I Invited a Protestant to Church . . . Then I Fought Him

In this episode Trent chats with Church of Christ minister Marco Arroyo about his visit to Trent’s parish and their recent jiu-jitsu match.

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Transcript:

Trent:

Everyone, welcome to the Council of Trent. Today, my guest is Marco Arroyo. He is a minister with the Church of Christ. So we actually have a lot in common theologically and also hobby-wise. We’re going to get into that later today. So Marco came to my church recently, the parish that I attend and visited and got to come around and we talked a bit about Catholicism. So today I just wanted to chat with you about liturgy, Catholicism, your thoughts on that, especially just liturgical elements, architectural aesthetic elements. And then of course we got to talk about our jiu-jitsu role.

Marco:

Yeah, let’s hurry up to that last

Trent:

One. Oh,

Marco:

Totally.

Trent:

I love whenever I’ll go to events. It’s always so funny, people will be there and I’ll be meeting and talking to people and maybe signing a book. And then someone will come up to me and say, “I’m a purple belt in jujitsu.” And then I’ll just talk to them for 10 minutes and the line starts form because I’m like, “Yeah, let’s talk about it. ” And so, well, let’s get a little bit of background. Why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit more just about yourself and what you do?

Marco:

Yeah. Well, I have a YouTube channel called The Me Tween Sundays and really I started off doing devotional stuff and then it kind of changed into apologetic stuff because of people always asking me questions and it’s a lot easier to go copy and paste. You probably have this experience too. Oh,

Trent:

Totally.People

Marco:

Asking you questions, you go, “Well, I got a video on that. Go ahead and watch that. ” And maybe we’ll talk about it after or something. You know

Trent:

What gets even better is when you get to the point you’ve written a book on it, because people are like, “I have a question about X.” And I’ll just be like, “Here’s a Catholic.” Well, I’ll just send them a PDF of the book. And it’s been crazy actually. I’ve had people who were Protestants. I had people who are atheists who emailed me saying, “Hey, I have a question about the existence of God and I really liked your debates, and I just had a question.” And I said, “Okay, here’s my book, Why We’re Catholic.” And then they email me a year later, they’re an atheist, and a year later they’re getting baptized and they’re coming into the church. And all I had to do is just send them a book basically.

Marco:

Well, a couple years ago before we did our first podcast, you sent me that PDF copy. I ended up getting the audiobook because I can listen to it better on jogs or something like that. And so when I think about that book, I think about myself jogging at the same time, but I really appreciated that.

Trent:

I do that all the time. So sometimes in my studies I’ll read books, I’ve listened to audiobooks, or I’ll listen to debates that people have so I can study. I listened to a previous debate. So that happens to me too, where I will listen, let’s say it’s a debate I heard maybe seven years ago and I’ll listen to it on my computer and I’ll remember like, oh, I was on my bike in Phoenix and I’m right back there again.

Marco:

Yeah. I think the same thing. Whenever I reread portions of your book, I’m thinking I feel like I need to go jogging. Yeah, totally. You know that episode of The Office where Jim does the little bell sound and he keeps giving Dwight the mint? Yeah.

Trent:

Puts his hand out. Okay. So a little bit of your background for everyone.

Marco:

So you’re

Trent:

A minister in the Church of Christ, but your family is a Catholic background,

Marco:

Right? Yeah. On my dad’s side it’s largely Catholic. In fact, I was baptized Catholic as an infant and some of my earliest memories are going to church, Catholic mass church with my grandparents and my uncle in Passaic, New Jersey. Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church. Shout out to them in Passaic, New Jersey. But I have very fond memories of that time. I think I did tell you about this one time. I really have a… Oh man, this even gets me emotional every time. A Catholic priest is largely responsible for why I’m even alive. Oh wow. Yeah. My mother, when she was pregnant with me, was told that I’d have severe spina bifida. And at the time we were living in New Jersey, they recommended driving to another state and have an abortion. And she was really troubled about that. She went for a long walk about it.

And then she saw a Catholic church was having mass and she walked in and the priest was speaking and the first thing she heard when she walked in was him saying, “God is the one who has the final say in whether we live or die. Abortion is murder.” And he was speaking against that, just so happened to be. And so after she left that and she prayed and she just said, “God, thank you so much that if this is the lot that I’m going to get with my son, thank you for letting me take care of him.” And so she gave birth to me and I was healthy.

Trent:

But you didn’t have a spina bifida.

Marco:

No, nothing at all. I mean, could you imagine how many times doctors have been wrong?

Trent:

Yeah.

Marco:

Oh, what a tragedy.

Trent:

But that happens a lot. I mean, even someone, a child who has a disability, they’re still a human being and we should treat them. People will say that to me, “What about a child has a severe disability?” I might say, “Well, imagine a two-year-old gets into an accident or gets sick, then they have a disability. If you wouldn’t kill that two-year-old, you shouldn’t do that to an unborn child.” So that’s the main moral argument I make. But I often point out to people, look, this might not also be, this is just doctors have an incentive to get it wrong with a false diagnosis.

Because for a lot of them, if they fail to tell someone this child has down syndrome or spina bifida and the child’s born, then they can get sued for wrongful life, like a perverse thing to think about. Because what they’ll say is, “If you had told me the baby had spina bifida, I would’ve gotten an abortion. Since you failed to tell me that I’m going to sue you. ” So doctors are all worried they’re going to get sued. And the thing is though, if they’re wrong about the child having spina bifida or down syndrome and the abortion happens anyways, no one finds out. So for them, there’s an incentive for them to make a false diagnosis to cover their behind.

Marco:

Wow. I know. How gross, man. It’s the worst thing.

Trent:

But that’s what I love though about the collaborations that we’ve had. I mean, in general, conservative Protestants, I love that when it comes to sexuality, pro – life issues, we’re solid like this. But also as being a minister of Church of Christ, we actually have a lot also in common believing in baptismal regeneration, for example. That’s a subject you cover a lot on your channel.

Marco:

I’ve been fortunate to be like, ever since we’ve met and been talking, to be brought up by you here and there because there’s the one quadrant. There’s this weird quadrant that you talk about sometimes. I

Trent:

Got to

Marco:

Have that. Baptismal regeneration, no infant baptism. There’s the weird guys in the corner over there in the churches of Christ. Well,

Trent:

That’s what I always tell people. I even did this with… Oh, I went out to dinner with some friends and my wife poked fun a little because when I was talking, I literally made a quadrant. But it’s the idea that it’s the Christian view on baptism. Wait,

Marco:

Real quick. That developed because you used to go like this when we talked. Now you do

Trent:

This. Now I just do this straight like… Yeah. The quadrant. Yeah. Crossfire. You’ll be caught up in the crossfire. So there’s two questions basically. Does baptism spiritually regenerate and should you baptize infants? And there’s four ways to respond to that. So you could say, yeah, it regenerates and because of that, we should baptize babies. So that’d be Lutherans, Catholic, Orthodox. Then there are those who’ll say, “It does regenerate, but we should not baptize infants. That’d be the Church of Christ position.” So that’s not as common. Most people would say if you don’t baptize infants, the reason you would say is because it doesn’t spiritually regenerate you. And so that would be some Presbyterians who would hold… Sorry, Credo Baptists. You don’t baptize babies because it doesn’t spiritually regenerate. So that would be classic reformed Baptist tradition. Credo Baptist doesn’t regenerate, so don’t baptize babies. But then you’ll have Presbyterians and others who will say, “It doesn’t regenerate.

It doesn’t spiritually regenerate you, but it still makes a member of the New Covenant.” And it’s a great

Marco:

Sin not to.

Trent:

Yeah, and it is a sin. They’ll say that’s in Westminster, so you should do it. Even if it doesn’t regenerate, children should still be brought in. And so now you’re my token Church of Christ person put in there. The only other person I ever am familiar with Church of Christ was my wife’s grandfather. So her family are converts. So they converted. She was raised in the church, but her family were converts and her grandfather was actually, he was a theologian in the Church of Christ. And I remember for, I think it was for Christmas or her birthday, I found on eBay an old, because this is something he must have written back in the early 1900s, commentary in the book of Revelation signed by him with his handwriting in it. So now I’m not going to be able to top that gift, so I

Marco:

Don’t know how

Trent:

I could do much better.

Marco:

Yeah. No, I hope my wife isn’t watching. That’s really thoughtful. I don’t know if I’ve ever pulled out something that thoughtful.

Trent:

Well, I was just wondering. I was just like, “Oh, I wonder where it is. ” Then I went and searched for it. So yeah, we do have these things in common. And so I’ve been on In Between Sundays a few times on your show, so people will go check it out. I’ll link to that below. And then although I first met you not through YouTube or theology, it was because a mutual friend of

Marco:

Ours

Trent:

Who’s Catholic, he was rolling at your gym.

Marco:

Yeah. There’s a morning crew at the gym where I was going to for a long time before I moved, and it was a group of seven, eight guys maybe, and he’s one of them. And afterwards, I love the feeling of you fight each other for an hour, hour and a half, and you’re just laying on the wall and you’re just talking about stuff. And then eventually the word gets out that I’m a preacher. It’s like

Trent:

A pouring sweat. And when you do Nogi, a lot of the

Marco:

Sweat is

Trent:

Not yours. That’s

Marco:

The

Trent:

Grossest part of it.

Marco:

Yeah. Sometimes a guy will pull guard and nogi and then scoot back and then just draw you into his puddle. It’s the worst thing

Trent:

Ever. I just tap. I

Marco:

Just tap because

Trent:

It’s

Marco:

So gross. It’s the worst. But yeah, we’ll sit down and then they find out that I’m a preacher. What do you do for a living? Kind of a thing. And then we just start talking and then, oh, he’s Catholic. We’re talking Catholicism, some differences. Yeah, I love that guy so much. Our mutual friend. Yeah. And he connected us.

