July 2, 2025 - Slightly Offensive - Elijah Schaffer
54:43
Is The Catholic Church the TRUE CHURCH of Jesus Christ? | The Rift | Guest: Timothy Gordon
Recently, we had Jay Dyer on the show to discuss Orthodoxy with the audience - shortly after, Timothy Gordon, a Catholic theologian and content creator, reached out to come by and give his argument for Catholicism.
What do you think the true religion is? Leave a comment below!
Timothy Gordon joins us for tonight’s episode of The Rift!
➤ FOLLOW OUR NEW YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@OfficialRiftTV
___
Check out our website: https://www.rifttv.com
___
➤ FOLLOW RIFT EVERYWHERE: https://linktr.ee/therifttv
___
⇩ELIJAH’S SOCIAL MEDIA ⇩
➤ X: https://X.com/ElijahSchaffer
➤ TELEGRAM https://t.me/SlightlyOffensive
➤ GAB: https://gab.com/elijahschaffer
___
⇩SARAH’S SOCIAL MEDIA ⇩
➤ X: https://x.com/sarahcstock
➤ INSTA: https://www.instagram.com/sarahcstock/
➤ YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@Sarah_Stock
___
⇩TIMOTHY’S SOCIAL MEDIA ⇩
➤ X: https://x.com/timotheeology
➤ YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/@RulesForRetrogrades
___
➤BOOKINGS + BUSINESS INQUIRIES: MIKE.MENDOZA@RIFTTV.COM
___
➤ RED PILL THREADS: Go to https://www.RedPillThreads.com to get some of the most BASED and REDPILLED gear on the internet! Promocode RIFT for 10% off.
➤ Nutronics Labs: USE PROMOCODE: ELIJAH | https://www.elijahigf1.com
➤ MyPillow: Mike Lindell is selling Giza Dreams Bedsheets in any size and color for $49.98, with the offer available by calling 1-800-210-8491 or visiting MyPillow.com using promo code ELIJAH. Orders over $100 receive $100 in free digital gifts for a limited time. The deal is only valid until supplies run out.
Well, we've all been impressed by the Catholic architecture, beautiful cathedrals, stained glass windows, what some people call idols, many just call relics or reminders of the faith.
The Catholic Church has left an imprint on society that nobody can really ignore.
But the argument over whether Catholicism is phased out, whether it's outdated, whether or not even it's the true church is something that's really common, especially here in America, where up until very recently, the Protestant norm didn't even want Catholics to hold power.
However, something changed in 2020.
All of these great Protestant and evangelical churches that we once sought were the cornerstone of the American tradition suddenly shuttered their doors because somebody told them they had to.
And we realized, if these are the real churches of America, why aren't they staying open?
These are the people that serve God.
Why are they listening to the government when it comes to violating their own oath to the King of Kings?
And who do we see not close their doors?
It was the Catholics and it was the Orthodox.
And I realized, well, maybe just maybe there's something a little more to Catholicism, something a little more to Orthodox, especially even though we know that Protestants, we'll talk about later, talk about Christianity as Christians or Catholics.
They don't even put them in the same category.
So is Catholicism a false religion?
Are they really a works-based faith that has no business calling themselves believers?
Are they all just religious folk that are not born again, as they say it in the church?
Or is there something deeper, something that we've lost, a hidden meaning, a psyop to try to subvert people from the one true holy Catholic church?
We're talking about this and so much more on another special episode of The Rift live Monday through Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
Just so you know, we're only live through Thursday this week because of the 4th of July holiday on Friday.
The best known one is called The Case for Patriarchy.
And we talked some yesterday, I guess, about what the case for patriarchy is, why patriarchy is coming back in a major way, why it's inevitable, and why it's distinguishable from the red pill, why it's not just the Christian version of the red pill, means power to fathers, and why it is perennial.
I've also written a book called Catholic Republic about how America will perish without Rome.
Another book called Don't Go to College, which is slightly ironic because I have many, many corny initials after my name that I wish I had spent my time doing something else wise.
And another book called Rules for Retrogrades, which is the name of my podcast.
And of course, my most recent book is one that I've done with, I co-wrote with my wife.
And it's called Leave and Cleave.
About how to do a patriarchal marriage and to really enjoy it and to not just be a LARP, which we also talked about in yesterday's show.
You can find me on YouTube where I do a three-times weekly show under my own name, Timothy Gordon, and the show is called Rules for Retrogrades.
And I'm really all about talking to young American men about how to reclaim their roots and not to LARP as they do it, how to be real and come correct.
And that always involves Christianity for people in our nation, with our culture, with our heritage, whether you're coming from a Protestant background or a Catholic background.
So hopefully we can talk about the relationship between those two things today.
And obviously people believe me every time when they know igloos usually come with double pane windows and pottery barn beds.
That's a typical internal decoration of the Naguat tribe.
But, you know, speaking of jokes, okay, obviously we keep things a little bit light.
