In this episode Trent shows how focusing exclusively on acts of kindness and ignoring evangelism can come off as patronizing to people who identify as LGBT or dissent from Church teaching.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answer’s apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Every now and then, some people tell me that we don’t need apologetics. People don’t really respond to arguments, that’s not what moves them to conversion, rather what we should be doing is just practicing charity, kindness, compassion. But what’s ironic here though is that this individual is giving me an argument about why people are not moved by arguments. So I always do find that ironic when I hear this.
Trent Horn:
What they’ll say is even if people are moved by arguments, that primarily what we should be focusing on, especially to certain groups like those who identify as LGBT, for example, they’ll say people don’t want to hear what we have to say, they want to see radical kindness, holiness, charity. If we just practiced a kind of holiness that was just unsurpassed, people would see the beauty of our faith and they would be more enticed to it, they’d be more interested in seeing what it’s about.
Trent Horn:
So what are my thoughts on some of this? Well, number one, the only thing that moves people to conversion is the Holy Spirit. You and I, no matter how smart we are, no matter how charitable we are, no matter how holy we are, our human abilities do not move people to convert, that is the job of the Holy Spirit. However, we can predispose people to be moved by the spirit. We can clear away obstacles, we can make it easier for them to be receptive to the grace of God, I think that’s our goal. And this objection, it has a kernel of truth to it, it’s not entirely wrong.
Trent Horn:
Think about what St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, he says, “If I have all knowledge, but I do not have love, then I’m a resounding gong.” I could be the smartest guy in the world and give the most perfect arguments for the faith, but if I’m just a total jerk, people are not going to listen to me, they’re all they’re going to hear are clashing symbols, they’re not going to hear the truth that I’m sharing. So there is a valid point here.
Trent Horn:
I was reading a book actually a long time ago called Humble Apologetics by John Stackhouse or John Stackhouse Jr, maybe, the book was called Humble Apologetics. And he was telling a story, it was either him or a friend of his went to hear a Christian apologist give a talk at a university. And he was scared the apologist was going to be refuted and he would look silly. But the apologist was actually really, really smart, and during the talk and the Q&A afterwards, he made everybody else look silly.
Trent Horn:
Then after the talk, either Stackhouse Jr or his friend heard two women leaving, and they said, I don’t care if he is right, he’s still a jerk. So you could have all knowledge, but if you don’t have love, you’re a clash gong. But then when I hear, I agree, yeah, we need to practice kindness, we need charity, we need holiness. But think about there’s that commercial, the El Paso Home Taco commercial, where the girl says, “Why not both?” That’s what I say, well, why not both? We can have good arguments to be able to share with people and we should practice compassion and charity and kindness. We absolutely should be doing both.
Trent Horn:
So when I hear some people say, we should only focus on one or the other, they’re going to be mistaken. So today what I want to talk about is focusing just on the kindness aspect. And there’s three examples I want to share. The primary example comes from an article I read from this past summer. And I think it really highlights how the attitude of it doesn’t matter about arguments, what matters is if we were just holly and kind enough, people would come into the church. How that’s kind of a patronizing attitude that it almost intellectually, I don’t mean the people who say this mean to do this, but I think it can be perceived as coming off this way, that it’s intellectually belittling to those people who disagree with the church.
Trent Horn:
Like, let’s say people who identify as LGBT many of them will say, yeah, it’s unfortunate when there are Catholics who are mean spirited or cruel or not compassionate, but at the end of the day, they will say my biggest problem with Catholicism is that it says that sexual acts outside of marriage, especially those between two men or two women are gravely sinful, that is the problem. And eventually, you have to confront that objection that the person has. It’s not just a matter of, well, they weren’t kind enough to me. Kindness is a necessary condition for evangelization. If you’re not kind, people are going to have a very hard time receiving the good news you want to share with them. It’s necessary and maybe in some cases, it’s sufficient that a person sees that and they experience a radical change.