Trent:

Yeah. So yeah, Spencer, our friend, so he was doing rolling. I

Marco:

Wasn’t sure if we were going to dox him or not.

Trent:

Dox him. Oh no, people find out I’m a Catholic that does jiu-jitsu.

Marco:

Name Spencer.

Trent:

Totally. So then he got us together and I came down, we did a little bit of rolling. I actually enjoyed that class. I wanted to pick up a little bit Tuesday, Thursdays because I had a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. But I went for a few months, but that 6: AM was killing me.

Marco:

Yeah, it’s rough.

Trent:

I go to the 9:00 AM now at my gym and it’s a perfect time because I work from an office remote, so I have the flexibility. But getting up at 5:15, driving there in the dark, going to roll. And that was the old gym where it had that big gap in the door. So if it was 30 degrees outside when you’d go in and you’re trying to get started. And then also your gym though is awesome because we’re kind of the older middle-aged guys just roll around and have fun. It’s like you’re drilling for an hour. It’s like you go to some gyms, people are having fun. Other gyms, I am preparing you for World League.

Marco:

They really belabor the

Trent:

Point

Marco:

There.

Trent:

I’m like, I’m just here to not gain weight and eat

Marco:

And try

Trent:

To live to be 60.

Marco:

That’s

Trent:

What I’m here for.

Marco:

No, I loved when I told David that David Evers a black belt there at Flex MMA. When I told him, I was like, “This is the longest class I think my friend’s ever been to. ” And he thought that was the funniest thing because that was one of his shorter classes. Oh my

Trent:

Goodness. Yeah, totally. So let’s talk a litle bit about the visit you had recently. So you came to my parish just to see the aesthetics, to go to mass. What were some things you just took away from that?

Marco:

Well, it was interesting because I remember as a child going to Catholic church, the church there in Passaic, New Jersey, much smaller. And the community is just very different over there, but much smaller. And so my memories were in Catholic church thinking, I don’t know when to kneel and stuff. It was in Spanish over there as well. At the time, my grandparents would speak to me in Spanish, but I wasn’t really that good at speaking it because they wanted to learn English, that kind of a thing. And so I remember just not knowing what to do kind of a thing. Wooden pews, no cushions. Oh, that’s

Trent:

The real deal.

Marco:

Almost the deal breaker.

Trent:

Digosi senor.

Marco:

Yeah. So I remember like –

Trent:

I know enough Spanish to sing the bad songs. In Tiempo Smallos E. Tiempos Buenos. Digosik Senior.

Marco:

Yeah. I remember walking in with you and some of that stuff came back a little bit where the first time I ever visited the Church of Christ, I remember thinking, this kind of reminds me of the Catholic church. Oh really? When I was a kid, I’d kind of be bored. And I remember walking to the Church of Christ thinking, well, I’m like 17 now. I’m not bored, but I could be bored here much more easily than when I used to go to a charismatic Pentecostal church. I played in the band at Charismatic Pentecostal Church of my teen years. So walking in with you, I remembered all that stuff, but I was so… I recently visited an Eastern Orthodox Cathedral and I’m kind of glad that I did that before going to mass with you because I kind of forgotten how much I love the beautiful.

I love a great building. I love a great building. I love great architecture. I love the art. Oh man. There’s a feeling that you get when you walk into a beautiful building, especially one though that has imagery in it of what you love the most, which is Jesus Christ and the word of God and everything that you read in the Bible. There’s something I can’t really put a finger on what that feeling is, but that feeling that I got walking in, I love that. I love thinking about Jesus and then I love being able to experience it with a different sense.

Trent:

If I had to describe it, I deal with a lot of, now that I’m in middle age and midlife crisis mode, I kind of have a lot of nostalgia for the ’90s and early 2000s before social media, before technology,

Things when you were young. I think a lot of people feel that way when they go back to when you’re young. So nostalgia comes from its etymology means homesick or sick for home times. In fact, in the Russian army, you could be executed for it was considered a debilitating illness that would spread throughout the other soldiers and destroy morale. But I think that when church architecture is done really well, it captures a timeless quality that sort of hones in on that inner desire for nostalgia that I think if you’re a Christian, if you think about it, Philippians says that our citizenship is in heaven, that’s our true home. And so when music and architecture is done really well to get us focused on that, I feel like it’s almost like a sense of nostalgia in a sense it’s like, “Oh, I’ve identified home.” And it gives you that warmth and that reassurance versus I was actually just looking on social media today.

There was a church, I think it’s a church in Oklahoma, a Protestant church that decorated the entire foyer based on Toy Story four for their sermon. And it’s like that’s the exact opposite

Feeling you would have versus when you go to a cathedral,

Marco:

Just

Trent:

Any cathedral, including Protestant ones that are done well. They’re not all smoke machines in Toast

Marco:

Story four.

Trent:

And I’ve covered this in previous episodes. When it’s done well with that timeless quality, it kind of hits you.

Marco:

No, one thing I thought when I, because I hadn’t been to a cathedral or a Catholic church in a long time until I went to that Eastern Orthodox Cathedral. And what I said, my initial thought, because I did a video on it was I felt like I was standing in a Bible in a way, like a child’s Bible with just a bunch of pictures on it. I felt like I was in the Bible in a certain sense because it was just surrounding me. With

Trent:

All the icons? Yes,

Marco:

Yes. With all the icons and stuff. It just felt like I was in a Bible. And that’s kind of the same feeling here where sometimes in a worship setting, you might tune out a little bit and look around and kind of just stare at the wall. Well, here you’re staring at Jesus, his transfiguration or something. It just snaps you back in a little bit. The church where I minister, we do have a lot of art in the hallways and when you walk in and stuff we have some artists there that have painted over the years and I love that stuff. Again, that was the first thing that stuck out to me that just something about that is so centering, so grounding. And again, it’s hard to put words on it. I think nostalgias are really good. I hadn’t thought about that.

Trent:

Yeah. I think what I would just encourage other Protestants, I know a lot of this came out of the Reformation, the anticonism, just the concern about images and that deals with the different theological views about seeking the intercession of the saints. And there were elements within the church that had superstitious attachments to saints or images. Although you can have superstition about anything, even in the early church fathers, you had some fathers saying that if you just have a copy of the gospel in your home, demons won’t come there. Or people would carry these ambulates. There used to be pagan amulets with spells in them and they would take out the spells and put a Bible verse in them. And there were church fathers saying that’s a little dicey.

Marco:

Have you seen the videos of the guys putting a Bible in the concrete of the foundation of their home? Yes. I just saw this the other day.

Trent:

Yeah, there we go. Yeah. That’s going to be the one thing where it loses structural stability because it’s an empty void as the pages collapse over time. So you could have superstition over anything. So I understand there were legitimate things that had to be reformed, but then going full into the other direction of not having any images

Marco:

At

Trent:

All, I think it’s been a tragedy. My favorite thing was when I went to Geneva with my wife in Switzerland. When I compare Geneva and Rome, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to either city. No. So Rome, it is an ugly city with beautiful churches. I felt it was kind of dirty. It’s not the prettiest city out there. I mean, it’s not horrible. There’s worse cities, but the interior of the church is there best the exterior of the city, hands down. When you go to Geneva, Switzerland, the heart of the Protestant Reformation, the exterior is absolutely gorgeous. You have Lake Geneva, the mountains, the Alps, the Chateaus, but then you go inside the churches and there’s nothing. It’s just these stone walls. And we walked and at the front there was this rickety wooden chair and they’re like, that was Calvin’s chair that he would preach from.

So there’s nothing fancy about it at all. And in Geneva, but there are four stone statues of the reformers. I know. I know. Really? I know. They’re probably turning in their graves. They’re like,

Marco:

No. Not even the originals, not original reformers, but not even Jesus or apostles or

Trent:

Reforms. No, because it’s the city of the reformation. So it’s one of the tourist attractions there is these stone statues of the reformers becoming the very thing they probably protested. But yeah, I just hope that any church could restore because when you went around our church, you seemed to like that we had stained glass windows for almost everything.

Marco:

Yeah. Yeah. And the church building where I’m at, we originally had stained glass windows and they did this big expansion and then sadly they took them down. But we have one that one of our shepherds there restored and it’s right behind where I preach or where everyone goes up. And again, I just love that stuff. Oh man, there’s something about that. Again, I can’t put my finger on it, but I love so much because being part of, because we talk about beauty and stuff. When I was part of an evangelical charismatic church, that version of beauty was more like these lights are sick. Or the smoke machine is killing it tonight. It’s floating at just the right level. I mean, it

Trent:

Is trying to make a really cool concert venue.

Marco:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s ironic how similar it is. And it’s almost indistinguishable to someone. If you put it on mute, it’d be really hard to know which is which.

Trent:

Well, I did an episode recently on what’s really wrong with modern worship songs.

Marco:

I loved it. I loved you singing along to it.

Trent:

Oh, totally. But the thing is, I’m telling you, so I went and saw Journey a few months ago. I was part of their final farewell tour. And it felt like being back at one of those things because it’s music you’re really emotionally attached to. And Journey especially has a great… It has a mellow dramatic element to it that is similar to contemporary worship songs. I’m here with open arms. Oh, that she’s more mean to me. Open arms.

Marco:

Contemporary Christian chord progressions too as a musician. Really similar. It’s fascinating.

Trent:

I mean, one of the songs is Don’t Stop Believing. You could literally turn that into a worship song. But it felt really similar. But I think a lot of people see that though. But then when they go to a service, when they can go to a service, it feels like it’s not pandering. It’s not trying to catch the current thing. It’s like, we’ve had this for 2000 years. We don’t have to do more.