We call this the best worst show.
We always joke about the fact it's not really that great.
But of the ones that aren't good, because most right-wing shows aren't very good, we're not so bad.
We started diving a little more into religion, talking a lot about faith.
And I think we got to talk about this because I grew up with this phrase, it's not about religion, man.
It's about relationship.
And I know that that's a very common Protestant phrase.
And what I found is that's an interesting phrase for a sheep to say because it's like a sheep being like, bro, it's not about being with the shepherd and the herd.
It's about grazing the fields, right?
Exactly.
So it seems like an odd phrase.
So I found myself, we get on this journey that, you know, I ended up sort of leaving the church, stepping away from it.
And I found myself stuck in bad patterns.
And most importantly, not living this open life of intentional destruction, but feeling empty.
And Timothy, I want to go right to you.
You know, you argued in your work, such as Catholic Republic, that Catholic principles are foundational to a well-ordered life and to a well-ordered society.
And what I feel like I'm lacking and a lot of young men are lacking is well-intentioned order.
And what society is lacking, what we're all seeing, what the struggle is, is that society doesn't have any function because it doesn't have any purpose.
And it doesn't have any purpose because it has no rules.
It has no rights.
It has no definition.
Can you explain why you believe Catholicism uniquely holds the fullness of truth compared to other Christian traditions?
Why would bringing Catholicism back or even reestablishing or for the first time establishing a Catholic normalcy, why would that bring back a stability into the individual lives of people and as well as to society itself?
for the West to enjoy the spoils that Catholicism built, like I won't go through them all, but universities, hospitals, schools, libraries, you know, secondary education, the whole rest of it, this is all given to Western civilization by Roman Catholicism.
And, you know, there are pieces of the Near East that really and truly were built by the Eastern lung of the church, which became Eastern Orthodoxy, which I have a lot of respect for.
It's very close to Roman Catholicism, just without the Pope.
Secondly, though, and more importantly, Christianity was intended as an apostolic religion and a sacramental religion.
And this is another reason why Catholics and Orthodox are very close is because the Orthodox, like Catholics, are apostolic.
They have bishops that stand in the shoes of a lineage of other bishops that go all the way back to the apostles.
And every single bishop in the world, whether you're Orthodox or Catholic, stands in the shoes of some exact lineal to whether it's Peter or Andrew or John, one of the 12.
Secondly, both Catholics and Orthodox have the seven sacraments, the seven sacraments as instituted by Christ in the New Testament, sevenness meaning perfection and completeness.
The reason that Catholicism is separate and above and the one true faith, even over Orthodoxy, is because we have the Pope, the Pope.
We are Papists.
You saw a lot of your viewers might have seen me debating my friend, my actual friend, Jay Dyer, Orthodox guy who you had on recently, about the papacy is really what it became.
And they saw that the Protestant guy there didn't have a lot to say.
And I'm not bringing this up to be mean, but the only and true ballgame is between Catholics and Orthodox.
And since we're both apostolic and we're both sacramental religions, the way that Christianity is supposed to be, one holy Catholic and apostolic, you know, it just doesn't leave Protestants who we do believe are true Christians because they have a Trinitarian baptism.
It doesn't leave them much to say.
But so whether you're from the West and you're just a chauvinist for the West on behalf of Western civilization, or you want to actually look at first principles, why were all of these institutions given to the West for the West?
It's actually because of the principles of timeless, pope-led, apostolic, sacramental Christianity known as Roman Catholicism.
It just turns out to be the one true form of Christianity.
So I might go a little more anecdotal to you here, Sarah.
Because you're a new convert, I'm not going to ask you to, you know, give a didactic response of the history, you know, from 400 AD on, but I do want to know, you know, we talked to Jay's wife about, you know, her being led into Catholicism and I into Orthodoxy instead of Catholicism.
And I have to ask you personally, you know, what is it that led you to Catholicism versus Orthodoxy?
And based on upon that previous question, I just want to add to it, what was it that you were looking to get out of Catholicism?
And are you getting it?
You know what I mean?
So like, why did you choose that over Orthodoxy?
And then what is it that you were looking for?
Because what I want is order, but maybe what you want is different, especially as a woman.
Yeah, I mean, I actually wrote an article exactly detailing my 10 reasons or my 10 kind of main reasons why I became Catholic, which I mean, obviously the number one reason is just because I became convinced that it was true.
So that really is the reason.
But then there's 10 different things that I wrote an article about, which I don't know, maybe we could link it below this action.
Yeah, but for me, I think the main things were I wanted some real answers because obviously I was Christian for my entire life, but there are so many things there's not really solid answers on.
It's just like, I guess, whatever your pastor says you kind of believe, or you can kind of find your own answers with it.
So I think just like that objective truth and logical arguments and historical arguments and tradition that's in the Catholic Church, that really just drew me to that.
And then another thing is kind of just the requirement for spiritual disciplines within the Catholic Church.