Trent Horn:
But I think in many cases, for someone who is opposed, especially to what the church teaches, and that’s the reason they’re not Catholic, kindness will be necessary, but it will not be sufficient. So here’s the article I want to share with you, it’s published at Religion Dispatches. It was published June 4th, 2021. It was published during Pride Month. Remember June is always LGBT pride parades. So the article is written by Chrissy Stroop who identifies as a transgender woman or a biological man who claims to be a woman. And, by the way, for pronouns, I’m going to either say he, because this person is a biological male or they, by they, I mean the singular they, I’m not going to use incorrect pronouns.
Trent Horn:
My policy is when I talk with people who identify as transgender, I’m not going to use incorrect pronouns, a compromise I’m willing, willing to make for dialogue is to use something like the singular they, for example, but I’m not going to say things that aren’t true. So Stroop’s article, the title is A Note to Churches during Pride: If You’re not LGBTQ-Affirming Keep Your Water, what does that mean? I shall explain shortly. So this is written back during Pride Month, as Pride Month, again, time for hoe, flying flags, marrying victims of anti-LGBTQ bigotry. And he says, I’m not going to speak for all LGBTQ people or former Christians, but he does talk about his familiarity with what churches used to do, because he was once a conservative evangelical.
Trent Horn:
And so he’ll talk about people who are non affirming. He says here, non affirming, Christians who will show up to pride events among the LGBTQ community, the term that they use to describe Christians who believe that homosexual behavior is not sinful or not immoral they would call them affirming Christians. Whereas those who would hold view that sexual acts outside of marriage, be it between a man and a woman or two men or two women, and that marriage can only be possible between a man and a woman, they would call those individuals non affirming Christians.
Trent Horn:
So he writes, of course, some non affirming Christians will show up to pride events, they always do, but it’s not the raving street preachers I’m worried about, they’re at least honest about who they are. And they often find themselves surrounded by angels who drown out their hate. So when you think of a Christian who opposes same sex behavior, who would hold to the traditional view of sexual morality, who goes to these events, you might think of like a street preacher, someone with signs, their yelling, maybe they’re uncharitable, and that’s something we definitely should not do. But what Stroop is saying is he’s more worried about, it’s not these people, because you can identify that they’re off the reservation, they’re whacko, people write them off in a second.
Trent Horn:
He says, “No, I’m more concerned about the Christians who definitely believe that same sex relationships and transgender identities are sinful, but who deliberately obscure their harmful views beneath messaging focused on love or even on apologizing to LGBTQ individuals for the mistreatment we suffer at the hands of Christians.” So Stroop is actually saying, and I’ve seen some Catholics on Twitter and actually one of them will show up here in the article who has said, let’s go to a pride parade and all we’re going to do, all we’re going to do is apologize for those who have mistreated members of the LGBTQ community. And we’re going to practice kindness and we’ll pass out water bottles and they’ll see how kind we are.
Trent Horn:
And so Stroop says if memory serves, it was about three or four years after I started grad school, I learned of evangelical Protestants, non affirming, of course who show up to pride events and hand out water or snacks. And so he talked about how he knew individuals who would do this. And then he starts to say that in the 21st century that there was kind of a change among American evangelicals then you see this also among certain Catholics, though I wouldn’t say just some here. Here’s what he says, he says, “They thought perhaps civility would lead to better understanding the thinking went and building bridges.”
Trent Horn:
Let’s see, this goes to folks on the family, remember Father James Martin has his book Building a Bridge, right? Would get the queers back to church, that’s Stroop’s words, not mine. What he is saying here is that they all thought civility better understanding would get the queers back to church where they would learn to be straight or failing that God was calling them to be celibate. And so Stroop is very opposed to this kind of thing. Now obviously we should be civil, we should be kind. But I agree with Stroop that we shouldn’t be two faced that the idea that, oh, if we are just kind, they’ll come back, it’s like, well, no, the big problem is they say this behavior is not a sin, divine revelation says it is a sin. And to believe the gospel, you have to repent. We got a major disconnect here, what we have here is a failure to communicate.