Marco:

That’s it because I left that evangelical church and went to the Church of Christ. And one thing that stood out to me too that is very similar about us is that both have a great sense of, they almost make you feel like this church, I don’t want to say this the wrong way, I think you’ll know what I mean.This church doesn’t… The message is not like we need you to be here. It’s you need to be here. And when I was in charismatic Pentecostal stuff, it was more like, what can we do to make you want to be here? And these are like, no, we’re here and we’ve been here. We’re always going to be here. You need to be here, is the idea. So there is not the pandering because you’re supposed to be here. Does that make sense?

Trent:

Yeah. And that’s how I felt. I remember during my conversion experience in high school, I’ve told this story a lot that I went to some Protestant churches and they overwhelmed me with everyone coming to talk to me. I think they were being legitimately nice, but it felt like they were trying to reel me in like a customer at a used car lot or something. I’m not saying every church is like this. And I think they were sincere, but I’m introverted and I was like, oh. But then when I go to the Catholic parish, it’s not so much like we’re trying to get everybody, we’re trying to get you. It’s like, well, you should be

Marco:

Here.You

Trent:

Should be here. We are here and you should be here.

Marco:

Yeah. Evangelism is a thing, of course, and it’s deeply important, but there’s a big difference between what can I do to make you love it here? Between what can I do to make you love what the church is? How can I structure things?

Trent:

Versus how can I help you see you should

Marco:

Love this? Yes, yes. How can we structure stuff to make people love it here is the heart behind church at the movies. There’s a megachurch. I just saw a thing with this where they have everyone in the auditorium or whatever open up their can of coke at the same time. I don’t know if you saw this video. No. It’s like 2,000 people going during the church service at the same time. I got an advertisement for this. I saw the comments and one of the members at this megachurch was like, “I can’t wait for the moment when we all open up the can of coke at the same time during the Sunday worship.” And it was like, yeah, church at the movies or something like that.

Trent:

This is the kind of thing that makes people stay home.

Marco:

Yeah.

Trent:

And

This is what I talked with Michael Pagano about when we’d had our dialogue recently that the problem is if you’re going to church to be inspired, if that’s the main reason you go is to hear a blockbuster sermon, there’s a million of those on YouTube. Or just to have this experience, you can have all kinds of experiences, but it has to be something deeper. I think one thing though for architecture, I really wish Protestants would reconsider though would be the presence of the crucifix. And I think that was one way Protestantism wanted to distinguish itself from Catholicism was they have a different view about the Lord’s supper, the Eucharist, not viewing the Eucharist as a perpetuatory sacrifice that’s offered to the Father. And so there was that concern of wanting to distinguish and say, “Well, no, we don’t have the same view of mass. Our services are different.

How do we show that? ” Because we would say that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross is represented to the Father on the altar. And so having the crucifix there is a visual image that that’s what is here that is being represented. The lamb who is slain, that we are now able to receive his body and blood. But I think a lot of products say, “Well, we want to distinguish from that. ” So they keep the cross, but remove the corpus.

And so while I agree that the cross is a good symbol, the cross has been a symbol for 2,000 years in Christian history. You find it in catacombs. It is a good symbol. What’s hard for me though is that it’s kind of an ambiguous symbol, right? Because if Jesus was a failure, if he was like a fraud, then he would be crucified, buried, decomposed. Tha cross would still be up there. The cross itself is not the punchy visual symbol of what has happened. I could even see an empty tomb being a better symbol if that’s what you want to focus on. But the crucifix, it’s like, oh, here is our Lord on Good Friday. And this is the moment when all of the sins of the world are forgiven and humanity is atoned for. This is the moment we should always have in the forefront of our minds when we’re living our Christian lives and we’re, what does it mean to be Christian?

It’s like this moment is so important.

Marco:

Yeah. I’ve heard people say this over the years like, oh, they have Jesus on the cross. Jesus isn’t on the cross anymore. He’s resurrected. Have you ever heard that before?

Trent:

Yeah. Well, that cross isn’t up anymore.

Marco:

That

Trent:

Thing was taken down 2,000 years

Marco:

Ago. I’ve heard that before so many times and never really doesn’t make sense to me.

Trent:

Yeah. Which of course we should celebrate the risen Christ. I mean, that’s why I love in the Eastern Catholic churches saying every Easter season, He is risen. Indeed, he is risen. Of course. And we celebrate that. Every Sunday in the Catholic church is basically a mini Easter is how we can just celebrate it. But that idea… Oh, I remember. So a long time ago, one of my very first YouTube videos, there was a guy, he did a rap video called Why I Love Jesus But Hate Religion. It’s like an old… Oh gosh, it was in the 2010s. And then I

Marco:

Don’t – Real brave stuff.

Trent:

Totally.

Marco:

Yeah. That’s the coexist of Christianity. It’s the worst. Relationship, not religion, that kind of a thing.

Trent:

I think it’s on the channel. I should actually go check. I don’t know if I took it down, if I was embarrassed. So hopefully it’s still there. Maybe I’ll re-release it. But I did my own counterwrap too.

Marco:

I hope it’s still up. It better

Trent:

Be up.

I’m going to see. And then maybe we’ll show the B roll and have the link here if it’s still there. If it’s not there, maybe I’ll bring it back. And I filmed it in my bedroom at my parents’ house and there was a crucifix behind me. And one of the comments under is like, take down that crucifix. Jesus isn’t on the cross anymore. Yeah, he’s not. But I mean, think about when Paul was writing his letters, he’s saying if the only thing I will boast and I’ll boast of the cross. And he talks about the theology of the cross. There was somebody who was like, “That cross has been taken down 20 years ago.”

Marco:

Or Philippians three as well where he says, “These people are enemies of the cross of Christ.” He uses that imagery on purpose and doesn’t just say they’re enemies of what Jesus did on a cross, but he says they’re enemies of the cross.That is representative of something really

Trent:

Powerful. Or Galatians. I want to make sure I get this right. There’s a verse where Paul says, “Who has-” I’ll come up with the scripture after that. We’ll go scripture for scripture. He said, “Who has bewitched you for we did we not preach Christ crucified to you? ” Well, I’m going to get you… I want to say Galatians three. One. Galatians three: one. Okay. It’s still up there. I am slowly losing my grip on I’m trying to do my best to model for Protestants. Yeah, but you should have everything memorized. You foolish Galatians. Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited as crucified. So it’s interesting. I was like, well, what does that mean exactly? It doesn’t mean that everybody who was there in Galatia, which is written 20 years later, was at Jesus’s crucifixion. They probably weren’t.

But is the idea that you went to another gospel even though we presented Christ crucified to you. You have to be put under a spell to go away from that. I hope there’s a way that we can bring that imagery and other imagery back at least into

Marco:

The churchical space. Church history, I’m still a big novice in it, but so much of it seems to be like something happens and then overcorrection and then an overcorrection. With Luther seems to be a good example of this, as little as I know about this. But it’s one thing that we point out sometimes of there’s a bit of an overcorrection from in the Catholic church, baptism regenerates to now. Again, there’s a complication to this, but yeah, the idea of works and faith and now what comes out of the reformation. It seems so much of the time, how about we just don’t go the

Trent:

Opposite way? Well, that’s what you deal with when you’re saying we’re justified by faith alone. Then someone comes to you and says, “Amen. We’re just by faith alone. There’s nothing we do to be saved.” You don’t even have to be baptized. You’re like, “Wait, wait a minute.”

Marco:

Stop the train.

Trent:

Yeah. But you see there’s that. And that’s the problem is that the Catholic church dealt with this in saying in the counter reformation at the Council of Trent, yes, here are these things or abuses. Here are theological doctrines that need to be clarified on both sides where people are getting it wrong. And there’s just this yo-yo efect where it’s like overcorrect, need to come back. Then it over-corrects again. Honestly, that’s almost like human nature. It’s like one guy tries to blow up a plane with his shoe. Then for 20 years we have to take off our shoes at the airport even though eventually it’s like, oh, this doesn’t really do anything. There’s no point to this anymore.

Marco:

They just changed that too. America’s back.

Trent:

Finally.

Marco:

We’re back. We finally recovered.

Trent:

Finally, you get to keep your shoes on.

Marco:

Yeah. After 25 years, we’re back.

Trent:

Oh my goodness. If only we could keep the ball rolling. But then you also attended a daily mass with me.

Marco:

Yes. Well, what were

Trent:

Some things you took away from that… Attending.

Marco:

Again, I love that we sat so close to the front, by the way. Beautiful place. It’s

Trent:

Okay. In the Catholic church, that’s always open.

Marco:

Oh, really? Right here

Trent:

In the front. It’s the back piece to get taken up.

Marco:

Yeah. We typically have a baptismal font in our building and stuff. I wanted to ask you about this. You all had two of them. You had a taller one that was like a bowl, or not a bowl, but you know what I mean? It’s like a bird bath. And then the other one, was it cross-shaped? A bird bath is good. Was it cross-shaped or a T shaped?

Trent:

I think it might be shaped like a cross. I’m seeing it in my mind

Marco:

Because – Is that for immersions? Do people get immersed in those?

Trent:

No. Well, not immersed usually, but this is so sad actually. It’s my own parish. The adult baptisms typically occur at the Easter vigil and I have not been to an Easter vigil in many, many years. The last time I went to an Easter vigil was probably… I go to Easter Sunday. Well, I love Easter Vigil. I mean, I was baptized.

Marco:

Easter vigil at night or something?

Trent:

Yes.

I mean, it’s one of the most solemn liturgies throughout the year because the Easter vigil is traditionally where new converts are brought into the church long, like three hours long. We’ll go through readings all through Salvation History. We’ll light the fire to symbolize the light of Christ at the very beginning and going through all of the readings through Salvation is like seven or eight of them. And then there will be the point where people are baptized or if you already were baptized, you’ll be confirmed, brought in the church. But if you’re a catechuman, if someone’s never been baptized, then you receive baptism. And that’s what I received when I was 17. And then I received it by pouring. And I assume this, I mean, this is the same thing probably at our parish. I wish I had been, I haven’t been in a long time.