Like there's a requirement to go to Mass every Sunday.
There's a requirement to go to confession and receive absolution and all of these different things really attracted me to it because that was one thing that I was struggling with in my faith as a Protestant was there's just this huge focus on like you're just supposed to essentially be a perfect Christian or something just because you accepted Jesus into your heart at some point.
And so because of that, it's like you're not supposed to feel a temptation towards sin or something.
It didn't really make any sense to me because I would just, you know, fall into sin or fall into temptation and then just like beat myself up over it.
And really like the thing that keeps you out of sin and temptation is building those spiritual disciplines and having a real relationship with God, which is found through religion, I think.
So to kind of combat what you said earlier when you were talking about how Protestants say, you know, relationship over religion, I find that religion is what brings you into relationship with God.
And everyone needs that structure and that discipline.
And not just that, but also a church hierarchy, like also a priest that you can listen to, also a pope and an actual structure, like an actual structure of authority there.
So let me, let me, so let me ask a couple of questions.
Now, a lot of these questions I'm asking is because I actually want to know.
And what I find to be confusing is obviously we know there was a church split.
I'm calling it that between the Orthodox and the Catholics, but they're all so similar.
And, you know, there are things like, you know, it's funny.
Like I have a Catholic friend that I know named Aldo Bottazzoni.
He works for PragerU.
He's a Claremont fellow, upstanding gentleman, really, really bright guy.
He has a great future ahead of him.
And he's a handsome bloke too.
And so, you know, we got to get that guy married.
But, you know, what's kind of crazy is like one time we were talking and I was like, you know, I just really, I told him, I was like, I'm enjoying going to Catholic church right now.
Just like the veneration of Mary is just, you know, bizarre.
And I talked to the priest and he told me, you know, there's some things you can, you know, figure out with God and that's not required to go to heaven to like, you know, you don't respect Mary, but it's like your faith does need to be in the work of Christ.
And that's what we're most concerned about.
And I told him, I go, you know, there's just some things I obviously as a Protestant born and raised, like I can't really, really get on board with.
And then he was like, dude, you guys have Jewish space lasers in your services.
And I was like, yeah, I was like, I was just laughing.
I was like, yeah, you know, you're actually kind of true.
He's like, I can't really get behind that too.
And I, you know, so I know that every tradition has things that are going to make other people uncomfortable that may seem extra biblical.
And I'm not claiming, obviously, as a Catholics, you believe what the church says, but I need to understand this.
As a skeptic, I put myself as a Catholic skeptic because I'm not, I'm not sure of everything.
How do we, how do we know that the claim that the Catholic Church has the authority of the church, how is that real, particularly with the papacy?
A lot of people say that it's not rooted in scripture or early Christian practice.
And there's even divisions now between who's the Pope?
Is it the Eastern Orthodox, the Greek?
Like, who's the Pope?
Is it the Vatican?
Like, how do we know that the Catholic Church, capital C, not lowercase C, but the Holy Catholic Church, how do we know that they have the authority?
And what's the, what is the evidence that the Pope should have any of my respect?
Because a lot of them just feel like people I don't respect.
And the Catholic answer, really, the only answer which finds its root in historicity is to look at the first ecumenical councils of the church.
And when I was on Tim Pool debating my friend Jay, it was funny because I was trying to get out this basic point that for the first thousand years of the church, what became the Orthodox Church until they split off from us in 1054, they shared the exact view of the Bishop of Rome, which the Roman Catholic Church has.
That view involves the undeniable claim that he's in charge.
The Bishop of Rome in the first four or five councils alone was literally requested to excommunicate the number two guys in the church, Patriarch of Constantinople.
They came to him, Eastern fathers of the church, and they said, Would you excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople?
By the way, that happened at the third or the fourth ecumenical council at Ephesus, which is where the Mary stuff was sorted out.
I know we're kind of dealing with substance and procedure at once, and it's tough to keep two balls up.
But I would say this with regard to Mary, at that council of Ephesus, it was dealt with specifically that you cannot, as a Christian, before there were Orthodox, before there were Protestants, all the Christians in the world were not allowed to say that Mary is the mother of Jesus the man only, because this splits his natures.
You have to say she's the mother both of Jesus the man and she's the mother of God.
So doing, so dichotomizing actually means that there's two separate guys.
And of course, Jesus was not two separate guys.
He had two natures, but he was one man.
So all time Christianity, going back to the very first councils of the church, which Roman Catholicism not only endorses, but it was Roman Catholicism that sanctioned these councils.
It requires us to say that Mary is not just the mother of Jesus the man.
Mary is the mother of God, Theotokos, not just Christotokos.
So we Catholics look at the rest of the world that's saying, or the Protestant world more specifically, that says, you guys aren't Christian.
You don't have early, early first millennial Christian practice.
And we say, that's absolutely wrong.
And of course, the Orthodox agree with us at that council, Nestorius was the Patriarch of Constantinople, the highest guy in what today is the Orthodox Church.
