Joe and Brayden from The Catechumen review Redeemed Zoomer’s “critique” of St. Frances de Sales.

Transcript:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and I’m excited to share a really good argument from one of my favorite saints responding to a popular YouTuber. I mean, obviously that’s not what he was originally doing, but along the way, I’m joined by one Mr. Braden Cook. Brayton, would you like to introduce yourself and then we’ll get into the tweet, the book, and the response?

Brayden:

Yeah, sure. Well, thanks for having me on, Joe. Yeah, I’m Brayden. I’m the host of The Catecumen, which is dedicated to Catholic and Protestant dialogue, as well as defending the Catholic faith. And I’m very excited because St. Francis de Sales is also one of my favorite saints. And the Catholic Controversy is a wonderful book. If you haven’t read it, you should definitely pick it up. And he also has great devotional works. So you got to Roses Among Thorns, Introduction to Devout Life and things like that. So I’m very excited.

Joe:

Yeah. He also has the Treatise and the love of God. I mean, a lot of saints are famous either for their deep theology or for their kind of pastoral counsel, their spiritual advice and all of that. St. Francis Sales is really known for all of the above. And I don’t know a lot of other saints that check as many boxes as he does, where he does apologetics, he does spirituality, he does deep theology, he does all of these things. But while I am deeply impressed with St. Francis de Sales, he is easily my favorite post-apostolic saint. Oh yeah. That is not a sentiment shared by everyone I discovered recently, including by Redeem Zoomer, who many of you are going to be familiar with. So why don’t you read Redeem Zoomer’s tweet, or I think this is actually Instagram, sorry. And then we can sort of unpack it together because I think he has an interesting take on who Francis de Sales is and what he believes.

Brayden:

Yeah. I don’t know when this posted. I guess it was fairly recently.

Joe:

Yeah. I got people sending the screenshot to me. I never even saw the original thing, but I got it from enough people that it must have existed. You’ll see why people were sending it to me soon.

Brayden:

Yes. So he just read the Catholic Controversy by St. Francis to Sales. He says Saint Francis to Sails. Famous for converting Calvinists back to Catholicism in the 1600s, which that might be why he’s so salty. Sorry, Redeem Zoomer. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I wasn’t expecting his arguments to be this bad. He’s straw man’s Calvinist so much he makes Joe Heschmeyer look charitable and nuanced, which I find that funny because he was defending you against people who were like, oh, Joe wrecked that guy in the debate. I haven’t even watched the debate, but he had high praises for you, Joe, in that solo scripture debate that you just did. So his arguments are literally, one, you have no authority. Two, you deny the visible church. Three, where was Lutherans before Luther? Four, we have miracles you don’t. Five, you guys think the church died.

Six, the Bible isn’t good enough. It’s clear he was either a moron or a liar.

Joe:

So this is even by … Redeem Zoomer seems to enjoy making these really controversial takes that virtually no one agrees with. I don’t know if he’s idiosyncratic in his thinking. I love that he’s reading deep stuff. I wish he had a little more maybe caution when he makes these kind of bold proclamations because they don’t typically age well. I won’t defend my own charity or nuance. I’m happy to just defend St. Francis de Sales. I want to focus particularly, because I know you’ve done some really good work on this, which is one of the reasons I was excited to talk to you about this. On the argument that he very charitably and nuancedly lays out as, where was Lutherans before Luther?

Brayden:

So

Joe:

True.

But before that, I want to address the absolutely outrageous claim that he was either a moron or a liar because literally you can go to Google right now and without any other context, just type in the gentleman saint. Think about the realm of saints who are like famously nice people to begin with. Overwhelmingly, there’s some saltier people in there, but he’s known as a gentleman saint. So this was the, I mean, this is the AI generated automatic response, but you just type in the gentleman’s saint. Here’s what I got. St. Francis de Sales, 1567 to 1622, is known as the gentleman saint for his immense patience, meekness and gentle approach to spiritual direction, embodied in his motto, which is the Latin for gentle and firm. As French bishop of Geneva, doctor of the church and patron of writers, he championed practical holiness for laypeople, famously noting that a spoonful of honey attracts more flies than a barrel of vinegar.

He’s not this straw manning, idiot, jerk, whatever. To say that I resemble him in charity is honestly a compliment I do not deserve. I would probably say he’s also more nuanced. He has really sophisticated arguments. As we’re going to see, Redeem Zoomer either does not understand or is just not charitably interpreting his arguments on where were Lutherans before Luther and why that matters. He has a sort of smug one-liner, but DeSales makes a sophisticated argument I’ve heard no one else make. Like I say, this is a brilliant theologian, but let’s add one more thing because this is something that Zoomer actually points out, which is that he was incredibly effective at converting Calvinists in the heart of Calvinist country, namely Geneva. This is where originally John Calvin, but then his successor, Theodor Beza, was. And so as Lorenzo Garcia points out, this is, I believe it’s actually a theener thesis at Columbia University.