Ever since having little kids though, usually start at like eight o’clock. So it’s not done until like 11. So it’s like now some people, they’re just champs. They will take their kids to midnight mass. They sleep on their blanket till 20 AM. I

Marco:

Don’t think my kids will… Yeah. My kids at home in the most comfortable place in the world right after 8:00 PM, if you blink too many times –

Trent:

They’re up.

Marco:

Pure meltdown. Totally.

Trent:

So I would love to get back to the Easter vigil at some point. Now we’ve just been at Sunrise and

Marco:

Easter morning for a while. It seemed a little shallow in there.

Trent:

Yeah. So the adults, so the taller font you’re referring to would be where infants are baptized. So for infants, you don’t wait till Easter vigil, you baptize them as soon as possible, and then they’re brought in and it’s poured over them and the baby is held over the font. Now they can be immersed. We’ve been to baptisms in Eastern Catholic churches where there is –

You dump the whole baby in, man. Wow. You dump them in and pull them right back out. And so they do the full… So you could do sprinkle, you can do pour with the baby, or you can do full immersion. And then for adults, I’m not aware of Catholic churches that do… There may be some that do full immersion with adults. Catechism talks about that I think being the most fitting form, but it’s still permissible in the other forms because God wants everyone to be baptized even if you’re in the desert and you only have a cup of water, you can baptize somebody.

Marco:

But the catechism says it’s the most fitting form.

Trent:

Oh, not that it’s the most fitting. I believe I’m going to have to go back and I’m going to ad an edit here with

Marco:

That.

Trent:

I believe that there is something in there talking about something special related to immersion versus other forms, but that they’re all valid

Marco:

Forms.

Trent:

Because

Marco:

A dedicate is what says it’s preferable if you can do it, but if you can’t –

Trent:

Yeah, it talks about gradations of preferability of running water, living water versus unliving water, running around running. So for adults though, like an Easter vigil, you would stand in the shallow pool and the water would be poured over you and you’re standing in this pool where you’re receiving baptism. Interesting. And so that would be the reason behind the two fonts.

Marco:

Yeah. Yeah. How fascinating. Yeah, I wonder about this because again, we just have one and we don’t have a little one for babies in churches of Christ. But I’m always curious about that because I did see an Eastern Orthodox baptism on Lazarus Saturday. Their calendar’s different, but do you guys have a Lazarus Saturday in –

Trent:

Lazarus Saturday?

Marco:

Yeah, it’s like the Saturday that Jesus raised Lazarus. They’re like one week before with their calendar.

Trent:

Yeah, because it’s like they have Palm Sunday a week before us,

Marco:

Which

Trent:

I was at the tomb of Jesus for Easter once and the Orthodox were in front of the tomb, it was us and the Latin patriarchs celebrating Easter. Behind the tomb were the Orthodox celebrating Palm Sunday. And when the patriarch got up to give the homily, they shouted and jeared and rang bells and he couldn’t speak. And he was just like, “That’s Catholics and Orthodox. We’re brothers always fighting.” But that one I’m not as familiar with though I’m going to get you writing in. Unfortunately, Catholic trivia is not my hot point. I gave up on that a long time ago to think, oh, maybe I could get it all so I could match Tim Staples and Jimmy Akin.

Marco:

Well,

Trent:

That’s

Marco:

One thing. It’s a massive amount of stuff to know. Just in terms of the workings of it all, the dates, the calendars, it’s unreal. Me trying to dive into this stuff, it just seems almost bottomless in a sense. I’m amazing. As a

Trent:

Convert, and I think other Catholic converts feel this way. You could study your whole life and there’s still a prayer you won’t know that a cradle Catholic knows because their grandmother told them when they were five. And it’s just like, oh yeah,

Marco:

I didn’t know

Trent:

About. So yeah, you’re right. There is a lot of rich elements to it. But I would always caution people like, no, you don’t have to be an expert in something before you recognize the truth, goodness, and beauty that’s present there. So was there anything else? So there’s the architecture. Was there anything else in the service itself that kind of stood out to you? Yeah.

Marco:

Well, you guys started off with a, I don’t know what to call it. I don’t know what they called it, but it was like through my fault.

Trent:

The penitential right.

Marco:

Okay. So is that to repent before we begin to offer worship to God or try to get ourselves right within?

Trent:

Yeah. So that’s to seek out just the general forgiveness of sins, the general sense of repentance. Not the same thing as going to the sacrament of confession where if you’re going to state a mortal sin, you would go to that sacrament Christ instituted through the apostles in John 20:23 to be fully reconciled with Christ in his church. But we all, as James three: two says, we all stumble in many ways. And so just as the dedicay says to make peace with your brethren before approaching the altar, this is something that we do to understand like, okay, we’re turning away from many sins might be distracting us from the Lord so that we can focus on his presence here on the altar that we’re about to receive in word and sacrament.

Marco:

Okay. So is it more of a repentance thing or just a focusing thing or both of them? I guess, would that be for someone that doesn’t have mortal sin, but does maybe just have general venial sin?

Trent:

Oh yeah, because receiving the Eucharist itself remits venial sin. So it’s a way of turning away from that and turning towards Christ in the liturgy of setting those things behind us

Marco:

So

Trent:

That we’re able to focus on receiving

Marco:

Him. That’s what I was kind of guessing it was like how in one Corinthians 11, there’s so much about discerning of the Lord’s body and not eating and drinking judgment to yourself, examining yourself. Is that kind of the

Trent:

Heart – Through my most grievous fault. And we ask also my brothers and sisters, both in heaven and around us to pray for me the Lord, our God, that we, as Galatians says, we’re to carry one another’s burdens.

And it doesn’t mean we’re just going to carry your brethren’s log to go build his house. The most important burdens we can carry for each other are the spiritual burdens. And of course we in our mere human nature cannot do that. But if we are united to Christ in virtue of our baptism, he is the vine, we are the branches. We’re also connected to the other branches. The body of Christ, the only way that the foot can do something about the hand, one Corinthians 12 and all that is because Christ connects all the different body parts. So in being united to Christ, then we can offer prayers for each other, which any kind of spiritual burdens, issues, trials people are going through, including asking for mercy for others and then to repent from sin or repent from whatever they’re dealing with.

Marco:

Yeah, that’s one thing I think kind of big picture on this that I’ve loved is the intentionality of liturgy where it’s like, this is exactly what we’re going to do and for each thing there’s a reason for it. Again, to contrast that with the charismatic kind of, there were times where going to church growing up, all my dad’s side’s Catholic and my mom’s side is this evangelical charismatic kind of stuff. And there were some Sundays where just the feeling, the pastor would get a feeling and be like, “You know what? Today we’re just singing.” And it’s like after song number two, he’s like, “There’s something going on right now. It just feels right. We’re just going to sing.” Oh boy. And that’s just all we would do. It’d be like an hour, hour and a half. And then he’s like – I’m just moved

Trent:

By the spirit.

Marco:

Yeah. I mean, if I had the power to do that at the church where I’m at, which I don’t, and I’m not saying he did this, but maybe I didn’t prepare a good sermon or something. I’d be like, “You know what? Something feels right.”

Trent:

That’s literally like a teacher when you’re in elementary school, you walk in and they’re like, “Today we’re watching a movie.” You

Marco:

Guys have been

Trent:

So good lately. Because I was up really late last night at the bars or something. Teacher puts on sunglasses. It’s funny if we look back, we probably, when we were in elementary school, if we had just a derelict teacher, now as an adult, we play like, they were drunk. Now we’re just like, we were kids like, “They’re goofy.” Things you don’t catch them. It’s been weird

Marco:

Today.

Trent:

Oh my goodness. Yeah. And that’s something that I appreciate within Catholicism and other high church Protestant traditions, understanding that the liturgy is something that does… For a pastor, the liturgy doesn’t belong to you. And priests are told this is like the mass doesn’t belong to you. You stand in the person of Christ to serve the flock that has been entrusted to you. And so that’s why

You’re given the rubrics. There’s the general instruction of the Roman missile. What is it? I always reverse the two. I think it’s say the red, do the black. I’m pretty sure that’s it. And people are going to get a comment, say the black, do the red? Say the red, do the black. As in you read the book, just say the words that are in red, do the things in black and you can’t mess it up. Just do that and you’ll be fine. But it’s always sad when I think any kind of a pastor thinks, oh, well, it’s mine

Marco:

And

Trent:

So I need to make all of this and do all this to it. And it’s not.

Marco:

Yeah. And again, my channel, because it’s largely reaction stuff, I see so many videos. And there was one where this guy was like, this pastor going, “The great thing about planting your own church is that you can do whatever you… ” And he said it a different way. He said the quiet part out loud. Oops. Yeah, you could see him stop his own be like, “You can just really plan things out. ” I don’t remember how he fixed it, but he was going to say that. And again, this is what’s so cool to me and why I have such an apreciation for the high churches, for Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, is because they’re not trying to be modern

And they’re trying to keep a historical root. It’s a hilarious kind of an overlap where we are trying to just do what the original church did where it’s so clear that all this modern stuff that happens in evangelical churches for… And I don’t want to just harp on… I want to be respectful. I’m not trying to be like… It’s just a good comparison. I know they probably don’t see that as much of an issue, but all of that stuff is just so clearly foreign to how things worked in the first century and even beyond that in the coming centuries. Where again, it’s not for us to mess with all this stuff in terms of how worship is supposed to go and all of that. And so I appreciate the, again, the pursuit of originality and in a changing world, this is a timeless thing about how God set up his church and we’re going to trust that even when the winds are blowing in different directions throughout the coming centuries.

