Brian and Me They Will Take Out For Being Laymen

Should We Be Judging Catholic YouTubers?
Brian Holdsworth | 5 April 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILmA_fE5S0w

dialogue:

Brian Holdsworth

@BrianHoldsworth

As I mentioned in the video, I've been told that YouTube is restricting impressions for my videos because of my defense of Church teaching in the face of alphabet related assertions. That means I need your help more than ever to spread these videos. Please watch, like, subscribe, and share so that we don't have to rely on the algorithm to allow us to discuss important topics.

And if you're willing, please support the channel by visiting: https://brianholdsworth.ca/help or https://brianholdsworth.locals.com/

Nuff Said!

@Trabunkle

I will recommend that you post your videos on other platforms! There are some of us that only come here to watch certain videos, because they're not available where we get most of our content! There are some good alternatives, you should give them a chance! God Bless!

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@hglundahl

How about, and I gave Anthony Stine the tip too (I forgot to count him and Lofton in the top list), you start burning DVDs?

DVDs are still being issued for cinematic releases, so the format cannot be dead.

And if your issue is, like his, that "not everyone has DVD" well, not everyone has access to the internet, and those who have in Russia cannot see youtube.

I'd myself have a need for getting books printed.

Crystal Marie Dore

@CMDoreOTR

DON'T STOP. The world needs the Catholic perspective. Keep fight'n the good fight.

Roman Baird

@RomanBaird-n7h

I think you're likely being censured because you aren't very honest. You tend to revise history to fit your agenda. You more or less lie. A lot.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ [Roman Baird] Whether it's to Brian or to me, the history revisionist is you.

Roman Baird

@hglundahl You haven't really been paying attention, have you?

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ [Roman Baird] If you mean to his channel, yes, I have.

If you mean to my own production, yes I have.

If I meant to the context of your question, I mentioned some kind of censorship indirectly against me too, before you answered.

But if you meant to your own production and comments before these two, I haven't had occasion.

Leeroy Mac

@ALM-Kath0lik

I appreciate what you do Brian. I'm not in a position to evangelize on a social media platform, and so for a fellow Catholic with a strong philosophical bent to do what you are doing is a boon to Catholicism. Thank you

Yajun Yuan

@YajunYuanSDA

Timestamp 13:06 Protestant unity

John Duh

@johnduh1900

I attempted social media and TikTok and quickly decided it wasn’t for me. It’s hard to not see the worst of society through social media. You either have to have a steel mind or be narcissistic enough to stay on social media.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ [John Duh] You literally are on social media right now ...

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ [Yajun Yuan] Yeah, Protestants think that questions about the Christian life are inessential.

How many times can you get baptised?

How many times can you marry?

What is the Eucharist?

Can you omit a mortal sin from confession or omit confession alltogether, if you sinned after Baptism, and still be forgiven?

Inessentials to Protestants.

John Duh

@hglundahl the social media building platform should have been implied.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@ [John Duh] OK, but we both have channels that can serve as such, I don't have a camera, but still ...

0:25 Counting occurrences in my blog:

Pints With Aquinas (55)
vaticancatholic.com (30)
The Counsel of Trent (28)
Brian Holdsworth (27)
Shameless Popery Podcast (19)
Breaking In The Habit (18)
LizziesAnswers (16)
Jimmy Akin (16)
The Crusader Pub (9)
vatican in exile (4)
Joe McClane (2)
Pope Michael II (2)
Pontifacts Podcast (1)

0:45 The charge "self appointed" only makes sense with an actual office.

It's a slur against Pope Michael I that he was self appointed. Given the efforts to get Sede Bishops to his conclave, it's more like they appointed him by leaving him a walkover he wasn't asking for.

But Pope is an actual office. In the Church that Christ founded, there is at any given time no more than one actual Pope except very quirky situations (like was Felix II really actually Pope when Liberius was under suspicion?). If you appoint yourself to that office, you steal it from someone else. If you appoint someone else with a heretical theology matching yours, you also steal it from someone else, an actual Catholic.

In this context "self appointed" makes sense.

Now, preacher is not quite the same way an office as Pope, Bishop of Calgary, Parish Priest of Ascension, Our Lady of Grace, Holy Name or Holy Trinity.

But mind you, preaching is still what Latin calls an "officium" ... an official duty also not to be usurped. Preaching is typically done in Church, inside or outside Liturgy, and if you do so, you either are a man ordinarily given that duty (Pope, Bishop, Priest of a certain parish or chaplaincy (not a priest who only celebrates silent mass on a side altar of the monastery), or a Deacon), or you have Venia Praedicandi by a bishop. While St. Francis actually did start out preaching without permission, he certainly eventually either got a Venia Praedicandi (at least implicit in the Pope's approval) or he became a Deacon.

Now, I think it's very specific what "preaching" means, and it means:

• preaching on the topics of the day (Gospel of a Lord's Day, Saint of a Feast Day)
• preaching penance.

Either way, "preaching" means exhortation to the complete Christian faith and virtue.

Obviously that is not what a Catholic vlogger or blogger is doing, including in Apologetics. In Apologetics, you do not go for completeness, you go for defending a Truth that is attacked and you have the means to defend, typically in my case, or in your case, explaining a Reality that is misunderstood and you have the experience and eloquence to explain.

