Manage Account

Trent’s obsession with industrial safety videos returns! In this episode Trent talks about delta-P, Caterpillar tractor protocol, and the goriest safety video on YouTube he could barely watch.

Don’t “shake hands with danger”!

Leviticus 18:22 condemns same-sex activity. But who cares? After all, Leviticus condemns things like eating shrimp. So is there any legitimate reason to accept parts of Leviticus as still binding, while treating other parts as obsolete?

Why Care What Leviticus Says About Homosexuality?

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DAY 11
CHALLENGE
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“Science cannot accept the supernatural. The natural world is all there is.”
DEFENSE
At best, this leads to a reductionistic understanding of science. At worst, it reflects intellectual prejudice.
The term “nature” is often used to refer to the visible world we see around us (i.e., the world detectible by the senses and by scientific instruments). The supernatural then would be anything that falls outside of the visible world.
On this understanding, the assertion that science can’t accept the supernatural would mean that science cannot deal with anything outside of the visible world. It would not mean, however, that there is nothing outside the visible world. Just because we can’t detect something with the senses doesn’t mean that it isn’t real. There could be vast realms outside the visible world that would be inaccessible to science on this understanding.
Further, those realms might be capable of interacting with the visible world, which would pose a challenge for science. We might be able to see visible effects of causes in the non-visible world, but science would not be able to explain the effects by their true causes, which it would be forbidden to discuss.
Sometimes people use “nature” to refer to everything that exists. On this understanding, one could assert that nature is all there is, but this also would not mean that the visible world is all that exists. There still could be vast realms not accessible to the senses. They might even interact with the visible world. Using “nature” to refer to everything that exists just reclassifies things that would otherwise be called super- natural as exotic parts of nature.
The claim that the visible world is all that exists is simply an assertion. It is not a scientific claim because it cannot be verified by science. If science, by its nature, is limited to examining the visible universe, then there is no way to perform a set of observations and experiments proving that there are no realms outside the visible universe. The as- sertion that only the visible world is real thus would be a matter of unscientific prejudice against the idea there is anything outside the visible world.
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Science and the Supernatural

Why Fr. Altman is Wrong About Pope Francis

Is 2 Tim 1:12-14 linked to sensus fidelium?

Is the Archangel Gabriel, Mary’s guardian angel?

How should we understand doing works of mercy and how it relates to the final judgment?

I’m reading a book on purgatory and saw the phrase imputed righteousness of Christ. What does that mean?

What are your thoughts on the claim that Jesus was a master hypnotist and trained his apostles?

Am I allowed to genuflect after communion?

Many hear the phrase &#8220;imputed righteousness&#8221; and think it&#8217;s a Catholic belief—but is it? We explain how Catholicism differs from Protestant views on righteousness, justification, and purgatory.
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What Does ‘Imputed Righteousness of Christ’ Mean in Catholic Teaching?

