Answering Jayni Jackson

The One Question That Shuts Down the Catholic and Orthodox ‘Authority’ Trap
Jayni Jackson | 16 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02FmU-NfmkE

3:05 Seing he had already done that once before, at the beginning of His Ministry, the priests certainly had thought of that.

9:38 "every Christian has a mandate to read the Bible for himself"

From Jesus or from Luther?

10:11 So glad you asked.

Under the authority of Moses. For instance Deuteronomy 13.

I'm not sure whether a representative of the Sanhedrin was among the Beroeans, but the duty of them to reject a false prophet is parallel to that of stoning a false prophet.

So, the Beroeans acted under the authority of the Old Law.

10:18 If the Pope should ever teach heresy, under the authority of Pope Paul IV and a few more we should conclude he is no Catholic and therefore no Pope.

There are also Church Fathers and ultimately Jesus for this move.

Now, a counterquestion. If I can detect an otherwise apparent Pope as teaching heresy, is it by contrast with what daddy heard in Catechism more than 60 years ago, or is it by contrast with what a highly learned man dug up as the Bible really meaning, even if no one ever heard of it, despite everyone reading the Bible, or what that highly learned man assures us the early Church did before Constantine?

10:39 No Catholic will say you have no right to believe the Bible.

The question is whether you have the right to interpret it.

If you say things like Ephesians 2:8 to 9 prove, not just justification without previous works meriting it (which we also believe), but also without an obligation to works from justification on, we could ask "who gave you authority to omit verse 10?"

If you say things like Matthew 16:18 having Jesus as the rock, we could ask you "and who gave you authority to omit verse 19?"

If furthermore we say Matthew 16:19 is a clear parallel to Isaias 22:22 speaking of Eliacim, and you respond "nah, Peter and Eliacim are two different persons" we could ask "who gave you permission to interpret the OT as if it were not about Jesus?"

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him
[Luke 24:27]

Did you note: "in all the scriptures"? ... all of the OT is about Himself.

Including the relation between the House of David (=Jesus Himself) and Eliacim (can you find a better candidate than Peter?)

10:51 You are aware that Beroeans were at that point not yet Christians?

11:13 An Apostle's teaching "was tested by the very word of God"' by people who had not yet accepted his authority as an Apostle.

This is not a blueprint for how Christians should behave to their pastors ...

11:24 F. F. Bruce is not an Apostle. Nor someone the Catholic Church accepts as a legitimate successor of them.

And, in this context, not someone that I see as very well analysing the situation of the Beroeans.

11:34 If what you are doing is discerning simply from the Scriptures you accept whether you should become Catholic, fine, you are following the Beroean model.

However, what it seems to me you are doing is looking for excuses to reject Catholic authority, which reminds me more of how some groups of Pharisees were dealing with Jesus.

Like "Beroean model" vs "Catholic model" ... won't fly. Bad excuse. While examining St. Paul they were not yet accepting him as authority, but they were open to it. They were like any Jew today asking if Catholicism fits the Torah ... and some conclude it does.

12:06 The dilemma you have painted falls apart.

Current Church teaching indeed has a standard to live up to (so, higher). 1) Bible. 2) Oral traditions codified in post-Biblical times. 3) Past Church teaching.

Biblically, whatever is the true Church has an assurance that this will not fall apart into contradictions. Matthew 28:20.

12:46 Found the quote:

5. But, as I had begun to say, let us not listen to “you say this, I say that” but let us listen to “the Lord says this.” Certainly, there are the Lord’s books, on whose authority we both agree, to which we concede, and which we serve; there we seek the Church, there we argue our case

St. Augustine is not arguing for indivudual Bible reading to decide individual belief. He's arguing to take a schism to the Bible, the one authority both parties claim to adher to.

A little later he goes on to warn against churches or interpretations found only in some nationalities:

But if the Church of Christ is delineated among all peoples with divine and most certain evidence of the canonical Scriptures, whatever they should bring to bear and whoever should read it should say Look! Here is the Messiah! Or, There he is! Let us rather hear, if we are his sheep, the voice of our pastor saying Do not believe it (Matth. XVIV, 23). Indeed, those individual churches are not found among many nations, where that Church is; but this Church, which is everywhere, is found even where they are. Therefore, we seek it in the holy canonical Scriptures.

Like if you go to Ethiopia, you are likier to find Catholics and Copts than Protestants. If you go to Austria, you are likelier to find Catholics and Protestants than Copts.

13:12 "not just to the clergy"

No, but principally. Timothy is selected as clergyman because he is expert on OT Scriptures. He's instructed on how to chose clergy:

Holding the mystery of faith in a pure conscience And let these also first be proved: and so let them minister, having no crime
[1 Timothy 3:9-10]

There are two criteria. Faith (to be judged by ordaining or consecrating bishop). Pure Conscience (to be judged by ordaining of consecrating bishop).

13:24 "the Beroeans weren't rabbis"

Did rabbis, as a distinct institution, even exist?

They were however Pharisees, i e students of the law, like Paul himself had been. They were not fishermen from Galilee.

14:15 No, there is nothing about either right or responsibility of weighing every single teaching of someone you already accept as your legitimate pastor ... unless you have reason to doubt he is such.

The key point is, Luke is describing the behaviour of Beroeans prior to becoming Christians, prior to accepting Paul as their authority.

The way you put it, it sounds as if Paul came in, held a speech, and then Beroeans at home verified. If that had been the case, how would Luke have known they verified? He obviously knew because they voiced the test criteria. "OK, but does this really match up with ...." and Paul answered.

This was not an ordinary occasion, it was a missionary one. Same problem that Sabbatarians have with the text, they think Paul worshipped mainly by preaching in the Synagogue. No, he worshipped at Holy Mass, on Sundays. He preached on Sabbaths, because he was a missionary. They voiced objections, because it was his duty to answer objections as a missionary.

14:44 "my allegiance is to Christ, and to Christ alone"

Can you source that in the Bible?

15:43 The Beroeans were pretty close to at least first year theology students and they were at the point described not being faithful to Jesus Whom they hadn't accepted yet, but to Moses.

16:04 When they consulted the Scriptures, it is very arguable they also consulted the Oral Torah, as still not yet adulterated among them by rejection of Christ, as it was going to be.

17:24 They discerned under the authority of Moses.

17:35 We should reject a heretical office holder or apparent holder as not Catholic and not office holder, on the authority of the teaching of the Gospel as it came down to our fathers within living memory.

If everyone within living memory in the Catholic Church had been decidedly Heliocentric, I would have no right to stay aloof from an apparent Pope who in 1992 said "Galileo was right" which he wasn't.

Fernand Crombette was Geocentric and Young Earth Creationist, and he died in 1970, two years after I was born. No one was telling him "no, you can't" ... because no such outrageous decision was taken prior to 1992.

So, I reject Wojtyla for 1992 bc Fernand Crombette is within living memory and because no previous Pope in an official statement adressed to all the earth's Catholics had come out as decidedly either Heliocentric or Old Earth. Pius XII did come out as Old Earth in 1951, but only in a document adressed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

[Comments posted after this previous one are invisible under the video.]

18:51 No, when I belong to Jesus, I'm already beyond the stage of the Beroeans who were at that point only disciples of Moses.

Jesus did NOT ask us to believe Him without any human institution as evidence, if human means consisting of human beings and visible in human affairs.

If Jesus told Apostles to teach all peoples, He expected all peoples to hear the Apostles. Not just critically, while deciding, but uncritically once they had decided.

He that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.
[Luke 10:16]

I am a convert. My confirmation sponsor was a convert. His confirmation sponsor was also my friend, and his reason for converting was :

How then shall they call on him, in whom they have not believed? Or how shall they believe him, of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear, without a preacher And how shall they preach unless they be sent, as it is written: How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, of them that bring glad tidings of good things
Romans 10:14-15]

In other words, we are NOT just supposed to believe Jesus because Jesus, but because credible human testimony which comes through the Church and refers to the Church.

19:56 "we all need reformation at some point"

We don't all need reformation at the same point in time. When Rome was as corrupt as Luther saw it (after that, St. Filip Neri is counted as Third Apostle of Rome), Cardinal Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros made sure that Toledo was not corrupt.

When Poland needed cleansing from Lutheran errors, Rome was already OK again (one ancestor of Lewis XVI on the side of his Polish ancestors became a Lutheran, his son became Catholic again).

20:17 "who are the Beroeans to test Paul's word?"

So far, while doing so, still un-Christian.

20:36 In some cases one can.

As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction
[2 Peter 3:16]

Note that in the previous words, St. Paul was not supposed to be scrutinised according to the OT (St. Peter was not adressing Beroeans before their conversion), but adherred to:

And account the longsuffering of our Lord, salvation; as also our most dear brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, hath written to you
[2 Peter 3:15]

— Yes, but Romans 2:4 is different, that's Scripture!
— OK, how were they supposed to know it was Scripture if no one told them?

This by the way confirms that Peter was writing to Romans, he was near the Tiber, not near Euphrates.

But the point is, the easiest way for Romans to know the Epistle to the Romans was Scripture was, because Peter said so.

20:46 Can you point to any Pope prior to John XXIII doing so?

By the way, when Daniel cites Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus as adoring the true God, are they using the tetragrammaton name, or is Daniel interpreting their use of Nebo or of Ahura Mazda?

Just in case you should find one.

21:20 He is certainly not teaching obvious Catholic tradition.

The Catholic position would normally be, the Muslims have a correct philosophical grasp on what God is, but not a correct theological grasp on Who God Is.