Trent Horn:
So Stroop goes on to write that last month, and he describes an individual. I’m not going to say the person’s name, I don’t want to drag them all into this because this person deleted their tweet about this, you can read it in the article. But a Catholic writing on Twitter, who’s fully on board with Catholic teaching that homo genital acts and transgender identities are sinful took to Twitter to suggest Catholics should do the same thing and they should just go to pride events and pass out water, and we should just do that. Now he goes on to talk about Christians who show up at pride parades that he likes because they’re openly affirming and say that identifying as LGBTQ is a good thing. But when it comes to this particular approach that evangelicals or this Catholic on Twitter, like let’s just go pass out water bottles, but they don’t believe that homosexual behavior is moral, they hold to the traditional teaching.
Trent Horn:
This is what Stroop says, “Christians who are non-affirming, however… So if you’re a non affirming Christian that believes homosexual behavior is wrong, he says, “If you are really serious about wanting to be decent toward queer people, you ought save your apologies and your bottled water and stay home, maybe while there you could do some reflecting on how there’s no such thing as kinder, gentler culture waring. It’s not loving to believe that sexual and gender minorities either shouldn’t exist or shouldn’t express who we are in loving relationships. Don’t come begging us for forgiveness until you’ve actually changed your harmful views, which you shouldn’t hide behind friendly rhetoric.” I love this. “Be “straight” with us.” Straight in quotation marks, right? A lot of these people who come will be identify as straight or heterosexual.
Trent Horn:
And he says, you fine, be straight in every meaning of that word, just come clean, you believe this is a sin, tell me that. Be honest. He says, it’s the honest approach. After all, according to Revelation 21:8 liars, go to hell. So just to be clear, we should practice kindness to everybody, but especially people who are far away from God or who are far away from the church. But we shouldn’t pretend that the only issue that is involved is a lack of kindness.
Trent Horn:
And some people may reject Christianity or Catholicism for an intellectually shallow reason, there were people at church that I didn’t like. Now that can be an emotionally powerful reason, but logically or intellectually, it’s not a good reason to give up the faith because some people failed to live up to the standards that Christ is set for us. So kindness, absolutely, that’s a necessity. But if we pretend that that’s the only issue we can come off as patronizing to individuals like Stroop.
Trent Horn:
In fact, when I was at a pride parade several years ago, I’ll link to it, by the way I wrote an article about it, I’ll link to it in the description below. I went there and there were Christians there with signs and they were nice Christians, they just had signs that said God loves you. And what I did was I walked around and I asked some of the people there what do you think of the Christians over there? And I just kind of did the Socratic, remember the Socratic’s stuff I was talking about on the podcast last week? I was engaged in that with these individuals. And there were three men who identified as gay, one of them was a former Mormon, actually.
Trent Horn:
And we had a really good conversation because I was able to combine a kind charitable disposition, but also be straight with them to say, yeah, I’m Catholic, I believe in the church’s teachings, but I think there are good reasons for those teachings and we had a good conversation on that. So it’s not just about kindness because a lot of people say the reason I’m not Catholic is because the teaching is false, and so we’ll have to defend it, but to do so in a persuasive, gracious and logical way so people can see that it makes sense.
Trent Horn:
Let me give you one other example, this is a more recent one back in November, actually. So this is one that I saw middle of November and this is an article published November 17th, this was up in Canada. It says, “Pastor of Kate Breton Church at center… I love the Canadian or British English spelling of center, C-E-N-T-R-E. “Pastor of Kate Breton Church at center of immoral children controversy not attending Sunday mass.” So this was a situation I think it was in Nova Scotia, it was up in Canada where a woman who is the executive director of a fertility treatment center, center that does like in vitro fertilization was scandalized by the bulletin saying inaccurately that children conceived an IVF are immoral or something like that, and the church does not teach that.
Trent Horn:
No matter how a child was conceived, whether it was through illicit means like the marital act or illicit means, let’s say IVF, prostitution, adultery, fornication, no matter how a child is conceived, that child is good, that child is made in the image and lightness of God. But the fact that all children are good, it doesn’t follow that every single way of bringing a child into existence is good. Some of them are wrong because they deprive a child the right to be born as the fruit of the marital act between a husband and wife.
