Why I Disagree With CSL's Stated Case on the Subject of Becoming Catholic (I was aware of the quotes in the video before converting)

Why C. S. Lewis didn't become Catholic (even if everyone thought he would become one)
Gospel Simplicity | 2 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXsyqFRVIh4

2:44 "Orangeman" ... Tolkien's "Ulsterior motives"

6:34 He was somewhat prophetic about "John Paul II" in 1990, who changed the profession of faith after I had already converted.

I just said:

"whatever the Catholic Church believes, teaches and proclaims as being revealed by God, that I believe and confess" ...

The Catholic Church obviously believes that all of the faith was given before the death of the last Apostle.

This means, in order to reach as high a bar as "proclaim to be revealed by God" it obviously has to be at least one side in a longstanding quarrel, it cannot be an obviously new invention.

Back in 1944 it was:

Besides I accept, without hesitation, and profess all that has been handed down, defined, and declared by the Sacred Canons and by the general Councils, especially by the Sacred Council of Trent and by the Vatican General Council, and in a special manner concerning the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. At the same time I condemn and reprove all that the Church has condemned and reproved. This same Catholic Faith, outside of which nobody can be saved, I now freely profess and to which I truly adhere, the same I promise and swear to maintain and profess with the help of God, entire, inviolate and with firm constancy until the last breath of life; and I shall strive, as far as possible, that this same Faith shall be held, taught, and publicly professed by all who depend on me and by those of whom I shall have charge.

However, "John Paul II" in 1990, well after 1963, changed the profession of faith, adding to a basic repeat of above also:

Moreover, I adhere with religious submission of will and intellect to the teachings which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium, even if they do not intend to proclaim these teachings by a definitive act.

In other words, what CSL was afraid of ...

Seriously, adherring to Jesus meant for the Apostles to adher not just to what He had already said, but what He was going to say. If one believes a man is the vicar of Christ and enjoys His assistance, that should, per se, be no problem, especially with above mentioned safeguards (one reason I do not believe "John Paul II" was Pope).

7:52 Jesus was telling the woman to give His Mother the compliment She preferred.

Bad exegesis, CSL ...

7:59 St. Paul on exactly one occasion in the epistles showed an attitude which many (not least in the West) have stated as being an "attitude to St. Peter" (others further east say that the Cephas in Galatians 2 was called Cephas, because he was different from the Peter in Galatians 1, that being St. Peter).

8:05 There seem to be semantic reasons in Matthew 26:26 against Consubstantiation.

There is no case at all for Symbolism-Only or for Spiritual Presence of an actual Body.

9:21 I'll take that as a less than endorsement of Vatican II, and as a compliment to Mgr Williamson, who died earlier this year.

I think he was buried in Canterbury.

Balázs, Greta, You are Both Wrong

First, the names mean Blaise and Margaret, for those who don't know Hungarian (I had to look Balázs up) or Swedish (I have met people who don't realise that Hans means John).

Orban Aide MOCKS Greta For ‘Failed Gaza Mission’ | Greta SLAMS Hungarian Govt Over ‘Ban On Love’
Oneindia News | 29 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRSeq2m8fQY

Dear countrywoman, the sin of Sodom is not an adequate expression of love.

Our countrymen Jonas and Mark can never both be actual fathers of the same person. They could be actual grandfathers of the same person, if Amos were marrying Miss Lewengood. But perhaps they have ruined that by raising them as siblings.

Most valued neighbour along the Danube (I'm as Viennese as I'm Swedish), Greta's voyage was a very glorious failure, if one at all.

Suddenly everyone was talking about starving Gazawis, and if Israeli or Israeli friendly media showed pictures of non-starving Gazawis, well, each Potemkin village is an occasion for Gazawis not to starve./HGL

Second Half of Video, I Made Parallel Observations.

Christine Niles on Recent Events and Others · C. S. Lewis and Anscombe agreed on this · Second Half of Video, I Made Parallel Observations.

Ukraine, Palestine, Iran and Just War
Shameless Popery | 26 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZOPPj_hQQE

19:26 "the state has ... you don't have that permission"

Correct about the violent response after the aggression is already over.

