of the Bible to find places that you um disagree with the Bible and need to change your theology or disagree with you're like, "Oh, the Bible says this, but my denomination says that." And you'll start finding there's um everybody has at least a 10% der between, you know, their denomination and where they are at personally, whether they know it or not.

[00:24:45]A little more research and they'll find it. We will get back to the story in just a moment. I wear many hats. As a wife, mother, podcast host, and small business owner, it is so easy to get lost from the present moment. And that is where our sponsor, Presence, comes in to help me in my daily life. Presence is a weekly texting program brought to you by Marie Hansen from the Catholic Woman Podcast. This service has helped me so much in staying present in my walk with the Lord and in my vocation. Our Lord tells us not to be anxious about tomorrow because today has enough worries of its own. And presence has helped me stay grounded in my vocation to keep my eyes fixed on heaven. We all should be striving for saintthood and presence has helped me in that walk with our Lord. I highly recommend using the service. We don't just let anybody sponsor the show. I'm very selective about who I work with and I'm so happy to say that Presence has been a great supporter of this show and I know that if you guys give it a try with my code conversion to get your first month free, you will want to keep using it for months to come. Go ahead and click the link in the description of this video or scan the QR code on the screen to try your first month free again using my code conversion. And now back to the conversion story. So, I have heard a lot of Protestants say this. There is no perfect church. This is the closest I'm ever going to get. There's no perfect church. So, get off my case about trying to be Catholic. I'm just going to settle for the Protestant church I go to. Cuz like you said, if I'm 80% there, that's good enough. This side of heaven, there's not a perfect church. And I've never been so bold. But maybe I'll be so bold on the show today to say, "What denominations do you think are in heaven? Are we all one church in heaven?

[00:26:37]How are the Pentecostals going to be practicing? How are the Baptists going to be practicing? How are the Lutheran going to be practicing? Fill in the blank, the 10,000 denominations.

[00:26:46]>> The one that that number comes from actually separates um every individual country as its own denomination.

[00:26:53]Um so you wind up with what I think it's like 143 countries. So it technically counts Catholicism as 143 different denominations in that particular like 40,000 study. Um, so I I did a little digging on that one definition because I got an argument on Twitter. Um, and I was like, "All right, let me check my numbers." And yeah, the guy was right.

[00:27:12]If you if you basically divide that total number by the number of countries, subtract the number that would be Catholic, um, you wind up with around 200, which is still way more than there should be. U, but it's it's not quite in the thousands. Um but yeah, I mean you're presumably right the Dallas Theological Seminary, your Southern Baptist Convention are going to be the same or you know within the ballpark of Baptist in Nigeria and other missions that they've established in um you know the Papa New Guinea or wherever they've they've particularly reached. So in that particular one it just separates all of them by country which is not not entirely accurate.

[00:27:49]>> Yeah. So like how would you like as a Protestant how would you think about that? Would you think everyone in heaven is going to worship like a Pentecostal?

[00:27:56]>> That's perfect because it it feeds right back into my my testimony because that's actually the key question that got me thinking because if you know, oh well, you're never going to find a perfect church. That's what they're talking about. They're talking about that 10 to 20% delta between the church they're at doctrally and practice um and then where they're at personally of what they want to see in doctrinal practice. And when it gets to about 60 to 70%, they start church shopping. and about 50% they stay home until they can find a church that gets them back into that 80 to 90% and they're comfortable again. Um, and then they'll learn a new thing or they'll learn a new thing about the denomination they went to and go, "I didn't know you guys believe that." And they start church shopping again. Um, or they go, "I can live with it." Um, but re if you're just like, "Well, I'm going to settle."

[00:28:45]Why wouldn't you settle for I mean Jesus only want we can all agree Jesus probably only wants one denomination. I know Catholicism is not a denomination.

[00:28:54]Um but you know viewed from the outside as a Protestant. It's oh it's just one of the many. Well right but there's a billion of us more than a billion. It's the largest and the oldest. Um why wouldn't you at least be in the club if you believe that they're just one of another denomination? Um you're oh well I got to settle. Well, then settle for the one that's the biggest tent that everybody should rally around if Jesus only wants one denomination. Um is the the little push back I might give on the well, we just got to settle. Um the but yeah, that is common Protestant um axiom that goes around is the uh uh but if you ever find the perfect church uh don't attend because you'll mess it up. that puts too much importance, too much faith infallible human beings. Like that there's a huge trope about Catholicism that we follow an infallible pope and that is not Catholic teaching. The Catholic Church does not teach that the pope is infallible. The Catholic Church teaches that the pope and all priests are sinful human beings and we only follow the Pope's infallible statements and the pope can only be infallible on matters of faith and morals because he's not speaking through himself. He's speaking in persona Christy through Christ. As Catholics, we only believe the only sinless human beings ever, the only infallible, if you will, human beings ever are Jesus Christ and his mom, which is a whole other discussion for Protestants, which is interesting because the Protestant reformers even believed that about Mary. So, I don't know where that uh disseminated over the hundreds of years after the Protestant Reformation, but the original Protestants thought that about Mary. But going back to your conversion story and where you were at, what was that aha moment for you where you were like, "Okay, this doesn't check out."

[00:30:42]>> So I a lot of the Baptist churches I went to the um in practice it felt like sort of tacit rationalism um where they would they would read all the miracles in the Bible and stuff and then just miraculously it stopped. Um and then you know maybe the chemo works and somebody's cancer goes into remission because we prayed is like the most that they would accept as miraculous. Um but then when you start interacting I I initially started interacting with a non-denominational church that leaned charismatic. Um and the speaking in tongues is it's a it's jarring for somebody who's not raised in that. But all of the stuff outside of that though they believed it was real.