Trent:

Was there anything though in attending a Catholic service that you don’t prefer as much to say maybe a Protestant service? I think maybe we might’ve been talking a little bit about homilies versus sermons.

Marco:

I

Trent:

Don’t know if that’s something that’s come

Marco:

Up. It’s kind of funny. I’m a preacher, but I would very much like it if homilies or sermons I would call them are shorter and

Trent:

More

Marco:

Time is given to the Christ.

Trent:

We call them sermons when they go on longer than seven minutes.

Marco:

The one of that morning I remember was right around seven minutes or so, which was great. Especially I think if you know that it’s going to be that long, you’re locked in way harder than the guy who goes, “All right, Marco’s getting up again. It’s going to be 30 minutes. Let’s get comfortable.” You know what I mean? And now’s a good moment while he’s getting a greeting to think about where we’re going to go for lunch or something. I can see that stuff happening sometimes. And one thing that I talk about a lot is how obviously central the Lord’s supper or the Eucharist is in the worship of the church. It gets a description to it in terms of the meaning of it, the impact of it, the significance of it. It gets an explaining that the other things that we do like praying and singing don’t get in the New Testament, which should stand out.

And it also has its obvious root in the liberation in Exodus 12 and the Passover and it’s all over the place, the shadows of it. And so it’s so obviously central. Acts 20 verse seven, the disciples came together to break bread. So I don’t like either. And the church where I’m at, we really strive to be intentional about this, the whole we get together because this awesome preacher’s going to preach. And like you said, we can get awesome guys saying stuff all the time, stuff that’s motivational. And so that’s one thing that I loved that not because I don’t like when people preach or teach, but I love that that just has its place. The homily has its place, but we’re here to break bread.

Trent:

I do think though for me, I have found most homilies that I have heard. I think it’s just a problem for many Catholics would say that they can feel just not very memorable, that there’s a very similar theme for a lot of them of just being like,

Just continue to live out, focusing more on how to live out Christian virtue in life, which is a good thing. But diving into more theological concepts to help people understand what does it mean we’re justified? What does it mean we’re sanctified? I think Protestants will spend more time that are really breaking into scripture. And I do wish Catholic priests could focus on that more. Yeah, it’s hard. I don’t want to knock too much. I think one of the difficulties, and I guess if I wasPope, I should do an episode called if I were Pope. I would have Modo Poprio in Canon Law that made it very clear that the homily at daily mass is optional. That way a priest didn’t always feel like he had to have a homily every single day because priests offer mass every day. Just imagine if you had to write a sermon every day.

It’s just like along with also… And that’s why I think a lot of priests where it’s an unfair comparison for some Protestant pastors, they could spend 20 hours that week on the Sunday sermon. But for a lot of Catholic priests, it’s like they have a daily mass every day, which may include a homily every day. They have to oversee an elementary school that has hundreds of families. They have to go and deliver sacraments to the sick, to the dying. They have a huge staff, sometimes a huge staff, if it’s a large parish to manage and coordinate other ministries, outreach ministries dealing with helping the poor. And

Marco:

There’s

Trent:

So many things on their plate. The homily itself, you just can’t devote as much time as maybe other Protestant pastors would, but it is so important. And I think it can be done well even in just seven minutes.

Marco:

How interesting. It is a balancing act because there’s a limit to what you can do in that amount of time that you may want to be able to do. I remember it was some years back, but I remember Pope Francis was talking about homily length and he was speaking Italian. He was like, there’s these guys. And he’s like like 20 minutes, 30 minutes. He’s like, “Come on guys. Let’s not go super crazy.” And I remember actually again, having a real appreciation for that, but I hadn’t thought about the fact that yeah, there is a limiting thing because there have been times where I’ve explained some complicated things and lessons that I’ve given where I’ll even tell people straight up, go, “Hey, this one’s going 40 minutes. We need to talk about this though. This one’s going to go up.”

Trent:

Yeah. I think that one of the other things though that I feel like yeah, it’s important there could be more lengthy periods to teach these more in – depth theological topics. But I worry sometimes about the Sunday service losing its focus on the Eucharist and essentially becoming Sunday school for adults. And so I worry that if the Sunday service is viewed as, because I think I saw on X somebody’s Protestant was talking about Catholic homilies and said, “I could never go to a Catholic church like that. ” He said, “My pastor spent an hour completely breaking down the book of Nehemiah for us. How could I get that in a homily?” And I’m thinking, “I bet you’ve got all of the kids under the age of 10 off in the daycare right now while you spend an hour on the book of Nehemiah.” And there are Catholic churches that do have this, but I’m very big into bring all the kids in, bring them all in, bring everyone into worship.

And there is a way to incorporate the entire community, the entire family of God and parish into worshiping the Lord. And the youngest children should be there for that and not think, “Oh, I finally get to come when I’m good.”

Marco:

You

Trent:

Have been good the second you were baptized here. So I think maybe there could be elements or if the priest time were freed up, oh, the other mode of proprio. I’d want the priest to do RCIA. I don’t know how many horror stories I’ve… Now it’s called OCIA for initiation of Christian adults where people who want to become Catholic go to an RCIA class run by people who actually don’t know the faith and they get driven away and it’s just done horrible. I wish just no, the priest is the one who hosts that, but they’ve got a million things to do. But maybe that there’s a way to have adult education classes on a Wednesday night where it’s like, “Hey, seven minutes, this is our preview here in the homily. Wednesday night though, we’re going to do an hour with Q&A. We’re going to lock everything in and come and we’ll have childcare and we’ll have…

” So that it’s separated. So it’s like liturgy doesn’t become identical with just catechesis or education. There’s an element of catechesis and liturgy, but liturgy is the word liturgy comes from Turgos means the work of the people.

So I worry that it becomes if liturgy is viewed passively as this is for me to get this versus, oh, it’s for us to work together to praise and glorify God. Yeah.

Marco:

We are big where I’m at too and largely from my experience in Churches of Christ in not having some people call them children’s Bible hour or something like this. Every so often, usually someone who’s having a hard time with their child or maybe their grandchild will go like, “We should probably have something like this. ” And the response is always like, “That would be nice. It would be nice for me. I’ve got a three-year-old, a two-year-old, and a six-month-old. Oh, wow. It’d be very nice for me to have that. But it would be far better if they grew up in every single one of these. It’d be far better if they were with me, with my wife growing up in this and seeing what this is like from the very beginning. And also there’s a pattern for this in scripture of how in Acts 20:20, how he says,” I taught you guys publicly from house to house.

“We’re constantly just in different places and learning scripture together. And a lot of the times it seems like, and maybe this is a product of our time of Sunday being the moment where people learn the most of the Bible. One day of the week, this is when I learned the Bible. This is when I learn from the word of God. And then I think that’s what feeds into the sermon centrality, not the Lord supper. It’s kind of an afterthought, done quickly, those kinds of things.

Trent:

When shouldn’t it be, I mean, Acts, I mean, I’m always quoted this about Sola Scriptura, but to turn it around here, I’d say Acts 17:11 says the Boreans were noble. And a lot of people treat it as because they searched the scriptures, but I don’t think that supports Sola Scriptura. I think it’s because Luke is saying they were more noble-minded. They searched the scriptures daily. And I love that detail. They searched the scriptures daily. They were immersed in them every single day. It wasn’t like, oh, it’s Sunday. It’s time to go to adult Sunday school. So I think there is a place for that. I think what’s helpful is also for little kids, I get the kids can be… My kids are older now, but they all went through the toddler phase. I think we should have that one, I love the cry room, one little soundproof room, go in for a bit.

Then when they’re calmed down, come out. There’s a balancing act. You shouldn’t do dagger stares for one little peep. But if that kid is wailing like an ambulance for the past minute, you got to take him out for

Marco:

A bit.

Trent:

You got to be a little bit… Oh, I remember I think the one time I remember, I think it was one of my children was two years old and he’s on the pew trying to pay attention. And then he slips, bonks his head.

Marco:

Always the head bonk. Oh

Trent:

Man. But here’s the thing, you know when kids are really hurt when they get hurt and they can’t immediately cry because they’re out of breath? Yeah. And it’s like you see the timer starting to tick down and I scoop them up like a football and I’m just running to the side door because I know he is just going to absolutely wail.

Marco:

I’m

Trent:

Like, “Got to get him out before he… ” It’s not even just the uncomfortable cry. You know it’s like they can’t speak, they’re out of breath. So the next breath, they’re going to be wailing. I remember I scooped up like, “I got to run. You’ve been there.”

Marco:

I’ve lived this so many times where it’s like my daughter hits her head and my wife is more optimistic than me. She’ll kind of give me the look like she’s probably not going to cry. I’m like, “You’re wasting precious time. Get out of here.” She’s about to scream. We have about four seconds before she catches her breath. Here’s the door.

Trent:

But here’s the thing that gets, and this is my third mode of proprio as Pope. The aisles of the pews are reserved. Here’s just a general rule I will give is reserved for someone who has a bladder the size of a hamster. I’ll go into a Catholic, I’ll go into all kinds of parishes. I have the kids and you walk and it is like looking at the pews, it is like Southwest Airlines back before they had a signboarding. You go and it’s like all the edges are… Nobody wants just the middle seat. They’re all on the edges of the pew. And I’m like, “I’ve got a four-year-old and a two-year-old here. Is sitting on the edge that important to you so that I am going to be scrambling by you, my butt’s in your face, trying to get by, getting my kid out just so you can save three seconds when you’re getting out?