Christians casually acquainted with Mormonism—more specifically, the form taught by the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (LDS)—might assume it to be little more than a quirky member of the broader Christian family. Certainly, the LDS do a great job of crafting this image on their website. If you click their “<a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/believe">Our Beliefs</a>” tab, the first thing you’re told is that “all our beliefs center on Jesus Christ,” and you’re invited to “learn more about our Savior Jesus Christ.”
Digging a little deeper, you’ll discover that the gap between Mormon and mainstream Christian belief turns out to be larger than it first appears. For instance, while the LDS speak about “God the Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit,” <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/do-latter-day-saints-believe-in-the-trinity">the fine print</a> is that they “don’t believe in the traditional concept of the Trinity,” believing instead that “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are three separate beings who are one in purpose.” In other words, instead of believing in the Trinity, they believe that these are three separate gods who work together.
This has led to a great deal of confusion among non-Mormons. After <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010605_battesimo_mormoni_en.html">the DDF declared in 2001</a> that Mormon baptisms aren’t valid, then-prefect Father (now Cardinal) <a href="https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20010605_battesimo_mormoni-ladaria_en.html">Ladaria explained</a> that there had arisen a “difference of practice, insofar as those who had a certain personal knowledge of the teaching of the Mormons considered their baptism invalid, while the common practice continued of applying the traditional principle of the presumption in favor of the validity of such baptism.” In other words, Catholic priests unused to Mormonism saw that they baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and figured their baptisms were valid (since Trinitarian baptisms <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/in-whose-name-should-we-baptize">are valid</a> even if not performed by a Catholic), whereas Catholic priests who understood Mormonism better insisted on rebaptizing Mormon converts to Catholicism.
As important as the Mormon rejection of the Trinity is, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/130?lang=eng">Doctrine &amp; Covenants</a> (considered by LDS Mormons to be inspired Scripture) teaches that “the Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s.” This idea dates back to Mormonism’s founder, <a href="https://journalofdiscourses.com/6/1">Joseph Smith, Jr.</a>, who said that whereas “we have imagined and supposed that God was God from all eternity,” he could “refute that idea.” Instead, he insisted, “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens.”
Several things follow from this idea. First, the Mormon depiction of “God” is clearly not the immaterial Creator of all space and time. He is, rather, a powerful being from another planet who lived, died, was resurrected (seemingly by his own god!), and is now exalted. He lives with his wife, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng">Mother in Heaven</a>, who is a goddess, but to whom we’re not allowed to pray. Second, this seems to suggest that the Virgin Birth wasn’t a miraculous overshadowing of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit, but the Father physically impregnating Mary. (This isn’t official church teaching but is a view held by many LDS, and one seemingly consistent with Smith’s view of God.)
Third, this understanding of God actually contradicts earlier Mormon teaching. While Smith claimed in 1844 that God the Father has a body, the 1835 edition of Doctrine &amp; Covenants included a section called “<a href="https://lecturesonfaith.com/5/">Lectures on Faith</a>” that taught that there were only two members of the Godhead (the Father and the Son), and that the Father was a “personage of spirit” and the Son had a body (in their words, “was a personage of tabernacle”). These lectures were cowritten by Smith and unanimously approved in 1835. Yet by 1844, a third person had joined the Godhead—the Holy Spirit—and the Father was suddenly a personage of flesh, not just spirit.
Mormon theology got stranger after Smith died, and he was replaced as prophet by Brigham Young. Young claimed that we ought to worship only one god: Adam. <a href="https://journalofdiscourses.com/1/8">According to Young</a>,
<blockquote>When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is Michael, the Archangel, the Ancient of Days! about whom holy men have written and spoken—he is our Father and our God, and the only God with whom we have to do.</blockquote>
This idea, called the Adam-God doctrine, <a href="https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/1976/10/our-own-liahona?lang=eng">was later condemned</a> by the LDS Church as “false doctrine,” although Mormons continue to venerate the originator of the heresy, Brigham Young, as a true prophet.
Fascinatingly, Young damned all of those who reject the Adam-God doctrine, insisting that “Jesus, our elder brother, was begotten in the flesh by the same character that was in the garden of Eden, and who is our Father in Heaven. Now, let all who may hear these doctrines, pause before they make light of them, or treat them with indifference, for they will prove their salvation or damnation.”
Where does all of this leave Jesus? As mentioned, the public relations side of the LDS church stresses the centrality of Jesus. This is behind <a href="https://www.sltrib.com/news/2018/08/16/lds-church-wants-everyone/">the Mormon church’s move</a> to get everyone to call it “the LDS Church” and distance itself from the word “Mormon.” But again, if you dig deeper, a different picture emerges. Although the LDS Church’s Newsroom <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUs407sadoY&amp;ab_channel=ChurchNewsroom">creates material</a> suggesting that they worship Jesus Christ, talks given to LDS audiences sound a different note. For instance, the Apostle Bruce R. McConkie <a href="https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie/relationship-lord/">spoke</a> to a Mormon audience in 1982 on the doctrines that “must be understood in order to gain eternal life.” First and foremost was the fact that “we worship the Father and him only and no one else.” In McConkie’s words,
<blockquote>we do not worship the Son, and we do not worship the Holy Ghost. I know perfectly well what the scriptures say about worshiping Christ and Jehovah, but they are speaking in an entirely different sense—the sense of standing in awe and being reverentially grateful to him who has redeemed us. Worship in the true and saving sense is reserved for God the first, the Creator.</blockquote>
For these and many other reasons, it’s clear that the Mormon conception of God differs in kind (rather than degree) from what mainstream Christians believe. Rather than simply different beliefs about the same God, these seem to be beliefs about radically different gods. That was certainly the view of <a href="https://journalofdiscourses.com/5/55">Brigham Young, who joked</a> about how “Joseph B. Nobles once told a Methodist priest, after hearing him describe his god, that the god they worshiped was the Mormons’ Devil—a being without a body, whereas our God has a body, parts, and passions.” So this isn’t a subtle theological squabble. It’s a fundamental question about whom we worship.