[00:31:27]Um these these were the people that are they're going on prayer walks to claim territory in their community. Um they're before they go into a movie theater just intuitively go, "Hey, let's pray that this is a good movie." As we're like on a youth group outing. Um you know, no other youth group I'd been to at that point between Baptist or non-denominational was like, "Hey, let's stop and pray actively in our lives right now that God changes reality around us. Okay, now let's keep going."

[00:31:52]Um nobody had that sense of like, "No, God's here right now with us." and prayers changed the metaphysical world around us or can um and so that was why I kept attending and I would you know just sit in the corner as they were having these speaking in tongues moments and and sessions and it was at at the worst you can accuse us of being you know over emotionalism or or some kind of messic you know some kind of psychological um tricking themselves but it's not disingenuine it's not wicked in any way is this some like genuiness to it and there's a lot of biblical passage that don't make sense with tongues being just human language, you know, in Paul and 1 Corinthians 12 and 13 as I'm trying to figure out this road. So, we lean Pentecostal just because it seems real for them and I'm still trying to find this like, you know, so do do we have miracles nowadays? What is it? because their theology usually is very poorly constructed and poorly thought out, but they they believe it and they're like living it every day versus the guys that have more what I would perceive wellthoughtout crafted theology uh almost live like atheists from day to day. Um and they just, you know, like they're just good people in their normal lives and they show up to church on Sunday and they don't like carry the faith with them in a in a way that the some if anybody has known Pentecostals, you know immediately what I'm talking about. Um, and so I I I keep looking and searching and that that question you asked earlier of like who is in heaven, right? I was approaching the same question from the perspective of if I were to witness to somebody and I was the reason somebody accepted Christ, where do I tell them to go to church now? Because I'm tacitly responsible for their spirit um for for their soul because they believed me that I was telling the truth about Christ and now I need to make sure they're going to a good place every Sunday that's going to take care of them. Um, where would I send him? Can you go to just any church?

[00:33:43]Well, no. Um, well, do you still go to heaven if I went to a Lutheran church?

[00:33:48]Well, yeah, probably. Okay. What if I went to a Baptist church? Yeah, probably. You know, what if I went to a Mormon church? Well, no, right? So, like, where do I draw the line? And the more I thought about it on like a logical side, um, I mean, you can keep saying, well, a Bible church, right? But the Seventh Day Adventists use the same Bible. Some very smart people spend the same amount of time reading the same book you have and come out at a way different place. And uh even a lot of Mormons very educated on the scripture.

[00:34:15]I think every uh the recent Pew Research survey that came out was as far as biblical knowledge. Mormons blew everybody else out of the park by about 20% on biblical knowledge. Um and so like what is it Bible a Bible church? Well, no. They can't have extra books. Well, what is that commentary you're holding? Um, you know, can I still be a Christian if I disagree with John Calvin's commentary on the Bible?

[00:34:37]Uh, so it's very few Calvinists, by the way, even know that John Calvin's commentary on the Bible is free on the internet and then also isn't even the whole Bible because he didn't get to finish all of it. Anyway, um, so I I the more I started digging like where do you logically draw the lines of, you know, how bad can my theology be and I still get to heaven?

[00:34:58]Um, and you very quickly wind up with a little bit of a a trillemma where you um that's it's a dilemma, but you have three options. Um, uh, CS Lewis's uh, lunatic, liar, or lord is a a tri an example of a trilmma. Um, sorry, I forgot slipping into fancy language for a second. Um, so but I can if I say I'm the only one that's right and everybody else is only correct in so far as they agree with me. Well, it's incumbent on me to start a house church and I I have difficulty now because I have to basically say only us are going to heaven for sure and everybody that's not going to this house church might not be.

[00:35:41]Uh, that's a cult. That that becomes a cult very quickly. Um, and the other side of it is go, well, it doesn't matter what church you go to, and hey, you can go be a Unitarian and get to heaven. And, um, well, you know, if we're talking about just calling on the name of Jesus, >> Mormons call on the name of Jesus. Um, you know, Muslims say Jesus is a is a prophet, even a prophet greater than Muhammad. Um, I mean, how where do we draw these lines? Um, you know, there are people in Hinduism that honor Jesus as one of the Hindu pantheons. Um, >> didn't know that. Yeah, there are some Buddhists that that believe that Jesus was just another Buddha incarnate. Like, where do we draw the line before you're a universalist? Um, so you can become a universalist, you can start a cult, or uh you can very seriously begin to dig into history and see after the book of Acts, do we have any biblically documented Christians and what do they believe? And what do they believe the church is? And how do they go to church?

[00:36:40]um and at that point you're basically left between Eastern Orthodox and Catholicism um as the the oldest church because once again there's still only one church on the entire planet for a thousand years.

[00:36:53]Everything before that is one church. So you you've got Eastern Orthodox or the Greek Orthodox, the Orthodox side of the house, and you've got the Catholic side of the house. um and then trying to weigh which one is more valid becomes less a let me dig into the weeds and I shall now judge this ancient theology and more um for me at least an exercise of let me look at the broad brush of history which of these churches accomplished the task of the great commission um which of these churches maintained Christ's call in the garden that they would be one as he and the father is one. Um and the the the later styled by the Protestants the Roman Catholic side of the house um becomes a very obvious contender. Um even if you are you know believing that oh the Eastern Orthodox has more there are there's a Byzantine right that's in communion with the Catholic Church that is you know 90% of what you would get from orthodoxy minus the the places in their theology nuances that that differ from Catholicism um that some of that that sect never split. Um there are you know portions of the Coptics. Um you have the Marian right in uh in and located mainly in around Palestine. Um but you know further revealed from other places. You have Armenian Catholics. You have every flavor of Catholic in communion with the Holy Sea. Um that is you know a billion.

