Having started from scratch himself, John Martignoni explains how to get started as a Catholic apologist.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith, I am Cy Kellett, your host. And we get asked a lot, how do I do what you all do? Not talking about me specifically but about the folks around here, this whole apologetics thing. Many people are interested in being better at defending the faith. I think, in large part, that comes from lived experience that the faith is under assault in many places. Some people would just like to know how to defend it to the nieces and nephews, the sons and daughters, the brothers and sisters in the family.
And so, apologetics is a skill people want to gain and we thought let’s do a real introductory level program. How do you get good at this? How do you become a good defender of the Catholic faith? You probably couldn’t do better for a guest than John Martignoni for that. You probably know him from two decades of hosting EWTN Radio’s Open Line but he’s also the founder of the Bible Christian Society that reaches hundreds of thousands of people each year across the United States, throughout the world, sharing the truths of the Catholic faith. He’s also got a regular newsletter, Apologetics for the … Excuse me, it’s an e-newsletter, Apologetics for the Masses. More than 40,000 people around the world, 80 countries, every state subscribe to that.
And if that’s not enough for you, he’s the director of evangelization for the Diocese of Birmingham, Alabama. John Martignoni, thank you very much for being here with us.
John Martignoni:
Cy, it is my pleasure as always to be on with you guys.
Cy Kellett:
Well, we really appreciate it and I’m told, I’ve checked your biography, you did not come out of the womb a Catholic apologist. You’re not a cradle apologist.
John Martignoni:
No. My goal growing up and after going through school and getting a degree in corporate finance and an MBA and then doing a year’s worth of work on a PhD in finance, my goal was to be a millionaire by the time I was 30. And being a Catholic apologist, you can’t usually do both.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, I guess not. Well, I haven’t met any super finance Catholic apologist. So, that means that, at some point, you had to think how am I going to do this, how am I going to get into it? So, maybe if you could start with the basics of the person who says how do I become a good, solid apologist for the Catholic faith.
John Martignoni:
Well, my experience of how I got into it, I did not look to become a Catholic apologist. I tell people I got dragged into this gig kicking and screaming. Basically, I heard an anti-Catholic program on a Protestant radio station, I called to complain and I said, “You need to let a Catholic come on there and respond to that stuff,” and I didn’t mean me. But the way it usually turns out, if you have the idea, quite often, you are tasked with seeing the idea come to fruition. And so, one thing led to another and I went on their live afternoon show that they had Monday through Friday for an hour, hour and a half or so. And then somebody called and said, “John, I’ll buy the airtime if you’ll do a show like that on the radio.” And, lo and behold, I wound up with a live Catholic apologetics program one hour a week on the largest evangelical radio station in the state of Alabama.
So, that’s not the usual way you will get started in Catholic apologetics but being on the radio caused me to learn in a hurry. And so, what I would do is just pick a particular topic that I was going to talk on that Sunday night and I would study it all day Saturday, go to mass Saturday night and then study it all day Sunday and then go on the radio and talk about Mary or purgatory or the Pope. And if anybody called, it was a live call in show, if anybody called with a question when I was talking about Mary and they called with a question about the Pope, I said, “Nope, not this show.” “Why?” “Because I wasn’t ready to answer it.”
Cy Kellett:
That’s a great tip, isn’t it? You don’t try to answer the questions you’re not ready to answer.
John Martignoni:
Exactly, exactly. But what I tell people now, because I get questions all the time, I get emails, I’m actually closer to 50,000 now on my newsletter in terms of the number of subscribers. I get emails all the time how do I become a Catholic apologist? How do I learn more? And basically what I say, the number one thing you need to do is to pray, pray about it. Prayer underlies everything. As you know, Cy, as all you folks know at Catholic Answers, prayer is the foundation upon which everything we do is built. So, you just pray about it.
Number two, you learn a little bit more about your faith every day. Make it a goal to learn something new about your faith today. Whether that’s by picking up the Bible and reading just a chapter from the Bible or picking up the catechism and going to the back, to the index and say, “I want to learn about purgatory today.” So, you look up purgatory in the index in the catechism and you go and read about purgatory. And in the catechism, if they’ve got scriptural references in the footnotes for the paragraphs on purgatory, you go and read those scripture passages so you just learn a little bit more every day. But the big thing, this is the number one thing I tell people, I said, “If you learn this, you are automatically a stage one Catholic apologist.” And it’s the first of the four strategies that I teach people on apologetics, it’s what I call the ignorant Catholic strategy.