What Kind of God Is the Mormon God?

Joe explains how Trent changed his mind on what is the most important aspect of Mary&#8217;s Immaculate Conception and her lifelong sinlessness.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I&#8217;m Joe Hesschmeyer In February, 2024, Mark&#8217;s one of the greatest tragedies to befall mankind. I was wrong about something and worse, Trent Horn was right. Now, for context here, Trent Horn and I and some other people we&#8217;re doing a two day brainstorming retreat, and one of the topics that arose was the idea of Mary&#8217;s Sinlessness and why we believe in that as Catholics and Trent made an argument for Mary&#8217;s Sinlessness that I&#8217;d never heard before and one that I initially dismissed as a stretch, which I&#8217;ve now come to see as profoundly true. Now, before I explain why I want to give at least a quick word of gratitude to all of my supporters, all of our supporters, really over@shamelessjoe.com. Now, we recently got a chance to meet some of you at the Catholic Answers Conference, which was incredibly cool. Now we&#8217;re also working on new show notes or Joe Notes that lay out the sources that I quote from or cite and summarize the main points and episodes you can get access to those as well as exclusive question and answer live streams each week for as little as $5 a month.
And just so you know, your direct support is what keeps this channel sponsor free and the quality high. So we hope to see you over there, shameless joe.com. Okay, now I&#8217;m back to the dark day in question. I should be very clear again, Trent and I didn&#8217;t disagree that Mary was without sin. We agree on that. The question was why? Because if you&#8217;d asked me before, why is Mary without sin, my usual answer would be to look at the way scripture seems to present Mary as the arc of the new covenant through a mode of analysis that we sometimes call Mary and Typology. Let explain what this means. Go back and look at Old Testament passages like Second Samuel chapter six. There we&#8217;re told that David arose and went to move the Ark of the Covenant through Judea to bring it to his new capital Jerusalem.
They&#8217;re traveling with the ark amid the hill country of Judah and David and all the house of Israel were making Mary before the Lord with all their might, but they end up stalled in the hill country of Judea for three months leading David to ask how can the ark of the Lord come to me after three months, they may get back to Jerusalem and David dances before the ark were in a priestly effort. Now, I want to compare that Old Testament event to something that happens in the New Testament, namely St. Luke&#8217;s account of the visitation in Luke one. You&#8217;ll notice it begins by telling us that Mary arose and went and where does she go? Well, she goes to the hill country of Judah, of course, and the unborn John the Baptist, the son of Zacharia. The priest dances in his mother&#8217;s womb in the presence of the unborn Jesus and Mary stays there for three months before returning home.
But while she&#8217;s there, her cousin Elizabeth asks her a question that echoes King David&#8217;s. And why is this granted me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? Now, it seems to me those are not just coincidences. The language is the same, the location is the same, the duration is the same, both involve singing and dancing, and the two questions seem to be obviously connected. But while David asked, but the ark of the Lord, Elizabeth now asks about the mother of my Lord. So it seems to me the best reading of this passage is that Luke is showing us that Mary is the ark of the new covenant, and that makes sense. After all, the original arc was the place of God&#8217;s presence. We&#8217;re told that God is enthroned upon the cherubim in the Ark, and now God has done something greater. He has been made flesh in the womb of Mary.
So it doesn&#8217;t seem coincidental to me that for instance, in Revelation 11 and 12, John says that he sees the Ark of the Covenant in heaven and then immediately begins describing how he sees the mother of Jesus. But if Mary is the new Ark, it makes sense that she&#8217;s completely pure and without sin. After all, the original arc was so holy that when USA touched it, he was struck dead on the spot. That&#8217;s why they get stuck in the hill country of Judea for three months. But the incarnation is greater than the divine presence in the original arc of the covenant. So the sinlessness of Mary seems to make sense, seems to follow. So that approach made sense to me before actually still makes sense to me, and it seems to match up with some of the early Christian descriptions of Mary, for instance, as the New Eve.
But Trent went in an entirely different direction drawing on the work of Dr. Jack Mulder. He argued that the immaculate conception of Mary was actually essential in securing Mary&#8217;s free consent to the incarnation of Jesus. In other words, it was important that Mary be without sin so she could give a free and uncoerced yes to God when the angel Gabriel enunciated to her telling her that she was to be the mother of our Lord. Now, as I say, when Trent originally laid out this argument, I found it unconvincing, but a few things have happened since then that have changed my mind. First was Trent pointed me to the catechism of the Catholic church, which says in paragraph four 90 that in order for Mary to be able to give the freest cent of her faith to the announcement of her vocation, it was necessary that she be wholly born by God&#8217;s grace.
And this idea is linked in the next paragraph to the immaculate conception. Now, that could just mean that it was divine grace that gave Mary the strength to say yes, to say, behold, I&#8217;m the handmade of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. But I had to admit that this gave some more weight to Trent&#8217;s argument. Then a few weeks later, a second thing happened. I was involved in an inquiry session for people with questions about the Catholic faith, and a young woman asked me about the immaculate conception. I answered her argument in the way I ordinarily would, and she didn&#8217;t seem convinced. I pause and then say, I recently heard another argument from Mary&#8217;s Sinlessness. I&#8217;ll let you decide for yourself what you think of it. I laid out the argument to her and it was like a complete light bulb moment for her.