While a man is being aggressed, he has the right to defend himself, possibly according to the law of God (and St. Thomas makes a natural law argument this is so) and certainly, even if the law of God didn't grant it per se, it grants the right to avail oneself of self defense laws in place ... "according to the laws of the emperors" as the specific Church father said.

Note, if you have heard a certain story about me, not sure you have, not sure you haven't, on the occasion, I was NOT seeking vengeance for an aggression already in the past, I was just learning from the past what kind of aggression it was, and what my chances were to get things straightened out legally, and was then in my mind justified in self defense on a renewed occasion of aggression.

20:49 You have a miniature enumeration of institutions here that are included in "every human institution" ...

Psychiatry doesn't fit the bill.

CPS don't fit the bill.

School compulsion doesn't fit the bill.

21:08 And also, if the civil authority encroaches on the rights of someone other than God to determine things, like the adult person himself (under the laws) or the parents, that other than God is also not obliged to give up his rights.

So, if the civil authority tells a man he needs to see a shrink or a parent she needs to give up custody or send a son to a boarding school, resisting either of them in any way available is perfectly licit.

27:37 Not just against someone trying to kill, but also against someone trying to maim or enslave.

But thanks for admitting there is a right to self defense.

31:19 C. S. Lewis disagreed on number 3, which it seems in his time was being introduced by Catholic Theologians (his words, he could have been simply unaware of earlier Catholic theologians).

And as he was from Ireland, he had a fairly good reason to do so. He considered this one impossible to know.

Easter Rising of 1916, in and of itself, had no prospects of success. In Dublin, 1000 to 1500 persons at most took arms against England.

Nevertheless, as we know with hindsight, the Easter Rising was highly successful. It triggered a repression that showed the administration was simply paranoid about Irish nationalists.

Pádraic Pearse did more damage to the union from his gallows than he did with his rifle. As we know, Éire is its own state, not under the English Crown, no longer in the Commonwealth.

Pádraic Pearse couldn't do it on his own, he just had massive help from Lloyd George. Among other things, targetting Sinn Féin which at the start of affairs was hoping for a Double Monarchy, giving Ireland a status parallel to that of Hungary. And absurdly enough targetting Sinn Féin as German agents.

So, CSL (I forget which context) had a point that point 3 cannot be a criterium, since it is unknowable. Unknowable things can't serve as criteria.

35:48 Vivat Cascia!

My own three state solution with shared territory would have involved Jerusalem as under international jurisdiction, because important to all three states.

The Christian, the Jewish and the Muslim ones.

With shared territory ... as you may recall from a certain chapter in LotR, specifically FotR, there is no frontier between men and hobbits in Bree, but each side stays mainly to itself.

With three separate jurisdiction (operating all from the river to the sea), in the case of a conflict between two states or citizens of two states, one could and should ask the third to broker.

38:27 For instance, if someone (a belligerent) is hiding under a hospital, it would obviously not be right to bomb the hospital?

38:45 "they did in fact succeed" ... not very easy to know prior to Al Alamein and the German loss of Stalingrad.

Are you saying the invaded countries were waging unjust war any time between September 1939 and 1943?

Hence, CSL's point. A reasonable prospect of success would seem to be a non-criterium. Unlike, obviously, the part criterium you mentioned, namely having a criterium for when one has won. War on terror, war on drugs, war on immigration are too amorphous, because what one is fighting is not one given army.

41:36 And if the one engaging in just war commits war crimes, the war that was originally unjust may become a just war of defense against such war crimes.

That's pretty straight from City of God.

46:14 Contrary to Rosmini, he made an excellent case against a One World State.

Did Harald Bluetooth in 945 Still Want Revenge for Verden? Probably Not?

The SHOCKING reason why the VIKING raids began
Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen | 28 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StJ0BcKwzYI

Before I hear the video, I think I have heard it before, was it about the felling of Donar's oak or about the Frankish reprisal in Saxony? Both persecution of Widukind (who I think ended up Catholic and even a saint) and toppling of Irminsul?