” People with small children, that should be reserved. They get the edge of the pew. So for bathrooms or crying, they can make that quick, quick escape. And especially imagine you have the long traditional church hallway like you were in, especially those pews on the edge. So imagine you have the central aisle proceeding to the altar and you’ve got two rows of pews here, especially those pews on the outside edge.Because the worst is if you get an inside pew, yeah, it’s okay, you can get up. But then you got to do the walk of shame down the main

Marco:

Aisle. You

Trent:

Got to do that walk of shame with the crying kid or the kid that’s about to pee himself. So I would please people who got to go. So small children, I will even reserve for elderly who have to maybe make a mid-bathroom

Marco:

Break.

Trent:

But if you can hold it the whole way through,

Marco:

Let the

Trent:

Seat be open.

Marco:

Yeah. I need an average bladder time from everyone when they come into the church. How long are we talking here? If you’re a 35-minuter – We should

Trent:

Just color code the pews. We just color code them red, yellow, and green based on how long you can

Marco:

Hold it. How urgent it is.

Trent:

And that way people have a quick out.

Marco:

I did have a question about the Eucharist. And I think we started to talk about this and I wanted to talk more about it because I don’t think we got to get to it. In the service, everyone got the bread. They didn’t get the fruit of the vine. The chalice. Yeah, the chalice. Yes. And that is very different for me in terms of just how we do stuff. I’m really curious as to what the reasoning is for it, and for all the obvious things you’ve heard before, it just seems like everything in scripture would indicate that everyone got both.

Trent:

Right. Well, although there are passage in scripture that Paul talks about profaning the body or the blood, he uses the conjunction or. And so this is a disciplinary element that had developed still early on within church history about concerns about spilling the precious blood, for example, about referencing that this is the body and blood of Christ, that even if it were to spill, use a special purificator and holy water on it. So I think that’s the discipline that’s really developed from that and also hygiene, other elements. So that’s where it’s developed. But I would say there is scriptural backing that it’s not necessary. While there is, you might even say a fullness to it, it’s not strictly necessary to have both kinds in order to receive the body and blood. I’ll include a link below. We have an article that was written at catholic.com just recently just on this going through the historical development of it.

I think Brian Burrows is his name because someone else actually asked me about this as well. So I’ll include a link to that. So I would say it’s a discipline that’s developed, but we do have scriptural warrant that it’s not strictly necessary in order to receive Christ’s body and

Marco:

Blood. Oh, interesting. Yeah, that’s a tough one for me. And again, I get it’s probably just like that comes down to a paradigmatic thing of solascriptura kind of stuff, but oh man, that’s a tough one for me. Yeah, I remain to be convinced about it, but I get it. I’ll read the article for sure.

Trent:

I’ll send that to you

Marco:

To

Trent:

Go through with that.

Marco:

So with that, is there stuff that is in the liturgy that is not changeable?

Trent:

Oh yeah.You couldn’t change, for example, the words of consecration or the matter. When it comes to the sacrament, you can’t change the form and matter of it. So for example, you can’t use grape juice. It has to be wine. It has to have an alcoholic element to it. Now you could use what’s called for priests to receive it who may have struggled with alcoholism. They could use what’s called mustum, which is wine that has begun to ferment, but the fermentation process has been halted. So it’s really, really low alcohol content.

Marco:

Could they go back to giving both things in the Eucharist? Is that a change that’s possible to be made where they give the chalice and the bread?

Trent:

Yeah, I would say that’s disciplinary. That’s something that’s similar to priestly celibacy.

Marco:

It

Trent:

Would be another similar discipline that has changed over time and could change. But there are things that are part of the deposit of faith. The clearest example would be, well, one, that the priest has to be a man. That’s something that can’t change. Whether the priest is married or not,

Marco:

That’s

Trent:

Something that could change. But especially the form and matter of the sacrament. So you could not change the words of institution, take, eat, this represents my body.

Marco:

If you

Trent:

Said something like that, it wouldn’t be valid anymore. And like I said, if you used instead of bread, instead of using unleavened bread, you used lettuce or something. I don’t know. Now there have been elements of trying to retain the sacrament while understanding different barriers that people have. So for example, my wife has celiac disease, so she cannot have wheat. So what the bitch has determined is that in order for it to actually be bred, it just has to have some wheat in it, even if it’s a microscopic amount, but it has to at least have some, even if it’s an extremely, extremely low gluten

Post. And then you need… And this is just difficult because going from Protestantism and the liturgy, we’ve covered a lot of that. I think that’s why it’s so important to have a living teaching authority in the church, especially one that can teach and bind universally for the whole church is so very important because these questions just come up. It’s like if you think like, “Oh, well, if I have the New Testament that answers everything for me, ” it’s like, “Well, the New Testament wasn’t meant to answer every single question, important question we have about the faith or the liturgy.” So it’s like, well, can we celebrate the Eucharist every day? How often? Because there’s some Protestant churches who will receive the Lord’s Supper maybe quarterly or once a month. Should it be weekly, daily, monthly? How much is permitted? How much is obligated?

Marco:

So

Trent:

That’s why I do think it’s very important for churches to discuss, well, what is the nature of the universal teaching authority? Or does every church just kind… Figure it out on their own and that can get kind of messy.

Marco:

Yeah, it definitely does get messy. I mean, we’ve all seen that. We do it every single week. I would argue to anyone who’s watching this whose church does it quarterly or something, reason why you should do it every single week is because you don’t find anything else. That’s the only thing that you see.You see that they do this on the first day of the week. And if you go, well, how many first days of the week? The only thing is you see it’s on the first day of the week. So then we could pretty easily say, I’d argue, therefore when the first day of the week comes around, we better be doing that. A more complicated conversation would be like, all right, well what about beyond that? What about Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday?

Trent:

Right. And that’s where you need, that’s why we say the apostles are given the ability to bind and loose. It allows them to be able to make these binding ecclesial laws for the church to permit, obligate or forbid. And yet then there’s other elements that come up too, and it’s not even just like the Eucharist. I remember a few years ago when Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, there were a lot of Protestant churches that said, “Well, we’re not going to have service today because everybody wants to be home doing presents.” We’re going

Marco:

To give you the gift of rest. That’s what they said. The gift of rest.

Trent:

Oh,

Marco:

On the Lord’s day of all days, the gift of rest means not worshiping.

Trent:

I love it. I love the gift of rest. It’s a great way when you’re basically saying when you want to take a day off.

Marco:

Yeah.

Trent:

It’s like, “Well, I don’t want to show up to my job today

Marco:

So you

Trent:

Guys shouldn’t have to come to church.”

Marco:

All the things that you could ever rest from, that should be the only thing that you don’t rest. That would be your rest, being with God’s people.

Trent:

Especially the idea of what is… But this goes back though, because there were a lot of… The Puritans, for example, did not celebrate Christmas. They called it popish nonsense. I mean, it’s Christ’s mess. That’s where the word comes from. So they didn’t celebrate Christmas. They considered it Romish, Popish. But then there’s a concern. It’s like, oh, well, it’s Christmas day. We want to be home eating and doing presents. It’s like, wait a minute, if that’s the centrality of Christmas for you, you’ve lost the plot about why we celebrate the nativity, the birth of our Lord.

You replaced the… It’s always funny, even the Christians who are most opposed to icons I understand. I think I get a lot of Protestants on board at least with, hey, crucifix, this is our Lord and Savior. It should be fine to have an image of him in church. Statues of saints, people know you a bit more have a hard time with that. Except Jesus Mary Joseph and the ox and the donkey at Christmas. That’s one I think can always be a… And it’s a similar principle there. Here are the holy men and women of God in at least important elements there, at least within salvation history To

Marco:

Be able to have. Yes. For someone with my paradigm without a living magisterium or something, usually, and everything I hear you saying is related to, for the most part, in terms of how stuff gets applied. Again, frequency of the Eucharist or something like this. A lot of it seems to be like, what is the best way for us to apply it today when circumstances may have changed or something like that? That’s what it sounds like to me. Which is why I wonder, so when it comes to things that could or could not change in the worship, are there some Catholic churches that don’t use organs and stuff like that? You what I mean? Oh

Trent:

Yeah. Yeah. So elements, the congregation for divine worship, so there is a decastry within the Vatican with –

Marco:

What’s a decastry?

Trent:

Well, it’s essentially like a department, but we don’t call it that because that’s very secular. So dicastery would be cardinals and members of the magistry and bishops. I mean cardinals, archbishops, those who are leadership within the Vatican appointed by the Pope who oversee various elements of the faith in the church. So there’s a dicastery related to the doctrine of the faith, understanding what does the church teach and answering questions people have. How do we apply this teaching to this circumstance? Especially with ethical questions or new doctrinal questions.

The decastry had to be asked questions like if somebody says for the baptism, “We baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit instead of I baptize you. ” It’s like, “Is that still valid?” And the answer is no. Or baptism in the name of the creator, sanctifier, redeemer, but name of the creator, redeemer, sanctifier instead of Father, Son, Holy Spirit.That one’s an easy one, but the we language to say, “Well, no, the point of I is that the person stands, they’re standing in the person of Christ, that it is Christ who baptizes this person and it shifts the theology away to it’s just the community

Marco:

Who

Trent:

Is doing something like that. ” And there’s people who are, when liturgical abuses happen, so there’s doctrinal issues, there’s liturgical issues that arise. Is this permitted? Is that permitted? So the second Vatican Council had a document on the liturgy called Sacrosanctum Conchilleum talking about the reform of the liturgy, especially making sure that people have full active conscious participation in the liturgy. It’s not something they’re just passively observing

And talking about, okay, well, how do we involve people? Music is a way for people to be involved. What kind of music? And so it lists talking about how things like Gregorian chant have a special pride of place within the church, but other kinds of sacred music can be performed with other kinds of instrument, but they should be befitting of the sacred quality that should be present here. It should be distinct from mere profane or worldly music. So it leaves latitude. So there will be churches that might focus more on organs, those that might focus more on just the choir singing. And then there’s others that might incorporate more contemporary musical instruments. And I have been to parishes that have the guitar, have the orange with the rice in it.