[00:38:30]And um some Protestants might instinctively say oh but Jesus said narrow is the path. And there are 8 billion humans on the planet per whatever the last count is. 1 billion, slightly over 1 billion. We're talking at close to a seventh of the world's population. That's seems narrow path to me. Um especially when you're looking at some of the numbers to see how many Catholics actually believe it um by surveys as far as like just going to mass every Sunday is a a big hurdle that you know you see you know people that self-report as being Catholic you know 20 or 30% of them are in mortal sin and need to get that figured out. Um, and so yeah, it's it's a large umbrella by name, but then when you're looking at folks that are actually living it like they believe it, it's still still fits that that narrow path that a Protestant might sling. Um and so looking at it from that perspective, I start looking at all right well let's uh you know the way you would take uh and try any hypothesis.

[00:39:32]Let me suppose this hypothesis is true and then start looking for evidence that it's not true in the places I would expect to see cracks in the facade. Um, and my my initial aha moment that made me start taking Catholicism seriously was realizing how much I'd been lied to and how much I'd been lied about. Um, and it came from kind of an unorthodox place because I wasn't pursuing apologetics. Um, and had actually intentionally avoided apologetic material. Um, I I didn't know Scott Han existed until after I became Catholic.

[00:40:08]Um well okay not not entirely true. Uh part of part of my like content consumption as I was um learning and studying had previously because you know bluecollar oh well it's not a branded hat. I lost it and I'm getting a new one in the mail. Uh but the the bluecollar uh Bible scholar stick I was trying to reach out to other bluecollar Christians on the airweb and so I immediately found Catholic for rednecks and bluecollar catholic. Um and I'm like well Catholics are Christians too and followed them.

[00:40:35]Um, and so they were whispering in my ear occasionally as I would listen to their videos on on my path. Um, and so that was how I had heard of Scott Hondo was because of um, he was very formative for um, uh, blueco collar Catholics um, conversion. Um, and I he had him on the show once or twice too, which was awesome. U, but now it's it's awesome. I understand who that guy even was, but I had never followed up on any of his stuff. But it was Michael Nolles on um, his show because he does a little Q&A section at the end of his thing. So I was listening more for like political stuff and you know trying to formulate a a Christian worldview as it applies to politics and the daily news cycle uh to sort of get my bearings. And so I'm listening to Michael Nolles and one of the questions was is true you guys pray to dead people and worship dead people.

[00:41:18]It's like ah no and he just gave like a a three sentence apologetic of like no we don't pray to I mean we we talked to Christians who are in heaven and have a lot of free time to pray for us. and he just mentioned um Hebrews uh 12:1 now that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses and he just threw off-handed and I was like Catholics are allowed to use scripture to form their theology what he made the clarification that it's it's veneration not worship and there are different layers to it but we just honor them we honor them deeply but I mean no more than you would have a statue of Abraham well I mean slightly more than but um you know no more than when you have a statue of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or something are you worshiping them you go to their shrine. It's called the uh you know, it's called the national shrine.

[00:42:02]Um no, it's, you know, it's uh it's we honor these guys. They're great examples and we should follow them. And that's the way the Catholic Church teaches about saints. Our lady, she's a cut above. Um and that that was kind of all he did. And I was like, "Oh, I've been lied to my whole life." And though you start digging and realizing that everything you've ever been taught was a lie told by people who hate Catholics and then repeated by people who just didn't check the footnotes. Um because the person telling the lie was somebody they loved and trusted and they internalize that lie and then they tell it to somebody else that loves and trust them. And it's just, you know, you have more than 500 years now of people copying each other's homework without checking the footnotes themselves. Um, and you have a lot of entrenched beliefs about Catholicism that just aren't true and are patent falsehoods. Um, where do you think that comes from?

[00:42:53]>> Research would do.

[00:42:54]>> Where do you think that comes from? The this dissemination of falsehoods about the Catholic faith that have been passed down through generations.

[00:43:02]>> Um, bad research done with a bone to pick in the 1800s that gets repeated in a time when it's basically impossible to check footnotes on things and uh, becomes common knowledge in short order.

[00:43:15]Um, a good example of this is the modern spread of dispensationalism from the Scoffield Bible. Uh, because that spread at a time when the American West was well connected by transportation, but still not well connectedformationally.

[00:43:28]Um, so a pastor on the frontier is not going to have access to a full commentary, a full pulpit commentary.

[00:43:33]That's the one they they all love, the pulpit commentary or even Matthew Henry's commentary on the Bible. He's a famous Puritan author from the 1800s who has a a really solid commentary actually if you filter it from a Puritan lens just his his uh knowledge of history and contextualizing a lot of scripture to the historical context and taking plain meaning from it on a historical grammatical level. It's pretty solid. Um great assault. He's a a Puritan and has a bone to pick with Catholics occasionally. Anyway, uh but they don't have access to that. But you can have one Bible that is all of the Bible notes. So when your congregants ask you a question very quickly that you don't know the answer to, oh, it's in this Scoffield Bible I have without questioning the agenda that was literally hardwired into it. And so it it spreads and becomes common knowledge.

