In this episode of free-for-all-Friday Trent examines the need for a younger generation of Catholic apologists.
Transcript:
What does the future hold for apologetics in the church, especially here in the US and the English-speaking world? Something Catholic Answers has been involved in for a long time, but we always have to keep our eye on the future. That’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Welcome Council of Trent podcast, it’s free for all Friday. Monday and Wednesdays, we talk apologetics and theology. Friday, this Friday, it’s apologetics. It could be all sorts of different topics, but it’s whatever I feel like talking about. And this has been really weighing on my heart recently. And it’s motivating me to change up a little bit of what I’m doing. Not drastically, but putting myself onto a different trajectory, something I’m concerned about when it comes to the future. I think it happens a lot for people, as you get older.
You start your young adult life really thinking a lot about your own future, like, “What’s my career going to be, who’s my spouse going to be, what’s my vocation, what am I going to do with children, how am I going to make my place in the world, how am I going to provide, how am I going to build up my family in a culture that’s increasingly opposed to Christian values?” For example. So this is something that people do in the beginning of your adult life, you think a lot about your future. But as your adult life continues on, and especially once you get to the point where you feel like you’ve answered a lot of those questions and you know what you want to do, you start thinking about other people’s futures, you start thinking about your children’s future, your grandchildren’s future, and you start transitioning to thinking, “Okay, what kind of legacy can I leave? What can I do in the world, do for the glory of God, that will benefit the kingdom of God and the body of Christ, and provide these spiritual rewards and benefits to others, maybe in future generations?”
“What can I do to serve the body of Christ in the future?” And a lot of that involves, “How can I serve the body right now?” So, that’s what I want to talk about, because we were having a discussion at Catholic Answers not too long ago. I was with the other apologists and the senior staff. And we were talking about what are we going to do in six months, what are we going to do in a year, what are we going to do in five years? And I raised the question, I said, “What are we going to do though in 10 years, or let’s say 20 years?” I would love to work at Catholic Answers for my entire life. I love being a Catholic apologist. I love doing debates, I love studying, I love writing books. I love equipping other people, and I think that’s going to become more of what I want to do in the future.
I love helping people overcome intellectual obstacles, so they can have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and be a communion with Christ and his church. I love doing that, and so I’m grateful to work at Catholic Answers to be able to do that. And so I asked the staff and the leadership, “What are we going to do, what are things going to look like in 20 years?” So right now, I can tell you this much. The current crop of leadership at Catholic Answers, our president, the board, the senior apologist, in 20 years, they’re going to be retired. They may be retired from ministry, they may be retired from this Earth, and go to their heavenly reward, which is a good thing, it’s what we all want to do. So in 20 years, they’re going to be there. In 20 years, I will be where they are now, maybe approaching thinking, “Oh wow, I might retire in five to 10 years.” But I could imagine if I stay with Catholic Answers in 20 years, that I might hold one of these positions of leadership in the company.
I’m not sure. Honestly, I would rather just do apologetics full time. I’d rather just focus on all the stuff I like to do. But, there comes a point where maybe you need to lead others who will go on and carry that torch, so to speak. And thinking about it also among the apologists, the youngest crop that we have now, we don’t have a young crop right now. The youngest people, I’m about to turn 40, my colleague Joe Heschmeyer is around the same age, Carlo is around there. So we are elder millennials. We’re the elder millennials. We’re definitely not in the Gen Z generation. Our children are part of the Gen Alpha generation. Those are the people that were born after 2014, I think. So we’re part of that generation, and I’m just thinking, “What is it going to be like in the future?”
Because I was really blessed to have been brought into Catholic Answers. I started doing apologetics work really right after I got out of high school. I was doing pro-life speaking, not on college campuses. During my time at Arizona State University, Scottsdale Community College, I was doing local pro-life talks. I would also do local apologetic talks at parishes. After college, I traveled the country, did pro-life outreach at universities, christian apologetic outreaches, did a debate with an atheist. I think he did two debates with atheists, actually. So I started getting into that apologetic field, and getting involved with producing some apologetics at the local level. But I started that around in my mid-twenties, actually. That’s when I started doing that. And I remember once actually, I made a rap video, there was this guy, he did a video called Why I Am Christian but not Religious, or Why I Love Jesus, not Religion. Something like that. And it was on my birthday.
And I went home and I made a video response, a rap video response to that. And I posted it online. And I remember Patrick Madrid even mentioned and said, “Hey, this kid might have a future.” And that was just something that I was really happy to do, because I felt like I needed to do something. And I started making little videos and I went out there. I didn’t have a lot to show, it was before getting into YouTube or anything like that. But, I cared a lot about that. And so I was so grateful, I was hired at Catholic Answers when I was 28. And so the past 12 years, I’ve really benefited from mentorship, especially from my older colleagues, Tim Staples, Jimmy Akin has mentored me a lot. He and I are kindred spirits on a lot of theological issues. We have the same mindset in a lot of things.
I remember when Jimmy interviewed me for the job, he said, “You remind me of me, just at a different point on the timeline.” It’s a very Jimmy thing to say, by the way. I take that as a high compliment. So I’ve been grateful to have been mentored along this way. And so now, going forward in the future, what I’m trying to do now is I’m wondering what is the future going to be like? I’ve been trying to identify the Gen Z Catholic apologists. And the things that I’ve been looking for, is, where are the younger generation who they’re autodidacts, really enjoy reading and learning, they don’t just read the secondary sources. They want to read the opposition, they read academic works, they want to know backwards and forwards on these issues, not just the surface level talking points.