22:05 I think pretty much all of your video has been challenging Catholicism on credentials instead of truth claims.

So, the question, why do we challenge your credentials can be answered: how do you know you are not one of the unstable and unlearned who twist the Scriptures.

If any Catholic would like to ask me that, I'd answer "I checked with Aquinas and Church Fathers on essential or doctrinal points, I just provide technical solutions" ....

24:18 As you asked for challenges, feel welcome to mine!

---

De Unitate Ecclesiae: On the Unity of the Church by Augustine
on the site Semper Reformanda
https://www.semperreformanda.com/de-unitate-ecclesiae-on-the-unity-of-the-church-by-augustine/

Une vision de la Création et du monde antique conforme aux Livres saints
Le savant de Dieu FERNAND CROMBETTE Un catholique français
https://ceshe.fr/loeuvre-dun-catholique-francais-fernand-crombette/

Also available in English: just click the button English (UK) or English (US) whichever you are more familiar with, and it will translate without changing the URL. If on first click it shows in your language and you would want to check the French, click the button Français.

I Actually Did Go Over This Argment Back When Converting

Where was your Church Before Luther? (Richard Field, Baptist Trail of Blood)
Gian The Baptist | 21 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZaJRngnOJg

0:46 You are aware that the Council of Trent is available online in English translation by EWTN or by Papal Encyclicals?*

Would you mind going to the session on Justification and tell me where Trent dogmatises "justification by works"?

I'll give you canons I, XI, XXI, XXXI as a sample:

CANON I.-If any one saith, that man may be justified before God by his own works, whether done through the teaching of human nature, or that of the law, without the grace of God through Jesus Christ; let him be anathema.

...

CANON XI.-If any one saith, that men are justified, either by the sole imputation of the justice of Christ, or by the sole remission of sins, to the exclusion of the grace and the charity which is poured forth in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and is inherent in them; or even that the grace, whereby we are justified, is only the favour of God; let him be anathema.

...

CANON XXI.-If any one saith, that Christ Jesus was given of God to men, as a redeemer in whom to trust, and not also as a legislator whom to obey; let him be anathema.

...

CANON XXXI.-If any one saith, that the justified sins when he performs good works with a view to an eternal recompense; let him be anathema.

3:02 So, Apostolic times "necessary doctrines" and no local Church successfully imposes an addition that's an error.

Corinth and Galatia are rebuked, so their errors do not spread, they accept the rebuke and return to truth. This part we agree on.

Some post-Apostolic times, prior to the Reformation, "necessary doctrines + accumulation of erroneous additions" and after that, Reformation, a concerted attempt to rid the Church of these erroneous additions ....

There is a certain ambiguity of wording here. Or at least of implications.

Do the erroneous additions actually contradict the necessary doctrines or not? If they don't contradict them, how can we determine they are errors and wouldn't stamping them as errors add a layer of unnecessary, though possibly true, doctrine? If they DO contradict them, how can we say the Church accepting them was, prior to the Reformation, still the Church? Which is the exact object of the question you and Field intended to answer?

3:14 Was relatively new, compared to the accumulation that preceded it ...

OK, you don't have someone making an error in 1978 and it immediately gets denounced by people already not recognising him as Pope?

Again, if the "accumulation of errors" wasn't hurting the necessary doctrine, denouncing it as such was adding un-necessary doctrine. A schism for nothing.

If it was, then "necessary doctrine" had in the meantime disappeared and this makes the Reformation as Religion, not a simply old but rather a old, gone, renewed one.

3:22 The Church which was in existence, was made pure once more

Impossible, about the Church universal. It's certainly possible about a local Church, because a pure Church exists elsewhere in the meantime. For instance, while Galatians were going astray, Rome was pure.

This is the meaning of the where part of the question Where was your Church Before the Reformation?

The Catholic polemicist certainly got "yes, we see that you consider Papal Rome was recent centuries NOT pure" ... the question just becomes, "so, which Church was pure?" Not previous to, but contemporary to Papal Rome "accumulating errors" ...

3:34 You are doing two things.

1) You are substituting a metaphor for an argument;
2) you are basically admitting the "truths of the Reformation" constitute health restored not health preserved.

The problem is, I can see what health and death are in doctrine, but I can't see what illness is, other than pure neglect. An active promotion of error and this getting universally accepted is not bad health but actual death.

You are basically again making the claim, and how unfortunate for Richard Field he was not debating Catholics over the internet, he was also (if you are now giving his position correctly) making the claim that the Reformation was a resurrection. Or that at one point, as to things on earth, it would have been correct to consider your religion as one which was, and is not, and yet will be

OR you are avoiding it by pretending the "accumulated errors" were not mortal, after all.

3:46 It's enough for the question that ONE Church as it is today was the Ancient Church, and that it DIDN'T go away.

We get what you are saying. The Ancient Church, on your view, is NOT Papal Rome. The Pope in 1418, Gregory XII, and the Archishop of Prague in 1405, Zbyněk Zajíc of Hazmburk, were on your view NOT the ancient Church. Our question in reply doesn't presuppose they or their successors were and are.

So, it didn't continue in 1405 to Prague or 1418 to Rome and Constance. Where then did it continue in 1405 and 1418?

4:30 Thank you very much for rejecting Trail of Blood.

It is an historic error, Donatists and Culdees and Albigensians never shared doctrine so as to be different successive or local names of one Church (and Culdees were actually Catholic, unless you would prefer classing them as Eastern Orthodox or Copts, Patrick arriving a bit earlier to Ireland than Chalcedon or the quarrel over azymes).

But James Milton Carroll had the merit of actually seeing the problem. His offered solution is a false one, but because he gets the facts wrong.

5:04 Yes, similarily** Richard Field, the one who died 1616, not the Jesuit who died in Dublin 1606, also used to fly before the arguments could be contradicted on the internet.

8:44 Richard Field is pretending that:

a) prior to Luther, some damnable doctrine was just present locally and individually;
b) but (arguably) that since Luther, unfortunately most of the Latin Church dogmatised a damnable error.

So, what damnable error would that be?

"Justification by works" is not dogmatised. See Trent Session VI. Indulgences and Purgatory and prayers for the dead already were dogmatised, they were reaffirmed by the Council of Trent.

Here*** is Lateran IV:

Catholics who take the cross and gird themselves up for the expulsion of heretics shall enjoy the same indulgence, and be strengthened by the same holy privilege, as is granted to those who go to the aid of the holy Land.

You don't grant an indulgence if you don't believe in Purgatory.

9:05 to 9:44

If they reply 9:07 that that church was theirs and not 9:09 ours, for that the doctrines they now 9:11 teach and we impugn the ceremonies, 9:13 customs, and observations which they 9:15 retain and defend, and which we have 9:16 abolished as fond, vain, and 9:18 superstitious, were taught, use, and 9:21 practice in that church wherein our 9:22 fathers lived and died. We answer, "Then 9:25 none of those points of false doctrine 9:27 and error which they now maintain and we 9:29 condemn were the doctrines of that 9:31 church constantly delivered or generally 9:33 received by all them that were of it, 9:36 but doubtfully broached and devised 9:38 without all certain resolution or factly 9:41 defended by some certain only,

This is simply false.

If he meant Purgatory, it was constantly taught. If he meant "justification by works" it was not taught by Trent and is not taught now.

If he meant Lordship Salvation (in a different style from Evangelicals, to be sure), it was dishonest of him to classify it as "justification by works" ...

10:05 When he parallels Corinth, Galatia, Pergamus and Thyatira, he forgets these were local Churches, which could be reformed from the Universal Church they were part of, wherein others did not share their errors.

When he claims (of presumed abuses) this:

it is true that they were in the Church wherein our fathers lived, but not without signification of their dislike of them, and earnest desire of reformation

he acts as a bad historian, conflating different things.

• Rome was, what Luther witnessed it as being, and after Luther's time, Rome received the Reformation actually needed and wanted from St. Philip Neri, who counts as "third apostle of Rome" (after Peter and Paul);
• he cherry-picks individual dissent (and most of it he could probably find in favour of Kings rather than Popes ruling diverse national churches);
• he pretends that dissenters who were condemned and seen as condemned as heretics were voicing a more general opinion of the Church.

This makes the treatment of Jan Hus in Prague and Constance very hard to explain.

When it comes to other rejections of Transsubstantiation, Jan Hus still believing a "physical" real presence, some of it depends on Albigensians denying Jesus was God in physical human flesh, like some very extreme views among Evangelicals depends on His having ceased to be so, His "resurrection body" (I dislike that term) being "a purely spiritual" one ... (which wasn't born of Mary nor Crucified).

11:22 to 11:35

11:23 It had been a vain challenge for the 11:25 stiff maintainers of errors and abuses° 11:27 to challenge the reformed party for 11:30 novelty to ask of them where their 11:33 church was before this reformation 11:34 began.

It wouldn't have occurred to them, because whoever answerd would very easily have said "in Rome, for instance"

Also questionable if there even were "stiff maintainers" especially united in some kind of church.

11:59 I would say that very briefly, Judaising became a common doctrine in Galatia.

St. Paul adresses the whole Church with "who has bewitched you" ....

I think it was rooted out and the false Cephas (probably not Peter) exposed and penitent so that it was forgotten even sooner than it had entered that Church.