[00:44:17]Um I was first introduced to the existence of the the Scoffield Bible as this is the Cadillac of Bible right here and drops it down and shows me all of the notes and like all of the notes are explanatory to the actual text itself. A lot of them are just wrong or tied together Bible verses that don't make sense or draw the wrong lesson from misapplied Greek understanding. Um, but that's that's where a lot of the modern dispensationalist movement comes from is just people without the ability to check footnotes taking on good faith bad research whether intentionally or unintentionally bad research and then it gets repeated until it's common knowledge. And why would you question that? Right? So in addition to that, you do have a lot of right at the the cusp of the Protestant Reformation. People are killing each other. You have actual warfare in the streets between Protestants and Catholics. Clergy are being murdered. Um faithful practitioners are being driven out of their homes in the winter. There's a lot of bad stuff happening on both sides of things. On a Catholic governor side, you have what appear to be ideological terrorists running a muck. But on the Protestant side, you have a lot of like good faith people who are trying to practice what they believe to be true Christianity and they're being this oppressive governments trying to chase them. And um you have a couple of cautious belly moments that have a lot of fuzzy propaganda around them where it's you know who shot first or who shot the first arrow or who killed it. Like we don't know and then word of mouth spreads on both sides and so now there's just militant tension that just warfare in the streets. And then that's in addition to cynical bad actors who just wear the name of whatever their particular Christianity dour is so they can claim land from the church and go oh well we're Protestant now so we take all of the church's gold in this monastery and this land or on the on the Catholic side of like oh cool I you know nominally Catholic but now these people are labeled as Protestants so I can take their homes and drive them out and now I have this land which happened a lot with like the Waldensians and Pedmont Easter and stuff. So, it's it's a bad deal all around and you have cynical actors, sociopaths basically within each side making it worse. Um, and so in that environment, you have bad research done intentionally or just with a bone to pick. So, they're not they're blind to their own biases that look for any similarity with Catholicism to the horror of Babylon or paganism or Easter.

[00:46:32]That's Ishtar. and they're writing books and pamphlets and printing press just came out so they can print them at nausea and just disseminate it to the masses um who you know are never allowed to own a Bible because even at right at the turn of the printing press it's not a there's one in every home quite yet but you can just out pamphlets left and right and um you know the pamphlets you know tell you that the pope is antichrist and so you you get a lot of ill will built very quickly within a couple of generations and then at that point it's it's set and uh it's structural and systemic so yeah you grow up just assuming that, oh yeah, Catholics worship statues and pray to Mary and they they worship Mary and not Jesus or whatever. And you don't even like that's absurd. These are reasonable adults. That's crazy. Maybe they're not idiots. That that veneer scratched a little bit by a random political podcaster was like, h, you know, yeah, we're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses anyway. And then he went back on with stuff like it was no big deal.

[00:47:23]Like obviously everybody should be Catholic. It's correct. Um, and I was like, okay, well, I have to take this seriously now. And yeah, you just start looking at one lie after the next just starts crumbling. And then you look at the early church and you start seeing, wow, this is really Catholic with regional bishops having a hierarchal structure to priests and deacons and like this three-fold structure consists early, really early. Now, very quickly, you're kind of stuck with looking at the theology of the early church fathers and the church structure and the ecclesiology of the the ecclesiology is a fancy word for the exact structure of the church, like who's in charge and who makes decisions. The ecclesiology of the early church fathers is um you you wind up now with this mirror that says either they're a heretic and I'm right or I'm a heretic and they're right cuz it it can't really be both of they're only right when they agree with me because they don't know the Greek. They grew up like speaking Greek to their mom. They write grocery lists to the store in Greek. You think you right now, Mr. 2000 years in the future, because you watched a couple YouTube videos, know Greek better than Irenaeus and Polycarp, than Justin Martyr? What are we talking about here? You even guys in the 200s, people don't really like fully fathom guys that are writing in the um sorry, the the 100s to early 200. They're they're born at a time like so Justin Martyr specifically, he's writing in like 150 I want to say. Yeah, 150 to like 180. 150 to 170. Um he's born in 100 uh AD. Well, using like conservative dating, the Apostle John was alive to 96 AD when he writes. So like four years later, Justin Martyr is born. And so everybody in his entire life that he's going to learn Christianity from is alive contemporarily with the apostle John. So he's like at most two degrees of separation away from the Jesus. Grows up speaking Greek as like his native tongue. And we're going to tell him clearly he doesn't understand siriology because he doesn't understand the Greek grammatical structure of Acts 238. And it's actually no this is ridiculous. Um, it's the same level of craziness. I I contemporized it, especially living in this area. Um, I can drive and go to George Washington's house right now. Um, and when you're looking at somebody born in the 100s, they're less than 200 years away from Jesus.

[00:49:54]Um, I'm more than 200 years away from George Washington, and I can drive to his house and read letters written in his own hand in my language right now.

[00:50:03]Um, and it's absurd to think that some rando 2,000 years in the future from right now who's had to reconstruct uh, you know, 20th century English from scratch from like trans manuscripts that they had to dig out of the dirt in an old McDonald's. Um, to to sit there and tell me that he knows more about George Washington than I do. Well, you don't understand. You haven't read all the stuff I've read. I'm a scholar. like, "Bro, I could drive to his house right now.

[00:50:33]What are you talking about?" Um, so that that level of nearness, you know, we we we tend to sit back and go, "Oh, but they were a hundred years after Jesus.

[00:50:42]That's such a long time." Yeah, but I can I can go to George Washington's house and he's like 250 years ago.

[00:50:49]That's that's that's a big gap. But I mean, nobody would say that you don't fully understand George Washington. Um, that's ridiculous. you know, maybe there's some propaganda in the school district, but once again, I can drive to his house. I can read his letters, you know, we can we can read the um the federalist papers, right? We can read stuff that's from just a couple hundred years ago, right? Now, um granted, it was a lower rate of literacy, but all of the early bishops are rich kids. A lot of the prominent early bishops are rich kids raised in the literary history of their day. They're reading, you know, Homer's Odyssey. they're reading Virgil's Aniad and those are from 200 years before their time. Um, it's it's not a huge stretch. I mean, even the Septuagent that the apostles are referencing was from uh a best guess 300 BC from before the apostles are encountering it and we're believing, oh, they didn't really understand that.