That is not an officium in either official sense, it cold only be officium in the sense of a felt duty, of charity, of prudence, of occasion.

That is very famously what Gilbert Keith Chesterton did, and what you and I do. It is not an appointment in the sense that can be usurped.

2:46 Speaking of lots of hard work and sacrifice, there is one guy you are constantly letting down on that account.

3000 words per day is not nothing, in publication, average over March. Stephen King just writes 2000 words, and that's before editing out sometimes large pieces of it. With Neil Gaiman, that's 1500 words.

In order to have an income, I'd obviously profit from visibility, because that's how I could catch a publisher's eye.

3:30 Technically, an episode of Pints with Aquinas, Brian Holdsworth, an essay by Gilbert Keith Chesterton or myself, is a consumer product.

So, by the way, is a sermon. Those who have the duty to preach, where a parish has the duty or the encouragement to turn up and listen cannot be callous to how they can't be boycotted (unless they say sth seriously wrong, and get stamped as heretics, like it happened to Nestorius). They have to provide a format that's agreeable for those turning up.

But because no one has a duty to turn on an episode of Brian Holdsworth, it is a pleasure or otherwise that you chose, vloggers, bloggers and paper essayists are providing consumer products in another sense.

That there is Apostolic zeal behind it, and perhaps at times for some an Apostolic kind of blessing from God, doesn't change that it's different from the Apostolic Zeal that some people have a habitual duty to muster every Lord's Day and Holiday of obligation, plus every Retreat they hold and every Lenten conference or Advent Conference encouraging to go to confession.

The priests who hold sermons have been appointed to that. Pretending that Matt and you and I have the quality of zeal that the priests have, given a life without celibacy or (for married clergy) a highly disciplined (by rules specific to clergy) family life, given the possibility of writing the post or the manuscript for the news paper article or turn the camera on for the video, when we feel like it, or when a guest arrives, is ludicrous.

And even if it were true, it would actually make the case for your clergyman critic. "I am a layman, but I'm an Apostle, because I have zeal" is as ... frankly immature as "I'm a woman, but I can celebrate the Lord's Supper, because I have zeal" ... There is an ontological difference between a man and a woman which makes the latter unfit for ministerial priesthood. There is an ontological difference between a ministerial priest and a layman, which makes the former's sermons essentially a necessary and highly disciplined sidekick to his Mass or his Absolutions. And of course sometimes Baptisms and weddings as well.

A lay writer can relax and to some degree not available to a priest in a sermon chose the background, the length of discourse, the type of topic and so on that he's comfortable with. AND his readers or viewers can chose if they are comfortable with it too. It is, essentially, a consumer product.

4:33 Don't Judge Me, 25 November 2016?

5:28 What were my latest totals for all time ...?

569,99 k + 1 M 115,85 k + 1 M 513,11 k + 723,89 k + 281,57 k + 60,06 k + 789,19 k = 5 M 187,98 k, as of Monday, 6 November 2023.

I think I did some update since then, but can't find it right now ....

6:33 In Sweden in 2002 to 2003, I was a lone voice, first for Palmarianism, then for Sedevacantism (with a Feeneyite slant).

When I went out, lots of young bloggers started propping up. Last year of "Benedict" and first year of "Francis" was when most of them ceased action. They were victims to the kind of voice that you are responding to.

7:43 æctchewositatem ... should be actooawsitatem.

8:24 when I started writing on the internet, I was living in my mother's extra appartment to be a comfort to her, mentally, and I sacrificed the opportunity to leave the country to do that for some time.

I got it a few years later, when mother was forced to quit the extra appartment.

I did not stop writing.

Before MSN Groups went down, with MSN Group Antimodernism, in 2009, I had started two blogger accounts that were disconnected by my enemies, recently even deleted, and a third that so far isn't. It's on that that I had 5 million plus views in November 2023.

With a publishing house, I could make money from it too.

And just in case you ask for my motivation, it has been debates on internet fora, and one section of my blogs are debate blogs, which I cannot get commercially printed without, for each debate, the accord of the other participants. They are, like formerly the Fan fic on Narnia, standing still since 2014, a labour of love which will likely not be repaid. But they are the heart of what I'm doing, and they are where I verify that such and such an error exists.

They are also where I know that mainstream believers in Heliocentric astronomy, including paid astronomers, are not discounting Geocentrism with a divine and lots of angelic movers, because the evidence anyway points to Heliocentrism, but because they have a metaphysical prejudice against God and Angels, like Dawkins.

8:46 Internet Apologetics is NOT living the Discipleship of the Apostles.

It does not take a "nolo episcopari" ...

And by the way, I'm not asking you for advice, but for recognition. If your Church takes my support for Geocentrism, YEC and Pope Michael II as heresy, they are free to proceed. But if they prefer taking it as a mental symptom, they are robbing me. And as far as I can see, not for the actual sake of God's truth.

A man who had been named Archbishop of Reims (yeah, it looks lame to spell Rheims that way!) just denied that Jesus had had Catholic states in mind when founding His Church. SSPX corrected him with a reference to Quas Primas. I did with a reference to Matthew 28. O B V I O U S L Y, Quas Primas is pre-conciliar, and that leaves Eric de Moulins-Beaufort free to imagine it might no longer be binding ... Except SSPX and me, no one corrected him. And SSPX did it in a dry way ...