And it was other Eastern Orthodox fathers that went to Rome and they said, you're the only guy in the church, the Bishop of Rome who was the Pope.
You're the only guy in the church that has the authority to excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople because you're in charge.
Would you please do this?
And that was literally repeated time and time and time again in those first thousand years.
So we Catholics find it really, really strange that at the first seven councils, about which, you know, in terms of the authority, the historicity, the magisterial power of these first seven councils, Orthodox and Catholics agree.
So it's really strange that the Orthodox were with us for a thousand years, 1,054 years, saying the Pope's number one, he's in charge, he can excommunicate other people.
Like Michael Scott says to Dwight Schroed, you're not boss unless you can fire someone, right?
The Pope could do that.
And they requested it.
The Pope was in charge from the very outset.
And we Catholics simply don't get why in 1054 the Orthodox started thinking that they didn't have to follow the Pope.
Now, I know the stock responses they'll give.
No pun intended.
We know the responses they'll give.
But the point is, we say that the other Christian denominations, especially Protestants, much lesser so with the Orthodox, but still so, they left the early Christian practice, which did involve a pyramidal hierarchy.
In other words, a hierarchy that doesn't go like this to the bishops the way the Orthodox have it.
They get that part right, but goes all the way to the tippy top because nature loathes a vacuum.
And if you're going to have bishops above priests, priests above the laypeople, you need a head bishop.
That's just a natural principle.
It was acknowledged for the first thousand years by the Eastern lung of the church, which became Orthodoxy.
And it's also required by just natural reason alone.
Sorry, I didn't know if Sarah wanted to say something.
I did want to chime in real fast, but asking a little bit of a slant on that is like you stated to me one time when we were discussing here at the studio that, you know, you were, you were, there was a group of us and we were just having a discussion after the show.
And, you know, not to bring the private conversations in the office, but she was really, you know, convinced.
Like, this is what the cat, she was like, kind of saying, this is the Catholic Church says.
So I accept it.
And that's like kind of crazy to a skeptic because like our intern was at church and they were telling him on Sunday that, you know, it was like an entire sermon about how we need to support Israel, you know?
And like, you know, I know he loves his church.
I'm just kind of like, so I'm not just attacking the Catholic Church.
Like it's the evangelical church.
He loves his church.
He loves the people there.
But he can sit down enough and be like, okay, this is, this is retarded.
Okay.
Like this is this is bad theology.
I just because the pastor is saying it, I don't necessarily believe it because he knows that they're a dispensational church.
So they have some things wrong.
But you were convinced, which I thought was interesting as a new convert usually.
Usually converts are skeptical in my opinion.
You were just like, no, the Catholic Church says this and I accept it because it's true because the Catholic Church says it.
How do you come to that sort of conviction?
Is that because you're a woman and you come under authority?
And I'm not even trying to be sexist.
I'm just being like, genuinely, is that like a female thing?
Is that a spiritual thing?
Is that a faith thing?
Like practically speaking, what is leading you to accept that authority in your life voluntarily?
Well, yeah, I think that's kind of like the whole point of being Catholic is that you accept that there's an authority structure and you don't get to define the Bible in your own way.
So it's not that I just, you know, stumbled upon Catholicism and then it's like, well, I guess I'll just accept everything it teaches, but it's more like I did come to the conclusion through researching, through looking through history, through just looking into Catholic apologetics, that the Catholic Church is the church that Jesus set up when he gave Peter the keys to the church and made Peter the first pope and said the gates of hell will not prevail against this church.
That is the church that has sustained throughout history, even if there's been problems inside the church.
It is God's church.
It is like the one true church that he set up and therefore its doctrine is correct.
And so because I came to that conclusion, there were some things maybe, yeah, I mean, when I was first looking into it too, I kind of had the same reservations about the veneration of Mary that you do, Elijah, because, you know, it is very foreign when you're a Protestant.
It does feel like it's some kind of idol worship or something.
But that is also another thing that I did look into more.
I have an entire apologetics booklet defending the veneration of Mary and the different Marian doctrines that maybe I'll actually bring it to next time I come to the studio.
I will.
But yeah, so basically because I start to accept the authority of the church, I'm like, you know what?
Maybe there's these little things that I don't fully understand yet or whatever, but I can still trust that the church, which has been around for 2,000 years, probably knows better than me on this.
And they're probably right.
And maybe I just don't fully understand why yet.
So there is, it is like a little bit, yeah, it's, it's a little bit of, there is an element of faith there, but.
But also the good thing about the Catholic Church is it's not the same as it's not like when your parents tell you, oh, you're not allowed to do something.
You're like, why?
And they're like, because we said so.
The Catholic Church doesn't operate that way.
Everything they say is logical and it comes from scripture.
And it actually makes a lot of sense when you look into it.
You might just not realize why right away.
Like, for instance, there are plenty of verses in the Bible that, you know, support the different Marian doctrines, but there's also just extra historical context there too.