She immediately resonated with it and it seemed to convince her, and that was a moment for me. I realized that I hadn&#8217;t been considering Mary&#8217;s situation from a woman&#8217;s perspective at all. After all, think of some of the news stories that came out from things like the Me Too movement. Many of these were cases in which men like Harvey Weinstein or Louis Cck made unwanted sexual advances to women. But the allegations weren&#8217;t usually that the women had said no. The allegations were that the women didn&#8217;t feel free to say no. So they said yes, but they said yes under duress because they were aware of this enormous power imbalance between themselves and these powerful celebrities. So maybe if you want, you can think of it in a different context. You could imagine a stranger pointing a gun at you and asking politely to kindly donate to their personal wellness fund.
In that situation, do you really feel free to say no? Is that charity or a stickup? So imagine that instead of marrying you have the angel Gabriel approaching a sinful woman, someone deeply aware that God could justly damn her at any moment. How free does she feel to object to God&#8217;s plan to bring his son into the world through her maternity? After all, the threat posed by the prospect of eternal damnation is equal to the strongest imaginable threat. That&#8217;s at the heart of Dr. Muller&#8217;s argument. As I understand it, the relationship that obtained between it&#8217;s between Mary as mother of Christ and God&#8217;s role as father to Christ necessitates a consent free from any coercion on the part of Mary and Mary&#8217;s freedom would&#8217;ve been unavoidably compromised by sin. We can think about that in several different ways because first of all, sin including original sin, darkens the soul in such a way that we don&#8217;t want the good things that God wants for us, this is one of the reasons we need divine grace.
Without the aid of grace, we don&#8217;t choose God. As Jesus says in John six, no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. So all of us need divine grace, and that&#8217;s actually true of Mary as well. She&#8217;s full of grace for her to be able to say yes, she had to be holy born by God&#8217;s grace. I mention this because sometimes people object to the immaculate conception thinking that it means Mary didn&#8217;t need a savior, but that&#8217;s not the case. Rather, it&#8217;s a God predestined Mary in this special way to be saved by grace from the first moment of her conception. You can save somebody from a car accident by pulling them from the wreckage, but be better to keep them from crashing in the first place. In both cases, you&#8217;re saving them. In Mary&#8217;s case, God&#8217;s doing the second one.
He&#8217;s saving her before she falls. So Mary&#8217;s still only able to say yes to Gabriel because as Gabriel reminds her, she&#8217;s full of grace. But it&#8217;s important to understand that God&#8217;s grace is not about overpowering our free will. It&#8217;s about liberating our free will from its enslavement to sin. Think about it like this. The person who&#8217;s not addicted to drugs still could do drugs, but they have a much easier time just saying no than a person already addicted. Likewise, the point here isn&#8217;t that Mary couldn&#8217;t sin, it&#8217;s that her will was much freer than our wills not to sin. Because unlike us, she wasn&#8217;t a recovering sin addict. And so if Mary was either without the divine grace to say yes to God&#8217;s will, or on the other hand, without the freedom to say no to the invitation to motherhood like this, then her freedom would be radically curtailed.
But instead, God gives Mary these tremendous gifts of grace, which enable her to give the free ascent of her faith to the words of the angel Gabriel. So approaching Mary&#8217;s consent to the incarnation this way actually led me to the third thing that changed my mind. Isaiah chapter six. In that chapter, the prophet Isaiah has a vision in which he says, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne high and lifted up and his train filled the temple. The angels are performed crying out Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And you might think for a prophet that seeing God like this would be pretty amazing, but that&#8217;s not Isaiah&#8217;s reaction at all. He panics and he cries out, woe is me for I&#8217;m lost, for I&#8217;m a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the king, the Lord of hosts.
And look, Isaiah is not wrong to react in this way as the book of Revelation shows nothing I pure can stand before God. So the only way Isaiah can withstand God&#8217;s presence is by having his sinfulness purged away. An angel takes a burning coal from the altar and presents it to his lips saying, behold, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin forgiven. Isaiah&#8217;s reaction is the understandable one, and you can find versions of this throughout the Bible, people responding to the presence of God with a holy terror. But Mary responds with a strange calmness. Consider she&#8217;s just been told not only that she&#8217;s going to look upon the face of God, that he&#8217;s going to make his dwelling within her very body. She&#8217;s not like Isaiah seeing God in his heavenly temple. She&#8217;s going to become his earthly temple, and yet she doesn&#8217;t react like Isaiah does, like any of the others. There&#8217;s no note of panic. There&#8217;s simply this docility, this openness to whatever it is God has in store. Behold, I&#8217;m the handmade of the Lord. Let it be to me, according to your word, Trent and I, we&#8217;ve disagreed on things over the years and I think we&#8217;ve learned a lot from one another. I hope I can say that in this case, I&#8217;m actually really happy to be wrong, and Trent was even gracious enough to share his own thoughts.
&#8220;Trent&#8230;&#8221;:
People often ask me who I think the best Catholic apologist alive is, and I always tell them with some hesitation, Joe sme, not because he&#8217;s smarter than me, though he probably is, but because when he walks into a room, people actually want to listen to him. I walk in and folks are like, oh no, here comes the debate club kid again. Joe walks in and it&#8217;s, wow, is this theology or the cover of gq?
Joe:
Yeah, that was definitely not ai. Now, if you want to find out more of why the yearly Christians thought Mary was the New Eve, I cover that right here for Shameless Popery, I&#8217;m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.
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I Was Wrong (Worse: Trent Horn Was Right…)

