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In this episode Trent sits down with a previous debate opponent who is now full received into the Catholic church.
Transcription:
Trent:
When I was a Baptist seminarian looking at these different texts, the things I started seeing didn’t look, sound or appear in any way to the Baptist church I belong to.
Stephen:
And so that moved you though from being a Baptist to being an Anglican.
Trent:
Yeah, I think if every Anglican is honest, they have to wrestle with the subject of Rome and the papacy because it’s in your history.
Stephen:
Welcome to the Council of Trent. My guest today is Stephen Boyce. He’s the host of the Facts YouTube channel. Fax is a theological historical podcast, uncovers the foundations of the Christian faith through scripture, early church history and patristic writings. Steven and I had previously clashed over church history and patristics when we debated the doctrine and justification by faith alone, specifically in the early church several years ago. And Steven has undergone his own faith journey from Baptist to Anglican to Catholic now. So it’s a really interesting journey and we’ve crossed paths before and he’s assisted with the channel. We had a great episode teaming up, Catholic Anglican team up on the sacraments, responding to Protestants who deny their seven sacraments. So yeah, I just wanted to have you on today to share a bit about your journey. So Steven, welcome to the Council of Trent.
Trent:
Yeah, so good to be back. Thanks for having me and letting me share a little bit of the story that the Lord has worked us through.
Stephen:
Oh, I’m super excited about that. So let’s jump right into that. In March of 2021, you were on James White’s dividing line and you’re talking about Solafide and First Clement. And at that time, you were a Baptist. So can you tell us a little bit more about your theology, your worldview, where you were at at that point?
Trent:
So that was a major transition in my life because I was just finishing up my PhD work. I had just released my dissertation, which covered a lot of first clement from Codex H. And so James White and I had already become friends. We had done some discussions on the Kama Yohanium and different passages that are textural variations, mostly because of King James onlyism, because as a Baptist, I grew up in the fundamentalist independent King James only group. And so I changed out of that group pretty early on in my college days. And so we crossed paths just on that subject. So we had done previous discussions together and even two on two dialogues. And so once I finished First Clement, particularly the textual analysis from Codex H, along with some of these other books, he’s like, “Well, let’s specifically talk about First Clement, come on my channel.” So we did.
And I was already struggling with things. I didn’t necessarily share those because when I was a Baptist seminarian looking at these different texts, especially the Ignatius letters, although those were in the longer Rescension and the full copy of the Didique, the only complete copy we have in Greek in that manuscript, the things I started seeing didn’t look, sound or appear in any way to the Baptist church I belonged to. I had pastored two Baptist churches. I started as a senior pastor at 21 years old as a youth pastor from 20 to 21, became a senior patch from 21 all the way to 26. And so I’d pastored two churches, independent and Southern Baptist. And so I had already taken steps kind of away from those ideas even as I was studying the early church, but studying the second and third century church, Father, especially the apostolic fathers, I was wrestling daily with this is not the church I belonged to.
What I’m reading doesn’t reflect the church. So he had me on and he wanted to talk about sole fide and some of the different variants in there. And at that point, I was still strongly Protestant in my ideas. I was still strongly Protestant in my concepts, but I did struggle with the idea of Bishoprick, things like Ignatius saying, “Don’t let anything be done without the Bishop.” Things that dealt with real presence in the Eucharist and the defense of it and the language that was used by Ignatius and the Didique. So these things really tore me up and daily haunted me in a good way that I had to constantly go back and say, “Do I reflect this?
Stephen:
” Right. And so that moved you though from being a Baptist to being an Anglican, because when we debated in 2024, it was a two-on-two debate, myself and Jimmy Aiken and your debate partner I think was more of a Baptist.
Trent:
Correct.
Stephen:
But by that point, you were staunchly Anglican and even said in the debate because we were debating the question, “What must I do to be saved?” And the question of submitting to the Bishop of Rome came up, to which I asked you, I mean, do you need to submit to a bishop define common ground? Do you need to be submission to a bishop? And you said, “Well, yes.” And you admitted a lot of Protestants won’t agree with me, but that is really, really important. See,
Trent:
I was in a weird stage in that debate because there was parts of me where I was worried that we would end up agreeing so much and we did. We agreed on a lot. And to me, some of the language we were debating was semantics. And I had become an Anglican at that point and a lot of that was due to Jonathan Sheffield. He and I were doing debates together. He was an Anglican in Texas. And so I fell in love with the English patrimony reading the-
Stephen:
Just a sidebar for our viewers, Jonathan and I have also done a debate. People can check that out on our channel. We had a debate about the Deutertero Canonical books of scripture, but he’s a super nice guy.