Trent Horn:
So the article goes on to talk about Carolynn Dube, who’s executive director of Fertility Matters Canada, well, I don’t know if she’s the director of a center or of an advocacy group, but she’s she saw this in the bulletin and organized a protest. And let’s see what she put down here. And actually the priest who that put it in the bulletin was not going to be at the mass that she was protesting. So another member of this protest says the idea is really just to show up with our children who fall into the church’s idea of what’s considered immoral. This person, Amber Tap Lee says, I encourage people to be kind and compassionate and to recognize we’re going to a place of prayer and peace, this is a pretty special place for people in the congregation. Really the purpose is to get Father Doug really be aware of the problematic nature of the literature he’s been sharing.
Trent Horn:
What literature is that? What was so problematic and hateful that he shared that caused people to be in an uproar and want to protest the catechism? The catechism of the Catholic church is what he shared. So this is what shared from the section on fertility treatments, why are artificial insemination and artificial fertilization immoral? The answer, straight from the catechism, they are immoral because they disassociate procreation from the act with which the spouses give themselves to each other and so introduce the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. And so it goes on to give just what the church teaches as to why it is wrong to create human life outside of the bounds of the marital act.
Trent Horn:
And then it says, how should we consider children? How should children be considered? It says a child is a gift of God, the supreme gift of marriage. There is no such thing as a right to have children, example a child at any cost. But a child does have the right to be the fruit of the conjugal act of its parents, as well as the right to be respected as a person from the moment of conception. I’ll also add that this is a paraphrase of what the catechism says, it comes from the compendium of the catechism of the Catholic church. So it’s a faithful paraphrasing of what is originally said in the catechism. So it is just what the church teaches in this matter. What they’re up in arms about, it was not some hateful screed, it was just the teaching of the church.
Trent Horn:
So it does boggle my mind a little bit to say for these individuals they’re outraged. Well, if you’re so outraged about this, why are you still Catholic? It would be like, if I converted to Orthodox Judaism and I protested that my rabbi said it’s sinful to eat pork, it’s like, well, that’s what we do as Jews. And if you think it’s really bad, maybe you should reconsider whether you should be Jewish or not, it just doesn’t make sense to me. No, I’m not saying that these individuals should just leave the church, don’t let the door hit you on the way out, that’s not the right attitude, I want them to repent from their mistaken views.
Trent Horn:
But I think they really should be honest, I think there’s a lot of Catholics, people who identify as Catholic, maybe show up to church once or twice a year who think that the church doesn’t really teach that contraception IVF, homosexual behavior is wrong or if it does teach it’s like a really, really minor teaching that you could amend whenever you feel like not a dogma or an infallible teaching that can never be reformed in any way. They think, oh, just like father changes his vestments, we could change this view on homosexuality or something like that. I don’t know why they think this, but I think that this is another example that what the past put here it’s how would it be unkind, it’s straight from the catechism.
Trent Horn:
Now it’s not as warm and fuzzy as other people who might popularize it would put it as, but it’s not hateful, rather what people are offended by. What many people are offended by is the truth. I remember once I gave a public talk on so called same sex marriage. After the talk, a woman came up to me and said, “Your talk really offended me, you were offensive.” And I just said to her, “How could I have shared my message differently so that I wouldn’t have offended you?” And she said, “You should just say that anybody can marry anybody.” And I said, “That’s not my message though, so how could I share my message that marriage is a union of a man and a woman without offending you?” And she thought about it for a minute and said, “You can’t.” I said, “Well, then I didn’t offend you, the truth did. So how are you going to respond to that?”
Trent Horn:
So once again, the big takeaway here, kindness, charity, holiness, compassion towards others, even people who are mean to us necessary, but it’s not sufficient. It’s necessary to build a bridge if you will, but then we have to, as the Prophet Isaiah says, Isaiah 1, “Come let us reason together. Though your sins may be like scarlet, they can be made as white as snow.” So I hope this is helpful for you all, I’ll leave some links in the description below. Thank you guys, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member-only content. For more information, visit trenthornpodcast.com.