2:18 Sure, along with Norway, Prussia, Estonians, Curonians and Livonians, Saxons were one of the peoples who were Christianised by force, in the Norwegian case from the king, otherwise from the outside.

Finland is a more complex case, one story repeated itself:

• part of the Finns were Swedish subjects (possession or in one case protectorate) and Christian
• other part were Pagan and attacked the Christians
• Swedish Christians took more land

But in a sense, the Saxons are not alltogether unlike the Finnish example, since Charlemagne's decision in 772 came after 100 years of Frankish Christians being harrassed by the still Pagan Saxons.

back then Christianity was forced upon people. 3:10 Christianity was not seen as a force of good. It was seen as a force of subjugation and control. 3:22

And Germanic (Saxon or Norse) Paganism was somehow NOT a force of subjugation and control?

And subjugation and control was not seen as, up to a point (like becoming a slave was not good for the man becoming a slave) as good?

When you state that subjugation of peoples under a common ruler and his rules and control over the subjugated people was NOT a good thing, like automatically not good, not just because it was on occasion abused and bad for that reason on that occasion, you are basically appealing to a certain fringe movement within Christianity, which in English are variously called Radical Reformation and Evangelicals and in Nordic countries Frikyrkliga.

A Christian back then (as a Catholic now) saw and sees a Catholic state as an ideal, given that Jesus told His disciples to make disciples of all nations (i e collectively, including state and government), not "people from all nations" as the Watchtower Sect mistranslate. Note, in the absence of a Catholic state, we still have a duty to convert individuals, see Mark, but in Matthew, the scope is clearly nations.

But the Pagan was not an individualist. He could of course decide to worship Thor or Odhinn or Frey personally, like Hravnkel Freysgode, but he could not neglect an actual vé or the sacrifices that were supposed to take place there if under his responsibility. And they did not tolerate the presence of another public worship either. If you check on the conversion of Riga, the Livonians were actually killing missionaries to stop the mission.

In the case of Odhinn, the cult was very much about subjugation and control, and Ynglings near a "lund" un Uppsala (now Older Uppsala, inside the Uppsala municipality) would every nine years sacrifice nine men there, and they would also make sure to expand. You know why the Ynglings came to Norway, via Wermland? One Yngling was just a bit too expansive, his name was Ingjald.

5:49 I'm not sure how much North Africa was involved in slaves caught by Vikings ... I took it, Christians who were enslaved would land in Scandinavia and become ancestral to later Scandinavians in part. Don't Norwegian and Danish redheads go back to Irish slaves?

If you are right, where is the documentation?

Christians in mainland Europe obviously documented Vikings had taken people. Vikings didn't document. So, is the documentation North African and only recently accessed?

6:19 Thank you for the admission.

So, in 900, a Viking raid on England, Ireland or France was not about revenge for Irminsul any more?

But your story about Irminsul or the Massacre of Verden provoking the Viking age, what about earlier Saxon raids?

Die Sachsen, die in dem Gebiet zwischen Nordsee und Harz bzw. Rhein und Eider siedelten, waren schon den Merowingern teilweise tributpflichtig gewesen, aber nie deren Untertanen. Auch hielten sie an germanischen Traditionen fest, wozu nicht nur die Religion und ein eher loser Stammesverband gehörten, sondern auch regelmäßige Raubzüge auf fränkisches Gebiet. Ob Karl zunächst nur diese Raubzüge unterbinden wollte oder von Anfang an eine Unterwerfung, Christianisierung und Eingliederung der Sachsen in das Fränkische Reich geplant hatte, ist historisch nicht gesichert.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachsenkriege_Karls_des_Großen

Probably, after a century of raids, the latter.

8:07 Keeping land under one lord, subjugation and control, through primogeniture?

Vikings were often younger sons who couldn't get their own land. Later on, people in that position would often become clergy.

8:30 Sure, but eventually Christians were better at fighting back than Amerindians.