And, you know, extra writings from the early church fathers and things that people who literally knew Jesus or knew people who knew Jesus.
Like, I feel like that person would know a little bit more about the mother of God than I do, you know?
I would also just say to Sarah that I don't, I don't know what, how to explain the chronology, but I started seeing your tweets around the time that you came into the church, Sarah.
So maybe they're just the algorithm is the almighty algorithm is suggesting them to me.
But I don't say this to very many women, but you have good, good content.
Yeah, but like in retrospect of his life, it's been like a year, I think, or something like that.
But meaning sometimes it's a slower transformation.
When you've been going through 30 years of bad habits, it's going to be a rough patch, you know?
But I'm glad he found it.
I was just going to say that he just makes me laugh because he'll just randomly do that.
And to also mention you guys watching, we're not uncensored anymore.
And that was not my choice.
So, but it is, but we love censored and we are with them.
But anyway, that's my apologies.
Okay, transitioning here.
So I have, this is a little more structured, but these are like my actual questions here.
As somebody who just needs God, okay, like I like, I just need God, but that's, but I don't know what to define that as because, you know, just needing God, I realize I need a structure.
I need the scripture.
I need the totality of what God set in place and not to define what God is or who he is.
And I'm genuinely curious.
And I mentioned that, you know, really truly, it was a joke in the beginning, but guys kind of go one way or the other in Gen Z. Literally, either are bi-curious or God-curious.
They literally become like furries and gay, or they go after God.
And it's the G, either way, right?
It's a three-letter G word.
But most importantly, I want to know something very important here.
If someone's looking for God and you're making an argument for the Catholic Church, what is the strongest theological or philosophical argument for Catholicism's claim to be the one true established church by Christ that would even stump Jay Dyer?
Or at least if he was here, that you would claim this is why we are, and the Orthodox church is not, because I have yet to hear that.
Okay, well, here's, I'll give you a three-pronged approach.
And there will be three different appeals made by these.
First off, because you're a Protestant, this wouldn't stump Jay because they also have the Eucharist in the Orthodox Church.
But I would say John chapter 6, verses 30 to 70, we call it the bread of life discourse.
Our Lord says that if you don't have, he says, I am the bread of life.
My body is true meat.
My blood is true drink.
And I want you to consume me.
And this is actually the time in the gospel when the most people in the crowd left him.
And he says, you find this a hard saying.
And Peter says, What is this beautiful line where he says, Where else would I go, Lord?
This is after the bread of life discourse.
Now, the verb that's used by Jesus when he says, I want you to consume me.
I'm the bread of life.
If you do not consume me the bread of life, then you have no life in you.
It's another reason why you do need some works.
You need the works of the sacraments.
The verb that's used is actually the animal gnawing verb to gnaw equivalent.
So to actually gnaw flesh.
So it's a very physical act of actual mastication.
There's nothing symbolic about it.
You need the bread of life in you.
And if you're left feeling, I don't want to speculate.
And there's some aspect that which even natural religion is very personal.
So I'm not trying to speculate about anyone's personals, but if you're left feeling hollow by one of the 39,000 plus sects of Protestantism, it makes sense because we need a personal relationship with Christ, right?
You guys used to always say that to us.
You don't have one unless you have the bread of life in you.
John chapter 6, verses, really read 30 to 70.
And, you know, you can't receive everlasting life unless you gnaw the real body of Christ.
His body is real meat.
His blood is real drink.
That's, I think, a stock answer for a Protestant.
Sorry, I'm going to keep saying that.
The stock answer for Orthodox is that once again, they accept the first seven ecumenical councils with us.
We together, Catholics and Orthodox, share the first seven councils.
The first council of all time, called by Constantine himself at Nicaea, where we get the Nicene Creed, was all about Arianism.
They had to correct this first guy.
It was the first time that Christianity could really come up for a breath of air after the church had been underground for about 300 years.
So even though it's over three centuries after Christ, it's the first real time they had the chance to organize all of the little Christian churches who were saying masses, taking the Eucharist underground, having bishops around the Mediterranean.
They're all doing this Catholic stuff.
But now they had to organize doctrine some because you had these heretics.
Well, also at this first ecumenical council at Nicaea, we get this term, one holy Catholic apostolic.
This is the mark that they set forth at this first ecumenical council that all Orthodox agree about.
And we say it in Protestant church too, the Creed.
So, I mean, I mean, like, it always stumps people because it says that we're one holy Catholic church, believing it or whatever, but it's like it does stump people.
Well, I'm just saying, so the creed comes from this first council.
And that's right.
I forgot.
One holy Catholic apostolic.
I would say to any Protestant, you guys.
Unfortunately, check none of those boxes because all four of those, we call them the, the four Marks of the church.
You do have a trinitarian baptism, so that's good.
So you're real Christian, unlike Jehovah's Witness or Seventh-day Advent or Mormons, then they're not.