TAKING A PAUSE HERE

* General Council of Trent: Sixth Session
Celebrated on the thirteenth day of the month of January, 1547.
DECREE ON JUSTIFICATION + DECREE ON REFORMATION
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/trent/sixth-session.htm

** The speaker made an excellent point about Trail of Blood. I echo his wording.

*** Lateran IV
Constitution 3 On Heretics
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum12-2.htm#3

° Richard Field, read by Gian The Baptist is still talking of local errors in the Church of the First Century and featured in the Bible.

Danny Faulkner Believes in Heliocentrism, but NOT ETs, is That Inconsistent?

Many Christians are Wrong about UFOs and ETs
Answers in Genesis | 19 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhnN1VkXG7M

10:10 You are aware that part of the pull for the Heliocentric shift was the appeal to ET's?

Kepler's Somnium, after which Lutherans accused his mother of witchcraft after which he was pretending, "no, that was just an allegory" ... but when I was a child, one man arguing Heliocentrism to me was appealing to inhabitants on planets or exo-planets and their non-Tellurian pov.

10:31 "Began to realise" ... on arguments like Copernicus' (in modern language) "spirographs are such ugly things, God would never allow Venus or Jupiter to move in spirograph patterns" ...

27:27 It is probable Eden's top soil and plant life was at the Flood transferred to Venus, and God makes it inhabitable for the two witnesses up to when they return (arguably they are Henoch and Elijas, and given how Jerusalem is currently pretty Sodom and Egypt, they might return here soon).

Crich Leslie

@Crich_Leslie

Why Venus?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Crich_Leslie "third heaven"

@Crich_Leslie Or third heaven could be Mercury, in that case it could be Mercury.

Sharing on Islamic Dilemma

New blog on the kid: Otranto · Understanding the Crusades / Phillip Campbell · Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Sharing on Islamic Dilemma

Muslim Accidentally ADMITS the Quran is CORRUPTED
Sips with Serra | 18 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1H0YirfQAo

A Reflection on St. Maria Goretti and Ven. Alessandro Serenelli

How Mercy Transformed a Murderer | FORWARD BOLDLY #mercy #grace
Christine Niles | 14 Jan. 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbLwfROrwiM

I have a devotion to Venerable Penitent Alessandro Serenelli.

Like Padre Pio, he died a little after I was born.

0:53 And the execution of the election of the elect is sometimes aided by the prayers of the saints.

Like Jacob was elect, and in order to get to Heaven, he needed to be born, but his birth was aided by the prayers of, I think Rebecca, his mother, and again, in order for Alessandro Serenelli to be in Heaven, he needed to convert, he did so as the obvious fruit of 24 hours his murder victim spent offering every wound and pain and tear for his salvation. Dear St. Maria Goretti, pray for us!

9:30 Would any of this have happened, whether extreme poverty or Alessandro getting porn in train stations, if Nettuno had still been under the Papal States, as 33 years earlier?

20:13 When Maria said "yes, I want him to be with me in Heaven forever" her purity was already saved.

She actually fought him first.

There are people that as late as yesterday I don't think I was saved from ...

Do Murderers Need to Turn Themselves In?

What happens when someone confesses a murder?
Catholic Answers Live Clips | 16 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMfnisVtnSM

4:50 In such a case, two things.

1) The priest could ask the murderer to turn himself in if someone else is credibly accused.
2) The penitent could at least earlier times have both taken the blame and not turned himself in, nowadays there is Interpol, so that's less of an option. Still could apply in some cases.

So my original 2, now third thing:

3) If the justice system is likely to frame innocent people just because someone has to take the blame, the murder case has to appear solved, perhaps neither priest nor penitent owe that justice system all that much respect, and what other innocent man gets framed that's on the corrupt justice system, not on the murderer. Now, in my one, I would make an exception to this if someone else is credibly accused. If the absence of confession to police by the murderer means someone else has to hear (reasonably) "OK, you say you are innocent, but the evidence looks very damning." But only if this is reasonably. Not if it's because of too loose a relation with the concept of "evidence beyond reasonable doubt" ...

Steven

@Steven-d8n8x

Nothing confessed in the confessional can be revealed, nothing no matter how heinous it is. You can offer all kinds of scenarios, but if you are inquiring about releasing information from the confessional......NO!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Steven-d8n8x Thank you very much, but I was not speaking of what the priest can reveal (i e zero), but whether the priest can ask the murderer to reveal ... as the priest in this video seems to have thought.

It would be a very rare case. Both a very good penal justice system and a good likelihood of an innocent getting the blame and getting convicted. Not very usual.

A Short Attack of an Auto-Authenticated Canon

What better way than to attack the defenses in an equally "short defense" by Michael Kruger and Michael Horton? Here it is, and below it are quotes or allusions with my answers:

A Short Defense of an Auto-Authenticated Canon
Sola Media | 12 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSd9oC4QM74

Even by the middle of the 7:27 second century, we have about 22 out of 27 of the books well established and wellreceived by 7:33 the church. So the idea that you need a vote or you need a council or you need a decision is just 7:38 simply out of sorts with the way the books emerge. They emerged naturally organically as God's people 7:44 recognized uh God's voice in these books and they were authorized for for public reading 7:49 in the church.

What does "God's people" concretely mean? Specifically, since the Christians (inside the Catholic Church) were millions, what kind of decision making on what part that could humanly speaking decide was done?

"God's people recognised" ... when the "people of the US" decided on "We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union ..." it was concretely the Founding Fathers. Paul Revere was perhaps consulted on an earlier occasion, but his opinion, if ever given, is not recorded. The guys in Boston who threw down tea into Massachusetts Bay did not write those words.

Howeversomuch organically resistance against the British parliament and Taxation without Representation bore fruit in the War of Independence, Gouverneur Morris wrote the sentence "'we the people" ... and he did so as attending the Constitutional Convention of the United States.

8:50 Now you are speaking of these books, basically one by one.

Yes, Christians recognised Apostolic or close-to-Apostolic authorship and at the same time God speaking through the texts.

However, I would say, in each case, a hagiographer was both authorised to write the text and to give its authentification. Unless a higher one was given ... by St. Peter. II Peter basically alludes to there being a canonic list of Pauline epistles, which he, Peter, was endorsing. Clement the Stromatist says, Peter was asked to authorise Luke, read variously from Luke and Matthew which he already had, and added some own comment, and so inadvertently (at least at first) made Mark believe he was dictating a Gospel. Then he authorised in this order Mark and Luke.

So, an agreement that Jude was canon was maybe with St. Jude, enjoying his authority as Apostle, or maybe with St. Peter, enjoying his authority as the first Pope.

It never "arose organically" in an amorphous and impossible way, like how Romantics like Johann Gottfried Herder imagined that Muß i denn prior to Philipp Friedrich Silcher arose out of literal masses with no single lyricist or composer at any stage. On the contrary, if there was no overall single composer and lyricist, there was at every stage one.

And just as there was a composition (though perhaps so far not on note paper) prior to Silcher, there was a canonisation, either by Jude or by Peter, of Jude, prior to the 4th C. decisions on all 45~46 + 27.

And it was not an emergent one.

9:08 "the canon wasn't voted on, it was recognised"

It was as a totality of 27 books recognised 382 in Rome, 393 in Hippo, 397 in Carthage, and each time by an actual vote.

9:44 No one has said that the decisions of Rome, Hippo and Carthage for the canon as a whole doesn't depend on a previous tradition for each of the books.

Received? Sure. Something already true? Sure. But I'd very much challenge the idea that St. Clement of Rome ever wrote of 27 books or of having received, not only each, but all of them as a package.

You could argue that Rome in Italy and the two cities in and near Tunisia represent the middle of East and West and received assurance for each disputed book from one of the surrounding sides. But this only means that if a decisive vote had instead been held in the East, it would not have held Apocalypse or in the West not Hebrews (that being hypothetic, since we don't know the exact location of the Muratorian canon). So, again, it comes to a decisive vote.

10:04 The Catholic Church very explicitly dogmatises that the books did not become inspired by being so recognised by the Catholic Church.

In other words, that the canonisation is a recognition of something already true. You are attacking a straw man.

10:30 Each hagiographer was part of the Church.

The twelve were the most high-ranking members of the Church. Before I and II Peter were god-breathed as books, Peter was god-breathed in John 20 and in Acts 2.

Whether Jude or Peter authenticated the Epistle of Jude as canon, they did so as high ranking members of the Church and their decision was recognised by the Church for this reason.

Note, Peter, Matthew and Jude clearly were among the twelve. Mark, Luke and Paul clearly weren't. Whether James is James of Zebedee or James the Brother of God, whether John is John of Zebedee or "John who wore the golden headband" (i e a Cohen) is disputed. Three of the hagioagraphers were not as such authenticated by being god-breathed as Church in John 20. Perhaps one or both of the last two. Even if all of them were at the point of their writing recognised as Apostles, this was obviously by recognition by the twelve, or whether some were not recognised as Apostles (highly probable for Mark and Luke) their role as hagiographers also depended for recognition on the Church.

So, even if you go back to the inspired writing itself, you need a recognition by the Church. You will not find any of the holy writings buried down in the 1st C and then dug up centuries later, like certain golden plates of a certain sect. They were each recognised by at least part of the Church before John died (if dying is the best description). Whether other parts forgot later or whether other parts hadn't heard the full picture, there was still a need for further action from the Church. The one taken in the late 4th C.

10:51 "In a smokefilled room ..."

Much as Tolkien would have appreciated the idea of pipeweed grown in pre-Columbian times in the Old World, it would seem that Nicotiana tabacum and its use in pipes arrived into Europe well after the 4th C. councils, more like 1000 years later.