9:52 Yes, indeed. Canute as he's called in French and English won England. For a time, later Danish rule was ousted by another Viking who won, or rather his descendant. And by 1066, Danes around Rouen were so mixed with Gallo-Romans that the Normans weren't exactly Danes and also didn't speak Old Norse.

But Canute and Rollo had a thing in common with Clovis. They found out Christians aren't necessarily racists, they can accept a foreign ruler to some extent, but they are confessionalists. A Christian population (which we are unfortunately running out of) is lots easier to rule if the king is Christian too.

10:21 I would add two factors.

1) Norse rulers became Christians and as such were somewhat less prone to plunder fellow Christians.
2) Christianity gave another outlet for younger sons. Clergy instead of going into Viking.

11:14 Isn't it still (even if you might avoid the term) Sankt Hans in Norway?

Thank you, best wishes for Sts Peter and Paul ...

King James is Dreadfully Wrong in Matthew 6:7

And incidentally, some Protestants give me a vibe of insincerity, if it is not incompetence, or possibly the insincerity masks as incompetence.

If 2 Bibles say different things can they both be God's words? - Is this important?
Waimak Bible Chapel | 26 June 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBEqLu7_lM0

Have you checked out the Protestant mistranslation in Matthew 6:7?

Geneva Bible, Bishops' Bible, KJ, perhaps a few more Protestant ones.

Waimak Bible

@WaimakBible

Hi I have looked up all the Catholic translations I can find and in this verse they agree with the KJV. Which Catholic translation disagrees and why? Catholic translations generally look similar to Protestant Bibles so that people don’t notice the important differences. Thanks for your input😀

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@WaimakBible N O ...

Here is King James:

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

By contrast, here is Douay Rheims, the classic English language Bible of the Catholic Church, Challoner revision:

And when you are praying, speak not much, as the heathens. For they think that in their much speaking they may be heard

I'm not speaking about the "but" vs the "and" but the difference between "use not vain repetitions" and "speak not much"

Here is another Catholic nearly as Classic one, Father Ronald Knox:

Moreover, when you are at prayer, do not use many phrases, like the heathens, who think to make themselves heard by their eloquence.

There is a clear difference between repeating one phrase and using many (different) phrases.

Here is a footnote he made on the verse:

The very rare verb which our Lord uses here probably means to ‘stammer’, to ‘hesitate’. The heathens used to address their gods by a series of titles, with the superstitious idea that the prayer would not be heard unless the right title was hit upon.

And I can confirm this, no Greco-Roman pagan had anything like the Rosary or the Litany or the Jesus prayer, but you can look up Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, book II, last chapter, where the author concludes the work with a prayer to the gods and does precisely exactly what Father Ronald Knox described in the footnote.

Tom Schmidt PhD and Sean McDowell on Testimonium Flavianum

My first comment is after a reading of an English translation of TF, before Tom Schmidt comes in. The rest involves gratitude or minor nuance to what Tom Schmidt says.

Breaking: The Earliest Non-Christian Testimony to Jesus may be Authentic (Josephus)
Sean McDowell | 27.VI.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwyFaJcapcI

0:15 Miracle working is not affirmed in the Testimonium Flavianum.

"Wonderful works" is in the original "paradoxa erga" and could from a non-Christian, even a denier of the miracles, refer to things like eating without washing hands or the two cleansings of the temple.

As to "was the Messiah", note the tense. I think there is a Jewish tenet that in each generation there is a claimant to the throne of David, a potential Messiah, so to speak, and that Josephus was saying a thing like "yes, he was the Messiah, but he missed the chance" ...

As to "appeared on the third day" could be a reference to what Christians believed, not necessarily sth that Josephus wholeheartedly agreed with.

Also, a text in the OT says Samuel appeared, and not all exegetes agree this was actually the soul of Samuel in Endor, some say even on this occasion the witch conjured a demon. Josephus need not have been taking sides on this issue.

I looked up the Greek text in D M Murdock (on Academia), and she makes an affair of the two negatives, saying they protest against someone else, whom Josephus didn't name. But Josephus could have simply referenced the test of Gamaliel. If he knew about the test, and if he knew in context that other Messianic claimants were returned to nobodies, a kind of footnotes in history, he would have noted the contrast.