But that can still be done because the church also believes in a principle called enculturation. So in understanding of that, and this is something the church has done for thousands of years that’s saying originally, yeah, we want to be like the first Christians. We’re not a slave to what the first Christians did because there was no idea of a building dedicated for church until about the fourth century. So before that there was worship and house churches where people also lived. But then after Christianity becomes the legal religion of the Roman Empire, the pagan temples are taken and used for sites of Christian worship. And so it’s in the fourth century, now we have buildings consecrated and dedicated to worship. And then the questions then arise, well, how do we worship here? And in different cultures throughout the world, you see, if you look at mass in Africa or mass in Latin America, you might see different forms of singing, different forms of chanting that reflect the culture.

But enculturation means we baptize whatever is good in a culture and use it to glorify Christ. And then we would say anything that is contrary to Christ, we would say no. So if you’ve got voodoo, witchcraft, things that are contrary, we have to draw a firm line.

Marco:

Snake handling.

Trent:

Yeah. Well, yeah, that’d be the Appalachians, I guess. But if you have something that is neutral, a particular way of chanting or singing or dancing or an instrument that is played, if it’s something neutral, that’s something that can be baptized in the liturgy and that can be incorporated. So there’s going to be different elements there, but you always have to be careful about inenculturation becoming a bit too worldly. So there’s a fine line there.

Marco:

Yeah, because we… So cool. That is a very cool way to put it. We have a concept of this as well in singing style. Broadly, there’s not a concept of this in terms of whether or not we would use mechanical instruments. It’s one of the more famous things or infamous things about churches of Christ. It’s more of the fringe hyperlib people that bring out guitars and stuff like that. But typically the only variation is in singing style. The church where I’m at, we use a four-part harmony kind of a style, which I would imagine your wife’s grandfather, it’s probably what was popular as well. But you

Trent:

Do use instruments though.

Marco:

Or is it

Trent:

Just acapella?

Marco:

Yeah, just acapella. The only instrument is the voice. We don’t even –

Trent:

Pitch perfect. Church of Christ. Well, that’s interesting because the church that I’ve been to Eastern Catholic churches and the Orthodox is similar in this way. They’ve retained that similar tradition of just using acapella. And so what we would say the Catholic church teaches is that is permissible, but it’s not obligatory. It’s not a part of the deposit of faith saying that sacred music can only be produced by the human voice, that there are instruments. But this is something that has had to develop within church history because in the early church, the organ, when the organ was first introduced, it was considered controversial because it was associated with kind of like Roman debauchery. It was associated with pagan debaucherous events where they would play the organ. And so now when you think of the organ, we think the most conservative instrument possible. Think of your grandma or something.

Sure. Or even styles of singing, monophony versus polyphony. So different ways of harmonizing tones. That was actually in the Middle Ages controversial when polyphony began. So not even just the human voice, but how many? How do the human voices interact? Is it too much to use polyphony? Is it just monophony? So these developments do occur and the magisterium’s role is to serve the depositive faith that’s handed on, but also using its judgment to apply that teaching in novel situations or developments that just don’t fall under what was given to Christ and the apostles.

Marco:

Yeah. How interesting. Yeah, because again, broadly, we only sing the variation is in singing style a lot of the time. And usually the rejoinder to that is something like, well, David used instruments and things like that. However, it seems like there’s a real strong absence of this. Strong absence is a funny thing to say, a loud silence of this in the New Testament in terms of what the church does. I just saw an article, an opinion article from Catholic Answers. Can’t remember his name. Mark something. My name is Marco. But about maybe the piano’s not the best for certain… I guess that’s the enculturation idea. It’s too contemporary or it’s too similar to that kind of stuff. That’s fascinating. I didn’t know about enculturation, that idea.

Trent:

My favorite thing though is when the choir is able to incorporate trumpets and horns.

Marco:

Really?

Trent:

Well, yeah, especially around Easter, we’ll include that for the liturgy because it just gives this wonderful regal triumphal… And what’s interesting is I would say that that hearkens to… That certainly not modernism. It’s a sense of Christendom or the early Byzantine court. When Christianity had developed from being the persecutor religion to being the bedrock of civilization, of being this is what ties together our civilization is this common faith. We worship in the court, the leaders, the people, we all have the same faith, Catholic, universal. So just having those trumpets and horns, and for Easter, for triumph, it’s like we’re worshiping the King of Kings. It’s like we are in the court of the King of Kings as the trumpets are blaring and saying hallelujah. So I guess, yeah, there’s different elements to be able to add in there. But I guess people are like, “Well, I’m just going to do what we see in the New Testament.” We don’t see descriptions of 40 minute sermons in there either or people gathering for worship and that’s why they’re gathering

Marco:

Well. So it goes both ways. We don’t know how long before midnight Paul started preaching on the first day of the week. It could have been 10: AM or it could have been 11:30, right?

Trent:

Yeah, totally. 1:30 PM. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I guess we’ve covered a lot of ground and I don’t know, unless there’s anything else you wanted to chat about, we could get to some of the fun stuff. Let’s

Marco:

Get to the fun stuff. Let’s get to the fun stuff. All the other stuff is just a vehicle

Trent:

To get here. To get us here. Alrighty. So here is the role that Marco and I had. I’m just going to preface it right away. I get thrown around a bit. But you just told me I did land some injuries on

Marco:

You. Yeah, so my neck is still sore. Whenever I turn my neck too far to the rigt, right about here, it starts to really hurt here. And you’re going to see why very quickly. It starts off fast.

Trent:

Okay. I’m going to give you a chiropractor’s gift

Marco:

Certificate.

Trent:

Also, you’ve got a little bit of weight on me. I’m

Marco:

Coming

Trent:

In about 175.

Marco:

Yeah. I’m fresh off my third child in four years, so I’m a Husky 210 right now. Husky 210.

Trent:

So there’s a reason we have weight classes and I think we’re about even about three, four years. We’re both jujitsu blue belts.

Marco:

Baby blue belts.

Trent:

Baby blue belts. So we know enough of the fundamentals to know how much a black belt can just truly wreck us.

Marco:

Yeah. And I know you’ve been training. So I knew the best thing that could tip the scales for me was going to be just hogging it out. You what I mean?

Trent:

Throwing the way. I was feeling it in some of the mounts. We’ll get to that. But yeah, what’s also hard before I start is in my gym, I deal with a lot. I mean, I’m Filo and 175. It’s not small, but a lot of the guys are like 220, 250, 280. Usually, I would say I’m the smallest guy there. So what’s hard is I get a lot of practice defense, but not a lot offense. So we’ll see this year as it starts my offense. It’s not the best. All right. So we start.

Marco:

The handshake, the guard pull, again, respectful.

Trent:

Yeah, I pull guard any chance I get. All right, then I’m moving. Goal here, try to get to the front headlock position.

Marco:

Yeah, it’s going to get bad quick for me. I could not breathe for a little bit here. Right about here, right there. Oh, when you got the lock, I went, uh-oh.

Trent:

Well, that’s because the move here, what I’ve got is this is the front headlock and I’ve decided to go for the anaconda

Marco:

Choke.

Trent:

So I’m around the neck. I’ve grabbed my elbow. My hand’s come out your armpit. Yeah, I locked it up, trying to get the hand on the back. And my instinct here, so there’s two ways if you’re watching this. If you have hands locked underneath the person, you could slide out under the armpit like I did. That’s called anaconda. Or you could slide the other way and put your hands over their neck and that’s called the dars. And my opinion is I feel like my instinct is anaconda because I want to drive my dominant arm through. But I feel like I should have gone with the dars –

Marco:

I think the darse is better.

Trent:

The dars is a better choke.

Marco:

The anaconda, there’s a lot of room to wiggle, especially because you got to do that gator roll. But look at me as the great defender that I am. Both hands on the mat, no defense at all, just waiting to see what you’re going to do.

Trent:

Yeah. So then I knock your arm out to do the gator roll for the anaconda.

Marco:

There we go. See, I’m just waiting. I go, “Oh-oh, problem.”

Trent:

And I’m like, “Come on, come on, come on. “

Marco:

I was going… I could feel that feeling right there.

Trent:

And then I lost it, and then we’re back.

Marco:

Hurt so bad. Someone said, I showed this to one of my jujitsu friends and he doesn’t really know much, but he was like, “Did Trent just be nice and let go of you there and let you reset?” And I was like, “Give me a little credit here.”

Trent:

No, you slipped out well. I was rolling. If I kept your head in my abdomen and locked up the anaconda tighter

Marco:

Before

Trent:

The gator roll, I think I would’ve had it, but I went too fast.

Marco:

Little reset. Now I’m on my knees. Now this is –

Trent:

Now we’re time to really go

Marco:

At it. Yeah. Now I go, all right, this is what Trent has in store for me. Don’t give him the front headlock again. So I just pull guard. My thing is half guard. Now

Trent:

You’ve got me in half guard. Is that

Marco:

One you

Trent:

Like?

Marco:

I do the under hook. My left leg, I try to collect your right leg with it and then –

Trent:

I did not see the sweep coming.

Marco:

That’s where

Trent:

Things go unfortunate. I’m like, oh great. Now I’m in half guard.

Marco:

And then my thing here, I just went to my ABC thing. I go to the sit back pass. So I’m establishing a control here and then I just put my arm on the other side and I just show you my back basically. Yeah.

Trent:

So I’m not sure what you’re doing, so I’m just keeping a regular

Marco:

Frame.

Trent:

And I’m like, all right.