11:09 How does writing with authority and writing authoritative books for the Church contradict?

The authority that St. Paul time and again explicitly assumed over recipients was mostly that of Church planter (Corinth and most of the rest) and three times as ordaining bishop or consecrating bishop, like Justus of Canterbury had over Paulinus of York or like Drogo of Metz had over Ansgar. In other words, the explicit authority as hagiographer is an authority that pre-existed the writing as authority in the Church.

By contrast, St. Luke is not explicitly assuming authority any more than the author of I Maccabees, when he writes his books. He is narrating the facts after stating he would try to narrate the facts, and it is very arguable someone above him (like Peter in the account by the Stromatist) decided with authority that he had succeeded.

11:22 So, either they wrote with an authority assumed by the inspiration or they had no idea the Church would later canonised their books. False dichotomy. Tertium datur.

St. Paul already wielding authority wrote that authority into his books. St. Luke was writing with an explicit search for approval of an at least intermediate authority.

11:46 So, St. Peter, the First Pope, authentified the Pauline epistles. Perhaps Hebrews was missing on the occasion.

And St. Paul authentified St. Luke, apparently? A reference would be useful.

Hence, clearly at least some of the non-Apostle hagioagraphers of the NT received authentification from a higher CHURCH authority in their lifetime. Probably all.

12:05 Again, you are adressing a strawman. The 4th C canonisations are not the first time each book is recognised as canon, but the first time the whole collection is. Along with, note well, a 45~46 book OT collection (depending on whether a book, probably Baruch, but I've also seen Lamentations, is counted as part of or separately from Jeremias).

By the way, I Tim 5 need not cite Luke as on par with Deuteronomy, St. Paul could have cited a well established targum in the Jewish tradition which was also cited by Jesus in Luke. But which the student of Gamaliel would have known independently of Luke. Though, no doubt, having it from Jesus' mouth would have added to its authority. The words "Scripture saith" could in that case encapsule an authentification of Jewish oral teaching as correctly paraphrasing the words in Deuteronomy. Overall, it's probable that St. Paul was referring to Gospel of Luke, but it's not certain.

But if it was Luke, not only Peter (as the story goes in Stromata) but also Paul had higher authority in the Church than Luke and could thus authenticate.

12:17 As a Catholic, I agree. As soon as the book is received by someone with authority in the Church capable of authentifying a lower or recognising a higher authority, that book has status of canon.

But that was not for all of the books universal tradition in the Church afterwards. And the decision on these 4th C. Councils was not independent of tradition, but deciding what traditionS to rely on, in the cases of conflict.

13:03 "because you didn't have bishops yet"

Where do you get that from, even?

Protestant reconstruction without basis in the Bible. The first twelve bishops obviously had another name. That doesn't mean they weren't bishops. So were some other groups with special names. While these specificities were dying out, the general name was sought and found in the LXX version of a psalm cited in Acts 1.

Τὴν ἐπισκοπὴν αὐτοῦ λαβέτω ἕτερος.

13:20 "It's not a hierarchic polity"

Did Jesus set 72 out of the rest of His discples, 12 over these, Peter over the 12 and then the 12 also chose 7 deacons? If that's not a hierarchic Church polity, what is?

[tried to add]

I wonder if one would be so incoherent even from cannabis ...

14:55 "there was no unified polity structure"

This is not what "everybody knows" but what every Protestant assumes. However, I've already dealt with the canon, so I end here. Yes, each book was originally canonised well before 4th C Rome, Hippo, Carthage. But it was so by an already extant polity structure which was already hierarchic.

"Identifying False Mystics" ... Is the Duty of a Bishop, Not a Shrink

Check out a certain similarity:

Identifying False Prophets and Mystics Videogram
American Institute of Health Care Professionals | 13 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_WNCfuY3dA

Would you mind telling me, if American Christian Health Care Professionals have me on a watchlist on this kind of suspicion?

I claim that young earth creationism and geocentrism hold true. That "John Paul II" to at least "Francis" are probably not true Popes. That we probably live in the end times, that part of what Trump is doing (to immigrants) or planning to do (to homeless) is Antichristian, that he is not the Beast, as his gematria is not 666 in any version of his name I can spell so far, that a candidate on that account would be Putin, that earthly Jerusalem is already spiritually Sodom and Egypt, that Enoch and Elijah have not already come, but will. Oh, in the context of YEC, that Babel was (Genesis 10 and 11) in Göbekli Tepe (or perhaps Karahan Tepe) and that the tower describes a rocket project, where a take-off would have failed, while God's decision to confuse the languages gave Wernher von Braun a chance. Nearly everyone on earth had already forgotten Nimrod, and the few Hebrews who hadn't (later the many Catholics who haven't) were thinking in terms of a skyscraper.

Now, what I do most certainly NOT claim is being a mystic, or getting these informations from God or the Blessed Virgin or other saints, except by the means of Providence, just as Providence made me come across the info that Albigensians really were not Christians (Umberto Eco, Name of the Rose, never saw the film, got the book at age 16 as Christmas present and on New Year had decided to convert.

The kind of discernment you propose, the kind of watchfulness against abuse that you propose, is so easy to abuse, and is very probably by some being abused. I could have had my work in print 2009 if it hadn't been for this sort of thing, and instead I'm still impoverished and homeless despite 13 000 + blog posts, a lot of which are essays that could immediately be put into print commercially, and another lot of which are dialogues that could be put into print as soon as you get a clearing from other participants.

If I'm not off the street, it's not because I'm waiting for God to give me a sign to start earning money instead of writing, I'm waiting for guys, probably like you, to allow my writing to be a gainful work, as it was for Chesterton, as it is for Trent Horn or Jimmy Akin.

If you find the positions I enumerated so absurd, you don't even look for a possible rational argument about them, you just find them a symptom classifiable as delusion, I consider you a representative of the Scarlet Beast. If a Catholic clergyman bows down to your assessment or caution, should such a thing be the case, or that of someone like you, instead of asking himself whether what I said was heresy or could on a Catholic dogmatic view be correct, then his bowing down to you makes him part of the Harlot. Clergy should have Christ, not Communism, as the Bridegroom of His Church. And what you would in such a case be doing would be Communism, not Medicine. My mother was a Med. cand. and Intern, I know the difference between what she did, and what certain colleagues did to her, by a professional or personal interest in Psychiatry.

You pretend to be health professionals? Then the question of false prophets and false mystics isn't your concern. You are not bishops or theologians.

5:43 As I'm homeless, some could pretend I had sacrificed my life for some false mystic, or for a false experience on my own part.

I have not sacrificed my life, I am prevented from getting the life I want. By evil-doers, as far as I could tell.

6:14 "they're out miracle shopping"

Whether or not someone should hope for a miracle, is ultimately a concern between him and God. In some cases his superiors or pastors.

What a med professional terms "mature" or "immature" faith is totally beside the point. I don't think there is any part of any Church document (prior to Vatican II) that even uses the words. "Unstable" in II Peter is not synonym with "immature".

A Commie would obviously consider any hope for obtaining a miracle, and any unhesitant affirmation such and such a thing is a real miracle, is "immature faith" as long as he wasn't able to apply the kind of measures Albania did under Enver Hoxha.

6:34 A verification for the faith is not limited to wanting to see with ones own eyes, good Apologetics is not the doubt of Thomas.

By the way, I'm offering Apologetics. I'm not that needy myself, even if those who hate my Apologetics would love if it were the case.

7:04 A Fundamentalist type of understanding of the faith is what we should have.

If a certain guy in the Vatican isn't Fundamentalist, he arguably isn't the Pope (that includes the former Antipope Ratzinger), and shouldn't be listened to, since in a layman, he could be a Catholic ill instructed, but in the position of a bishop needs to be shunned as preaching heresy.

7:13 I'm certainly a victim of trauma and abuse ... by the likes of you.

Doesn't make me easier to manipulate.

If you pretend I'm manipulated, you are basically abusing mental health jargon to censor me, to pretend a non-extant protection and impose further abuse.

8:13 As Christians, you should leave the discernment to bishops and theologians, they shouldn't outsource it to your psychological assessments.

And bishops and theologians should not embark on this kind of discernment if no actual CLAIM to prophecy or mysticism is being made. They should ask the person concerned, and not outsource it to your psychological assessments.

Again, my positions are (apart those held by all Catholics, which are many more), these:

I claim that young earth creationism and geocentrism hold true. That "John Paul II" to at least "Francis" are probably not true Popes. That we probably live in the end times, that part of what Trump is doing (to immigrants) or planning to do (to homeless) is Antichristian, that he is not the Beast, as his gematria is not 666 in any version of his name I can spell so far, that a candidate on that account would be Putin, that earthly Jerusalem is already spiritually Sodom and Egypt, that Enoch and Elijah have not already come, but will. Oh, in the context of YEC, that Babel was (Genesis 10 and 11) in Göbekli Tepe (or perhaps Karahan Tepe) and that the tower describes a rocket project, where a take-off would have failed, while God's decision to confuse the languages gave Wernher von Braun a chance. Nearly everyone on earth had already forgotten Nimrod, and the few Hebrews who hadn't (later the many Catholics who haven't) were thinking in terms of a skyscraper.

