In this episode Trent addresses Redeemed Zoomer’s recent video on supposed Roman Catholic contradictions showing how it’s ultimately self-refuting.
I studied Protestantism for 20 years. . . I’m not converting. (Reply to Redeemed Zoomer)
Christian Wagner On Salvation Outside of the Church
Erick Ybarra on Salvation Outside of the Church
Ending the Icons Debate – Suan Sonna
Understanding the Catechism’s Death Penalty Revision
Did the Church Change Its Stance on Usury?
Vatican II’s Declaration on Religious Liberty
Transcription:
TRENT:
Recently Redeemed Zoomer made a video about 14 alleged contradictions in the historical teachings of the Catholic Church. So in today’s episode, we’re going to go through them and view them in light of what I consider to be Redeemed Zoomer two main arguments against Catholicism. But before I do that, I want to say two things. First, I want to give a big thanks to Redeemed Zoomer or RZ from here on out who reviewed this script to make sure that I understood his arguments before offering my reply. And second, I want to address a gut feeling some Protestants have when they see rebuttals like this one put out online. I feel like some of them have this train of thought. Wow, it took 10 Catholic apologists to respond to some guy who likes Minecraft. They’re in total panic damage control mode. If that’s what Catholics have to do, then this really shows how flimsy their position is.
The fact that many Catholic apologists might respond to a Redeemed Zoomer video or a Gavin Orland video does not mean those videos are a silver bullet against Catholicism. A dozen Christian apologists might respond to an Alex O’Connor video, but Protestants agree it’s annoying when atheists say that the mere number of Christian apologists responding to an atheist means that Christian apologists are in some kind of panicked damage control mode. I’ve created videos that multiple Protestant apologists have responded to, but I would never want Catholics to triumph fully say this fact alone proves I’ve refuted Protestantism. These kinds of videos only show that someone created content that has gotten a lot of views and so it will be prudent to respond to the errors or alleged errors in that content. That’s all. On the other hand, I’ve noticed some Catholics say that RZ is acting in bad faith because he recently said that Catholic arguments are bad or super weak or that Catholic apologists engage in sophisticated cope, but many Catholics think the same way about Protestantism without thinking that they are acting in bad faith.
So why can’t RZ do the same thing? RZ is wrong about stuff, but if you’re a Catholic, just point out where he’s wrong and you no need to get emotional about it. When someone criticizes our faith, we should offer a competent defense, not an emotionally defensive reaction. The latter isn’t helpful reassurance to Catholics and it’s not impressive to non-Catholics who are still on the fence about whether Catholicism is the church Jesus Christ established. Alright, now let’s get into the heart of Ar Z’s argument. Essentially he makes two different arguments in his video. One argument is that the Catholic church has made contradictory, infallibly defined statements of doctrine. If this ever happened, it would falsify Catholicism’s claim to having infallible teaching authority and make the church’s claim to having a divine origin extremely suspect. This is similar to atheistic and Muslim arguments against scripture which say that the Bible contains contradictions and so the text is not inert or it’s not divinely protected from error.
Therefore, we should be skeptical of the Bible’s divine origin. So you could call this the logical argument against Catholicism. The Catholic church has infallibly decreed doctrine X at one time and infallibly decreed doctrine not X at another time. Therefore, the Catholic church is not infallible because it contradicted itself. However, in order to make the logical argument against Catholicism, you’d have to show that the two statements were indeed both infallibly defined to be true because a non infallible teaching could be an error and that fact alone would not falsify Catholicism. The second argument is that the Catholic church has made contradictory non infallibly defined statements of doctrine or practice it’s ordinary teaching. In other words, the church has changed these ordinary teachings or practices over time. If these changes do not involve invalidly defined doctrine, then any single instance of such a change would not falsify Catholicism because there’s no divine promise that these changes or teachings would be without error.
However, frequent examples of such changes might make us skeptical of Catholicism’s trustworthiness or its ability to preserve doctrine. This collection of evidence would provide a more probabilistic argument against Catholicism than a strictly logical argument. So call this second argument of rzs the evidential argument against Catholicism. These two arguments parallel when atheists make logical and evidential arguments from evil against the existence of God. The logical argument from evil says that only one instance of evil is necessary to falsify theism because God and evil cannot logically coexist. Likewise, the logical argument against Catholicism says that only one instance of infallible contradictory teachings is needed to falsify Catholicism because contradictory infallible teachings and the Catholic church cannot coexist. In contrast, the evidential argument from evil says that while God and some evil can coexist, the sheer amount of evil in the world should make a skeptical God exists.