Do they have charity? Do they have charity in dealing with opponents? Do they have charity when talking about the Magisterium, for example? It’s some very popular, I’ve seen a lot of people that have shown promise, but then I see how they talk about Pope Francis or the bishops. Very, very harsh. And I’m not saying they have to say everything positive. You can have respectful criticism. I’ve offered respectful criticism of Pope Francis and of others. But sometimes I worry they’re just getting in it for clicks. And I want to find someone who has a real heart of evangelization, a mind for scholarship. Honestly, the biggest thing I look for too, is debates. The biggest thing that would move me if I found a young Gen Z person, I want to see them in a debate with someone else. And are they charitable and knowledgeable, and they can think on their feet. And I’ve seen a few like that. And it impresses me.
And especially for people, they’re not just interested in very narrow theological topics only for advanced thinkers. They care a lot about the bread and butter, basic apologetics, and making it understandable for a wide variety of people. So that’s kind of what I’m looking for. If you know anyone like that, go to Trenthorn.com, shoot me a message, send me a link to what they’re doing. I found a few, but I would really enjoy finding more, because that’s the thing, I don’t want to get to 50 or 60, and what, there’s nobody else out there doing this, or they’re doing it, but they haven’t had some mentorship to maybe prevent them from falling off a theological cliff, or doing something drastic, maybe they shouldn’t do? So this episode is really about a call, especially to young people who are listening to this. If you feel a call to this, bloom where you’re planted. Do a blog, TikTok, YouTube videos. Just start making materials, and pray, pray a lot while you’re doing that.
And if it brings value, other people will share it, and it will begin to grow. And you may find yourself maybe doing apologetics work part-time. Offering as a hobby, then part-time work, and then maybe something full-time will offer itself in the future, in one or more different ways. I noticed though, there’s something interesting, when I was a young person, when I was young. So I remember in the early 2000s, there was a whole generation of people, the Gen Xers, these are people who are 10, 15 years older than me. There was a stable of Gen Xers who would go across the country and speak. And then there’s others out there, they’re still doing it, right? You got Jason Evert, Paul Kim. There were a lot of these Gen X… They’re Gen X to me. I mean, I was what, 18? These people were 30, 32, and they were just crisscrossing the country, going and doing talks, and they were doing other kinds of evangelization online.
But I’ve noticed more so, especially finding those speakers, that’s harder to come by among Gen Z, to have people that are just known for going around and doing talks. I think a lot of Gen Z is more comfortable just making short TikTok videos. They never really grew up with, or developed a skill for giving an hour-long talk at a conference, or at a youth seminar, for example. Having to engage in those in-person interactions. It’s just safer to do your YouTube channel, your TikTok videos, your YouTube posts, whatever it might be. But we need more of that, we need someone who can be good online, but also can go and do a public debate, can go and do an hour-long talk and engage people in person. So that’s one thing that I’ve noticed. But I really want to find the others who could do debates, who can write.
You can write well, you can speak, you can do debates. One thing I am willing to compromise on though, is you don’t need to be a Jack-of-all-trades. I worry some people think that in order to do apologetics, they might look at myself or Jimmy Akin, and say, “Wow, Trent and Jimmy speak on this and speak on that.” And I’ve written and done debates on a wide variety of subjects. And so they’ll say, “Well, I can’t do that many subjects, I don’t want to be an apologist.” It’s really, really, really rare to find someone who has a wide field of knowledge to engage in that way. But I would love to find people who are competent in a narrow field. Maybe they just do Abortion and transgender ideology, and contemporary moral issues, they just do Catholic apologetics or Christian apologetics, but they have the chops for it, and they’re willing to grow, and they’re willing to get better.
So that’s the call. That’s all I have today. I didn’t have a lot to share, but that’s just been on my mind and heart. I think about the future a lot, and I would love to find people, especially in their mid to late twenties, early thirties, who want to do this, and want to seek mentorship, want to grow, want to be given those opportunities. And I wouldn’t mind finding the people who show promise. I can’t shepherd everybody, right? I can’t spend my whole time mentoring every single person who comes to me. I don’t have the resources, the time, to do that.
I mean, I can give nudges to people, I can give them helpful tips. And for people who really show promise, they just get out there and they do it. And maybe they’ll take a few lumps along the way, they’ll make mistakes, they’ll learn from it. But if they’re willing to learn and to grow, I’d love to see what comes from them, so that 20 years from now, they are the person in their late thirties, early forties, who is going around in their flying car from city to city… There’s not going to be flying cars. Maybe we’ll have full electric cars by then. Nah, I hope we still have gas cars, right? If you listened to Free for All last week, you know I talked about that.
But they’ll be in the where I’m at now. Their star will be rising, my star will be setting, I’ll want to hang out with my grandkids and write the occasional book here and there. But I don’t want the future to sneak up on me. I don’t want to one day wake up, “Hey…” like I do in the old person voice. I’m going to be like, “I’m 65.” Someone will be like, “I’m 65, I don’t sound anything like that.” Oh, no, you don’t. I don’t want it to sneak up on me and realize I want to retire, and haven’t planned through to encourage the next generation to carry the mantle.
There’s always going to be a next generation until Christ returns. And each current generation needs to think of those people and prepare them to carry the mantle forward, and just offer what I’ve learned, both from what’s worked and what hasn’t worked as well. So yeah, so I hope that was helpful for you all. Thank you guys for listening to my wistful thoughts about this. Pray that God will raise up apologists, evangelists, among the younger generations, to build up Christ’s Kingdom and his church. Thank you all, and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.