But nevertheless, I mean, another person in their 20s to combat Redeem Zoomer’s views, I suppose, but he actually has a bunch of sources and citations, and he’s just doing basic biography here. So he says that the appointment of Francis as successor to the Bishop Rick of the Diocese of Geneva in 1597 accompanied his prodigious efforts to evangelist Protestants as a missionary in what’s called the Chable, I’m sure I’m nailing that pronunciation, the Chable region between 1594 and 1599, the population of the Chiblet was majority Calvin. So Geneva, if you’re not familiar, is right on the edge of the French Swiss border. So this region, which is where, by the way, FrancisSails is from, it’s really the heart of Calvinism. Southeastern France, Western Switzerland, this is where Calvinism has this real stronghold. So most of the people had become Calvinist by this point. And Theodore Beza is John Calvin’s successor, as I said.

France de Sales tries unsuccessfully to meet with him multiple times. And so he is going around trying to debate Calvinism when they refuse to debate him and they order the Calvinists not to even listen to him. Francis DeSales writes a series of pamphlets like tracks that he can slide under people’s doors because they’ve been legally barred from associating with him and talking with him. And so this is someone who is incredibly charitable. I mean, this is a guy who literally, at various points, he and another priest were preaching. And because the people were also told they couldn’t offer them quarter, in the middle of winter, they are sleeping in trees tied to the trees so they don’t fall out and tied to the trees so that wolves don’t kill them because they’re in the woods. And this is the guy who is literally risking his life to reach Calvinists while the Calvinists are just refusing to engage with him or talk with him at all.

And the results are incredible. Regem Zummer talks about him doing this in the 1600s. Even before then, by 1597, there were an estimated 14 to 15,000 Calvinists who had converted in the area. And even today, there are more Catholics than Calvinists even in Geneva now. I mean, he massively undid a lot of the Calvinist’s stronghold, him with a few other missionaries and other supporters. I mean, I’m not saying all of this was individually Francis de Sales, but I want you to just think about this. Redeem Zoomer’s argument is, oh, he doesn’t understand true Calvinism. He’s arguing with Calvin’s personal successor. He’s arguing with the Calvinists of Geneva, and he’s making arguments that are convincing enough to them that they recognize that he has defeated their theological views and they’re converting back to Catholicism. So there’s this kind of, that’s not really Calvinism argument that certain Calvinists make where every time you show, “Hey, look, here’s this problem with Calvinism.” It’s just, “Oh, well, you must not understand Calvinism.” We have every evidence to believe this brilliant theologian and apologist understood Calvinism.

He himself and his youth, like young 20s, struggled with the idea that he might be reprobate. He has a treatise on the love of God. He gets into a lot of the underlying theology that was controversial within Calvinism then as now. It’s absurd to say he is either uncharitable or that he doesn’t understand Calvinism and he’s just unnuanced. The evidence simply does not support that kind of conclusion. Because as I say, if you want to read a wonderful book, The Catholic Controversy, it’s dated a little bit in terms of the language. It’s 16th century, so some people are going to find it difficult as a read. The actual arguments are brilliant. So one of them, the where was Lutherans before Luther won. What Francis Sales actually says is, but as for your church, it is called Everywhere Huganot, Calvinist, heretical, pretended, Protestant, new, or Sacramentarian.

Your church was not before these names, and these names were not before your church because they’re proper to it, meaning that Protestants aren’t called like the church, they’re not called the Catholic church. But also there was no such word as Protestant. The Calvinist, it was not a term anyone had ever heard of in the first 1500 years of the church. This is a very basic, very obvious point. What does this mean then? Well, he says, nobody calls you Catholics. You scarcely dare to do so yourselves. Because right, you’ll find people who will be like, “Oh, I’m Catholic, just not Roman Catholic.” And it was silly that it’s silly now, and only those people do it. If you ask a normal person, Christian or non-Christian, “Hey, where’s the Catholic church?” No one’s going to be like, “Well, I think that must be the Prosbyterian church because they’re the real Catholic.” No one misunderstands what the term Catholic means, except the people very devoted to not understanding what the term Catholic means.

