You did NOT become Catholic by reading the Bible!
St AnthonyPadua RadTrad | 26 July 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8wb5_s53Cs
Those of us who are religious or clergy are obviously obliged to read the Bible. Lectio divina, as it is called. (Lay brothers are exempt if analphabets ... in some cases also authorised to replace the Breviary with Our Fathers and Glory Be's to 150 per day)
Those of us who came from Protestantism may have had a habit before becoming Catholic.
I will not fault a Catholic who goes to Mass, prays the Rosary and Litanies and never opens a Bible. But neither do I think I should bear with someone calling me out for reading and citing the Bible in debate with Protestants. Or when figuring out the exact archaeological or naval implications of Young Earth Creationism.
Also, credenda like Young Earth Creationism are very widely known to be Biblical, even by people who don't read the Bible. St. Thomas says, if you don't know the Bible says that Abraham (at age 100) had two sons, you are excused for not believing it, but once you know it is in the Bible, you are obliged to believe it. No one in today's world would be unaware of a certain type of Protestant who is Young Earth Creationist precisely because that's in the Bible. And therefore also not that Young Earth Creationism is in the Bible. Hence, we are obliged to believe it. Day age is only an option for prolonging time before Adam, and by now the Old Atmosphere would contradict the human timeline since Adam in the Bible. To Revd. Fulcran Vigouroux, it was perfectly plausible either that Neanderthals weren't human at all, or that all Neanderthals lived the last 7000 (to up to 10 000 or maybe 20 000) years (extensions being in the Genesis 11 part). To us that is impossible, unless the atmosphere is young, since an old atmosphere is bound to have C14 around 100 pmC, this validating C14 dates beyond 40 000 years as actual years. The dispensation from 1909 doesn't break down canonically as much as scientifically. Those who really hold adequately to Fulcran Vigouroux's position today publish the Watchtower and Awake! And they are not the best archaeologists or palaeontologists.
I stick to Douay Rheims and Vulgate, except when I go for a LXX reading (which both Fulcran Vigouroux and the Roman Martyrology for Christmas Day do for Genesis 5 and 11).
I also go for Haydock, when the sense is in dispute between us and Protestants, between us and Jews.
4 Reasons I Reject the "One True Church" Claim (And You Should Too!)
Canon & Creed | 21 juil. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoC7t93r-U8
1:35 False.
There are five or six major traditions of non-Protestants.
Roman Catholics. Eastern Orthodox. Copts. Armenians. Assyrians. Assyrians are also labelled Nestorians, maybe there are also a Miaphysitic group in the same region, if so that would be the sixth of them.
To decide for or against Assyrians, I need the THIRD Ecumenic council. To decide for or against Copts, Armenians and a possible sixth group, I need the FOURTH.
To decide between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, the history is more dispersed, since Photius died in communion with the Pope, but I need to study Photius and Caerularius and the Roman side and possibly Florence too.
Done, except for those who would accept three councils, where a decision between Copts and Armenians would take some more.
Alternatively, between RC and EO, I'd need to study three topics.
- Procession of the Holy Ghost
- Matter of the Eucharist
- Papacy vs Episcopal autonomy.
That's very far from a "needle in a haystack" like what you seem to suggest.
1:41 Donatio Constantini, forged or true, I happen to believe it true, is irrelevant for the Papacy.
Succession disputes are more vital inside Protestantism or inside some of these "big five" (is Jansenius or Clement XI the true heir of Trentine Catholicism? is "Leo XIV", Michael II, "Peter III" the true heir of Pius XII? or is papacy or Écône the true heir of Pius IX?)
If you want to argue "polemic Avignon papacy was the true heir of pre-exile and pre-schism Avignon papacy, but polemic Avignon papacy didn't survive, therefore papacy as such must be dismissed" you are making things very unnecessarily complicated for yourself. To an Orthodox, such a proposal would be a very minor point.
So, no, between the big five, you do not have to decide on each succession dispute, you generally don't have to decide on succession disputes at all. We can know Cornelius was and Novatian wasn't the true pope, because historically Trail of Blood is a lie, and in real history, Novatian didn't have many successors, even the Donatists weren't such.
1:55 Well, the thing is precisely, there are lots fewer schisms between the big five or current ones within Catholicism, than there are Bible verses that can be misinterpreted.
That kind of does make the choice way easier.
2:27 Protestants are using reason and Catholics are using reason. But Protestants claim to use it about 1334 Bible chapters (or some less if you reject "Apocrypha" as in Deuterocanonics). The person chosing between Catholicism and Orthodoxy are pretending to use it about c. 3 conflicts. The person who is already Catholic is claiming to use it about specific instructions issued often enough more recently and therefore less prone to cross-cultural misunderstanding. And can usually ask a successor if unsure of his own interpretation (not the case with those who believe the papacy is currently vacant, though).