They're not trinitarians, but but?
Um, none of the boxes.
So one means that the doctrine all needs to be the same.
Right, you have to have the same doctrine around the world being taught.
Uh, holy means you have the seven sacraments, the sevenness or the completeness of the sacraments.
Um, Catholic means that that one doctrine is taught all around the world.
So even though it's a big club, it's still very uh philosophically dogmatically, exclusive.
That's almost impossible to pull off.
Some people say it requires the holy spirit to be both a big club and very exclusive dogmatically at the same time.
It is so one holy Catholic, Apostolic means what I said before, that you have bishops that actually stand in the shoes of apostles.
Well, protestants check none of these boxes, orthodox only check two, and I give them propers where I can they?
They check the boxes of being um holy because they have sacraments in there.
They're apostolic because they have bishops.
But they agree with us about this.
First Ecumenical councils and the next six which followed.
And they agree with us about all the lines in the creed, aside from the filioque, one little line that Charlemagne added, that that made them really really, really mad uh, the filioque.
But they agree about the creed.
They just don't say anything, or won't say anything, about the fact that they can't check the boxes on the oneness or the catholicity, and we don't mean capital Catholic, they just.
They have 14 autocephalous churches.
Some of them allow contraception, some of them allow up to two divorces and remarriage a third time.
Some of them even have women deacons, others don't.
That doesn't check the box for oneness or or Catholicness.
The Catholic church has.
I'll say this, and then I want, I want to hear what.
What Sarah thinks is a new convert.
But there's an inverse correlation between the um, the fractile nature of any club, the fact that it will break off, and the tension that inheres.
So, like if, like Protestantism, which has a super high radioactivity, you have a new sect every day right, 40 000 plus sects well, you can be really insular and tight with your own little sect because it might have just broken off.
Yesterday you have 40 000 sects of them um, so they always brag.
Well, my pastor is really good.
He says everything I agree about.
He's my exact subtype of Christian conservative.
Well, that's great.
That's because you just broke off with this Branch yesterday.
Orthodox, it's less so.
There are 14 autocephalous churches.
They have divisions within the divisions that they're closer to one.
14 is closer to one than 39,000 plus.
But within those 14, they have a little bit less irascibility between them.
Naturally, because Catholics check these other two boxes that the Orthodox don't, in addition to holy and apostolic, we're one and we're Catholic, we're worldwide.
It's a big tent.
The dogma is really tight and binds everyone in the tent.
But as to speculative theology and some of the theology that has come out that is not part of dogma in the last 60 years since Vatican II, where they're pushing it as speculative theology, yeah, there's a lot of disagreement about it.
But the important thing is we've pulled the Roman Catholic Church, not me, through the action of the Holy Spirit.
It has always safeguarded dogma.
We've never had a contradiction or an overturned dogma.
And it's worldwide, global, and one.
That's something that the Orthodox can't and actually won't claim.
No one else, no other Christian sect can claim it.
There's a whole other issue of the papacy.
We could also just say as a third argument, well, because we're the one sect that has the papacy, they acknowledge bishops.
We acknowledge their bishops.
They acknowledge ours.
They even acknowledge the bishop of Rome is the first among equals, even though in the first millennium they acknowledged that he could fire their guy, the patriarch of Constantinople.
Well, if Christianity requires a pope, and you can go to scripture and prove that it does, then Catholicism is true.
But also, if the four marks of the church are true, which they acknowledge at that first ecumenical council, then Roman Catholicism is true.
And I, you know, and I listen, I go to a Catholic church just because it's a lot of the Orthodox churches are like really ethnic and I'm racist, you know, like I am, you know what I mean?
But not in like a, not in like a bad way.
It's just like in like a, you know, you like white people.
So it's like for that philosophical argument, I kind of want to flip it because I want to kind of, we are going to have to kind of conclude, but we're also going to get into a bunch of, we will have gotten into a bunch of Catholic stuff about like current events and some of my perspectives on, you know, justifying, you know, my worldview and different things with God and Catholicism and defense from yesterday's episode on the rift when this will have aired.
So you guys got to check that out.
It was our live show two hours, two and a half hours, actually, I think, and we're going to go at it and talk about a bunch of stuff going on.
But that idea of the philosophical argument for Catholicism, I just kind of want to know, like, what is it that you would tell someone as a new convert, this is why the Catholic Church, like without having to get into all the apostolic history, what would you just tell like a simple Gen Z person who's curious?
But yeah, just knowing that it's been consistent throughout time, it's remained unified.
It's Catholic means universal.
It's all over the world.
And yet we still all believe mostly the same things.
And it is how you receive the sacrament of communion.
And then you can literally eat the body and blood of Christ, which in Protestant churches, it's just symbolic.
So, and they tell you that too.
So that's good.
At least they're not.
telling you it's not symbolic.
But that is, I feel like the Eucharist is really the, I would say that's like top three reasons also why I became Catholic, because I want to be able to experience actually taking part in communion.