And so then he says, “The name of religion is common to the church of the Jews and of the Christians and the old law and in the new. The name of Catholic is proper to the church of our Lord.” That you go back to the writings of Ignatius and he’s referring to the Catholic church. He doesn’t refer to the Protestant church, doesn’t refer to the Calvinist church, obviously. So the fact that you can’t credibly be identified as that church by anyone other than yourself should be a big red flag. That’s a simple, clear, straightforward point, but it has some implications. And one of the implications that Francis DeSales draws out that I have not seen anyone else do as effectively is the implication for authority because I know you’re going to talk about one of the dimensions to this, what a radical break the early Protestants were from the church that came before them for 1,500 years.

And I’ll let you do all of that part. But the bit about authority, and I’ve tried to use a version of this argument before, but I need to just make an episode on maybe this is that, maybe this is that episode. Desales talks about this principle that you have to have authority to preach. And so we see this very clearly laid out in Romans 10 where St. Paul says, “And how can men preach unless they are sent?” That’s verse 15. But it’s not just there. This idea that you have to be sent is illustrated really beautifully in Acts 15. Now, I’m going to give just a little bit of a walkthrough of Acts 15, and I just want to highlight the difference between the two sides, the Catholic side represented by Paul and Barnabas and the Judaizer side represented by people who’d come down from Jerusalem.

And I want you to be mindful of the language because the chapter begins by saying, “Some men came down from Judea.” Notice they’re not sent down, they just came down and they’re teaching the brethren, unless you’re circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved. And so Paul and Barnabas debate them, and then Paul and Barnabas and some of the others were appointed to go up to Jerusalem. So there’s a very obvious parallel there in the first two verses. Some men came down, Paul and Barnabas were appointed to go up. Now you might be saying, “Well, I think you’re making too much of that. Read on. ” And the next verse, it says, “So being sent on their way by the church, why does Luke stress this over and over again? Because these guys don’t have authority to be preaching their false doctrine because they were not sent by the church.

Paul and Barnabas, who a lot of Protestants imagine, Paul and Barnabas is these kind of wild cowboys who don’t care about the institutional church and just do their own thing. No, they are sent by the church. So then in the next verse, when they came to Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church. But then some believers who belong to the party of the Pharisees rose up. So again, you have the churches giving approval to Paul and Barnabas. They’re sending them, they’re approving of their message, and then the Judaizers just rise up on their own pretended authority. This is a recurrent theme throughout, especially Acts 15. You then have the Council of Jerusalem, very obviously the church stepping in in an authoritative way, and they send a letter making clear that the Judaizer heresy is a heresy and saying, I’m jumping all the way down to verse 24 here.

“Since we’ve heard that some persons from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us in assembly to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul maneuvers their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and silence. “So he goes on. I mean, it’s just so incredibly clear that in order to preach and teach, you need the approval and sending of the church. You can’t just make yourself pastor. You can’t just make yourself shepherd of the sheep. And this is also clear in places like Hebrews eight where it talks about the high priesthood and says,” And one does not take this honor upon himself, but he’s called by God just as Aaron was. “Now, think about the high priesthood. This is going to be a helpful way of understanding the way authority works.

It either works directly or it works through the body. So God calls Aaron directly, the voice of God, Aaron is called. But then from that point on, the sinding happens in what’s called in a mediated way, immediate authority, that the people of God from a top down perspective then call the high priest. So Aaron then has successors. Those successors are not individually called with some kind of voice of God moment they don’t claim to be, but the calling is still from what’s essentially apostolic succession, but not apostolic. You have this priestly lineage. You have a priestly line, but his origins are in this direct calling by God. So if someone is going to say that they have the authority to preach, Francis’ point is that you have to either be called by God directly or called by those who were called by God directly. And so that’s going to be the foundation of the idea of apostolic succession.

And the idea that everyone who is sent is either sent directly by God, and then he points out they can prove it with miracles. If you’re claiming God called me as his prophet, you should be able to show signs and wonders demonstrating, you should be able to prophesy, you should be able to perform healings, you should be able to do all these things, or we know you were called by God because someone who we already know was called by God called you.

Francis says,” Finally, that which is less is blessed by the better, “as St. Paul says, and he’s referring to Abraham Melchizedek there, and then he uses that to say,” The people then cannot send the pastors. The pastors are greater than the people. The mission is not given without blessing. For after this magnificent mission, the people remain sheep and the shepherd remains shepherd. “And this is an obvious point, but one that a lot of people miss. No one in the early church is congregationalist. No one in the early church has a view that the shepherd is chosen by the sheep. That’s simply not how it works. The people don’t choose the apostles. Christ, the king chooses the apostles. They then choose a successor from Mathias. They then are the ones who appoint bishops and elders, elders, deacons. They’re the ones doing all of that. There is this top down authority.