Trent:
Super easy to deal with. I mean, he and Bart Erman debated on my channel a couple of months ago, and they’re going to be doing it again in March. And he and I still, I mean, to this day, we’re friends. We see things very similar at times, but then we differ on some major points, but he’s a good guy. Easy to disagree with and he’s very charitable in his approach, but he was a big influence on introducing the English patrimony. And I fell in love with the venerable bead and the history of bringing Augustine of Canterbury from Pope Gregory the Great and all the things that had transpired in England at that time, I fell in love with it. And then I read Anssom and I was like, “Wow, this is powerful.” The way that the church had formed and created its unity and worked through major war plagues, problems, and at the end of the day, exalted Christ and sent some of the greatest mission work around the world from there.
I fell in love with that. And so we started, my wife and I were secretly going to like an Anglican mass and just seeing what would happen. And my wife said something. Claire said, “If we’re not going to go at least sit through a mass, we’ll never know. We’ll always be talking about it, but we’ll never be doing anything.” I said, “Why? All right, we’re going to go to a mass.” And so we went to an Anglican mass, our life was absolutely changed because we went back to our Protestant church and we continued to go there and it haunted us because every single service, there was not the taking of the body and blood of Christ. Whereas in the Anglican world, there is. And so it haunted us so much that we left a very healthy church that was a massive church that we were a part of, that I was teaching in.
I had started a class of 10 people that grew to over a hundred people and we were seeing a lot of good things and we literally sat down with our mentors and pastors and said, “We’ve got to go. ” And we left on good terms. We didn’t leave on bad terms and they still to this day have a relationship with us, but we left. We told them we had to leave. Then we got into the Anglican world and that was a little bit more complex, but that was the transition is there was a lot of influence studying the early church, seeing what it meant to have the English patrimony, looking at the idea of liturgy. So we fell in love with all of those concepts, which the Anglican church provided. And then we realized we’re actually more high Anglican, so we like these smells and bells and all those things.
And so we became pretty integrated in the Anglo-Catholic world after about a year of being in Anglicanism.
Stephen:
I’m very surprised though that in studying the history of Christianity in England, you did not become Eastern Orthodox because the Eastern Orthodox online I’ve engaged with have sworn up and down. It was an Orthodox country prior to King Henry III or whatever they have you. So it is always funny how people look at history for sure.
Trent:
The problem with that is that was true of the Celtics and some of those areas in the North. But in the Southern part, especially in the Anglo-Saxon conquerings and the wars that went on, I mean, the peace came through Canterbury by the Pope. And honestly, the only thing that kept me connected to the Western right over, if you would, the Eastern, was Pope Gregory the Great. I fell in love with Pope Gregory the Great. I mean, I sympathize with him on so many things. He was a true leader who cared about people, who cared about unity in the right way, but also was strong in his convictions of doctrine. So the more I read Pope Gregory the Great, the more I fell in love with the Western side of that. And yes, there are Eastern influences even in Anglicanism and there’s liberties and Anglicanism that lean toward it, but our calendar is not based on the Eastern right.
It is based on the Western. And so they could say that, but at the end of the day, the councils that came together after 601 were forming Western churches that were based on communion with.
Stephen:
So I guess this is going to lead to the big question, and then maybe also you can tie into this. I know that there are some people, so you’ve been on James White’s channel before and whenever he hears about somebody becoming Anglican, his bat signal goes … It’s like Def Con, Def Con two, and he gets freaked out about it because he sees a pipeline, like an Anglican to Catholic, Baptist Anglican to Catholic pipeline that really worries him. And there was something along there also that spoke to you. I’m sure the papacy will be a part of it, but it’s interesting you mentioned Pope Gregory the Great was for our listeners who may not be as familiar, he was a Pope at the end of the sixth century, so in the late 500s. And that is really marking a big transition period from when the Catholic church exists in tandem with the Roman Empire to now the Roman Empire has fallen for over a hundred years.
I mean, there’s no exact date, but it’s like for over a hundred years, now Christendom is the only thing that is holding the Western world together and papal authority is very important for that, especially in Western Europe holding all of that together. So yeah, so let’s tie it all together how you want, but now something turns you from Anglicanism towards looking at Catholicism.