2:42 single visible institution ... that one is actually pretty clear from the Bible.
Single?
Una est columba mea. The body of Christ is not divided.
Visible?
He who heareth you, heareth me. No one places a lamp under a bushel, nor can a city built on a mountain be hidden. The Church replaces Israel, which was visible (and had a visible succession schism, between Jews and Samaritans), therefore the Church is visible.
Both single and visible:
He who heareth you, heareth me ...
Institution?
If Acts and Pastorals don't describe an Institution, I don't know what would describe such a thing clearer. They certainly don't describe an absence of institution.
2:45 No one says Apostolic Succession guarantees doctrinal purity. Yves Congar and Michael Caerularius had apostolic succession, but not doctrinal purity. Cranmer had apostolic succession, but not doctrinal purity.
In fact, what we are saying is, Apostolic Succession of the Magisterium is part and parcel of a larger thing guaranteeing doctrinal purity, the other components being Apostolic Tradition (you cannot come across a doctrinal point no one has been making for centuries and pretend imposing it is a reform) and the Bible (you also cannot flatly and blatantly contradict the Bible).
Besides, we could perhaps agree that God could have, had He wanted, organised His Church in a more democratic way, so the 12 weren't preeminent over the 72 and the bishops not over the priests. But we conclude He didn't from the fact that this is not what we find within Apostolic Tradition.
2:48 that Scripture is unclear without an infallible interpreter
What does Scripture actually say?
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]
We are far from saying, Scripture is shrouded into a dense fog where only the magisterium allows us to catch a glimpse. Gospel simplicity made the point, it is easy to know Scripture teaches Hell, just as it is easy to know CSL believed in Hell. Fine. 95 % chance of getting half the truth of one of the articles of the creed "inde venturus est iudicare" right. The other half is Heaven. 95 % chance of getting that right. Wait, those are the results of a specific act of Judgement, 95 % about that one too ... when we have 12 articles of the creed and one of them contains three truths, you have 14 to 36 things to get right. Even with just 14, there we are down to 48.8 % of getting all of them right.
I think the quote is very clear. Not everyone is fit to interpret the Bible on his own. Of the two ways out, a magisterium which unlearned can rely on and even learned have to obey, and "lets make sure we are all learned and stable" I would say Protestantism has shown a dismal track record for the latter position.
3:01 I very most definitely did accept these axioms VERY consciously when converting in my teens.
I don't know how you know "many" convert without realising they have accepted them ... could that be YOUR wishful thinking about a majority in a friend group who became Catholic or Orthodox?
[tried to add]
Also, even in Protestantism, the Reformers agree you are at risk of walking astray without a Magisterium.
The difference is, Augsburg and Westminister lack apostolic succession and on various points contradict what appears to be Apostolic Tradition.
3:22 For my own part, I can just say that you have misused your reason, and especially by sloppy fact checking and arguing.
4:02 The Immaculate Conception is maximalising the sinlessness of Mary, which is clearly taught Scripturally, if you read New and Old Testaments in each other.
Luke 1, Our Lady is called "Blessed Among Women" twice over. The first time before God became Man inside Her womb.
The phrase has a specific connotation, about Jael and Judith. You may not consider Judith Scriptural, but Jael is, even on your view. The phrase is found in no other OT context (and in both of the cases, there is a limiting clause). Jael, and for that matter Judith, had each destroyed some enemy of Israel.
Who was Mary's Sisera and Holophernes?
The second time Our Lady hears the phrase, it is with the addition "and Blessed is the Fruit of thy womb" ... echoing Genesis 3:15. There is frankly no other candidate for Mary's Sisera than Satan, in the light thereof. But given what is Satan's victory, this implies Mary was, in Herself, not just by carrying in pregnancy, Sinlessness.
There are two possibilities of maximising. You maximise the sinfulness of mankind to include the first moment of Her existence, but no more. Or you maximise Her sinlessness to include the first moment of Her existence and every moment since. St. Augustine did the first, St. John of Damascus the second. Up to the Crusades, the Immaculate position was mainly held in the Eastern Patriarcates, some of which went into schism just after the taking of Jerusalem and Antioch. Prior to St. Augustine, every source remaining is not actively maximising either, but also not polemising against the other. Hence presumably OK with maximising one.
4:10 Your point misses that we have an incomplete view of the Church's past.
Both Newman and CSL made it very clear that what we have as historic sources is a very tiny selection of the whole actual past. This also applies to the Church.