All you have to do is be prepared when you’re asked a question about your faith or your faith is attacked right there in front of you, all you have to do is say, “Look, I don’t know the answer to your questions but I tell you what, I’m going to find out and I’ll get back to you,” and boom, you are a level one Catholic apologist. So, never be afraid to show your ignorance about the faith but always tell people, say, “Yeah, okay, I’m ignorant about it, I don’t know this answer but I’m going to go and find out. And once I find out, I’ll get back to you.”
Cy Kellett:
There’s a level of humility needed there because I think it easily becomes a … I suppose one of the traps of apologetics is the argumentative apologist, just I want to win this argument.
John Martignoni:
Yes, yes. And so many Catholics that I’ve come across are afraid to admit to someone, whether it be a Baptist, Evangelical, whoever, that they don’t know something about their faith because they think that’s somehow showing that the Catholic faith isn’t worthy because this particular Catholic doesn’t know your questions about the faith. So, they don’t want to embarrass themselves but they don’t also want to embarrass the faith, the church. And I tell them, I said, “Don’t worry about that because the church is big enough, it can handle itself, so you don’t have to worry about not embarrassing the church.” And then, as you said, it’s a question of humility.
If you don’t know something and you’re asked a question about it, about the Catholic faith, don’t give it your best guess. Don’t give it some half-cocked answer because, I’m telling you, literally, Cy, a soul could be at stake here.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
John Martignoni:
So, you don’t want to give your best guess of what you think purgatory means or where in the Bible is the teaching on the Eucharist or on confession. If you don’t know, you just say, “Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I don’t know the answer to your question, I don’t know my faith as well as I should but I’m going to go and do a little research and I’ll get back to you once I have an answer for you,” and, boom, you are out of any and every jam. I had a guy, and this wasn’t too long ago, maybe in the last year or so, a guy emailed me, he said, “Just that one strategy, I don’t know but I will find out and get back to you,” he said, “Has freed me up to talk to anybody and everybody about my Catholic faith.”
Cy Kellett:
Oh, yeah, right. Because you don’t go into it thinking, “Oh, no, what if I don’t know the answer?” You already know what you’re going to do if you don’t know the answer.
John Martignoni:
Exactly, exactly. You have the answer to every question they could possibly ask. Either you know the answer and you can give it to them from the Bible or the catechism or whatever or they ask you all these questions you don’t know and you know the answer to that too. I don’t know but I’ll find out and I’ll get back to you.
Cy Kellett:
And I suppose you can, depending on the situation, modify that. If you’re a parent, maybe you say let’s look it up together, we’ll find it out together.
John Martignoni:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
Do the work with the child or the niece or the nephew or whoever it is and, more and more, it’s grandkids challenging grandparents on these things.
John Martignoni:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
All right. So, first of all, I feel safe as an apologist if I’ve got, if I got that in my back pocket. But you said you got four strategies so I want to pick your brain on more of them.
John Martignoni:
Well, yeah. And that one, you feel safe but it also emboldens you because they can’t trap you, they can’t embarrass you, they can’t wrap you in a knot and get you all tied up. They can’t do that because all you have to do is say I don’t know but I’ll find out and get back to you. The second strategy I have, I call it being offensive without being offensive. And again, Cy, you know this very well, truth offends people. So, if you’re in a discussion about your faith, about Jesus, about God and you’re going to be giving people the Catholic view on things, you’re going to be telling them the truth, whether it be moral truth or truths about the faith, and there’s a very high probability that, when you tell somebody the truth, they’re going to be offended. Okay?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
John Martignoni:
You can’t avoid that.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
John Martignoni:
Sometimes they won’t be but, a lot of the times, they will. Jesus was the truth and I tell people, I say, “Look, can you love somebody more than Jesus loved them?” “No.” “Can you be more respectful to someone than Jesus was?” “No.” So, if they hated Jesus because He told them the truth, guess what kind of response you’re going to get? So, it’s not always going to be a pleasant thing when you get into a conversation with somebody about the truth but, if you can lower the temperature, let’s say, of a conversation or keep from offending someone, you want to do so. And the way I have learned to do that and what I teach people in this strategy of being offensive without being offensive is to simply learn how to ask questions.
