Why are so many Protestant YouTubers becoming Catholic? In this episode of the Flannel Panel, Cy Kellett, Joe Heschmeyer, and Chris Check dive into the growing trend of popular online creators leaving Protestantism and entering the Catholic Church. They explore the reasons behind these conversions, what draws people to Catholicism, and what it says about the search for truth in the digital age.
Transcript:
Cy: In recent years, several notable Protestant converts to Roman Catholicism have made waves online. Influencers like Cameron Bertuzzi of Capturing Christianity, Candace Owens, Joshua Charles, and help me with this, Eva Vlaardingerbroek crossed the Tiber from various expressions of Protestantism. We’ve had Joshua Charles on the show several times. What an impressive person. Oh, and Keith Nestor.
Prominent evangelical pastors like Ulf Ekman, Keith Nestor, and Brook Thalander made headlines when they converted to Roman Catholicism. Similar stories are littered across social media, YouTube, and websites like the Coming Home Network. This is in a Protestant publication. Now I’m reading. Prior decades witnessed numerous prominent Protestants to Catholic conversions, including Francis Beckwith, Christian Smith, and Thomas Howard. What drives these Christian thinkers to make this jump? Several theories could be explored, but one factor might concern the surprisingly savvy of online Catholic apologetics, particularly on forums like YouTube. What do you make of that?
Joe: I’m a little hurt that we weren’t singled out, but I’m really, I… Look, think about it this way. For decades, maybe, if you want to say centuries, Protestants—and not all Protestants, I don’t mean to speak universally here—but huge evangelical efforts within Protestantism have been not going after people who’ve never heard of Jesus Christ, but picking off Catholics from the church. I mean, just yesterday I was watching a video from ryaneeedgod.net, and they were talking about the mission project they have to the Philippines. And it’s like, you know, Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim country, is next door. You could go there, but instead you want to focus on Catholics’ interest.
And so for decades and even centuries, they’ve been picking off Catholics with arguments that sound good but are often false. And eventually, somebody picked on the wrong church. It was Karl Keating’s church, and they put a bunch of anti-Catholic stuff on the windshields. And so he created Catholic Answers. But even as the name suggests, this is a response to a provocation. And it turns out the Catholic responses are better than the Protestant arguments.
So Protestants reading this with a fair mind are saying like, “Wow, I didn’t know any of this stuff. I’d been taught you guys believed X, and it turns out you don’t. I hadn’t realized Scripture actually teaches why.” And so a lot of people read that and start to take Catholicism seriously. Many of them are becoming Catholic.
Cy: It’s getting harder to not tell the truth about the Catholic faith. It’s getting harder to get away with. I spoke with a guy, a wonderful man who converted from Latter-day Saints to Catholicism. He goes, “This is what he said. The Internet is the worst thing that ever happened to the latter day saints because you can find out the truth.” And then he said, “The Internet is the best thing that ever happened to the Catholic Church because you can find out the truth.”
Chris: Yeah. A point that Joe has made several times here about Catholic apologetics, generally speaking, is that it has—and Todd makes our… Todd Anguera, who runs our press, Catholic Answers Press, makes this point as well—it is a uniquely, even still, English-speaking phenomenon. And it begins in apologetics and it begins in England. Why? Well, because it’s a Protestant country.
It’s a Protestant country. So the need to defend, explain, and defend the faith in Italy or France, you know, maybe Germany, there’s a bigger demand or something like that, but there’s not a big German apologetics tradition, mostly English. And then, of course, as a consequence, American. And when Carl began his work, he was heavily influenced and inspired by the guys at Speaker’s Corner with the Catholic Evidence Guild. We even published their outlines: Ronald Knox, Frank Sheed, G.K. Chesterton, Vincent McNabb, and folks like this.
Joe: You can go all the way back to Edmund Campion during the time of the Reformation.
Joe: Absolutely. Excellent point. And in fact, you know, the Church of England, or whatever they were calling themselves under Elizabeth at that time, is, you know, they’re making offers to Campion to say, “Could you please stop this?” Because they recognize that.
Joe: So some of those offers were a little more forceful than others.
Cy: They finally made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
Chris: Right. There’s a second thing here that I think is very important, and that is, yes, on that list of folks that you read, you have folks like Joshua Charles, who is superb, there’s no question, wonderful, and a first-rate mind. It’s been a treat every time we’ve had him on Catholic Answers. But then you also have people on there like Candace Owens, who is, I’m just going to be charitable, a mixed bag theologically.
Okay. And I know she has quite a following.
Joe: Well, and politically, I would say… Go ahead.
Chris: So one of the things, though, that a formal apostolate such as Catholic Answers brings to this, and I think these people in many ways are the legacy of an outfit like Catholic Answers, is if Joe is going to say something stupid, then he’s got Jimmy Akin to say, “Okay, well, that was stupid.”
Joe: We’ve all got Jimmy Akin.
Chris: Yeah, yeah, that’s right. Or if Jimmy’s going to say something stupid, he’s got Tim to tell him. So there is a fraternal quality and relationship among our apologists so that the lone guns don’t have. And we’ve seen some of them, some of them go off the deep end, and some of them who’ve been associated with us, when they no longer have someone say, “Hey, knock it off,” then, yeah, they do go off the rails