How (Almost) Everybody Gets this Christian Argument Wrong

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DAY 140
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“Monks and nuns are unbiblical. We don’t see them in Scripture.”
DEFENSE
Yes, we do. In both testaments we see people who take vows to specially consecrate themselves to God.
In the Old Testament, we read about Nazirites. The Hebrew term nazir means “consecrated” or “separated,” and the Nazirites were those consecrated to God by a special vow (Num. 6:2). As a result, they were not to drink wine or use any grape products (6:3–4), they were not to cut their hair but let it grow long (6:5), and they were to abstain from contact with dead bodies, even of their own relatives (6:6–12). There were also ceremonies to be performed upon the completion of the vow, which included cutting the hair (6:13–21). Many Nazirites made temporary vows, but some had perpetual ones. These included Samson and Samuel, who were Nazirites from the womb (Judg. 13:5, 1 Sam. 1:11).
Like modern monks and nuns, Nazirites were vowed to live lives of special consecration to God. The parallel is so clear that in modern (twenty-first century) Hebrew, the word for monk is nazir and the word for nun is nazirah (the feminine form of nazir). Monks and nuns thus are the Christian equivalent of Jewish Nazirites.
In the New Testament, Paul appears to have taken temporary Nazirite vows more than once (Acts 18:18, 21:23–27).
He also describes a first-century order that took a perpetual vow of celibacy: “Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband; and she must be well attested for her good deeds, as one who has brought up children, shown hospitality, washed the feet of the saints, relieved the afflicted, and devoted herself to doing good in every way. But refuse to enroll younger widows; for when they grow wanton against Christ they desire to marry, and so they incur condemnation for having violated their first pledge” (1 Tim. 5:9–12). Paul is concerned that younger widows will be tempted to re-marry and thus break the vow of celibacy the order required, bringing judgment upon themselves. He thus says younger widows should re-marry and have children rather than join the order (vv. 14–15).
Both testaments thus affirm the principle of some taking vows of special consecration to God.
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The Consecrated Life

In this episode Trent sits down with an Anglican priest and a Calvinist to discuss his thesis that Protestantism’s use of sola scriptura can’t unite believers around essential doctrines.

DIALOGUE: Can Protestants Agree on Essential Doctrine?