The person you’re talking to, they have probably been to a seminar at their church. I know because I’ve been to seminars at Protestant megachurches that were on how to evangelize Catholics. And so, there are these seminars out there and they’ve been told Catholics don’t know the Bible, Catholics don’t know this, Catholics don’t know that. If you ask a Catholic this question, then you’re going to have them totally befuddled and then you’ll be able to swoop in for the kill and all this stuff.
And so, I tell Catholics, I say, “Look, take advantage of the stereotype that folks have of Catholics,” that they don’t know the Bible, they don’t … “And just sit there and say, ‘Okay, you’re the teacher, Mr. Evangelical or Baptist or non-denominational, you’re the teacher, I’m the student, lower yourself to the level of student and raise the other person up to the level of teacher.'” And I always ask, “What does a good student do?” He asks questions, he or she asks questions.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
John Martignoni:
So, somebody might come to you and say, “Well, where in the Bible does it say that Mary was assumed body and soul into heaven?” Well, the Catholic response could be, “Well, that’s a really good question but where in the Bible does it say she wasn’t?” “Oh, well.” So, now, they’re trying to trip you up or get you to think, well, what is your question, it gets them to think. You’ve heard the line from Socrates about the unexamined life is not worth living, well, I say modify that a bit and say the unexamined doctrine is not worth believing.
And a lot of the Protestants out there, again, whatever denomination they’re in, they haven’t really examined what it is they believe and why they believe it. They’ve just taken it whole cloth from their pastor or their mom or dad or whoever, they’ve never really been forced to examine what they believe, why they believe it and how it fits with scripture and common sense and simple logic.
So, with our questions, what we’re going to try to do is get the non-Catholic Christian to examine their beliefs as much or more than they’re trying to get us to examine ours and you do that simply by asking questions.
Cy Kellett:
All right, okay. It’s very, very helpful. It’s also good to practice your Bible a little bit, know some of these things.
John Martignoni:
Well, yeah, yeah.
Cy Kellett:
But this is a conversation. The person is asking you to justify something, it’s perfectly fine to say, “Well,” like you said, “I love the question, where does it say she didn’t?” then now we’re going to talk about how scripture fits in the Christian life and what authority scripture has and what authority the church has, we’re going to move on to that ground.
John Martignoni:
Right. And I teach people, I say, “Look, no matter what the question is, no matter where the conversation starts,” whether it’s the Bible alone or the Pope or Mary or purgatory or salvation, “Wherever the conversation starts, you as a Catholic want to move it to authority, the question of authority as soon as possible because, no matter what the question is, the difference between Catholic and non-Catholic Christian boils down to a question of authority.” Who has the authority to decide these issues? Who has the authority to decide what is true and correct Christian doctrine and dogma and what is not? Who has the authority to decide what is true Christian morality and what is not? Is it each person reading the Bible on their own who has that authority or is it the church founded by Jesus Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit that has that authority?
And so, Catholics need to realize, if you keep the church at you’re back, stay on what the church teaches and don’t deviate off into, well, this is what John thinks or this is what Cy thinks, no, no, no, no. What does the church say? If you stay on that, you cannot lose a debate on issues of faith and morality with a Protestant Christian. Because again, once you start asking these questions … And I’m going to warn Catholics, when you ask a Protestant a question, they say, “Well, we believe in salvation by faith alone,” they read you a scripture verse and you look at it and you say, “Well, it says we’re saved by faith but it doesn’t say we’re saved by faith alone. So, why are you adding that word?” When you start asking those types of questions, you are going to get slammed with scripture verse after scripture verse after scripture verse.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
John Martignoni:
But you always keep in mind, well, when I get to something that I don’t know what the heck’s going on here, what do you do? Oh, that’s a good question. Tell you what? I don’t know the answer to that but I’m going to go and find out and I’ll get back to you. And I-
Cy Kellett:
Back to strategy one.