Trent:
Yeah. I think if every Anglican is honest, they have to wrestle with the subject of Rome and the papacy because it’s in your history. And when you start studying the English reformation and you start asking the questions and you start looking at what happened with Kramner, or you just take the 1549 prayer book and you compare it to the later prayer books and the changing of certain language, the removal of what became known as more Romish. They love that word in a lot of the early English reformation, the Romish doctrines or Romish practices, you start asking yourself like, “Well, what created this distaste?” Most of it was politically driven more than it was theologically. And this is a huge problem in Anglicanism, and that’s what we didn’t know when we came into the Anglican world. And one of the questions that my wife and I continued to ask ourselves is, “What is an Anglican?” Because if you go to the Anglican communion, they start talking about, “Well, the Sea of Canterbury is no longer in communion with these other seas because of X, Y, Z.” And we all know what happened to the Church of England.
Stephen:
Well, it’s because of XX. The Sea of Canterbury, it’s now held by a woman as one of the issues.
Trent:
That’s the major one that’s recently come up. But even before that, especially Gafkan and these other groups already said, “We’re not following you anymore You’ve left Orthodoxy.” And so then it’s like, well, see, two thirds of the Anglican communion are conservative and the rest are not. And that would mostly be the non-conservatives would be the Episcopals here in the United States or the Church of England and some places in Australia and New Zealand. But when you look at it from that perspective, just take the conservative branch, they’re not in communion with each other. So when we started moving in our journey, we started talking to the archbishop of say the APA, which is Bishop Chandler Jones, a wonderful man. Most of his family is Roman Catholic, either priests or deacons and things like that, very, very priestly family, but he remained in the Anglo-Catholic world.
And when we started getting integrated in the Anglo-Catholic world, it’s like, well, we accept seven sacraments and you and I did a whole entire discussion on that. And then we also accept icons and veneration because you have the seven ecumenical councils. And they would go so far as to say that 39 articles have lesser authority than what is decided in the seven economical councils. So the 39 articles are not even binding to that group. And then it dawned on me, and this was crazy, Trent, because one of the things that happened is when we were coming over from the ACNA, which is very Protestant, more low church, there are some higher church within the ACNA, but that’s not the-
Stephen:
The Anglican Church of North America.
Trent:
North America, correct.
Stephen:
Yes.
Trent:
And the Kern Archbishop who was just recently resigned, we had lunch with him. We spent a whole day in Charleston with him before he became the Archbishop a couple months before. And I was sitting there listening to him talk about the sacraments and the 39 articles, and he was more of a Pentecostal Anglican faith healing ideas. And then you sit down with Bishop Chandler Jones, and it is very, very high church, very much involved in the sacrament life. And then I asked the question when we were going to come over to Anglo-Catholicism, what does it look like? He said, “Well, you got to understand, we don’t recognize the ordinations and we don’t recognize the confirmations of the Anglican Church of North America.” I was like, “So if a priest converts from the ACNA into the APA, they have to be conditionally reordained.” He said, “That’s correct.” And so we recognize these instantly that these conservative Anglicans that sound conservative in their communion are actually not in communion with each other.
And once we became a part of the APA, we could no longer take communion with ACNA because they, and the APA are under old Catholic and Polish national Catholic orders rejecting the very thing that, say, for example, Pope Leo the 13th condemned in the late 19th century, and that is that the orders of Anglicans are utterly null and void, which that was specifically talking about Edwardian Anglicans, which a lot of the Anglo Catholics are not under Eduardian orders. They’re under Old Catholic and Polish national. And so they reject the orders of many of the other Anglicans around them.
Stephen:
So that’s so interesting because there are many Anglicans who will be put off saying, “As a Catholic, why wouldn’t you recognize that we have holy orders also or feel this is an affront from Catholicism? And yet there are many other Anglicans who wouldn’t recognize each other by the same virtue.”
Trent:
Yes. And that was the problem for us. It’s like, wait, we talk about this Anglican communion and we don’t even see each other’s orders as valid and nobody wants to talk about that, but I did. I wanted to talk about it. And one of the things that I had Steven Alspech from the Catholic Brothers on my channel and there was a time where the ACNA was sending delegates to Rome to talk about communion with Rome and we were discussing, well, what would that look like? It was a big deal at that time. And Steven said something to me in that show. He said, “You need to define in your own mind what an Orthodox Anglican is, and then you need the groups to define what they mean by we’re Orthodox.” Not in the sense of Eastern Orthodox, but just in the sense that-
Stephen:
Lowercase O, “Faithful to the deposit of faith.”
Trent:
And I instantly sat there. It haunted me. In fact, one of the board of directors of our channel, our podcast, because we’re on YouTube and we’re on eight different podcast channels as well. We started as a podcast, moved to YouTube, but I have a board of directors and one of them was an Anglican priest and it haunted him. We actually both converted, we both converted together. He was just confirmed a month ago and he converted as well from an Anglican priest. And that question haunted conversations for the next six months for us. What is an Anglican? And so I went back to where most Anglicans go. So there’s a big debate about where does Anglicanism begin? This is a huge debate. Do they begin with King Henry the eighth, or do they go back to the patrimony, Augustine? And if most Anglicans want to start earlier than the English Reformation, they want to go to 601.