Likewise, R Z’s evidential argument against Catholicism says that while changing non infallible doctrines can coexist with Catholicism, the sheer number of these changes should make us skeptical the Catholic church’s Divine authority. And as I’ll show later however, this evidential argument opens the door for critiquing Protestantism on this issue because Protestants have also changed their teachings. For example, in our previous discussion I pointed out that the Westminster confession that Presbyterians rely on has changed its teaching on the Pope being the antichrist, which is why redeem Zoomer only considers the later version of the Westminster confession to be inert, which means that earlier Westminster confessions contained errors. So you’re saying that the revision that happened in 1789 in the American church, that’s the one you consider to be an errand because it improved upon the earlier one?
CLIP:
Yes. I think the church has the authority to revise its statements because the church is fallible.
TRENT:
So even if RZ were correct about Catholicism changing its non infallibly defined teachings that would not justify abandoning Catholicism because Protestants do the same thing, but as I’ll show they do it to a much larger and much more severe degree that truly compromises important doctrines. But as I said, I’ll save that for later. What I want to do right now is go through these alleged contradictions from AR Z’s video and show that they do not involve two infallible teachings and contradiction, and so they do not support the logical argument against Catholicism. I’ll also show that we can understand these to be authentic developments of doctrine and so they don’t support the evidential argument against Catholicism. And when it comes to the logical argument, keep in mind that not everything a pope or an ecumenical counsel says is an infallibly defined teaching, but only what they say under certain specific conditions like the Pope speaking ex cathedra or an ecumenical counsel solemnly defining doctrine.
And in the case of the Second Vatican counsel, theologians agree it did not make any infallible declarations, so it cannot be used in any logical argument from contradiction against Catholicism. RZ said in his video that Cardinal Dolan and Francis Sullivan say Vatican II is infallible, but I haven’t found any record of these men saying this. In addition, I’m going to present evidence as I said before, that these cases of alleged doctrinal change can be explained as being authentic development of doctrine, and so they do not support R Z’s evidential argument against Catholicism. But I am going to offer this disclaimer before going forward. Many of these issues would require an entire video of their own to address, so I won’t be able to comprehensively or exhaustively address each of these topics. But if you’d like to help us create more videos to be able to do that, hit the subscribe button and support us@trendhornpodcast.com.
My goal instead is to point you in the right direction when it comes to resolving these difficulties. So let’s take a look at them. Number one, no salvation outside the church. I’m also going to subsume point number four on the saving nature of Protestant baptism into this point because they have a fair amount of overlap when it comes to no salvation outside the church. R Z’s first source Unum sanctum probably contains an infallible declaration that those who do not submit to the Roman pontiff cannot be saved. The pap bull ante domino given at the Council of Florence may also be an exercise in infallibility when it says that Pagans Jews heretics and schematics cannot become participants in eternal life. However, the modern documents RZ sites are not infallible in nature. Those documents include the Second Vatican Council, which as I said, did not teach anything Infallibly and the Roman Martyrology, which records 21 non-Catholic Coptic Martyrs who were beheaded by Muslim terrorists in 2015.
Papal canonization are generally considered acts of infallibility, but Pope Francis did not formally canonize the Coptic martyrs. The Roman martyrology contains martyred saints, but it also lists martyred blesseds and martyred individuals. It is not an infallible declaration that someone is in heaven like a papal canonization, and so it cannot be used in a strictly logical argument against Catholicism. The Council of Florence says that martyrdom does not undo the sin of schism if one chooses to remain outside the church. However, if someone is only incidentally a non-Catholic and dies a martyr because they did not resist the Catholic church in bad faith, it’s possible they may be saved. Pope Francis included the Coptic martyrs in the Roman martyrology as a show of unity with the Coptic church, which is why he did this with the consent of the head of the Coptic Church and not as an official teaching about the salvation of non-Catholics, but through acts like these and statements in the Second Vatican Council, did the Catholic church change its teaching or fail to uphold older infallible teachings on salvation?