[00:51:43]That's crazy, right? It's not a long stretch in the span of time. um to to no longer understand the language to to no longer understand um even our King James English in 1611 400 years old. As long as you know the F-ook letter is actually an S, uh you can read old English more or less and fumble through it, it's not that big of a jump. Um so the more you look at history, the more you go, these guys are Catholic. They're more Catholic than anything else I look around and see. Um and they they have this consistent structure. And then when you look at with the historical lens now back in the book of acts now you can see yeah Peter's obviously the ring leader and then the James being the bishop of Jerusalem at the the Acts the one everybody loves to point to um Acts chapter 15 the Jerusalem conference figuring out Judaizing and what what rules that uh Gentiles had to actually adhere to coming into the church. Peter is the one that calms everybody down and says, "Hey, we're going to talk about this and we're going to give you one solid answer." And then James is the one who's the the speaker for the group, which makes perfect sense when you see Peter as chief of the apostles and James is the bishop of Jerusalem. Uh it's James the brother of Christ at that time. uh cousin to be more specific or potentially um uh half brother, sorry, half brother or cousin depending on what explanation you find more credible. And um going into that, I want to touch on that to the that's a big thing a lot of Protestants have is when scripture says uh brothers of Jesus there there are two acceptable Catholic views that one can take and neither are confirmed or denied by the Catholic Church. Like neither are said like this is the official church teaching. Number one is that St. Joseph was a perpetual virgin like our lady like he was chased his entire life and he was young when he met our lady and um they I mean he didn't have any children before our lady had Jesus and um they remained celibate and that view was widely held in the west for the entirety of Christendom and then there's another view upheld more in the east and that is St. Joseph was a widow and that he had children prior to being betrothed to our lady and both are acceptable views to have and the fact that our lady our lady still was a perpetual virgin and she never Christendom never confirmed never supported never it was it was a heresy to say that our lady ever had any other children or ever was not perpetual virgin because that number one is disrespectful to Christ because Christ is fully God, fully man. That is a um diminishes his divinity and it's dishonoring to the mother of God. Uh which is the title we give to our lady.

[00:54:48]But both of these what what you're saying is both of these are acceptable acceptable views to hold um within the Catholic view of the world. and um curious to know what your thoughts are on that and then want to dive into more what the aha moment was for you to become Catholic.

[00:55:04]>> Yes. So the the initial aha moment of course was the the Michael Mills line that that got me to really start digging. Um and then I have a a final aha that was kind of the last thing that I I I picked away at. Um so yeah the um yeah you have the half brother theory or the um the simply uh their their cousins theory as far as what we do with the brothers. Um both of them have sort of their their highs and lows. The um the halfb brotherther theory does answer why you have places in um Josephus and referring to them as sons of Joseph. um it answers that question a little more neatly. Um but I do find the I had to dig up the infographic um to to like keep it straight. But there is a second Mary wife of Alfus or Clus is the same guy for the between the Greek and the Aramaic. Um and that that family tree layout where you see um the two different Marys being the um the mother of um James, Simon, Jude, and uh and the the other Joseph versus um our our lady being the mother of Jesus is the one that u makes the most sense if you're digging through scripture and following the names acutely. Um but it it is um it's not entirely unanimous all the way back to the early church um cuz you see in Tertullian who to to credit to um the perpetual v virginity side eventually becomes a heretic before he dies. Want that on record but Tertullian references it. This was uh so well we're we're getting ahead. All right, we'll we'll do this. So, my final lynch pin, actually, this was my final lynch pin because I had the more I looked, the more Catholicism appeared to be true, but I still was not convinced that the perpetual virginity of our lady was a historical view or could be supported historically. Um, it just it it felt like a later edition and I didn't want to research it because I didn't want to be wrong because I wanted to be Catholic. And I knew that if I found the history wholly unconvincing, um, that's one of the Marian dogmas. You you can't disbelieve that and be Catholic. Um, and so then I was going to have to be back on my own, a drift in a milu of Protestant land trying to find a way. And like I guess I'd have to be Orthodox then. and figure that out. Um, and I I finally knuckled down and just dug into the early church father quotes about our lady. And sure enough, Tertullian smack in the 200s very early.

[00:57:50]He's making some ancillary point and he mentions that he mentions in a way that very clearly appears to be about half the church at his time believes our lady was a perpetual virgin. He states that he doesn't personally believe that and then he uses the belief that our lady was a perpetual virgin to support whatever claim he's making as he goes on to the rest of the document. And so it it blew my mind to realize that no this is very early. This doesn't just pop up in the Middle Ages. This doesn't pop up as a response to Protestantism. And uh it was simply something that was not initially fully unanimously believed. Um but there was a large contingent that believed it very early. Um, and it can be seen and easily supported from scripture. The moment you start digging into scripture and once again you start digging and finding some surprising things um that strongly indicate that our lady was perpetually virgin like the existence like you never really think about Mary wife of Clus or Mary wife of Alfus and like oh that's the same guy and she's you know the same or the sons of Zebedee and the this is why you know Jesus knows all these guys um and you start having if you look at the word adelfos so yes Etmologically it means from the same womb. However, even to this day in Greek, it has the broader meaning of any kinsman, anybody you're slightly related to, any distant cousin.

[00:59:21]You know, we've got in English is a very precise language. You have brother, same womb, and then you have first cousins and second cousins and third cousins, and every has a very specific in u in most other languages, they just have one bucket word, and it's for all of it.