Can you pinpoint any moment in which so and so accepted Mary's Immaculate Conception and you actually know that his predecessor hadn't?
St. John of Damascus died in Jerusalem 749, in communion with Theodore of Jerusalem who presumably was OK with it, can you show John V wasn't? Can you show Anastasius II of Jerusalem wasn't? These men, while on wiki listed as "Greek Orthodox" patriarchs because not Syriac Orthodox ... who are in communion with Copts, btw ... were in communion with Rome as well as Constantinople, up to c. 1092 or sth.
So, you cannot pinpoint such a moment for the Immaculate Conception. I can however pinpoint such a moment about denial of Institutional Infallibility, even in Councils. Luther, after 1517, but before his date of excommunication. As soon as he said it, one reacted as Constantinople reacted to Nestorius.
Greek Orthodox tended to believe in the Immaculate Conception up to the Skirzhal of 1666, which was translated from an Orthodox writer in Venice who had been to Wittenberg, where Luther had his position from St. Augustine, but obviously not everyone agreed in that time.
4:27 Philosophically, that doesn't follow.
If St. Thomas and St. Augustine were pardoned for not believing the Immaculate Conception happened, I think you showed Palamas who did, by the way, this is indeed because the thing was not defined as dogma in their day. They had an error, but not a disobedience about that error.
The magisterial statement serves the truth.
The truth is Biblical.
But once the magisterial statement is made, the truth must be held, by obedience, even by those who cannot trace it in the Bible.
You are confirming I have been right in supposing you misused your reason, since you are capable of such twisting of our position, just in order to polemise against it.
5:29 No, the infallible authority is not assumed, it is actually there in the activity of Jesus as historically shown in the NT.
As to "the RC is that Church" I don't think Scheeben is at this point concerned with discerning between RC, EO, Copts, Armenians, Assyrians. He arguably has or at least other theologians could have, arguments against EO, Copts/Syriac Orthodox, Armenians or Assyrians being the Church which spoke in the councils of Rome, Hippo and Carthage.
His conclusion is "therefore the Church" ... which is true irrespectively of which of the "big five" is the true Church.
Again, you misuse your reason by falsely analysing people's arguments, when you dislike the conclusion.
5:45 Neutral history is not the criterium.
If Jesus is God, we cannot be neutral on whether His obvious intention of founding an infallible Church resulted in His Church actually being infallible.
I would say "non-partisan" history only in the sense that all parts (except modernists) accept facts, however, some do not accept very obvious interpretations, they prefer very counterintuitive ones. Like pretending "he who heareth you" applies only to the apostles personally when Jesus said He was staying with them to the end of time. Meaning, very obviously, with them and their successors. It also cannot mean "11 apostles personally plus writings they left" because:
- Paul, Luke and on the more common view James, even on a less common view John are not among the 11 in Galilee
- because Matthew, Peter, Jude, possibly James the Taller, possibly his brother John, are not all of the 11, and the other ones left no NT books
- because it's unclear whether Mark should be attributed to Mark or Peter if Mark actually penned it
Compared to this convoluted view that 1st C Christians had access to infallible Apostles, but we haven't, only to infallible writings, and this is all that "with you" means, in Matthew 28:20, the interpretation that "with you" means with Apostles and Successors is infinitely more intuitive. And both as on some levels and occasions infallible.
5:55 That Christ intended to give His Church infallibility is a Roman Catholic reading of that history.
It's a Greek Orthodox reading of that history.
It's a Coptic and Syriac Orthodox reading of that history. As well as an Armenian one.
It's an Assyrian reading of that history.
It's just NOT a Protestant reading of that history, and not only are they the odd man out, they were lacking the first 1500 years or nearly so of the Church. AND it's a very convoluted reading of that history. It depends on highly second rate arguments in controversial issues, many of which would if spelled out honestly take the form "I don't find that in the Bible" or "I don't find it in the Church prior to" (various years depending on issue). Then that is used as a crowbar against the obvious reading of the last five verses in Matthew.
6:20 To assume sth that Protestants dispute is not automatically to assume what isn't in the text.
You are presuming Protestants are competent and honest readers of NT history. Not just in individual capacities, but also collectively.
6:57 Lumen Gentium and Tuas Libenter do not correspond perfectly.
What Pius IX said, corresponds to what I professed as converting in 1988 "whatever the Church believes, teaches and professes to be revealed by God, that I believe and confess". Submission to the infallible solemn magisterium and submission to the everyday magisterium across sees and ages which is also infallible.
What Lumen Gentium said corresponds to the new profession of faith introduced by "John Paul II" in 1990. Submission to the infallible solemn magisterium and also to non-infallible decisions of those holding a potentially infallible magisterium but not in this case so used.