I'd take a debate with anyone on these matters, provided he were the type of guy interested in debate, and I would not invoke my own experience as decisive argument. I would invoke the difference between "observation" and "conclusion", or the ASCII value of upper case A as 65, equally that Göbekli Tepe is West of the Mountains of Armenia, that a rocket before take off looks like a three storied tower, whereof only the top storey will reach into space (earlier referred to as heaven). I would appeal to an atmosphere in 2556 BC of 51 percent modern Carbon equally resulting in a carbon age of 10 000 years ago, as an atmosphere in 8000 BC with 100 pmC. On both theories, the sample would in 2556 BC have c. 51 pmC. None of these arguments are God speaking to me. None of this is based of me being a prophet or mystic.

8:35 The apparitions of Fatima were investigated exactly like what you refer to.

Chesterton mentioning that the respect for children is the fruit of Catholicism, not Paganism, or "Peter Pan belongs to the world of Peter, not to the world of Pan" was NOT investigated the manner you refer to.

Bernadette Soubirous was investigated as you mention. There was a medical involvement, but had nothing to do with "delusion" or "fundamentalism" or whatnot, the doctor took her pulse, so the trance was not induced by an anxious or otherwise very vivid physical passion.

Tolkien mentioning Henry VIII's divorce or impiety against the Welsh his ancestors spoke was NOT investigated such manners.

Now, the operative distinction is not between "banale" or "paradoxic" (Chesterton was regarded as paradoxic). The operative distinction is simply between receiving a message as someone seeing the Virgin Mary physically appear, and concluding for a truth out of own research. Each one of my positions falls on the latter side.

9:28 The questions "are they mad" (question in the case of Bernadette Soubirous, concluding negatively as the pulse was calm during her vision) and "do they have mental issues" (which could include any kind of "attitude problem" as per DSM-V) are not synonymous.

I'm on a daily basis abused by people wanting to "verify" if I'm of a sound mind. When Muslim children passing are curious whether I ate chicken, or when a black stranger asks me "how are you" in a way too reminiscent of "are you really well?" and I get visibly angry, they can go to some mental health professional and pretend I get angry for nothing. I don't think it's for nothing. It's respect for my personal liberties, for not allowing strangers to one-sidedly introduce themselves into my life as "friends" just because I'm on the street, and especially when it's highly probable they are doing some dirty work for actually mental health professionals who are power greedy people, as was seen in the Khruschev era (with which psychiatrists of the West had "scientific" collaboration).

10:02 "especially with all these mystics and false prophets that have doomsday calendars"

Does this mean, my claims on Apocalypse 11 state of the Knesset and Apocalypse 13 gematria will continue to be investigated until Armageddon, and be used as leverage to keep all the rest under a shrug by "it's being looked into" along with it?

Will it stop when Henoch and Elijah come and do miracles? Some of them obviously highly punitive.

Or are some people in your version of the Catholic Church (too respectful of the likes of you for my taste) finally getting around to the fact that mental health professionals and exorcists are less of clue than actually challenging me on the doctrinal level?

10:56 "it's important ... so you don't become a victim"

I'm an ex-Lutheran. One thing Luther said, in a very different context, was, if you find you have been fooled by someone, good for you. Nice lesson of humility for your judgement. He compares the guy in this position to a man fallen into a ditch adding "and here he lieth all for the better" ... he should enjoy the spectacle of his having been misled as a kind of slapstick comedy.

Luther didn't claim it was important never to become a victim to the neighbour ... in general. As to religious doctrine, he was far more ultra-magisterial than Catholicism is, and so Lutherans and Anglicans are to this day.

But the very phrase pair "it's important ... so you don't become a victim" is a very modern American phrase. The goal is not always within our power. The means to an impossible goal should not be extreme. Precisely as Nimrod had no right to draft mankind into a rocket project the Neolithic was not technologically mature for, and as Fauci or in France Salomon had no business drafting society into mask- or vaccine mandates. Or at least partially, Putin in Russia. The means chosen were extreme, the bad outcome one tried to escape was hysterically overemphasised (people weren't dying galore when the Black Sea flooded some decade or century before Babel, and mankind would not have been reduced to a rubble of skeleta reminiscent of Gaza without masks and vaccines), the good outcome (saving mankind from Flood-able Earth, eradicating Covid) was not attainable, therefore the "one world totalitarian" measures were not justified.

Tried to add:

I suppose, when I write, when I hold cardboards with URLs to my blogs, there are some US Americans around who here are telling people to either give me nothing at all, or give me only food, and above all not read my blogs, but pretend interest, hand the URL over to someone like you in France who hands it over to someone like you in US or Brazil. Because, of course, otherwise they might risk taking me seriously as a writer, believing I'm a writer because I said so, and "it's important they don't do that so they don't become victims"

Meanwhile, same day, or rather next day, but time zone of Australia, so still "same day" in France, as by "pure coincidence" Creation Ministries International, who are as unlikely to relish my Catholicism, as a Catholic on "American Institute of Health Care Professionals" to relish my Young Earth Creationism, came out with ‘Flat Earthism’ and seeking truth in a confused world. Those guys love to appeal to the Galileo case in a Heliocentric perspective, so are biassed against Geocentrism. Look out for them systematically mentioning Flat Earthism but not Geocentrism apart from Flat Earthism. Andrew Sibley writes:

Such writers argue that heliocentrism is false. That is, the correct view of the Sun at the centre of the Solar System (orbited by all the planets) was allegedly developed by people interested in promoting Paganism (i.e. sun worship), so that’s why they rejected the geocentric view.

Paganism is not just sun worship. It's also post-truth or radical scepticism. When Seneca (quoted by Sungenis, also not a Flat Earthist) is neutral on "whether a god turns the heavens around earth, or earth within the heavens" — that's a jab at sensory data being reliable truth. From Ficino to Kant, from Neo-Platonism to Idealism, there is a thrust to rely on pure thought against the senses. Geocentrism which adapts the thinking to actual sense data doesn't fit that.

But this is false. They ignore the fact that Geo, or Gaia was also an ancient Greek god, so the argument doesn’t hold. Furthermore, one of the main proponents of the modern flat Earth view, Eric Dubay, describes himself as a Hindu Yogi—and he is President of the International Flat Earth Research Society!4 ‘Flat Earthism’ certainly fits with Hindu mythology, where the Earth is said to rest on four elephants, themselves standing on a turtle.

Correct, but this is no valid indictment of Sungenis, myself, Gerardus Dingeman Bouw or the late Pope Michael I. None of whom believe in a Flat Earth, I have myself gone out of my way to show how Biblical literalism purported to lead to Flat Earth doesn't, like Where Are the Four Corners on a Globe?, my proposed answer to which is, Cape Horn, Point Barrow, Anadyr, and SE Australia (Hobart for reference) are four corners surrounding the lived in land masses, except mainly New Zealand and requiring very little curvature of the lines between the corners. The North line between Point Barrow and Anadyr passes only very little South of Murmansk, for example. The Bible was right, and a Globe equips me to see it.

Timmy Gibson Fell Away over Belief in Evolutionist Stuff ...

My answers refer to, for instance: Want to Live Close to Giant Dragonflies? Nah, Me Neither · Acknowledgement to Jerome Cohen for Previous · Creswell Crag and Bolsover

Or to a checkup with Witwatersrand: Contacting Karoo about superposition of layers and fossils, refeatured in this dialogue: Debate on Geology.

Christianity Can’t Be True - Says Former Evangelical Pastor of 30 Years
Timmy Gibson | 30 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR-LH4NIyQY

1:01 Not a believer in OSAS anyway, and in my teens I was confronted (partly by part time bullies of myself, partly actually by nice guys, kind of a good-cop / bad-cop routine) with loads of reasons to leave Christianity.

"If you are Protestant and believe the Bible, how do you deal with getting it from the Catholic Church?"

Oops, my bad, converted. Crossed the Tiber.

"If you believe in Adam and Eve, what about Australopithecus and Homo erectus?"

- "Guess they could be some kind of trolls" ... (didn't quite stay with that one: Australopithecus was an ape and Homo erectus are Adamites, perhaps with some Nephelim issues or perhaps with some deliberate Orc breeding by actual Nephelim).

Just for the record, that was about 42 years ago. Still RC, still believe in Adam and Eve.

4:11 Oh, dear.

No, never went for that solution. I just answered a few days ago, how we could live along dinosaurs up to Noah's Flood (when most dino bones we find are from), namely: same way we can live along lions. By NOT living along them and taking a safe distance, at least from the larger, but apparently also from the smaller ones. Wouldn't want to meet a rhino right now (there was an awful meme on a bullfighter facing one saying "my relative the bull was ill, so I replaced him" ... I don't think even toreros are keen on metting rhinos) and don't think they would have wanted to meet a Pareiosaurus back then. As none of the pre-Flood human settlements in South Africa are in or very near Karroo, I find the solution pretty vindicated.

I do however believe devils had some agency in flood waters and lava and radioactivity during the Flood and can have used it in part to prepare K-Ar and U-Pb dates. While God decreed the Flood, it was the devils who would have enjoyed executing it, and perhaps God gave them that chance. They'll have so little fun after Doomsday.

5:09 I just mentioned that Karroo where you find dinos is hundreds of kilometers from possibly pre-Flood habitations of men in South Africa.

That pretty confirms that men and dinos lived at the same time and men avoided dino grazing fields.

You know what would confirm your story? If human habitations had been found in Karroo, ten meters (33 feet) higher up in the layers than dinos. Or if, also in Karroo, you had found some Triassic critter ten meters higher up than a Permian one. I actually checked with Karroo (yes, it happens, very rarely, but still, that professional scientists answer me). Doesn't happen.