[00:59:37]uh like in in uh in Spanish lucha is wrestling very technically but also they use it for any kind of fighting striving altercation um any kind of uh where you're countering somebody by by strength or by will or intent um is is a broad use word that most of the time means luch means wrestling physically wrestling with somebody um so most languages have that broader understanding um And now it's reasonable to believe since we have so many of the New Testament quotes come from the Septuagent. Um, every mo most educated Protestants understand this as just a fact. Um, we can use the Septuagent, which is the Greek Old Testament, um, as at least a a way that they might reasonably see a vocabulary word used.

[01:00:28]Um, and so we go now to Abraham and Lot who we know by the text by other places around are called they they are uh uncle their their their uncle and nephew and they're called a delos brother in multiple places in the Greek Septuagent. Uh in the Greek copy of the New Testament is called the Septuagent. U for the 70 scholars it's abbreviated LXX. Um, and they are they it's in there. We have we have a distant relative that we know have a different name. Greek has a nuanced word that means specifically nephew and it is not used uh it might be used in one place but it's used as a delos for the prepoundonderance of it. Um so nephews in the range of meaning.

[01:01:17]Um and so with that understanding of like even the modern usage is broader.

[01:01:22]Um even in English we have the use of brother is broader than just um because well we have the in a Christian context right we have brother in Christ but um people use brother as a common form of address. When I was in high school it was common to jokingly use brother from another mother um as like a a funny form of address for good friends. Um so even in English brother is not explicitly somebody who's of your same uh kith and kin. Um before we even talk about the possibility that it might just be half brothers um which does neatly tie up um where you you have other places where they are mentioned as being sons of sons of Joseph. Um and there there are other ways to understand it. There's also the inscription in Jerusalem where they've they found a mausoleum dedicated to James son of Joseph brother of Jesus. Um which is a a big deal. Um but once again halfbrother would explain that easily with very little extra nuance if assuming that is you know the ash the James ashuary I think is the the right word for it. Ashuary is a big word that uh means a bone box. Um I think it's s if you get close in in Google it'll correct you. Um but yeah bone box James uh archaeological find will get you there on Google. Um, but they what they would do is they would lay you in the tomb and wait for your body to decay and then they would go back in when it was just the bones left and then all the bones would fit in a box and then an ouary was a stone box that fit the femur bone which is the largest individual bone at a diagonal in the box and then all of you would go in the box and then you'd be tucked in a corner in your family tomb. Um, so that's why Jesus is laid down and then everybody else is in bone boxes because of course he wasn't there long enough to wind up in a box.

[01:03:07]Um, so that that was my last like lynch pin is realizing that it is very reasonable. It is a very early belief and it's a belief that can very easily be biblically supported. Um, oh, can I remember the word kakartoone? Uh, it's a plurer participle of um, having received grace. Um, and it's it's from Karaho, um, where you you have received grace and it's used to refer to our lady by an angel. Um, and one thing that doesn't get mentioned enough, can I pull it up here really quick while I'm talking?

[01:03:49]>> Yes. It's whenever is it whenever the angel comes to Mary and says, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you."

[01:03:55]And when the angel says full of grace, it means you were, you are, and you always will be full of grace. It's a perpetual full of grace.

[01:04:05]>> Yes. Oh my s.

[01:04:07]>> I remember hearing that as a Protestant uh in classes to become Catholic and understanding that and realizing, oh my goodness, this is the biblical argument for the perpetual virginity and the sinlessness of our lady cuz the angel says it to her and the apostles believed it. I I want to note to the listener too there's a fantastic book which I will link in the description of today's video called Mary of Nazareth and it is written by an archaeologist who goes into great detail of not the tradition of the church necessarily but the historical argument for Mary and her perpetual virginity. And I did not know this until reading this book, but our lady was also a consecrated virgin in the temple, which was a common practice for girls who would take vows of celibacy, and they would serve in the temple. And our lady's parents, Yoim and St. Ancrated her as a virgin in the temple. And did you guys know, also learned this from that book, is that Mary's dad, guess what he did for a living? He raised lambs to be sacrificed at the temple, >> right? I did not know that.

[01:05:19]>> The little fun fact, a lot of foreshadowing, divine providence, if you will.

[01:05:23]>> And so, highly recommend that book. I'm I'm sure, Robert, that you have recommendations as well for a Protestant who might be curious, but that it is a very academic level book, Mary of Nazareth, but it's just full of so many truths that are not uh propaganda from an from either side, but historical facts. Like something else I didn't know, St. Luke authored the first icon of our lady. It's a mosaic in Greek, actually in Greece. And St. Luke. Um, it's actually the cover for that book, but he was the artist who made the I first icon for Mary, which is crazy and awesome. And anyways, I digress, but did you find the >> I didn't I didn't know that. I got to dig further in that. That's awesome.

[01:06:02]>> Yeah, I'll have to send you the book or a link to it. Yeah.

[01:06:05]>> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, the the interesting thing I hadn't heard anybody else mention is now it's not the same conjugation, but it's the same verb. Uh so the that exact conjugation of kekartomin is not used anywhere else.

[01:06:20]However, the same verb um not as a participle but as a aist active indicative. So it's a it's a past tense completed action um is the aist and so it's uh echartosen eartosen. There we go. Man, Dr. Do's going to kill me. Was my Greek professor in Bible college. Um but it's only used so that verb though is only used in one other place in scripture and Paul uses it in Ephesians 1:6 um to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. Paul is describing Christians who are already saved. That's the only other place that verb gets used is Christians who are already saved. And that verb is applied to one person before Jesus is incarnated in the flesh. Um, that's incredibly significant and you have to deal with that theologically if you're a Protestant. If you're a Catholic, you go, "Well, obviously." Um, but if you're Protestant, you have to explain why she would have the same descriptor as an already saved Christian before Jesus has even come in the flesh because he greets her before the incarnation and calls her highly favored, full of grace. Wow. And that f that perfectly corresponds with the Catholic belief that our at the moment of our lady's conception. God applied the graces from Jesus on the cross to her as a zygote and she was removed of from the stain of original sin in the womb. And I've had Protestants scoff at me and say, "Oh, you really think I've literally had Protestants say it just that this this smug people? This smug." And not all Protestants are like this, but some some unfortunately are very jaded and really bad.