John Martignoni:
Exactly. That’s your fallback position. And I tell people all the time that, when I first got into this, again, it wasn’t by choice, I had people at the bank where I worked Baptist, good Baptist folk, asking me all these questions and my first responses were run away, run away. Oh, look what time it is, I think I’ve got a meeting. Or, wait, I think I hear my mother calling me.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
John Martignoni:
Get out. But you learn by doing so you practice. The first few times you don’t know how to answer, then you go and look up the answers and then you start coming back with answers and then you’re going to get questions that, well, now I don’t know how to answer those so I’m going to say, don’t know but I’ll find out and get back. And it’s a process, it’s not all at one time, it’s a process to slowly learn so be patient with yourself and just don’t hurry that I’ve got to know everything right now. You don’t so take that burden off of you.
Cy Kellett:
All right. So, if I’m keeping score correctly, we’ve got the, I don’t know, the ignorant Catholic and then you’ve got the be offensive without … Wait, no. Be on offensive-
John Martignoni:
How to be offensive without being offensive.
Cy Kellett:
Offensive, yeah. Give me another one.
John Martignoni:
Well, the third one that I use, and this one does take a little more scriptural knowledge but it’s not, oh, I’ve got to be a PhD in theology or even a bachelor’s degree in theology, no, no, no. You don’t have to know any of that or you don’t have to have that level of learning and, quite often, I tell people, I say, “Look, if you get a master’s degree in theology, it might actually hurt you as a Catholic apologist.”
Cy Kellett:
I’ve had that experience with people where, the masters, it messed them up as far as being able to explain the faith.
John Martignoni:
Yeah. Well, depending on what school they went to-
Cy Kellett:
Right, right, yeah.
John Martignoni:
… it could mess them up. But also, what happens is, the people who are so learned, they start using these big technical terms. And you’re talking to a Protestant and you don’t need those big technical terms, you just confuse people and so keep it simple. But the third strategy that I use is it’s the principle of the thing. And what this is is drawing Catholic principles out of scripture because, we admit, there are some things in Catholic teaching that are not mentioned directly in scripture. For example, I mentioned the assumption of Mary, well, that’s not mentioned directly in scripture. But if you go to Revelation, start with chapter 11 verse 19 and then flow immediately into Revelation 12 verse one and following, you see there’s this great portent in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and moon under her feet and a crown of stars on her head.
It was like, well, okay, wait a minute. There’s this woman in heaven, she’s got a body because she’s clothed, she’s got a head, she’s got feet and this woman is the mother of the male child who will rule all nations with a rod of iron. Okay, yeah, it doesn’t say this is Mary and she has assumed body and soul into heaven but that’s a pretty good piece of evidence that she was assumed body and soul into heaven. So, you just throw that out, say this is the evidence that I offer you. Plus nowhere does scripture say she wasn’t assumed body and soul into heaven. And people being assumed into heaven doesn’t contradict any scriptural principle because Elijah apparently was assumed body and soul into heaven on this fiery chariot. Enoch, it seems, from Genesis five and Hebrews 11, it says Enoch walked with God, he did not die. It seems like he was assumed body and soul into heaven.
So, it doesn’t violate Mary being assumed body and soul into heaven, it doesn’t violate any scriptural principles. And so, there’s a principle. And then we’ve got purgatory. That’s a big bugaboo for Protestants, this purgatory. Nowhere does the word purgatory appear in the Bible. Well, you’re absolutely right. However, the principles of purgatory are there loud and clear, they’re shouting at us from scripture. For example, in, oh, what’s this, second Samuel 12 where Nathan, the prophet, comes to King David after King David has committed adultery with Bathsheba and essentially had Bathsheba’s husband killed or allowed him to be killed in battle. So, he’s a adulterer or a murderer. Nathan tells David this story, David realizes he’s talking about me and David repents and Nathan says the Lord has put away your sin. In other words, David’s been forgiven but Nathan says, because of this thing you’ve done, the child that is born to you shall die.