Michael Lofton is saying "even when the magisterium holder teaches sth non-definitively, we have to submit" and "the successor can change non-definitive teachings" ... that doesn't make all that much sense, how shall the successor know that a non-definitive teaching needs changing if no one pushes back against it? How shall the pushback be licit on his view?
In the case of John XXII, there was pushback, he said "I'll study" and on his deathbed took a distance from what he had said, and after that, his successor definitively decided the saints in Heaven already do enjoy the Beatific vision. But that was only possible because there was a pushback and the pushback was only possible a) for not holding the submission was absolutely due to non-infallible statements or b) suspecting John XXII was not Pope, until he clarified he hadn't quite made up his mind.
8:57 Come on. Get real. Beroeans were not scrupulously double-checking St. Paul after converting to Christianity, Beroeans did so while deciding on whether to be Christians or not.
The chapter in Acts very explicitly says this double-checking was happening while St. Paul was teaching in a synagogue, a hall so far institutionally bound to the Old Covenant, at that point, and therefore not where they would be once they had decided to become Christians (unless they all decided so and made the synagogue into a church).
And disciples of Christ were required to reject their own reason to follow Him.
Then Jesus said to the twelve: Will you also go away And Simon Peter answered him: Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life
[John 6:68-69]
9:26 And you are trying to prove our conscience isn't properly formed because it has agreed to agree with the magisterium.
9:55 Well, thanks for reminding me.
I recall a certain Gendron complaining the Council of Trent issued 130 condemnations of Protestantism.
I'm defending the 130 anathemas, some of which do not condemn Protestantism but a very opposite error, like denial of Original sin. I'm behind schedual.
Denial of transsubstantiation is very much fuzzier in Lutheranism and Anglicanism which (obligatorily or optionally) believe in the Real Presence. I was not even as a Lutheran in denial of it. (Back in the teen days when I decided). And you cannot get this denial from Scripture, least of all from John 6.
10:13 Heretics under anathema collectively.
Ignorant or stupid in some individual best case scenarios, or very best case, will later sober up or get the facts straight and become Catholic.
I have no intention whatsoever to dispute the anathemas of Trent. Against Protestants and other errors (I argue the Vatican II sect is since 1992 flirting with the condemnations of Session V, canons 1 to III, which all presuppose a literal Adam ... not all Vatican II-ists deny this, but some do, as proven by Sébastien Antoni, supposed Assumptionist priest in communion with back then "Francis" ...)
10:36 Every piece of logic is in fact clothed in some rhetoric.
Trent uses the rhetoric of divine decree, and in fact, the texts of Vatican II are not directly opposing it, just making another consideration. Some rejectors of Vatican II are considering even this one totally illicit (Dimond brothers), some aren't. Ask Pope Michael II if he considers you as a separated brother or as a heretic or both concurrently.
11:39 It may be noted that the one true Church in the time of Mark 9 was the Jewish Church, founded on Sinai, and Caiaphas and Hannas also belonged to it, as did the Pharisees.
Situations have perhaps changed.
But "spirit at work outside one true Church" doesn't equal "no need of one true Church" ... what we are asking is not just for the Holy Spirit to work in us, but to sanctify us, so we can get to Heaven and not belong to the impure groups that cannot get in. A man may have temporarily been in the state of grace and done a miracle, even if he weren't part of the Church.
The healing of an ailing by Pentecostal or Jewish prayer do not contradict that Jews and Pentecostals need to convert. And if the pastor doesn't convert, perhaps his spiritual grandchildren will.
Other than miracles, your claim is somewhat murkier. I have seem Protestants who seem to take me for a drunkard and therefore unsaved because I drink alcohol (usually beer or wine). That links them more to the Qoran which says "if a large quantity intoxicates, even a small quantity is Haram" than to the Bible. Does your claim refer in part to people doing moderate drinking and then giving that up under what I can only consider as undue group pressure, except in exceptional cases, where some are actually engaged with missionary work among alcoholics (I'm not, btw)?
12:15 The Catholic Church is ideally not trying to erase a house church, but to absorb it.
Btw, house churches are a red herring against "institutional church" ... a policeman is a policeman with a badge, even if he uses a private home as temporary office, and a bishop is a bishop, a priest a priest and a deacon a deacon, even if they each use a private larger villa in Antonine Rome. The architecture does not negate the institutional structure.
The SSPX has acted as (from the architectonic and property related pov) a house church in Copenhagen for a while, perhaps still does so, and the emergency conclave of 1990 was in a house church.