On another occasion, I looked at giant dragonflies, the types that have a wingspan of 50 cm. On two specimens of Meganeura, the one potentially Neanderthal close habitation was 86 km from there, on the other one 7 miles or 11 km. Plus in both cases, the Neanderthal presence if such is verified only by Mousterian tools, which could have been reused or revisited after the Flood, and in Creswell crags you also have post-Flood occupations, from the Magdalenian.

So, if you had found the giant dragonfly 10 meters below the human tools in Creswell crags rather than 7 miles way in Bolsover, that would have been evidence for your now position, that I don't see you as having.

[The comments seem to have been removed.]

Allen Parr is Right We Shouldn't Try to Handle Snakes (But Overall Wrong on Mark 16:17—18)

Charismatics Try To Fool You On This Bible Verse
THE BEAT by Allen Parr | 12 Aug 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNlgUOi8jU0

4:17 Jesus was in fact saying "these signs will follow them" ... not "you" but "them that have believed" (τοῖς πιστεύσασιν)

5:52 Nope, both Mark 16 and Matthew 28, the Great Commission applies to a group and basically the same one. The Apostles.

It still applies throughout time, as per Matthew 28:20, because the group is not finished with it's then members.

However, it applied to a group then, it applies to a group now. 12 / 72 / maybe even 500 back then. Catholic bishops now.

St. Mary Magdalene, an Apostle to the Apostles, was not an Apostle, was not in that group then. Women are not in that group now.

6:55 St. Paul was at that point not in the group. He was later handling deadly snakes.

The words are prophecy, not command.

Driving out demons is elsewhere commanded, to a specific group, which is perpetuated throughout time, but here Jesus is prophecying that the attempts will be successful, or sometimes even there wasn't an attempt, and the good result will follow.

Some where, some time, in Church history, perhaps someone will have accidentally drink what was meant to poison him and not died, or perhaps it's already fulfilled when St. Benedict of Nursia set out to drink, he made the sign of the cross over it and it burst. I'm not sure if that's fully the meaning of the aorist subjunctive I found in the interlinear namely πίωσιν.

And these miraculous signs are not restricted to the Apostles or their successors, the bishops. Venerable Eusebia Palomino Yenes (whose abbess was martyred by the Reds in the Spanish War, she had already died) didn't try to make an exorcism to get rid of the poltergeist, they were waiting for an exorcist to come, but with three Hail Marys on her part, the exorcism was already done, the commanded exorcist came to late to perform an exorcism there and then visibly stopping the Poltergeist. That's why in a poem I called her "exorcista de España" not as if she were an ordained exorcist, but because she performed an exorcism and can from that matter be called an exorcist. Dito for the skull of St. Bridget of Sweden, also in Spain, I think. Exorcisms are still worked by that relic.

7:34 The words And these signs shall follow them that believe: is a prophecy to which the group hearing the words was a witness, not a command to them.

He didn't say "do this as a sign" but "this kind of sign will happen" ... so, it is definitely not restricted to the then and there hearers.

It is indeed for all times, but having to handle snakes or accidentally drinking what someone else poisoned without telling you is obviously rarer than calling for an exorcist or getting a healing miracle in Lourdes or when a priest gives Extreme Unction.

8:18 The signs are not commands.

They are none of them for all individual believers, but all of them to the Christian community as a whole.

That's why we see exorcisms and healings today. Speaking a tongue you haven't learned is rarer, maybe last happend with St. Francis Wavier, unless he had a translator, since the Church is usually alert to avoiding the necessity for this sign. On Pentecost day, none of the Apostles, I can safely conclude had studied Cretan Doric. Nevertheless, Jews from Crete who knew Cretan Doric were hearing it. Snakehandling and poison drinking with survival are obviously emergency situatiional miracles, not sth you deliberately expose yourself to.

And when Paul had gathered together a bundle of sticks, and had laid them on the fire, a viper coming out of the heat, fastened on his hand And when the barbarians saw the beast hanging on his hand, they said one to another: Undoubtedly this man is a murderer, who though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance doth not suffer him to live And he indeed shaking off the beast into the fire, suffered no harm [Acts Of Apostles 28:3-5]

8:45 The actual text* doesn't say "will be able to" ... while healers exist, who actually are able to do so, it could often be in contexts where no healing was expected, like if a priest gives a cancer patient Extreme Unction and instead of soon dying he is healed and doesn't need an operation, the prophecy is fulfilled even if that priest doesn't have a parmenent ability to heal the sick.

Quit using that text*, which reads things into the words rather than translating. Unbelievers won't be converted by a priest "being able to" heal the sick, they will be converted by a priest actually doing so.

9:17 None of the signs say, "at will" ... an exorcist may be able to cast out some demons but not others. And not every Christian is an exorcist.

The sign belongs to the community of the believers, i e the Catholic Church, even if most can't cast out demons, it's enough that some can.

And none of the five signs says "at will" ... it's about results not expected for. Wednesday after Ascension Thursday, Peter wasn't saying "tomorrow, I'll speak Gaulish and Cretan Doric" and he was not claiming that ability in Jesus name, but whoever of the Apostles spoke in those languages did so as a free and unexpected gift from the Holy Spirit.

St. Paul wasn't expecting to be stung by a viper.

10:26 On the contrary, it is very applicable to believers today.

Miracles still happen.

Exorcisms and healings of the sick being the most common of the five.

Your problem is, you substitute "believers today" as the red herring, when the real one is "every single one" ... a community has the credit of every miracle it's members do, even if not every single member is doing a miracle.

You also pretend the word is about "at will" or read a text that falsely states "be able to" ... a sign is a sign even if or maybe rather especially if it is unexpected.

14:17 Thank you for clarifying, on your own reading it is not** "at will" ...

* The actual text = the Bible (original, Vulgate, Douay Rheims, Monsignor Knox, or for French Crampon). That text = whatever Allen Parr is using (NASV?) ** The "at will" is a logical exploration of how his adversaries reads the passage, even if they do not utter it, or should be reading it in consistency, even if they are inconsistent.

On Miracles, Hume and a Modern Atheist Called TMM

Why Miracles Can't Happen
TMM | 4 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2_kC-UaimE

Bradypus tridactylus

@bradypustridactylus488

There is something profoundly circular in this line of thinking.
How do you know that god rules the world? — Because god produces miracles.
How do know that god produces miracles? — Because god rules the world.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

No. Correcting the second one:

How do know that god produces miracles? — Because miracles are observed and only a god who rules the world can explain them.

"A miracle is a purported violation of a law of nature."

Defined so by whom?

"This is impossible by definition, because a law of nature is defined as a regularity that is never violated."

By whom?

"If you ever see a violation of a law of nature, that would just mean it wasn't really a law."

Only expands on previous.

"If somebody tells you anything about any subject, not just a miracle, there's always the possibility that said person is lying, mistaken, or delusional."

That's always a possibility to "weigh in" but not always a practical possibility. Breakfast with risen Jesus in John 21 doesn't match what any hallucination could look like, not just because it was collective, but because a breakfast of fried fish is not half as exciting as what hallucinations tend to be. And so on for other factors. In other words, the possibility to reckon with is in some cases a possibility to definitely reckon away, to definitely discard.

"... you should always estimate whether the truth of what they are saying is more probable than any of those potential fallibilities."

Which Christian apologetics have a tradition of making very precise evaluations of. Like reducing them to zero and being left with the truth of what they are saying.

"If you want to convince me that a guy rose from the dead, I'd have to see his brain in a state of necrosis with my own eyes and I'd have to directly witness him get up and walk around"

Because of the wrong reasoning blindly following the lead from Hume ... including his definition.

[Looking up, my comments have disappeared, including my answer to Bradypus tridactylus.]

Tolkien and Dante

Did Tolkien Really Call Dante "Petty"?
Ink and Fantasy | 9 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vDP_2OGlH0

I don't know in what way you think Dante was important for Catholicism.

He was important for expressing it in Italian as to eschatology, but thousands of priests were already doing so.

"Among the many celebrated geniuses of whom the Catholic faith can boast who have left undying fruits in literature and art especially, besides other fields of learning, and to whom civilization and religion are ever in debt, highest stands the name of Dante Alighieri, the sixth centenary of whose death will soon be recorded. Never perhaps has his supreme position been recognized as it is today. Not only Italy, justly proud of having given him birth, but all the civil nations are preparing with special committees of learned men to celebrate his memory that the whole world may pay honour to that noble figure, pride and glory of humanity."

I think "religion" here means "piety" rather than Catholicism as such. I cited In Praeclara Summorum, by the way. It's more to the point when discussing Dante, than when Dimond brothers use it about Geocentrism, quotemining one specific sentence in the concessive subjunctive.

I also think that the Latin superlatives translated as "highest" and "supreme" should be translated as "very high" ... it's mainly civilisation that's in debt, Christian civilisation in Italy.

And I venture to say that while the praise of the Divine Comedy and arguably also Italian of Dante are honest, they are also partly tactical, since Anticlericals were saying on the one hand that not appreciating Dante would be barbaric, and on the other hand, they were celebrating him for things like "De Monarchia" which was anti-Papal, a precursor, with Marsilius, of the infamous Kulturkampf a few decades previously endured by German faithful Catholics.

Tolkien obviously didn't care for being at odds with a Papal encyclical. Probably, his own feeling about Dante was a mixture of enjoyment and of the irritation he had here expressed.

5:05 Dante's Divine Comedy, as far as I can tell, is not religious allegory, but religious science fiction ("theology fiction" or "eschatology fiction" if you like). Same genre as "Pearl" which no doubt both inspired The Great Divorce and pleased Tolkien more than Dante, as per lack of pettiness.