And this is founded in this theology that the greater isn’t blessed by the lesser. So you don’t choose the people who God has put in authority to lead you or else you’re in control of them. And this is a functional pastoral problem that we see even today. If the people choose and can replace the pastor, the pastor’s ability to actually lead is limited because if he says something controversial, they can be like, ” Actually, we’re going to replace you. “And so the relationship of shepherd and sheep gets totally inverted. Brendan, I know I’m going super long here, just by the way, but you jump in anytime you want.

Brayden:

I could add

Joe:

Because- Yeah,

Brayden:

Please. It reminds me when St. Paul constantly talks about this gift given to Timothy through the laying on of hands, right? Yes.

Joe:

And

Brayden:

So in one Timothy chapter four, he’s telling Timothy,” Command and teach these things. Don’t let anyone look down on you, whatever. Going down, until I come to vote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to preaching and to teaching, do not neglect your gift, which was given to you through prophecy when the body of elders laid their hands on you. “That’s right. And so these responsibilities and rights of preaching and teaching the doctrine to the church is given to Timothy through the laying on of hands by the elders. And so that shows immediate, immediate mission. And you were talking earlier about, oh, your church doesn’t have miracles, but our church has miracles. And the reason why we say that is because when God gives an immediate mission such as to a prophet or the apostles, he accompanies that mission with motives of credibility so that not everyone can just claim,” Yeah, well, God told me to go do this.

“He literally told me in a vision and a dream to go do this. So how do I know that? Well, he accompanies that new immediate mission where God directly ordained someone to do something with miracles so that everyone knows,” Oh, well, this guy comes from God. “And so that’s the reason for we have miracles you don’t, because if you’d expect that if God was going to do something new that would require that the Protestants to break from receiving immediate mission, which is through the line of successors, then God would ordain that and give miracles to that new immediate mission.

Joe:

Yeah. Well said. Exactly. I appreciate you unpacking the why you need the miracles and everything. Because if Luther is called to basically found the reorganized church of Christ, like if there’s a great apostasy and he’s the prophet sent to build the new Christianity, this is the Joseph Smith thing. It’s not enough that Joseph Smith says,” Trust me, I totally saw a vision. “He should be able to perform clear miracles. So similarly, if Martin Luther, if your understanding of Lutheranism and Protestantism more broadly is the church fell into total apostasy, the visible church had no more authority, then you’re going to need apostolic level miracles at least because you’re claiming there’s this bold new covenant. Returning to France to sales, he says it’s necessary that the sheep should receive the shepherd from elsewhere, meaning they don’t just call by their own authority. Even in Act six, I’d point out when the people choose the seven deacons, they don’t become deacons when the people choose them.

They have to receive the lay on of hands from the apostles. So still authority is given in a top down way, not bottom up. And so FrancisSell says,” The people are not able to give legitimate mission or commission to what he calls these new ambassadors, meaning the Protestant reformers. “But I say further that even if they could, they did not. It isn’t as if Martin Luther and John Calvin were chosen by the people and they said,” These guys just stood up on their own authority and started preaching new doctrines. “And then he makes a very clever point. He says,” Well, for this people was of the true church or not. If it was of the true church, why did Luther take it there from? “In other words, if Luther’s congregation, if the church in which Luther grew up was the true church of Christ, then why did you break from the church?

Would it really have called him in order to be taken out of its place and out of the church? On the other hand, you could say,” Well, no, the church Luther grew up in wasn’t the true church. “He says,” Okay, if it were not of the true church, how could it have the right of mission and a vocation? Outside the true church, there can be no such authority. “Because you can’t say,” Yeah, Luther grew up in an apostate church and an apostate Catholic church, and he still has authority because the apostates ordained him and gave him a mission to preach. “You are actually cutting off your own authority if you attack the Catholic church because his authority to be a priest is only rooted in the authority of the Catholic church to ordain priests. And so if you say the Catholic church can’t ordain priests, this whole theology of priesthood is nonsensical and false and everything else, okay, then Luther has no authority either from the Catholic church or from anyone else.

He is simply sent by himself. It’s a very clever argument. As he says, if we say this people was not Catholic, what was it then? It was not Lutheran, for we all know that when Luther began to preach in Germany, there were no Lutherans, and it was he who was their origin. Since such a people did not belong to the true church, how could it give mission for true preaching? So this is why the no Lutherans before Luther point is really sound because it not only shows you’re introducing a wild novelty, I think a lot of people have made that argument, but he makes a very biblically tight argument that, and by the way, you actually need to be able to show that you’re coming from the true church with authority to be able to be a preacher. And if you are going to point to Luther’s authority from the church, you have to, one, say that the church has the ability to give and also revoke that authority, and then you’re stuck in a catch 22.

Either the church never had the ability to send him at all, ... Read more on Catholic.com