[01:08:03]>> Yes. And only God can judge, right? But I've I can I I can just say what I've experienced and I've had Protestants tell me, "Oh, you really think that God could do that?" Yeah, I do actually. I think that God became flesh and dwelt among us, which is the most radical belief. And you claim to believe that, too. And then I also believe that he died and you claim to believe that, too.

[01:08:23]And I believe that he rose from the dead. And they went back up to heaven in front of like hundreds of people. And then they spread that message. And 2,000 years later, we believe that. You you claim you believe that, but it's too much to think that that same God that became human and died for us and was and went back to heaven that he could apply those graces to his own mom. Like, it's just very, very, very interesting to see that play out. And that's not all Protestants. I believe those are the Protestants that are have that deadly sin of pride. They have the deadly sin of pride, which is the devil's sin. And it is I don't want to be Catholic so bad that I'm going to contradict the core tenants of Christianity to deny the truth of Catholicism because to follow even Protestantism to follow Protestantism to its logical end is to become Catholic. And there are so many I believe there are many many Protestants in heaven that just never were taught.

[01:09:22]They never knew they didn't have the opportunity to reject the truth of the Catholic faith. But there are a lot of Protestants who out of their own pride, they would rather be apart from the fullness of the truth than say, "I'm going to be I'm going to believe that God could apply the graces from the cross to Mary in the womb." Like, that's just too far for me. And I just it's a very it's just it is that it is the deadly sin of pride. That deadly sin that unfortunately grasps so many souls and drags them into darkness. And um you were a faithful Protestant. You were a faithful Protestant who followed Protestantism to its logical conclusion and you became Catholic in 2023. Is that is that correct? 2023 is when you joined the church.

[01:10:05]>> Uh 2023 is when the decision point came and then summer of I went to local Catholic church and said, "All right, I want to be Catholic." Made an appointment with the priest and said, you know, what hoops do I have to jump through? How do we how do we make this work?

[01:10:18]>> Um and then I um I w up entering the next round of RCIA. I was halfway through when it changed to OCIA and then um wound up being um finally confirmed in uh Easter Vigil of 2024.

[01:10:33]>> Praise God. And your whole family joined the church then?

[01:10:36]>> Uh yes. So I'd been educating as as I went. Like I said, there was this leaprog as um I would learn a new thing and I'd share it with my wife and she'd be like, "Oh, wow. That's really cool."

[01:10:46]Or sometimes she'd struggle with it for a couple of weeks and then come around and then I'd learn a new thing. And so we were just doing this constant like leaprog towards the faith closer and closer. We're teaching our kids the whole time. And um by the grace of God, there wasn't a ton of resistance from them on that point, which we would have we would have handled very um gently if there if there had been um with with patience and kindness. But they they were all on board and they followed they followed me right into the church. Um praise the Lord.

[01:11:16]>> Praise God.

[01:11:16]>> And uh I would like to say too, I I fully believe God's grace meets us in our ignorance. Um, so when we're doing the best we know, that we're doing the best we can with what we have, he meets us there. Um, but also it's not on Catholics then to rest on our laurels um to uh it's not on it's on Catholics not to rest on our lo laurels, but to still make that that push and that outreach to say, "Hey, um there's more. You're missing out on so much."

[01:11:44]>> Yeah. Yeah. God doesn't need me to go and convert people, but he wants me to.

[01:11:50]He wants me. He wants me to cooperate with his will. And all we got to do is say yes. Say yes to God in in your life.

[01:11:58]To everyone listening, just say yes. Let your fiat to God be active in your life daily, and your life will be greater than you could ever have imagined it. Um and and it's going to be different for every soul, but God has something in store for you, better than you could ever want for yourself.

[01:12:18]>> Yes. Very, very true. And um yeah, I've seen that play out in so many different people's lives and it's just such a wonderful and beautiful thing to witness. Robert, who is your confirmation saint?

[01:12:29]>> St. Robert Bellereman 100%.

[01:12:31]>> I love it. You picked him up with your same first name. I love it. Oh, that's awesome. Wow. And how has he impacted your life? How has he interacted with you? And um I know you guys share the same name and very similar story points like you mentioned earlier, but tell us about that. um just uh having a zeal for for converting Protestants, having a zeal for sharing with them the true faith. Um especially now that it's no longer a militant disagreement, it's more of a cultural disagreement. They're they're largely raised in it. Um a lot of it is just cutting through lies. Um I've recently been uh begun ingesting more and more Catholic answers um now that I am Catholic to try and I've got 2,000 years of history to catch up on.

[01:13:15]um been having to redo a bunch. Every day I learn about a new saint. I'm like, "Oh, this guy's amazing. I don't have time to to dig as deep as each one of these guys deserve." Um but just if you listen to Catholic Answers for any period of time, you realize it's the same like eight questions forever. Um because you're just breaking down every single one of these misconceptions and misunderstandings and just patent lies that people have internalized for so long. Um, one one not note I missed on my conversion was that very early in the process before I was really intentionally discerning, someone gave me a green scapular and that just kind of sealed the deal. In hindsight, that was that was what sealed the deal. It was a matter of win. Um, for those of you who don't know, you can Google a green scapular um l a r on the end. But yeah, it's you you pray a prayer once a day or somebody prays a prayer for you and just having it in your possession is um is very powerful for uh conversion.