An interview with Leah Libresco, author of Building the Benedict Option: A Guide to Gathering Two or Three Together in His Name, kicks off our series on living the communal aspects of our Catholic Faith.

Communities of Christians, Part 1

<div>How can we reconcile our view that Scripture is the inerrant word of God when you have verses like Leviticus 20:21 and Deuteronomy 25:5 that seem to contradict each other?</div><div><blockquote>If a man takes his brother’s wife, it is severe defilement and he has disgraced his brother; they shall be childless (Lev. 20:21).
When brothers live together and one of them dies without a son, the widow of the deceased shall not marry anyone outside the family; but her husband’s brother shall come to her, marrying her and performing the duty of a brother-in-law (Deut. 25:5).</blockquote>
On first glance these verses to appear to be a contradiction.  However, reading them together, an equally plausible face-value reading would simply render the second verse an exception to the first verse.
Reading the verse from Leviticus carefully, we see that it is a blanket condemnation of marrying your brother&#8217;s wife regardless of circumstances, whether after a divorce or death.  The verse from Deuteronomy appears to present the one exception to the rule—if the brother died childless—and leaves the condemnation intact in all other situations.
We can see that Deuteronomy is an exception to condemnation in Leviticus because of the emphasis on children in both verses. Leviticus states that the divine punishment for such an action will be infertility. In Deuteronomy, the very reason for marrying the brother&#8217;s widow is to have children with her on behalf of the deceased brother.
The two verses together are not contradictory but rather a simple explanation that a specific action (marrying your brother&#8217;s wife) is forbidden except for one very particular set of circumstances (he dies childless).
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Can Someone Marry His Brother’s Wife or Not?