To specify, if Dante disliked someone for political or personal reasons, he probably placed that someone in Hell or Purgatory (if he had died). It's as if Tolkien had named Shagrath and Ugluk some recogniseable English known person's name.

In fact, that's not just Dante. Michelangelo placed someone in Hell, that someone complained to the Pope who answered "there is no absolution from Hell" ....

ἀστροπελέκι

@Astropeleki

Dante also placed someone in Hell before he had passed away, because he had betrayed his guests and had them killed.

The soul of that specific damned explains that if someone commits such a heinous sin, their soul descends into hell before they're even dead.

ἀστροπελέκι

Oh wait, it's literally mentioned in the video, hahaha

Well, I guess it was worth mentioning the context of this specific "petty" representation.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Astropeleki It might have been a way to warn the guy, like in Michelangelo's case.

5:29 No, in the afterlife, people do NOT go from Hell to Purgatory.

As such a journey does not exist, Dante's work cannot be an allegory of that.

Also, while everyone in Purgatory goes to Heaven, they go from one specific place in Purgatory to one specific place in Heaven.

Again, what Dante writes is not an allegory for what in Catholic theology doesn't even occur.*

M1santhropist

@m1santhropist410

I've always thought while studying the Commedia that the term "allegory" must have reached a more prominent spot than it deserves, when applied to Dante's work. Granted, there is a whole level of textual interpretation that is founded on allegory, as the style demanded for its period, but I do not think it goes so deep to touch the more religious and theological tones of the work.

In this regard I think the way of symbolism would be the better one to try and understand the Commedia, and funny enough it reminds me a lot of what Tolkien himself did with his legendarium in general and with Lord of the rings in particular, representing the history of salvation through the lenses of a fictional story but at the same time deploying symbols that are 100% canonical and orthodox in his religious tradition.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@m1santhropist410 Can only agree.

However, given the screen name, may I recommend you take a look where misanthropists risk spending eternity in Hell or considerable time in Purgatory.

Mister Kitty And Friends

@misterkittyandfriends1441

The divine comedy is the journey of a man (or man in general) looking for a way to avoid hell, wherein he can be guided away from evil and vice through reason (as Virgil, up to a point) and later on to perfection via faith and love. Part of how one can reason away from hell is by noticing the effect of sin upon the human person.

It is absolutely compatible with Catholic theology - Dante is not dead in hell, he's essentially a visitor being given special permission by a surprising person.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@misterkittyandfriends1441 Yes, exactly.

It's a journey in the afterlife that is against Catholic theology and that Dante is not making an allegory of.

M1santhropist

@hglundahl name's insignificant. Doesn't reflect my views. But thanks for your interest in my salvation. I do not live my faith in fear of hell or Purgatory though, that's not how I was raised. Everyone is exactly where God wants, and He knows exactly where we are going to be. I live to serve the beauty of His craft, not my personal interest in being saved.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@m1santhropist410 Oh, maybe you should take a hint from Dante, but glad your name doesn't reflect your views .... I was actually more concerned with attitudes.

Everything that happens, either God directly wills, or allows. Sometimes taking a giant step back to allow.

* Usually. The Comedy in fact describes a kind of sight-seeing of other people's fates, which could occur as an exception.

Viking Age Norse Women

The truth about Viking women will surprise you
Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen | 9.VIII.2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl0yR09XnS0

2:35 At least for Sweden, I would say that Norse women in the Viking age had no right to inheritance, at least not unless it was per testament and at least about capital.

Prior to Magnus Ladulås (son of Birger Jarl, a Crusader to Finland, of the dynasty previously mostly called "Folkungar" and now the "house of Bjelbo" ... Bjelbo-ätten), the rule was "gånge hatt till och hufva från" — to the hat and away from the bonnet. He changed it to "syster ärfve hälften mot brodern"* (so, 1/1 to male heirs first, later with a brother and a sister 2/3 to male heir, 1/3 to female and so on depending on number of heirs in total).

I suppose this did not refer to items of clothing or to looms and spindles.

Summers Idyll

@SummersIdyll

Most societies are patrilineal and practice primogeniture...even if the woman was smarter, wiser, more capable...a deranged younger male would be given the crown or inheritance...for instance. All that mattered was male or female.

I don't understand it, other than, they feared she would be swayed into a marriage in a rival family or something, or over powered by brute force.

Yet in history women are among the more effective rulers. We can all think of some probably.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@SummersIdyll "primogeniture"

Only for land or political power.

"Yet in history women are among the more effective rulers."

Efficiency is not all one looks for in a ruler.**

The last ruler of independent Wales was a woman, she lost. Not effective. Dito for Mary Queen of Scots. Elisabeth Tudor was taken hostage by Protestant interests, those of the Cecils, and her apparent efficiency was a misfortune for England.

But these women were pretty few. The 18th C. was relatively frequent in them, in Austria and Russia. I think 3 in total. A fourth in Portugal was kept in a kind of wardship as a doctor declared her insane.

4:42 The past is not just a relief from grey and boring, but from things like Covid mandates and "taking responsibility" for people one tactically presents as incapable of doing that for themselves and from things like compulsory school (it came to Sweden in 1842, or not really, homeschooling was still allowed if the parents were competent for it, that was pushed back in Social Democrat decades.)

8:48 Speaking of modern times as "feudalism 2.0" is not very respectful of actual feudalism.

9:51 ερρωσο και συ!

* Sister shall inherit half of the brother's lot.

** I had written, "in a women" and when trying to correct this, I found out my comment had been deleted. The screenshot doesn't function, so I can't show you.

Is It Too Late for the Three State Solution I Proposed?

Here is where I made the proposal, years ago:

I have written on Jews and their relations with others (the first a linea, peace plan for judea, samaria and galilea ... the post collects two different posts from 2007 on FB).

Let’s not FREE PALESTINE! 7 good reasons why we shouldn’t free Palestine.
travelingisrael.com | 8 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RNBdBBx19c

1:28 You know the owner of Guiness is part Jewish and pro-Israel?

6:30 Yes, pretty interesting.

Given the homogeneity of the population, perhaps Isaias 11 was after all fulfilled 2000 years ago?

7:45 You may have some inkling on why I would prefer three states over two.

A Christian, a Jewish and a Muslim state. Obviously, Christian Palestinians are not the most loyal to Hamas.

No borders, the distinction between Palestinian and Israeli Arab replaced by that between Christian and Muslim.

10:34 I've spoken up for the Uygurs.

Not often, they are not as often in the news. And in Palestine, though they are fewer, my main loyalty is the Christian ones.

It may be considered anti-Semitic to some that with Jewish ancestry, I insist on being Roman Catholic and refuse to become a Jew. And it may be more properly considered pro-Jewish, if I want friends of my family and perhaps family of friends who live as Israelis to not partake in crimes against Gaza. And not to promote lies, like you did when explaining starving children with "genetic diseases" that don't exist (other ones may exist, but that's another matter).

I would be very happy to not have heard Israeli Jews use language about Palestinians like some guys in the 1920's and early 1930's (before those camps) used about East European Schtettls.

But obviously, the situation is not very ideal for Jews in Western countries either. Ask Katie Halper about it. She has more news than I to provide on that side.

10:49 I spoke up for the Rojavas, the Kurds of Syria, back when both Islamic State and Bashir al Assad were cruel.

I said they were our rational best allies in the region.

That said, PKK has often been cruel to Assyrian Christians, if you go over the frontier to Turkey.

11:00 I've spoken up for Druz and Christians.

Less need to do so for Alawites, all of France is their allies anyway.

11:13 However, I will mention, Druz, Christians, perhaps even Alawites, would have been better off, if the West had supported the Rojava. A k a Kurds with some others.

I Cor 13:8 Doesn't Prove Cessationism, see verse 12; St. Paul is Not Talking of Current Church History

Does the Bible really say that spiritual gifts will cease?*
Spirit & Truth With Austin Nix | 9 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keWwXqMwYtI

I was fortunately never (at least not very explicitly even in the Lutheran interlude) a Cessationist.

Part of my point in converting was discovering that Protestant Reformers were Cessationists.

Spirit & Truth With Austin Nix

@Austin_Nix

I understand where you are coming from. I was saved later in life, but my first couple years were really heavily influenced by the hardcore reformed communities. And truly, I am very thankful for it because it kept me grounded, but I've come to land in some different places in other aspects of the faith which is okay :-) God bless you richly in Jesus Name.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Austin_Nix Catholicism is not just "a place" but "Rome sweet home" ...

Thank you, and welcome to swim the Tiber.

* Retranslated from automatic translation: La Bible dit-elle vraiment que les dons spirituels prendront fin ?

I think an actual Inquisitor actually represents the Catholic Church

In other words the layman's club called Catholic Truth (not sure if affiliated to Sheed and Ward's Catholic truth guild) here did some overkill. It's true he wasn't executed for translating the Bible, in Vilvoorde an English Bible was practically irrelevant, English wasn't as big a language yet, but he had a Church judge prior to being delivered to "the secular arm" (i e the State), so, the video got a like because Kate is pretty, not because Bryan Mercier is highly competent.

Did the Catholic Church Really Kill Tyndale?
Catholic Truth | 7 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shFrkLLcB-0

1:24 Henry VIII never was a Protestant. He was in communion with Lutherans, but he never was one himself. He died as a Catholic believer (on most of not all accounts) in Schism against the Pope.