So, what’s the principle here? There is punishment due to sin even after the sin has been forgiven. So, that’s the first principle. Then you go to Revelation 21:27 which says nothing unclean will enter the new Jerusalem. Well, the new Jerusalem is heaven so you could say nothing with the stain of sin will enter heaven. Okay, great. Hebrews 12:22, 23, you’ve come to the heavenly Mount Zion, to the gathering of festal angels, to the God who is God overall and to the souls of the just made perfect. The souls of the just. We would call those people those who have died in a state of grace. So, the souls of the just made perfect. So, there’s the principle is there’s some process by which the souls of the just are made perfect. All right?
So, one more principle I’m going to throw out. First Corinthians three verses, well, about 12, 13 to 15. And it’s talking about that, after you die or on the day of your death, that your works will be judged as through fire. And if you’ve done some works of hay, straw and stubble, in other words, not the best of works, you could suffer loss as through fire yet still be saved. So, the question is, well, where after you die are your works tested and you could suffer loss as through fire yet still be saved? Is it hell?
Cy Kellett:
No.
John Martignoni:
Well, no, because you suffer loss as through fire in hell but you don’t get out so you can’t be saved. Is it heaven? Well, no, you don’t suffer loss as through fire in heaven. So, there must be this other place or state of being where you can suffer loss as through fire after you die. So, let’s take those four principles, Cy. There’s possibility of punishment due to sin even after the sin has been forgiven, nothing with the stain of sin enters heaven, there is some process by which the souls of the just are made perfect and there’s this place, other than heaven or hell, where you can suffer loss as through fire after you die yet still be saved. And I say, “You put all those together and you’ve got what Catholics call purgatory.” And I say, “You can call it whatever you want but that’s what we call purgatory.” And that’s one of the best examples I know of the strategy of it’s the principle of the thing.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, wonderful, wonderful. And you didn’t have to master reams of biblical citations for that, you established the principle in three or four citations. So, a person could take those and establish the principle on whatever topic it was you wanted. Once you have those, then you can establish the principle and you can move on from there. In other words, you don’t have to be a Bible expert to use the Bible to establish these principles.
John Martignoni:
No. And with purgatory, you take those four passages that I just gave you and you can go and you can cause some Baptist or Evangelical’s minds to explode and they won’t know how to answer that. But let’s say, Cy, you give them those four principles and they come back to you, they say, “Well, yeah, but in Hebrews seven, verse 13, it says this and, in Matthews six verse 45, it says this and this and this,” then what do you do? Huh, good questions. Tell you what, I don’t know how to answer those but I’m going to find out and I’ll get back to you.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right. Back you are.
John Martignoni:
And you’re out of a jam.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Don’t let yourself get into that jam, that’s what it seems like. You always have a place to step back away from being in a jam. Whereas, if you’re making it up as you go along, you’re going to get yourself all crossed up.
John Martignoni:
Right. If you’re making it up, like I said, as you go along or giving your best guess or giving some half-cocked answer, you’re going to get in trouble. And number two, if you’re trying to do it all, if you got to be perfect, oh, I’m going to nail this, I’m going to just absolutely … Well, most of the time, most people, most Catholics don’t know something perfectly well but you can know it well enough to plant a seed. And that’s the overarching theme here is that we’re not trying to convert anybody, I’m not trying to convince anybody, I’m just giving evidence of what I believe and why I believe it to maybe plant a seed with this person. And then, after the conversation, I go and I pray my head off for this person that the Holy Spirit will convert the heart and the mind because that’s His job, not mine.
Cy Kellett:
So, I guess, before we get to the fourth of your strategies, that’s a important thing that you said because the other kind of anxiety about being a defender of the faith, even to family members, is what if I fail, I’m responsible for this person’s soul at this moment. And so, we don’t try for fear of making things worse or hardening a heart or something like that. And it sounds like you have a pretty healthy tolerance for failure that I’m not going to put the burden on myself every time I defend the faith of doing so in a way that this person is irresistibly drawn into the Catholic Church.
John Martignoni:
Yes, absolutely. It’s not my responsibility, that burden is not on my shoulders. Plus, talking about mistakes I tell people, I say, “Look, if you are sincerely trying to bring truth into someone’s life, Jesus Christ being the truth. If you’re sincerely trying to share Jesus with somebody, even if you make a mistake, God can use your mistakes to plant a seed with that person or with someone else.”
Cy Kellett:
Right, right.