No, because what has developed since then is recognizing there is a difference between defining the objective means of salvation and acknowledging that God can save a person through extraordinary means as long as that person does not sinfully reject the objective means of salvation such as if they acted out of a kind of ignorance. This has been noted throughout church history and in 1863, Pope Pius I said the following, because God knows searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts and nature of all his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments. Also well known is the Catholic teaching that no one can be saved outside the Catholic church. Eternal salvation cannot be obtained by those who oppose the authority and statements of the same church and are stubbornly separated from the unity of the church and quote, this is a huge topic. I’ve already addressed my previous reply to Redeem Zoomer, which I’ll link below. I’d also recommend this video from Christian Wagner on the subject and this article from Eric Ibarra on Tante Domino, both of which I’ll link in the description. Zi also takes issue with the idea that the only people condemned for non-belief are those who know Catholicism is true and still reject it. He says this stretches invincible ignorance because as he says,
CLIP:
Who in their right mind would know something is true and necessary for salvation and still reject it?
TRENT:
Well, we can ask the same question of those who know certain actions are necessary for salvation and still commit grave sins. People apparently in their right mind do that every day. That means the group of people who know Catholicism is true and still reject. It should not be ridiculed as an absurd hypothetical, however, RZ does make a good point about invincible ignorance. Traditionally, this referred to people who are ignorant of correct doctrine and could not overcome their ignorance on their own Vincible ignorance on the other hand, is quite common and there are many people who hear the voice of conscience telling them to learn more about Jesus Christ or learn more about his church and then they don’t listen to that voice because they know deep down it would be too hard or too risky to follow and they’d rather not do anything and just remain in ignorance.
Vatican two even says that salvation is a mere possibility for non-Catholics, not a probability and says the following, but often men deceived by the evil one, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie serving the creature rather than the Creator or some there are who living and dying in this world without God are exposed to final despair. Wherefore to promote the glory of God and procure the salvation of all of these and mindful of the command of the Lord, preach the gospel to every creature. The church fosters the missions with care and attention. Contradiction number two refers to the alleged contradiction between the authority of the Pope and the authority of ecumenical councils, especially in regard to things like the Western schism where there was a dispute about the identity of the true pope. I’ll refer you to Orthodox video on this subject for a complete breakdown of the issue, but I just want to address one part of R Z’s reply. In his original video, he claimed that the Vatican took an insanely high view of papal authority through the Pope basically acting like a Star Wars villain.
CLIP:
The main issue debated at the council was the infallibility of the Pope. Most members of the council supported it, but to varying degrees in frustration, Pope Pius the I in a Darth city manner declared I am the church and pressured all the bishops who didn’t support his infallibility to leave with the more moderate Bishop Swan. The council took a radical ultra mountainous position.
TRENT:
This makes it sound like Pope Pius the ninth took out his lightsaber and cut down the bishop standing in his way of declaring him being infallible, but that’s not what happened. Even if such a scenario would be pretty awesome if it did happen. In this article summarizing John O’Malley’s history of Vatican one, it says that because of the encroaching war between France and Germany, bishops had begun drifting home so that O’Malley tells us before the final vote in July, nearly a quarter of them were gone. Some left out of frustration, some to escape the war, but most did so to avoid a divisive non plat vote. On the final document, these bishops were called inopportune because most of them did not disagree with the dogma of papal infallibility. They just considered such an infallible declaration to be inopportune and more harmful to the cause of Christian ecumenism.
The majority of the council always favored the proposal so it would’ve passed regardless. Finally, the claim that Pope the ninth said, I am the tradition or I am. The church is incredibly suspect as it only comes from second and thirdhand accounts which contradict each other. As early as 1872, the Roman periodical Las Cica called out this propaganda saying the following, yet, the imp prudence of this singular narrator grows to the utmost when without citing writings or witnesses, he attributes heretical concepts and insulate propositions to some bishops, to cardinal greedy who is challenging papal infallibility with tradition, he angrily replied, I am tradition. I’ll make you profess your faith. Again, a slander full of foolishness for it attributes incredible ignorance to a most learned cardinal and places on the lips of a most wise and humble pope. Words intoxicated with falsehood and arrogance. The most prominent account describing this alleged exchange is from IANA’s Vinger, a German theologian who was a fierce critic of Pope Knife who later went on to be a formative influence of thematic old Catholic church.