While he was the one opposing Tyndale's translation, Tyndale was actually burned by the Spanish Inquisition in the Netherlands, in Vilvoorde, modern Belgium, for an actual crime against the faith. He misinterpreted Romans 3. The Tyndale society carefully preserves and has translated the text of Jacobus Latomus, and his, I think third, refutation of Tyndale.* Had Tyndale recanted, he could have lived.

Vince Giangiacomo

Verge63

Henry VIII burned Tyndale for denouncing his divorce

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

@Verge63 No ... even a quick wikipedia check would find you he was burned in Vilvoorde, where Henry VIII had absolutely no authority and where his divorce was not a very well looked on event.

Charles V had absolutely no motive to take revenge on a man for dissing the divorce of Henry VIII, of which his relative Catherine of Aragon was a victim.

2:20 His Inquisitor actually gave him opportunity to continue translation efforts. I think it's Trent Horn I have that from.

According to CSL (who considered him a saint, a martyr, paradoxically along with St. Thomas More, in his Latin correspondence with an Italian priest, I think), Douay Rheims actually took hints from Tyndale, no less than King James took some from Douay Rheims. The most egregious mistranslation in KJV, Matthew 6:7, is not from the Tyndale Bible, but from the Geneva Bible via the Bishops' Bible. Calvin had a bee in the bonnet against repetitive prayers.

4:52 It would be fairer to say that Charles V took a tip from Henry VIII, and had him arrested.

James Latomus was his judge, and he was an Inquisitor in full communion with Rome. I know, technically it isn't the Inquisitor who pronounces the death penalty, he functions as a coroner, a judge of enquiry finding guilty or not guilty, while a judge of the state pronounces the death penalty after he was found guilty.

The real irony is when some Protestants who believe in Lordship Salvation uphold Tyndale, since his heresy specifically was a free grace message, a total denial of Lordship Salvation.

Obviously, Lordship Salvation looks differently in Catholics and those Evangelicals who believe it, but nonetheless ...

Note:

* My bad, actually first of the three. I cite it in this article, in a fact box below an intro with bold:

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: A Good Video on Inquisition, with Some Quibbles of Mine
https://assortedretorts.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-good-video-on-inquisition-with-some.html

The Tyndale Society still has a page with Latomus' text:

Jacob Latomus His Three Books of Confutations Against William Tyndale
https://web.archive.org/web/20080517104730/http://www.tyndale.org/Reformation/1/latomus1.html

Genetically Modified Sceptic Has a Point

He also has less of a point on other issues, as he wants to replace "Fundamentalist" with "religious extremist" in the broader sense outside Evangelical Fundamentalists who actually have sth directly to do with The Fundamentals or Chicago Statement of Faith.

Calling it, in general "religious extremism" is obviously a Commie or Atheist move. It's more of a prescriptive "don't do that, it's extreme, normal people don't do that" than descriptive. It's clearly an exonomym from people regarding themselves for some reason as non-religious.

"Fundamentalist" DOESN'T mean that!
Genetically Modified Skeptic | 6 Aug. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xt0JHLhjadY

1:33 You mean* the polar opposite of Evangelical Fundamentalism.

A Lutheran or Catholic "Fundamentalist" in the broader sense would obviously not rely on Scofield and therefore not necessarily be Zionist.

I quit Zionism over, as a Catholic seeking out fellow "Fundamentalists" (the actual term would be Traditionalists, Lefebvrians or ... as to laymen ... "faithful of the SSPX" ... SSPX as such is just the priests and religious: there are other Trad groups, like Conclavism too). A man outside St. Nicolas du Chardonnet sold a tract saying Palestinians are Israelites, which is correct on purely historic grounds.

Not sure exactly where the "Fundie" Augustana synod or Missouri synod stand among Lutherans on this issue, I was a sympathiser with them and without direct access too short to find out, but mainstream Swedish Lutherans have a connection to the Haredim (a modernist "priestess" mentioned she had been Sabbath goy and lit cigarettes for some), since Lutherans nowadays believe in cosplaying the OT as part of theological and sometimes catechetic education. A certain Greta Thunberg whose grandfather or greatgrandfather was a Swedish clergyman is famous for not being Zionist.

2:00 Your term "religious extremism" is also used about drastically different groups and on top of that more a term of rejection than of description.

It comes from a place I could describe as "religious extremism" in the religion of Evolutionism (which in its pure form, without syncretism with Christianity or Islam is called Atheism). But thanks for clearing up a Catholic Trad, an Evangelical actual Fundie, a Haredi Jew, a Salafi Muslim are NOT the same.

* He had mentioned Haredim often opposing Zionism.

Censored at Good Sense Question

First, my comment was immediately censored. When I tried to add another comment under it, it couldn't happen, meaning the comment must be gone.

Second, here is the video short or the link to it, and after it my comments, with the last § added afterwards, and impossible to add under the video, the "short" I mean:

@fryrsquared
L'Atlantide pourrait-elle se trouver dans la mer du Nord ? (Bien sûr que non, mais quelque chose ...*
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Afwxk4peYys

Do you have a source for the skull being Neanderthal?

Could you have misread "Netherlands"?

Because, on my creationist view, the sinking of Doggerland is post-Babel and Neanderthals are pre-Flood.

On the Evolutionist view, the skull is 13 500 years old** and Neanderthals died out at the latest in 28 000 BP (Goreham Cave, Gibraltar, only tools have been found and the material so dated is charcoal).

The actual Neanderthal Krijn is 50 000 to 70 000 years ago, on the Evolutionary version of carbon dates, and was found in Zeeland, not in Doggerland.***

* Unfortunately, the title is automatically translated to French bc. I watch from France. I'd translate back: Could Atlantis be below the North Sea? (Of course not, but something ...)

** North Sea: Oldest human remains and oldest art from the North Sea
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden | 9 February 2018
https://www.rmo.nl/en/news-press/news/oldest-human-remains-and-oldest-art-from-the-north-sea/

*** Face to face with Krijn: Dutch Neanderthal now has a face
Rijksmuseum van Oudheden | 7 September 2021
https://www.rmo.nl/en/news-press/news/the-first-dutch-neanderthal-now-has-a-face/

"You Can't Read the Bible on Your Own" ... Is That Precise?

How to Study the Bible as a Layman
Decrevi Determined to be Catholic @thecatholicman | 5 août 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS6a_FNmucA

0:10 I've heard from Robert Sungenis, the textual apparatus and cultural explanations and whatnot are top notch BUT it unfortunately includes the modernist view of Genesis 1 through 11 in the comments.

6:59 Ah yes, in France (and presumably Belgium and Switzerland) there is a Magnificat in French.

14:16 "you can't interpret the Bible on your own"

Magisterial and pre-Vatican II source, please?

1) You can't interpret prophecy of the OT without knowing the NT is certain: the Ethiopian Eunuch.
2) You should take care not to read Scripture as unlearned and unstable (St. Peter singled out some passages in St. Paul's Epistles)
3) If you interpret the Bible on your own and come up with something contrary to what the Church hath held and now holds or also to the consensus of the fathers, you are wrong.
4) If a whole set of communities have as basic principle,_everyone_ interprets the Bible on his own, it can't achieve unity.

I've featured: Acts, II Peter, Trent session IV, Pius XI (was it Mortalium Animos?).

BUT: none of these says in so many words that no Christian can interpret the Bible on his own. They just say there are pitfalls if he does and passages he won't get. Not that he absolutely can't. Christians are obviously now in a better position to interpret OT prophecy because we have the NT.

Now, let me be precise. In a matter where a Christian who already is a Catholic (I've converted) actually has access to the interpretation of the Church (over centuries and two millennia, as per Trent IV), he cannot on his own say "no, I'll interpret it in the opposite way" ... Ephesians 2 verses 8 to 10, notice I said 10, not 9, indicate justification is not from good works prior to justification, but involves signing up for good works. If I tried to deny this aspect, relying on a common Protestant interpretation of Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9, and then tried to gloss over verse 10, for one thing, it wouldn't be on my own, I would be overrelying on Protestants instead of believing my own better judgement, but for another thing, in such a context NOT relying on the Church would obviously be fatal ... as well as not common to a conclusion agreeing with the Church, if we happen to read that without access to Catholic doctrine.

Now, the Catholic Church has NOT dogmatised how Genesis lines up with archaeology. That's the ONE item where I've actually done some original interpretation, notably identifying Nimrod's Babel of Genesis 10 and more story details 11 with Göbekli Tepe, I'm highly confident, I have not spoken against the position that the Church hath held and holds, as well as, I double-checked, the interpretation of the text is not uniformly "one vertical piece of ground fixed architecture." In Postilla in libros Geneseos, St. Thomas (or a contemporary, but I think it's a youth work of his) suggests the reading "city wall with many towers forming a skyline" rather than "skyscraper" ... this means, the idea that Nimrod was intending a rocket, but incompetent, and that God stopped him to give Wernher von Braun a chance is NOT going against universal tradition.

Also, I'm very well aware that the spiritual reward of reading Genesis is not acquiring a carbon 14 conversion table, but I'm equally aware that Genesis 1 to 11 are historic fact, theologically, and scientifically, that if one can date an item with organic matter independently of the carbon date, that functions as a calibration of the carbon date. I think a historic overview with archaeological support is very helpful when the historic truth of Genesis 1 to 11 is under attack. As I've heard that Study Bible does attack the historic reliability of those chapters. Obviously the older Haydock comment (also Catholic, c. 100 years older than Scofield's ineptitudes) doesn't attack it.