In this free-for-all Friday, Trent explores the varied roots and offshoots of rock and roll music.
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Transcript:
Welcome to the The Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
&#8220;Everybody&#8217;s talking about the new sound. Funny, but it&#8217;s still rock and roll to me.&#8221; That was Billy Joel. Today, we are talking about musical genres, the history of rock and roll, and it&#8217;s many, many, many permutations into various genres in modern music.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I am your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn. On Mondays and Wednesdays we talk apologetics and theology, but on Friday we talk about whatever I want to talk about. Today I want to talk about a webpage that I found that was really interesting that has cataloged all of the different genres that have branched off from rock and roll music, as well as its precursors. It&#8217;s a really cool webpage. It&#8217;s called 100 Years of Rock in Less Than a Minute.
What makes it really interactive is that it shows a chart showing all of these different genres, how they lead up to rock and roll in the 50s and 60s, and then the genres that play out from that. But you can click on every genre and you hear a little musical sample of the genre, and it has an arrow showing what it came from and the genres that came from it to show the evolution of music. It&#8217;s just a really cool thing to see human creativity, how we build off of the accomplishments and work of others, tweak it and modify it, add our own cultural elements, to present that really unique sound.
Rock and roll has an interesting element to it when it comes to the history of music. There is a video on YouTube called Most Recognizable Song Each Year of the Past 100 Years. There&#8217;s a lot of songs like that that talk about 100 best songs, 100 most popular songs, so they differ a bit, but they get a general sense of the change in music.
When you listen to it, what&#8217;s really fascinating is that when you listen to popular music in the United States, and this is just the United States. Obviously, in England and other places, the music is different. In fact, a lot of our music here in the US came about because of things like the British Invasion. The Beatles come here, the Rolling Stones, British new wave pop, things like that coming to the United States and changing things up. And then we export a lot of our elements of country and other elements of music going around to other places and the creativity continues.
But if you listen to the previous music &#8230; I&#8217;ll play a little bit of this. I&#8217;m really hoping I don&#8217;t get any copyright issues today. I&#8217;m just going to go for it. Let&#8217;s just see what happens. When you listen from 1924 until the early 1950s, the music is just really similar. It&#8217;s all a bunch of crooning, slower jazz ensembles. It has almost a static feel for it for about 30 years. I&#8217;m going to play a few of them. Here&#8217;s Gershwin, 1924, Rhapsody in Blue. Sorry, in the year 1924.
And this is Ben Bernie, 1925. A lot of piano, a lot of rag time. (singing)
That&#8217;s a Tiptoe Through the Tulips. Let&#8217;s see if we have a few other elements here. We&#8217;ve got Duke Wellington, It Don&#8217;t Mean a Thing. (singing)
Ethel Waters, Stormy Weather. It continues on. We&#8217;ve got Bing Crosby. (singing) Then also we get a lot of swing music during this time.
But as you go through the 20s, 30s, and 40s, a lot of jazz, a lot of swing and big band. You go to the early 50s, you still have crooners, like Dean Martin. (singing) 1954, Mr. Sandman. When you think of 1950s music, a lot of times you think of that, like in Back to the Future when he goes back in time to 1955, you hear The Chordettes, Mr. Sandman, which it came out a year earlier.
But then I feel like you have the big change ushering in rock and roll in 1957 with the King, Elvis Presley. That is what changes everything in the US, I would say. (singing) The recent biopic of Elvis, I&#8217;ve seen clips of it, I&#8217;ve heard mixed reviews on it, but it&#8217;s got really good reenactments at least of his early concerts. What made Elvis really successful is that he brought music that had been popular among African-Americans to largely white audiences. There&#8217;s this white southern boy that knows how to shake his hips like nobody&#8217;s business and brings in this new sound for people to hear. You have girls that just start screaming when they see him, how he shakes his hips. But that was a real thing because when you think about rock and roll and the history of it, the precursor to rock and roll tends to be jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie woogie, gospel, as well as some elements of country music.
That was kind of the precursor for that. And Elvis was the one who put a lot of that together and brought these elements in for more of a largely white audience to be able to hear. It was controversial. The phrase rock and roll itself can refer to the fervor in black church and gospel performances, but it was also a slang term to refer to sexual activity. And Elvis, with his hip swinging, really brought a lot of that out.
Going back then to a hundred years of rock visualized, it&#8217;s so interesting. I&#8217;ll play a few of these clips and you see where they all start to come together. To give you an idea of this development of the sound here on the website, and I&#8217;ll play some of it. To see how it grows, you start in the 19th century, early 20th century, which is blues &#8230; just playing the blues guitar. Then that develops more into something like jump blues (singing) and then eventually into rhythm and blues by 1950. That itself is the offspring to rock and roll or doo wop (singing), which itself then turns into more of what you would call beat music of the 60s (singing), and then that develops more into the pop rock of the 70s.
I love this. It&#8217;s a cool website, concerthotels.com, 100 Years of Rock. It&#8217;s all different kinds of genres to see where this comes off and veers off into different directions. Blues, country turns into things like rockabilly and rock in the middle of the 20th century. Rock fragments into all different kinds of rock and sound, which also turns into &#8230; so you have things like blues rock, for example. Which then it is one of the precursors to heavy metal (singing). You get that heavier sound (singing), which then turns into more developed forms of metal music (singing).
I&#8217;ll give you another example. I just think it&#8217;s so neat to see how when you look at a chart like this and you see the genres of music, how there&#8217;s slow incremental changes in the sound. It&#8217;s not these dramatic jumps. It&#8217;s how evolution works, basically. It&#8217;s these small changes over time. We have found the missing links in the evolution of music.
Another one, country and rock really have a lot of kindred elements here, and a lot of that goes back to things like Appalachian folk music (singing). Okay, (singing) so then Appalachian folk would become later in the 1960s folk rock (singing), which then turns more into soft rock (singing) or country rock (singing), in which today in the 90s then turns into more like alternative country (singing). There&#8217;s a lot that you can play with here to see the development of these different genres over time.
That was it. I just wanted to give you a little bit of that. I thought it was really interesting. The other video I&#8217;d recommend is Most Recognizable Song Each Year of the Past 100 Years. As I said, once you get past 1957 with Elvis, it&#8217;s so interesting to see the development of rock into things like the British Invasion, which then turns into more like the 80s bands, hair bands, metal, and then grunge in the early 90s, and then the resurgence of pop in the 2000s. As you get more into the 2015s, later 2010s, early 2020s, we almost have a return. The circle starts to come full turn away from the louder sound of the 80s, for example, or 90s grunge. Remember I said earlier in the 20th century is more individual vocals and solos, crooning, if you will, that kind of makes a return in the 2010s (singing). With things like Adele, for example, in 2015 and other similar genres.
Fascinating stuff. I hope that you enjoyed this. As I said, 100 Years of Rock, visualize, go and check it out, or Most Recognizable Song Each Year of the Past 100 Years. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.
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FFAF: The Evolution of Rock and Roll

Can your temperament shape your spiritual life? In this episode we explore how natural disposition, trauma, and personality types affect prayer, change over time, and whether they’re at odds with providence. Also—can you be a composite temperament?
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