[01:14:11]There's stories of of wives like sewing it into their husband's clothes and he'd go out drinking and carousing and she was like faithfully praying for him and he would miraculous conversions left and right from people who were just wanting debauchers and stuff. So I I was a soft cell in that regard. But that was something that I I still remember and I I still carry in my pocket now is that that a green scapula because a Protestant once you break the veneer of like, "Oh, they're calling on the name of Jesus. This isn't something demonic.

[01:14:35]It's a piece of fabric. This can't hurt me. I'll throw it in my pocket if that makes you feel better. Don't worry about it, buddy. They got me." Um because like we had started this with, right? It's real. um this simple understanding that your prayer can actually change the material world around you in a way that you will never perceive with a magnifying glass or or a microscope is is mindblowing to an average Protestant to like well the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective right does do things change when you pray even if you can't see it well yeah okay so having a faithful guy whose forsaken family to follow God with every waking hour of the rest of his life intentionally prayed over this water and used a thousand-year-old prayer to bless it. And anybody that uses it in a faithful manner, I can now use this what we call for shortand holy water to bless other things and make my prayers more powerful because they're joining with the prayers of this faithful guy uh who does this as his day job. Uh that's just very common sense from the simple presupposition that I would assume every Protestant believes is that your prayers do things.

[01:15:48]>> They do things in the physical world we live in.

[01:15:51]>> Yes. Yes. It impacts people. I if the audience has listened to my conversion story when I touched holy water for the first time, that was my moment of conversion. And I had a metaphysical experience when I touched holy water for the first time. And I had someone in my comment section say that was the moment that a demon entered you because holy water had possessed you. And I read Matthew 16:18. Jesus specifically condemns that. Jesus was accused of that by the Pharisees of being someone uh not the Pharisees accused him of being from the evil one. And Jesus said, "How could God how could how could how could Satan cast out Satan? That is blasphemy." And he condemned them. And if these prayers over this water is in the name of Jesus and it it miraculously transforms people's lives, I'd never responded to the comment because I thought I think it had the opposite effect. It radically >> sticky the lousy comments stick with you.

[01:16:47]>> Yeah, they they roll off my back now. I I used to be more sensitive, I think.

[01:16:50]But yeah, holy water, priesthood, the 2,000 years of faith handed us by Jesus Christ. It's true and it's good and it's not extra hoops to jump through. to make this walk towards heaven an easier one.

[01:17:04]These are tools that God gives us to let us know we're less alone. And um I want to ask you, Robert, too, uh before we close out shop today, where can our listeners find you and your work?

[01:17:15]>> Um bluecollarbiblecolar.com is about everything. I am also here on YouTube. Be warned, the only videos still up are from Protestant land, so I caution you that. But there's they're mostly what's in the Bible and um just the content of scripture itself. and then breaking down sort of higher level theological uh phrases. Strangely enough, my best performing content of all time is on maficism. I didn't know there was a huge curiosity about that, but that was the the heresy condemned at the council of Chaledon and I I want to say 485. I haven't looked at it in a bit. Um but that's I'm also I'm uh I'm on X most days because I seem to be getting a little better traction there and it's it's solid for for networking.

[01:17:56]Um, and then I just about anywhere. I have a Substack nobody reads. I have a Medium nobody reads. If anybody still remembers Medium. Um, but my website is the main place, the main hub to kind of find me and then branch out from there.

[01:18:10]Uh, I've written a book called Bluecollar Blind Spot about how mainstream Christian media just inadvertently trends white collar and is tacitly ignoring blue collar. And it's a systemic problem. Um, not not that there's any malice, not like class struggle. Like the bi the church needs profound scholarship and it also needs working dudes that can't understand profound scholarship and they got to they got to meet in the middle. Um, and so I'm just trying to call attention to that and then give actionable steps for the the white collar crowd to adjust their messaging. But also in the same book I talk about the meaning and purpose of work, the meaning and purpose of Christ's work as a carpenter. um and how that how that relates. So, you know, the the cute little marketing phrase, right? Um pastors will find perspective and plumbers will find purpose um in that book. Um and also since becoming Catholic, I realized laborum exorcist.

[01:19:06]It's an encyclical from uh Pope John Paul II and it's incredible. Um a little high level, but it it it made me feel like the one chapter I had um uh theology stuff is called ologies, right?

[01:19:20]ology, physiology. So I coined a phrase that doesn't exist outside of like exercise science called erology. It was much less common when I when I put it in the book uh 6 years ago, but just simply a theology of work because nobody's intentionally done that in Protestant land that I was aware of uh until I started reading labor sense and what I had done felt like a crayon drawing of this master class in the meaning and theology of work for our lives. Um, but there's there's sort of a beginner course then as you can view it in my um in my book on the the meaning and purpose of work. Um, so that's what I'm doing everywhere is I'm trying to break down high level concepts for blue collar dudes and then I'm also trying to like shout and get white collar people to pay attention and like hey just talk about trucks more in your homaly man that's all you got to do really.

[01:20:09]>> I love that and I think our listeners will too. Be sure to go check out Robert's work at Blucollar Bible Scholar and I will link all of that in the description of today's video. Robert, thank you so much for coming on to the show today.

[01:20:22]>> No problem. Thank you for having me.

[01:20:24]>> Thank you for listening to another episode of Voices of Conversion. If you've made it this far, go ahead and hit that subscribe button on YouTube, ring the notification bell, and share this with a friend. Until I see you guys next time with another story of conversion to the Catholic Church, stay close to Christ.