John Martignoni:
An example, I was at a Catholic singles group, a young adult group, whatever you want to call it. This was before I got married but I was engaged. My future bride and I were at a Super Bowl party at this parish for the young adults group and I’m walking out, literally, to take her home and I’m holding the door open for her, she walks through and, from the room behind me, I hear somebody say, “Yeah, well, Catholics don’t really have to go to confession, it’s not in the Bible.” And I just froze in the doorway and Janelle, my wife to be, she just kept walking, she didn’t realize for about 20 feet that I wasn’t right there next to her and she stops. She looks back and I’m just frozen like a statue in the doorway and she goes, “What on earth are you doing?” I said, “Hang on, honey, I’ll be right back.”
And so, I go and I make a beeline for this group, there’s four or five people, a couple of guys and three young ladies. And this one young lady, I said, “Well, Kat,” I said, “Yes, it is in the Bible that you need to go to confession.” And she looks at me and I said, “In fact, it’s in the catechism.” This was, I think, ’95 or so so the catechism had just come out a year or two earlier. And she said, “Well, the catechism is just a book written by men.” I said, “Well, it’s in the Bible too.” She goes, “Well, the Bible’s just a book written by men.” And I’m like, “What the heck?” I said, “You’re Catholic?” She said, “Yeah.” I said, “Well” … Well, she’s a moral relativist so I’m trying to find something I can make her see, yes, it’s either right or wrong on this question.
So, I said, “When a priest consecrates the bread and wine, it either becomes the body, blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ as Catholics believe or it doesn’t as Baptists believe. One of us has to be right, one of us has to be wrong.” And she goes, “Well,” I said, “What?” She goes, “My priest told me that it is whatever the person receiving says it is or believes it is.”
Cy Kellett:
Man.
John Martignoni:
Yeah, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
I don’t doubt her that her priest said that.
John Martignoni:
Oh, I don’t either but I looked at her and I said, “That’s nuts.” And my voice was raised and I’m red in the face and I’m just like, “I can’t talk to you,” turn around and walk out. Okay? And I realized later, I’m like, “I should be done [inaudible 00:31:57]. But about five years later, as I’m organizing a men’s luncheon with a speaker here in Birmingham, I send out my email, I’ve got, by this time, a few hundred men on my list, one of them emails me back. He says, “You probably don’t remember this but, several years ago, we were at this young adults thing, Super Bowl party and you were talking about confession being in the Bible.” He goes, “I hadn’t been to confession in about 10 years at that point,” he said, “I thought about what you said for about three weeks and I went back to confession and I’ve been going regularly ever since.”
Cy Kellett:
That’s that. Isn’t that something?
John Martignoni:
Yeah. So, God-
Cy Kellett:
So, you walked away thinking you failed.
John Martignoni:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
But God accomplished what He needed in that.
John Martignoni:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
Isn’t that great?
John Martignoni:
Yes, and it was up to somebody else to work on that young lady but a seed was planted with that guy. So, everybody listening, don’t be afraid to make a mistake because, when you go out there and you start sharing about Jesus and about the Catholic faith, look at Peter’s example. Peter messed up at times, he made mistakes yet Jesus told him, “Come with me, you will be a fisher of men,” and He said, “Do not be afraid.” Why? Because even if you make the mistakes, even if you don’t always know something perfectly well to explain to somebody, God can use you to plant seeds if you are sincere in trying to share Him with others.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, man. Okay, so what’s the final of your four strategies?
John Martignoni:
Okay. The fourth strategy is but that’s my interpretation and I tell Catholics this is your ace in the hole. You’ve got the fallback in terms of the ignorant Catholic strategy, I don’t know but I’ll find out and get back to you. But this one, but that’s my interpretation, I tell Catholics this should give you the boldness, the courage to go out and talk to anybody. Because what it is it’s a recognition that by Protestant theology, by their theology, you as a Catholic have the right to read the Bible for yourself and determine for yourself what is or is not the correct interpretation of scripture. Okay?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
John Martignoni:
So, when you are talking to a Protestant, what’s going on here? Well, like I said, getting to the subject of authority, it’s their fallible interpretation of scripture versus your fallible of interpretation of scripture according to their theology. Okay? So, you’re talking about the Eucharist, you say, “Well, John six verse 54, five, six, Jesus says you must eat My body and drink My blood. My body is real food indeed, My blood is real drink indeed.” And they say, “Oh, He was just speaking symbolically.” Then all you got to do is look at them and say, “Don’t you believe that every person can pick up the Bible for themselves and read it and determine what it says as the Holy Spirit is guiding them?” and the Protestant has to say yes because that’s what they believe. Then you say, “Well, that’s my interpretation.” What can they do? They can say they disagree with it but they can’t tell you it’s wrong because, by their theology, you have the right to do that.