I mean, I have like almost five years of theological training from Wesleyan Seminary.
However, I don't really bring a lot of it up because this show is not a religious show.
So we don't really talk a lot about that stuff.
But when we study Catholicism and Orthodoxy, we really study it under cults and other religions.
It's not really studied as a parallel.
I mean, there's historical concept, but, you know, the modern day, that's what I'm saying.
We usually talk about it as terms of councils and creeds and breaks and wars and things, but that's more history.
But Protestantism is so new that usually you focus on Protestant history, which is the last several hundred years.
And that's sort of like, that's sort of an interesting thing.
It's not apostolic, but they kind of they break away from that.
And I just think what we've seen with Protestantism is that I think that the original reformers really did have a good heart.
They saw some corruptions that were going on.
I do think that they were a lot closer to Catholicism than what we see today, but especially in this postmodern world of evangelicalism, like, you know, that's why you even see in the Protestant churches, you'll have the liberal part and then the conservative part.
Like under Lutheranism, you'll, there's still some very close to Catholicism.
And then there's these gay pastors.
There's breaks and breaks and breaks.
And that's kind of what the issue is because it's like, you know, once you move away from authority and structure, then someone can move away from your authority and structure until there's no authority and no structure at all.
And it's like, kind of like, where do you set the line, right?
It's like, so I kind of, this is really bad that we're going to kind of, we're going to kind of close it on this question, but this is actually a really complex question.
I think that one of the main things keeping people away from being Catholic is one of the main things that's drawing them to Catholicism.
Groupthink.
And let me just be careful in saying this.
So I'm not disrespecting people's genuine conversion.
And I don't sound like I'm dismissing Sarah's conversion here.
The majority of people I hear converting to Catholicism is because it's like based and trad and like right wing and stuff.
And that makes me nervous.
Not that they found the truth that's good.
I don't know if they're going to stick to it.
So I don't know if, you know, groupthink is the best reason to find God.
Maybe it is.
I don't know.
But I hear a lot of people who won't be Catholic because as it's always been, their family's Protestant or their family's this, their family's that.
And they can't break away from this.
So somebody who's afraid of pressure or they're feeling pressured into it and want to make sure that their heart is right, right?
They're not just doing it because all the groipers are doing it or something like that, that it's a genuine conversion.
It's got to be real of the heart.
What would you say to those who have faced criticism even from fellow Catholics, even from their family members, particularly when it comes to converting?
What does a real conversion look like?
And what should they be searching for and experiencing?
What is a sign that they're on the right path?
And what should they do to guarantee before them and God to know that they're making the right decision and that they're doing it for the right reasons?
Well, what did Peter say to our Lord in that verse?
Beautiful, beautiful expression of being in a moral conundrum.
He's like, are you going to leave me too?
He said, where else would I go, Lord?
And it's the same answer that I think proofs Sarah as a legitimate convert, even if this is the first time someone's hearing her.
I looked into it and it's the church.
It's the OG church.
It's what our Lord established.
It's what it in every wise it checks out as what he sought to establish.
And it also checks out for, as someone, I am also a constitutional law scholar in addition to an aristotomist.
And there are pitfalls consistent with human nature that make keeping any constitution, sacred or secular, or really any set of guidelines, that makes it difficult for them to obtain through the ages.
You know what I mean?
We want the original constitution, just as Scalia left us with.
We want the original public meaning of what the words meant on the day that the ratifiers ratified them.
Well, when you go back and you look at it, and I think this is, I mean, Sarah, I'll be so bold as to characterize what you're saying in your first answer.
When you actually look at not the psyop of what particularly American Protestantism has told people, that the Catholic Church is nothing like the church of the 300s or the even pre-Constantine underground church.
It's the exact opposite.
They had bishops and they had a bishop who was in charge of the others and could excommunicate them.
They had sacraments.
So there's apostolic succession and they require sacramentals.
It is a religion.
Our Lord set up Christianity to be a religion because he knows that without the baselines of religion, Protestantism ironically lacks this, even though they're legitimate Christians.
They lack some of the baseline elements of natural religion that even the pagan Greeks had.
And I'm not trying to be insulting, but there has to be a sacerdotal class, a class of priests.
There has to be sacrifice and sacrament, you know, blood, sacrifice, sacrament.
There has to be precepts, what Sarah said in her answer.
There has to be stuff you have to do every day.
There has to be sacramentals, little things like prayer beads.
Several world religions have those, because this corresponds with something fundamental in us, with man's nature.
And we know that if it's just a Jesus-loving book club, which is what really compared to Orthodoxy or Catholicism, Protestantism feels a lot like it's just a book club and hey, we dig Jesus.
There's not enough left for you to do.
I don't know if you ever get anxious or anyone out there in your audience, or if you've ever addressed anxiety, ways to avoid it.
You were just saying why you went and worked out in between the show we shot earlier and now, if I don't do enough in the day, I get anxious.