The problem is if you go to 601, you’re speaking of a different church, a different authority, a different structure. And since the Anglican patrimony is what brought me over anyway, I started to conclude, well, maybe a true Anglican was always meant to be somebody who holds to the English patrimony in English right, but has full communion with the Pope, the way it was instituted to begin with. And so I started searching that out more and saying, “What was Anselm? What were these great kings in the past that we talk about and embellish? What were they? ” They were Catholics. They were English Catholics that loved their English patrimony. They loved the traditions that were distinct in some ways in their liturgy from that which was in the Roman right. But at the end of the day, these things were beautiful things that I had already fallen in love with, but I had not put categories to.
And so I started moving closer and closer to the patrimony and saying, “I believe what a true Anglican is, was an Englishman who is in full communion with the Pope.” And so that was a big deal for a lot of us that were studying this together. So we had a catechism class at our house. My wife and I hosted every other Sunday and the Anglican priest, Pat May, who’s also a co-host of mine, he and I would lead this study with a bunch of Anglicans and we studied the Catholic catechism together and we asked the hard questions. And almost all of us that were in that room have now converted to full communion with Rome.
Stephen:
To be deep in English history is to cease to be an English Protestant, to modify Newman’s quote there. Yeah. I think what you’re pointing out is a serious problem. And we’re going to be having more, I think more and more Anglicans and other high church Protestants from the mainline denominations looking into Catholicism because in spite of efforts from people like Redeem Zoomer and others to reconquista and all these other things, we’re seeing just this serious hemorrhaging. The question you ask, well, what is an Anglican? I was just thinking when you were talking, it’s like Anglicanism is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get. The diversity in theological belief, even you look at the most liberal elements within the Catholic church, it does not compare at all to the most liberal elements of Anglicanism. And my favorite example of that is a gentleman named Michael Corin.
So Michael Corin was a, I think he was a Canadian broadcaster. He wrote a book called Why Catholics are right, but then he changed his mind on homosexual conduct and abortion. And because of that, he’s not a dissenting Catholic anymore. He’s now an Anglican priest, but he’s in a very liberal denomination where he can be pro- homosexual unions, pro- abortion. And I think it’s good to bring up like when someone tries to say, “Oh, that’s all what Anglicanism is. ” No, it’s not, but the majority isn’t, but it’s a very loud plurality. It’s not a tiny sliver either.
Trent:
No, there’s an identity crisis going on in Anglicanism right now. I think everybody, if they’re being honest, they’re asking this question. And I think if they’re being honest, and I know this because I’m friends with so many priests. And by the way, we left on good terms when we were … Most people don’t know this, so I’m just revealing this here, we had been attending a Catholic mass for over a year while also going back and forth with our home parish and the Anglo Catholic mass. Our priests knew what we were doing, our bishop knew what we were doing, we were transparent, we were upfront, and they actually welcomed the exploring and said, “You have to do it’s best for your family and your conscience and we’ll support you either way.” And I didn’t want to burn bridges with the Anglicans because I have so many friends and charitable moments with Anglican priests and parishioners.
I was able to speak at multiple churches in the Anglican world. They saw me as an Anglican apologist and because of that, I have a sensitivity to Anglicanism. So I want to continue dialogue with Anglicans and ask these same questions like, “I know you’re battling this and every single Anglican that’s going through an identity crisis right now, so whether it’s scandals going on in the ACNA or there’s issues with G3 that’s now going to be G2 and they’re not even seeing eye to eye on things there, they’re all asking the question with the word Rome in it. Every one of them is. Whether they want to admit it or not, every discussion behind closed doors involves the Pope and Roman invention. And so this has to be something that Anglicans battle out and I’m willing to continue these friendships and share my 10 cents. They can throw it away.
They can accept it and continue dialogue, but I’m not looking to burn bridges with the Anglicans because they are so close to a lot of things that Catholicism loves very, very close on many of these subjects. And so there’s enough there to be compatible with. It just comes down to a couple of questions that some people have to work through, whether or not they’re going to go into full community or not. And that’s what happened to me and it didn’t happen overnight. It happened over a two-year span.
Stephen:
Well, tell us a little bit about the Ordinariate, which many people refer to as the Anglican Ordinariate, but that’s not the official name. Tell us a little bit more about it and its role in helping you be in full communion with the Catholic Church.