Now, I got into a discussion with a pastor at a Bible church one time and we got into it and he’s giving me scripture verses and he’s interpreting all of them for me. And I said, “Well, Pastor, before we get too far along, can we agree that what’s going on here is your fallible interpretation versus my fallible interpretation according to your theology?” And he didn’t want to agree to that and he started talking, “Well, you know” … They’ve never thought of that. That idea has never entered their head but that’s what’s going on. And so, grudgingly, he never said yes, he just, well, and he went on to something else. Well, a few minutes later, I said, “Well, Pastor,” I said, “In this verse it says this, this, this.” I said what that means and he pokes his finger in my face. He goes, “Aah, John, but that’s your fallible interpretation. Remember you said the best you can do is your fallible interpretation versus my fallible interpretation?”
I said, “No, Pastor, that’s not what I said. I said that’s the best you can do. I said the best I can do is the teaching of the infallible Church founded by Jesus Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit versus your fallible interpretation.” And he turned bright red and he had never ever contemplated the fact that Jesus founded a church and that church needs to be infallible if it’s going to teach the truth. And so, I hit him with that upside the head and we talked a little while longer and then it was done. And maybe I planted a seed and maybe I didn’t but the Catholic who was sitting there watching this whole thing, he came away going, “Wow, I’d never thought of that stuff before.” Yeah, he was-
Cy Kellett:
Isn’t that something? He was strengthened in his faith then.
John Martignoni:
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Cy Kellett:
Wonderful.
John Martignoni:
And like I said, the Bible Church pastor had never ever considered this point of view before. And so, just the fact that I just stopped him dead in the tracks, that planted a seed. Now, whether the seed grew and bore good fruit or not, don’t know but the seed was planted.
Cy Kellett:
John, this was just what I hoped for. We wanted an introduction for people, this is how you begin to do this and this is how you become good at this and what wonderful help you’ve given us. I really appreciate that you took the time to do it, thank you.
John Martignoni:
Well, it’s absolutely my pleasure, Cy. And I tell people this is what I do so I’m very happy to do it as often as possible.
Cy Kellett:
So, people can also get your e-newsletter though. So, that might be a nice source for keeping up and you got to practice and you got to remind yourself of how to do these things. So, how can people get your e-newsletter?
John Martignoni:
It’s biblechristiansociety.com, just go to the newsletter page and put your email address in. You won’t get a lot of fundraising things and stuff from me, I’ll send you something twice a year that says, “Hey, if you can give me 10 cents a day, great. If you can’t, great, just keep reading the newsletter.” So, it’s biblechristiansociety.com, go to the newsletter page. And I say, exactly in the newsletter, a lot of times I have conversations where I’m employing these strategies. How to be offensive without being offensive, it’s the principle of the thing. You will see the strategies inaction as I talk to Evangelicals, Baptist, Church of Christ folks, Presbyterians, et cetera, in the newsletter.
Cy Kellett:
All right. John Martignoni, thank you very, very much.
John Martignoni:
My pleasure, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
And thanks to all our listeners. You know you can reach us with comments, questions, maybe you want to be reminded of how you can get John Martignoni’s e-newsletter, just send us an email anytime. We’ll be happy to help or we’ll be happy to take your idea and maybe make a new episode out of it. Just send it to focus@catholic.com, focus@catholic.com. If you’d be kind enough, as we always ask, to give us that five stars and maybe a few nice words wherever you get the podcast, that helps us grow the podcast, encourages other people to give it a try and we would appreciate that. And if you’d like to support us financially, you can go to givecatholic.com, givecatholic.com. I’m going to say, I don’t know, 10 cents a day. Can you do 10 cents a day? I am Cy Kellett, your host, we’ll see you next time. God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.