That's the problem.
There's a fundamental Kierkegaardian anxiety endemic to Protestantism because there's not enough to do that corresponds with the needs of man's inner heart where a human being, man or woman, wants to do certain things that correspond with even natural religion.
Roman Catholicism has them all.
Orthodoxy has most of these because they're very similar.
Orthodoxy is just Catholicism without the Pope.
But at the end of the day, I'm repeating myself.
It goes all the way back to the practice that Jesus left to the apostles and the apostles left to their closest friends.
Yeah, I'll also add, I think with Protestantism, there's this huge separation of the physical realm and the spiritual realm where they seem to think that anything, any sort of physical representation of your faith is bad because it's physical.
So it's kind of flawed.
And it kind of, I've kind of said this before, but it seems to border on this heresy of Gnosticism, where it's like the material world is bad and fallen.
And it's like, no, God built the material world for us.
And so we're able to worship God through different material ways, like we pray the rosary and that's this physical reminder of, you know, how long you pray and it helps you meditate.
And you have even there's things like the scapulars or obviously the best example is the Eucharist.
It's the actual physical body and blood of Christ and you're able to connect with God through physical things he left through us, even different, you know, paintings or sculptures of Mary and Jesus and the saints and even just the, you know, the physical, visible church of the visible hierarchy of priests and the pope and bishops and all these things.
Even that is a physical reminder of what God is doing here on earth.
So I think with Protestantism, a lot of it is kind of rejecting everything that's physical.
And that's why they think that it's like idol worship or something to be Catholic.
And it's like, no, it's very much the opposite.
All of these things point us towards God.
And I think that's something difficult.
But when you are Protestant, you're kind of searching for something.
So they kind of just, they have a very strong emphasis on the Bible, which I mean, that's good.
I think obviously scripture is really important, but that is kind of their only physical connection really to God is just the Bible and the words that he left for us.
And it's like, well, actually, Catholics put together the Bible too.
It's like pre-enlightenment abstract rationalism, where, yes, the Bible is the source text for what we know Jesus did.
But just to dovetail with Sarah's point, we are flesh and blood, right?
We are form and matter.
And that's where it's a whole other lesson.
But that's why the teachings of Aristotle, pagan Greek philosopher, who basically got metaphysics and physics right is so important to Catholicism.
And this is another thing the Protestants rejected.
Why is Aristotle so important?
Well, because it's form and matter.
Like the, we are not body haters the way that the Protestants tend toward Neoplatonism, where you hate the body.
What Sarah's talking about there that's so key is like, I'm a physical guy.
Like I said, the whole first half of my life, I was just a basketball player before I did anything else.
So even though I was always a good student, I was always dribbling a basketball or walking around when I memorized stuff, when I studied, you know, law or philosophy.
I still dribble a basketball or I'm walking around because we're made.
We're not disembodied spirits the way angels are, right?
They are rational.
They're not a rational animal.
They have a rational nature that's disembodied fundamentally.
They don't have bodies.
They will never have bodies even at the end of time.
Human beings are fundamentally different.
We are a rational animal of a corporeal nature.
We have bodies and therefore we want things like prayer beads.
We want things like little sacramentals.
This is the Seventh Ecumenical Council where they condemned the view that praying to a statue is idol worship, you know, because we need physical reminders because we're, you know, rational animals of a corporeal nature.
So I love, I love everything Sarah's saying.
And it's got all the marks of, you know, what really and truly draws someone that's authentically interested in what is the true religion that Jesus laid out?
Is it Protestantism, Orthodoxy, or Catholicism?
It really bespeaks, you know, a true searching soul.
I hope that we've grown a little more by then because the goal would be to help your YouTube.
In the future, it'll help more, but unfortunately, we're pretty small here, but we're growing.
And I mean, dude, I mean, we've only had the YouTube channel for a little over two weeks and we are already averaging a few thousand views per episode.
So, meaning I really do believe in the content strategy for long forms, just got to produce content every single day and then it grows.
That's Tim Poole's method.
It always worked for me on You Are Here.
It worked for me on every show I've done live.
It just, every day, live, same time, you just grow automatically.
That being said, Sarah, you have some new content out.
You just did an interview with Dr. Taylor Marshall.
Our book club, ironically, on Sunday did like 80,000 views.
To my guests, thank you so much again for watching.
To the rest of you guys that are here, I appreciate you guys supporting Rift.
Remember, if you want to support the show, if you want to watch the book club, you know, you want to be around, consider joining our locals, ElijahSchaefer.locals.com.
It's free to join.
It really helps us out if you join.
But also, you can, the links in the description, if you're watching this on Rumble, you hit the red follow button.
If you're on YouTube, you can click below.
And also, if you're on Rumble, follow our YouTube.
YouTube, follow our Rumble and wherever you're at right now, like and subscribe to the video.
Anyway, I'm going to go run and get some food in between the shows with my guests here.