Marco:

Annoying frames, by the way, here. Your arms are under there. I should have dealt with that first because I’m going to mess up quickly. Frames, frames. Because yeah, your knee’s already in there. Oh, so annoying.

Trent:

I mean, I’ve got a pretty squirrely game, but one part of my game I’m least happy with is I can usually recover guard. And so I was happy at least here. I’m like, I’ve got to keep him from getting past. Okay, if I can get my clothes guard back.

Marco:

You’re cagey, dude. You’re so cagey.

Trent:

Elbows to knees. Elbows to knees. All right. So I’ve kept the clothes guard.

Marco:

Yeah. And I’m trying to do the armpit thing, the armpit move. And then you have this crazy ability to not let my wrist go. Look at me, I’m trying to do everything to get my wrist out.

Trent:

Well, I was seeing that and I was like, “Can I get a Kimora? If I get the arm down enough, could I maybe get the Kimora from that? ” So actually I was thinking about that. That was the other mistake I made was I can keep a clothes guard pretty tight on people. It’s pretty hard for people to break it. One of the things I’ll do is I’ll keep a clothes guard and I’ll wait for someone to try to do a standing break.

Marco:

Yeah, that’s what I was going to do too.

Trent:

I should have… Because actually we –

Marco:

What’s your move when I do the standing break?

Trent:

Well, no, this has happened to us before. I’ll find the video.

Marco:

Yes, it did happen to us before. I will

Trent:

Find the video because when we rolled before, you attempted a standing break and I dummy swept it.

Marco:

Yeah, you dummy swept me, dude.

Trent:

Oh man. So a lot of times when I do clothes guard and people do the standing break, I’ll release, grab the ankles, and I dummy sweep it down.

Marco:

And when you did it to me, I felt like the biggest dummy. I literally did. I was like, how did I get hit with that? That’s like a day one thing.

Trent:

But that’s the thing. So I do that a lot. But here’s the problem is that in my game going from white to blue belt, a lot of times I have stalled in closed guard where I’ll just keep the guard locked because I’m safe. It’s like, okay, if I’m in closed guard, it’s locked. I can’t get submitted. But the problem is I can’t advance from closed guard. So I’ve been working with my coach to be like, okay, only do closed guard for an emergency, then get back to open guard and try to advance and do stuff. So I was just like, okay, let me go to open and play around. But you pass that bad boy way too, way too well.

Marco:

I’ll resend you our original video if you want to show people you dummy sweating.

Trent:

Oh yeah. Love to add that in there. So now I’m just trying to keep a knee shield in and I’m trying to look. I’m trying to go also for my chimoras.

Marco:

Here we go. I’m passing.

Trent:

Oh, I think you’ve got the pass. I know I’m starting to get in trouble here.

Marco:

Yeah. Cross face.

Trent:

I’m feeling

Marco:

It.

Trent:

Now I’m trying to keep frame.

Marco:

Then I do the sit back pass and then I just make you deal with love handles. That’s all you can see. Just the…

Trent:

I’m feeling 215 a little here on my diaphragm.

Marco:

You made a noise at the end. We’ll address it when it comes. You made a noise that I’ve been thinking about ever since. Anytime I want to eat a cheeseburger.

Trent:

There is my half guard disappearing under the full mount and I’m like, all right. A lot of times though, I can still get out of this stuff with people. You had a good full mount.

Marco:

Yeah. I’ve worked hard on the full mount. If I can ever get there, it’s great.

Trent:

No,

Marco:

Here I’m trying to get the gift wrap and go to the back and then you just stop turning, trying to go gift wrap, trying grab my other wrist. So that’s

Trent:

Why I’m popping my head out because I know if my arm grows around my head, I’m done for.

Marco:

Yeah. Yeah.

Trent:

Also, we did this. We’re going to do three minutes and I was waiting for that timer and it went like four and a half.

Marco:

I didn’t hear it go off. I think your volume was down. Yeah. I didn’t hear no bail.

Trent:

All right.

Marco:

Frames.

Trent:

Well, now I’m trying to really, if I can just shrimp out.

Marco:

It almost had you there.

Trent:

Oh wait, go on. Let me take that.

Marco:

Let me take that back. Just so you know, I wanted to tell you this. That straight arm bar there, I’ve gotten muscular 260 pound men in that straight arm bar. When you got out of that, I was pretty upset. Yeah, that thing, I’ve gotten big dudes in that.

Trent:

Like I said, so my game, because I’m at a gym where nearly all the guys are bigger than me, I’ve had to develop a high level of defense just to deal with guys who are 100, 120 pounds heavier. So what sucks though is that I don’t get a lot of practice on offense with smaller people to get my submissions to be lethal

Marco:

Because

Trent:

I don’t practice them. A lot of times I’m just learning defense with these big guys.

Marco:

When I started training at this gym, same thing for me all defense. Only guy, shout out to him that I got to practice my offense on, Spencer. He was always lower than me, so I got to try stuff out.

Trent:

There you go. Okay, so you’re trying the straight arm bar. But like I said, I have a cagey game, so I’m pretty…

Marco:

Yeah.

Trent:

I’m always like, “Okay, got to stay out of

Marco:

Here.” You recognize quickly when there’s a problem.

Trent:

Oh, absolutely. Like here I’m like, “Okay, you got my hips. I’m in danger, but I can’t move.”

Marco:

I go to sit back and I want to hook your leg here. I want to… Oh, this time I don’t do it. I

Trent:

Think you’re just going back to the

Marco:

Mount. Back to mount.

Trent:

And now going to high mount. I’m in trouble. And here’s where the game, here’s the game. Here’s where it all goes away from me. And I was just hoping… Oh, pause it there. I was just hoping. I was like, “Okay, I don’t know. Where’d you get my arm? We’re going… “

Marco:

Right around here. I was faking gift wrap and then –

Trent:

Oh, that was

Marco:

It. You faked

Trent:

The

Marco:

Gift.

Trent:

And you did a rollback to get the arm. And I was like, “Oh, let’s see.”

Marco:

Can you go to the moment when you made the sound that has been haunting me ever since? Hold on. Can

Trent:

I hear it?

Marco:

It’s further back. It’s further back.

Trent:

Oh, where?

Marco:

Right when I sit on you, right there. You’re

Trent:

Going

Marco:

To hear yourself go…

Trent:

You were putting your whole… The hard part for me is when I’m trying to maintain top control on people, I have to do all these tricks, like get on my toes instead of my knees to have weigh on their abdomen. You just sat your butt on me. I was just feeling all 210, 215 pounds of that. Okay, so then you’re –

Marco:

Don’t say 215. I said 210. 210,

Trent:

210. I think you said 215 when we were there.

Marco:

Maybe that morning.

Trent:

You’ve lost five pounds since then. Okay. 205. Then I see then the arm bar is going and I had a faint hope. I was like, “If I could just clear my head.” I was like, “Oh, if I could clear my head, I can get out of this one.” And then I grabbed the ankle. I’m like, “Come on. ” But I was focusing too much on trying to clear the head. I should have just done a hitchhiker

Because I’ve gotten… We did a… What was it? We were playing around at our conference. I’ll find a clip of this and put it in there. We were just playing around at the Catholic Answers Conference. There was a guy there, an attendee who had a rash guard, and we just went and rolled with a few people in one of the upper rooms. Oh, that’s cool. So yeah, we’ve come to the conference. We’ll do a whole thing. And he had me in an arm bar, but I was able to roll out of it. I was able to do the roll because – Best feeling. Oh, it feels so good.

Marco:

Escaping an arm bar, best feeling. Yeah,

Trent:

Exactly. So that was the – You rented

Marco:

Like I’m really bad. End of

Trent:

That. So yeah, he got me. So yeah, it was about three minutes, 40s. But I love at the end though. I love when middle-aged guys roll, because at the end we’re just like, “I’m tired.”

Marco:

And by the way, after this, you had to go, I was getting my stuff to go and my coach goes, “Hey, you’re training, right?” And I have to say yes to this.

Trent:

Oh,

Marco:

You can’t turn

Trent:

Your coach down

Marco:

When they say that. Yeah, it was brutal. It was brutal. It was. I escaped as quickly as I could from him.

Trent:

No, I understand. So good times. We’ll have to get together and do… I really want to do the Catholic Protestant ecumenical dialogue and we all do jujitsu and MMA after.

Marco:

I would love

Trent:

That. We’ll get everybody together and it’s a surprising number of people. Even I think Jacob Hansen’s a Mormon, he does jiu-jitsu. Matt Chandler is a Protestant pastor here. He does it.

Marco:

This guy, Matt Chandler, starts a podcast called Between Sundays. Matt Chandler, I’m coming for you. Are you trained? Well, he’s a higher level. He’ll probably beat me up.

Trent:

Well, I think he’s a blue belt. I know the guy who trains him. He’s now a black belt.

Marco:

I’m going

Trent:

To organize something together.

Marco:

I want to train with Matt Chandler and Winter gets between Sundays as their YouTube channel.

Trent:

We’ll set it up with all of us.

Marco:

Knowing him, he’ll beat me.

Trent:

I hear he’s got a tall lanky game.

Marco:

I

Trent:

Actually don’t mind with the tall lanky guys on a roll with them because it gives me a lot of outs to

Marco:

Sneak out of

Trent:

Stuff. Well,

Marco:

Matt Chandler, you’re not David. You remember that sermon?

Trent:

What?

Marco:

As an old sermon. Oh

Trent:

Yes, that’s right. You’re David. You are not David. Bible’s not about you.

Marco:

Yeah. So

Trent:

Matt, hopefully we’ll have you out here. We’ll do a few things. So sir, fun chat, fun

Marco:

Role. Yeah, you’re the man, dude.

Trent:

You are the man. So thank you guys and check out Marco’s channel. I’ll link to that below. And I hope you all have a very blessed day.