27:04 5500 hapax legomena within the corpus flavianum?

29:11 Ah, you do mean a Christian edited out "was thought to be" as offensive, in not the Latin, not the Syriac, but the Byzantine or Greek reception of the text?

My own hunch back when I came to debates on the subject would have been "he was the Christ according to ..." (insert derogatory description of Christians).

And that phrase was then considered too offensive and was edited out.

44:42 Phainetai moi kenos isos theoisin ... Sappho doesn't state the bridgroom of her former protégé (to which she was still ssa) IS the like of the gods, she just saying that's how it seems to her in her present state of mind.

Yes, thank you, I hadn't noticed myself, but Josephus uses the same verb.

48:55 Josephus sounds a lot like Cicero saying things like:

"I was mentored by ... " no, I'll give the Latin paragraph:

Q. Mucius augur multa narrare de C. Laelio socero suo memoriter et iucunde solebat nec dubitare illum in omni sermone appellare sapientem; ego autem a patre ita eram deductus ad Scaevolam sumpta virili toga, ut, quoad possem et liceret, a senis latere numquam discederem; itaque multa ab eo prudenter disputata, multa etiam breviter et commode dicta memoriae mandabam fierique studebam eius prudentia doctior. Quo mortuo me ad pontificem Scaevolam contuli, quem unum nostrae civitatis et ingenio et iustitia praestantissimum audeo dicere. Sed de hoc alias; nunc redeo ad augurem.

(Laelius de Amicitia)

Jews in the day of Josephus were imitating Roman nobility in being highly snobbish about social connections, and this is to be expected from idolaters who had just said "we have no king but Caesar" ...

50:09 Obviously Hanan Ben Hanan would know he hadn't been able to end Christianity by killing St. James the taller.

To whose tomb I went in 2004. Pope Leo XIII has authentified, yes, St. James really, after being killed in Jerusalem, was buried in Galicia, Spain.

As a good fan of homeschooling, I have obviously also noted that his successor Joshua Ben Gamla was the first to oblige Jewish boys to a school system still used today. Meaning, the Holy Family was NOT under this obligation decades earlier, meaning Our Lord presumably was a home-schooler and He is once basically taunted with it, probably at a time when schools were already prestigious, but not yet obligatory.

And the Jews wondered, saying: How doth this man know letters, having never learned
[John 7:15]

50:39 Tom, the French priest Jean Colson in 1968 published a thesis, named l'Énigme du disciple que Jésus aimait.

In it he states that John the Beloved had "worn the golden head band" so, he was not one of the twelve, a lesser rank of disciples, but potentially at least very high ranking as an OT priest.

Do you think the text of Josephus could help to figure out who of the Cohens St. John the Beloved was?

My hunch is Theophilus Ben Hanan, since "whom Jesus loved" according to very clear Johannine theology would be the same as "whom God loved" = "Theophilus" ...

51:44 Two questions.

1) Is Hanan ben Hanan the high priest John who's facing John of Zebedee in acts 4?

And Annas the high priest, and Caiphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest
[Acts Of Apostles 4:6]

2) Apart from the absurd shilly-shallying of first being a disciple and hosting the Mother of God, then being a persecutor and then going back to being a disciple, is there something that precludes that Hanan ben Hanan was John the Beloved?

That would be one explanation of why he didn't write Christian literature before the Jewish war.

Dan McClellan on Palestinian Origins — I Provide a Small Correction

On This One, Dan McClellan is Right · Dan McClellan on Palestinian Origins — I Provide a Small Correction

Are Palestinians the real colonizers?
Dan McClellan | 18 oct. 2023
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJG0Jc0ER3w

3:04 Could the Assyrians have meant Beduins and the Beduins have been Israelites?

Obviously the Assyrians were NOT speaking of "speakers of Classic (or later) Arabic" ...

4:19 These ancestors were furthermore the same populations up to c. 33 to 70 BC.

Ancestors of Palestinians worshipped in the Second Temple or on Mount Gerasim.