Number three, second NAIA and veneration of icons. I have a long discussion of this issue in my response to Gavin Orland, so I’m not going to rehash all of those points here, but I will refer our viewers also to a book published last year by Michael Garten that questions assumptions about the lack of veneration of sacred images prior to the Council of Nsea, especially because of overlooked archeological evidence. RZ even admits this isn’t his strongest argument because it does not involve two contradictory magisterial statements at best. Second Nsea is wrong about the apostolic origins of icon veneration, but even if you believe sacred images came about later in church history, that can be a legitimate doctrinal development. RZ says believing icon veneration develops centuries after the apostles constitutes denying second nyia, but not everything said in ecumenical counsel becomes enduring doctrine or dogma. RZ says, however, Catholics cannot do this because second IIA relies on icon veneration coming from the apostles to justify the practice, but the specific anathema RZ quotes in his video only says it condemns the claim that making of images is a diabolical invention and not a tradition of our Holy Fathers, which doesn’t say anything about icons.
Going all the way back to the apostles and images were a tradition going back to the Patristic age, as can be seen in St. Basil, the greats homily on St. Barham where he tells painters adorned by your art, the mutilated figure of this officer of our army. As I show on my previous episode on the matter, the early church fathers did not oppose icons by citing the second commandment. They opposed it through different philosophical arguments that other fathers disputed. By the time we get to the second council of Nsea, the church saw the need of intervening and restricting those Christians who would tell other Christians paying respect to a sacred person through a sacred image as sinful. For a complete breakdown of this issue of icon veneration and Catholic doctrine. See the video by Swan Saana that I’ve linked below. Number five, has confession always been private.
RZ says that the current catechism and the counsel of Trent contradict each other because Trent in Foully teaches that the following statement is false. The manner of confessing secretly to a priest alone, which the church hath ever observed from the beginning and doth observe is alien from the institution and command of Christ and is a human invention. However, paragraph 1447 of the catechism says in the early church that for some sins penitence had to do public penance for their sins often for years before receiving reconciliation. It then says that since the early middle ages, the sacrament has been performed in secret between penitent and priest. Now this cannot be used for the logical argument against Catholicism because the catechism is not infallible. Moreover, in these discussions people often confuse public acts of penance or sorrow for sin with public confession of the sins themselves. In fact, I have been guilty of spreading the common myth that confession of sins in the early church was done publicly before the congregation mepa culpa mepa.
I now see that there is very little evidence for this position. The first century document that did Ake says in the church you shall acknowledge your transgressions, but that doesn’t mean a person must confess his sins out loud to all the people in the church. Catholics still go to church for private confession and the evidence shows private confession existed long before the seventh century. St. Augustine talks about not wanting to publicly disclose that a person is a grave sinner by turning them away from communion, but this would not be necessary if confession of sins was already done in public, and so everybody knew each other’s sins. That’s why Hubbard and his thesis on this issue says the following, there appears to be no evidence whatsoever in Augustine’s writings to indicate that an individual sins were read out in public. The evidence from writers like Cian in the third century suggest that there was a long tradition of seeking out priests alone and not priests with the entire congregation for the solitary medicine of confession.
The catechism may simply be an error here or it may just be a sloppy way of saying that the assignment of penances, which was done publicly without acknowledging the nature of the sins, requiring the penance that that became private by the early Middle ages and is not about the confession of sins themselves. Either way, this is just a development in how the sacrament is celebrated, not a change in the essential form of the sacrament instituted by Christ who said that the apostles had the power to forgive and retain sins. Such an instruction would entail that sins must be confessed to the apostles so they could decide if they should forgive a truly contrite person or retain the sins of a person who isn’t truly sorry for what they’ve done. Number six is the death penalty immoral. RZ says the main problem here is that older sources like the catechism of the Council of Trent say the death penalty is good, whereas the current catechism says it is bad because it is an attack on human dignity and so it is now inadmissible.
Like the previous argument, this one cannot be used for the logical argument against Catholicism because it involves a non infallible teaching in the catechism. It could be a case that Pope Francis is making a prudential judgment about the death penalty that can be rejected after careful consideration or he was issuing a doctrinal teaching that falls into the rare category of doctrinal errors committed by a Pope. Don and Veda says the following, when it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could happen that some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question, but it would be contrary to the truth if proceeding from some cases one were to conclude that the church’s magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission.
So the catechisms teaching could be a mistaken prudential judgment or it could be a rare mistaken case of doctrine just like a pope in the Middle Ages who is mistaken about the beatific vision and had to be corrected on that later. Though these errors are rare and far between, which is why in some cases of non infallibly defined doctrine, a person could privately struggle with this doctrine. They just couldn’t publicly dissent from it. I’ll leave a link in the description below with an article from Jimmy Aiken describing how someone who doesn’t accept the church’s teaching on the death penalty could respond to their fe... Read more on Catholic.com