When it comes to Hgh Church Anglicans, for the Vatican II-sit pov, this is apparent in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham. A certain Fr. John Hunwicke belonged to it while alive on earth. I count him as a friend.
13:16 Can you really not see the deviousness of John Calvin?
He argues as if Apostolic Succession in and of itself were sufficient to belong to the one true Church. [According to those he argues against, i e us Catholics]
It certainly isn't according to Roman Catholics, who say Apostolic succession is materially or sacramentally preserved, while only formally and magisterially lost by being outside the Church.
"John Paul II" and Michael I (for different reasons) believed that Mgr Lefebvre was outside the one true Church in 1991. Both agreed that he had apostolic succession, that his is a valid line of bishops, that Mgr Williamson was an actual bishop, sacramentally speaking.
As to Orthodox, they would argue, some of them, that Apostolic Succession is totally lost, totally invalid, outside the Church. In other words, that Mgr Lefebvre was actually a layman.
That both George III and George Washington laid claims to being a legitimate overlord over Massachusetts doesn't negate that only one of them actually was so at any given date, up to you to say George III forfeited by tyranny or George Washington never acceeded, but usurped.
13:26 Calvin was right that Succession alone was not a sufficient guarantee of truth in any given bishop.
It does not follow it is not a necessary condition of the guarantees of truth in the Church as a whole.
13:40 The true Church is the one Christ instituted by His resurrection and on occasion of the last five verses of Matthew.
It is marked BOTH by continuity (all days) AND by doctrinal purity (teching them to obey all I have ordered you).
Jesus didn't think it was one or the other, but both together. Missing this is a blatant misreading, not a legitimate "other viewpoint" of what is going on.
13:53 There is a difference between "rival factions" within the Church (17th C. Franciscans and Dominicans on the Immaculate Conception, 17th C. Jesuits and Franciscans on Predestination and Freewill), and, on the other hand, mutually excommunicating parties, like George and Athanasius in Alexandria.
Protestantism is a collection of denominations the earliest of which are all excommunicated by Trent and many later arrivals, possibly from Menno Simons, certainly from first Baptists, join excommunicated doctrines. Some of them may simply lack Catholic doctrine and also Catholic sacraments for some of them (though two, Baptism and Marriage need not be lacking).
From before the 16th C. you have the "big five" claimants to one true Church, plus Waldensians and Hussites, pretty recent precursors of the Reformers (Waldensians closer to Calvin, Hussites to Luther). The mutual excommunications exist, and persist. But they are few. It's not a needle in a haystack.
Maronites were once excommunicated Monothelites, but are reconciled with the Church since at least the Crusades ... as are also various uniates from Orthodox or Coptic or Armenian or Assyrian backgrounds. The excommunication between Luciferians and Semi-Arians, aka Cappadocians, not only was not respected by Athanasius in the day, but also was not prolonged after Emperor Theodosius came to power. I don't recall the exact moment when it ceased. An already healed excommunication, as well as an excommunication where one side completely ended (Arians, Donatists, Priscillianists) is not a problem for finding the one true Church. Maronites and Rome are already one. Arians are already zilch.
14:18 Scriptural engagement is definitely not lost on a collective level, every priest is required 15 or 30 minutes (forget which) lectio divina. On the individual level, it is not a requirement.
I do not know what kind of "spiritual vitality" you consider as lost by a one true Church, it is not miracles, which were rather lost on the Protestant side, and as for teetotalism, that's a "vitality" for Antichrist.
14:26 It hasn't occurred to you that outsourcing discernment was always a requirement of individual Christians?
Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life
Was it only to Christ?
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]
Was it only while the Apostles were still alive?
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world
[Matthew 28:20]
15:22 Did you notice how he qualified what he "refused to leave"?
The faith once for all committed to the saints.
It's a Biblical description for the true faith.
Well, if he claims that he would be leaving it if he became Catholic, he's claiming Catholics don't have it, i e he is on this point voicing a Restorationist, not just Reformist view of the Reformation.
Logic. If Calvin wasn't Restorationists, Catholics still had the true faith and he could safely return. If he was Restorationist, he denies that the true faith was committed to the saints once, since he claims it was re-committed to them through him. He wants to have it both ways. When Catholics bring up "where was the true faith in 1400" he could say "oh, in Rome" ... if they brought up "where was the true faith now?" he could say "oh, not in Rome"
One cannot compare Popes Michael I and II who claim to preserve pre-Vatican II theology (and Michael I was born 1959, the year after Pius XII died, he was not a centuries distant nostalgic for a truth he needed to reconstruct). Preservation through a small faction is not equal to restoration by a new faction, that's obviously theologically new.