Trent:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I’ve been surprised at how many Roman Catholics are unfamiliar with the Ordinariate. The official name is the Personal Ordinariate. Bishop Lopez, Steven Lopes would not like the term … He gets squamish when you say Anglican Ordinariate, but that’s the name that’s been given to it because in 2009, Pope Benedict the 16th, it created a provision for Anglicans to come back into full communion with Rome and maintain their English patrimony. And so that didn’t launch into the US really until about 2011. It came Canada and then it came into US and then it eventually made it to Australia. And so there’s three major hubs right now for that. And it’s considered a personal ordinary because there’s not really a jurisdictional side of it whereas you have the Diocese of Charleston or Charlotte or something like that. It’s all over. And so Bishop Lopes is the bishop that stands in that position.
He was appointed there, but Pope Benedict the 16th loved the Anglican tradition. He was known for having multiple Anglicans in his office and just having conversations about the good old days. And so I think it was on his radar for many, many years to create some sort of provision where Anglicans don’t lose their identity, but also go back to what they were before the schism. And to me, it was a perfect world. So you can look at … And the book that they use is named after Pope Gregory the Great. You read it and you feel like you’re in an Anglo-Catholic parish. If you go to an ordinary parish, it’s a very high church. The posturing is very much like little things like even when you’re doing the Nicine creed, when you get to the very end and talk about the resurrection of the dead, it is very Anglican to cross yourself at that point of the creed or when they’re doing gospel procession.
A lot of Catholic Latin right churches will do the procession off to the side when they process the gospel book, whereas in Anglican tradition, they actually bring it to the congregation and they have the acolytes with the candles and the incense while it’s being read amongst the people. Things like that have been maintained. So if you’re going to an ordinary parish, you’re like, ” I need to go look at the sign. Is this Catholic or is this Anglican? “Because it feels just like you’re in an Anglo-Catholic church. It’s beautiful. So that Pope end of the 16th did a wonderful thing by making that prevent. Anglicans are against it. They are mad about it. I don’t think they understand it all, but they are mad about it. But to me, it was a beautiful harmony of my tension. The tension is I love the English patrimony, but I feel like we need to be in communion with the Pope and that provision was made in my lifetime.
And what a big deal. It’s a huge deal.
Stephen:
Yeah. It reminds me of I attended for a while a Byzantine Catholic church, but I have been in a Western Nova Sorto parish now for several years. There’s still people online who claim that I have escaped to the East because I’m secretly ashamed of the Catholic mass, which is not true. I didn’t dislike it. I could have even gone to the TLM, but I just enjoyed Byzantine. But now for the past few years, we’ve been back to the Novus Ordo and we really like that too. But the Byzantine Catholic church that we attended, you go to it. It feels like an Eastern Orthodox church, except there’s a picture of the Pope in the vestibule. Otherwise, it all looks identical. And it’s very similar for the ordinariate and maintaining Anglican English patrimony. So I think that, and to me, seeing that under Pope Benedict, that makes so much sense because also under Benedict, we had some more on Pontificum, which allowed for a greater use of the pre 1962 liturgy or the TLM, the traditional Latin mass.
And what do you think then of the other rights? For me personally, I think more the merrier, as long as you are not compromising the faith, it’s like these little things like there’s these little differences in liturgy. Sometimes they could be even bigger differences. You look at the Zaire right, for example, to preserve some African traditions within the liturgy. And they’re all good things that God can be glorified in different ways and different cultures. How do you see this element of the Catholic church, the different rights, personal ordinariates contributing to Catholicity?
Trent:
Well, I think it takes us back to what was going on earlier before these schisms, whether it’s the English reformation, Protestant reformation, or back even to the great schism of the 11th century, because all of those churches did have some distinction to their territories and their traditions, especially in the Eastern right. So I think it’s a beautiful thing because what it does, and I felt like I was in so many traditions at once when we were being confirmed, my whole family was confirmed. One of the things that Father Josh Johnson, who’s the priest at the parish up in North Carolina, we had to go way up, way up the mountains. We live in South Carolina, but we’re only about an hour from the mountains. And I joke, I say, I went up the mountain to Protestant and I came down to Catholic. It’s like a Moses experience or something, but it was a cool experience, but he told us, he was like, ” All right, so here’s what we’re going to do.
We’re going to do this. “I was like, ” Oh, that sounds very Anglican. We’re going to do this. All right, that sounds very Anglican. We’re going to bow here. Oh, that’s very Anglican. “He’s like, ” But we’re going to do the Nicene Creed and Latin. “I was like, ” Okay, all right, that’s interesting. “So we did English patrimony, we did Latin. I mean, we did a lot of things. It was a beautiful thing. And what I saw was many beautiful traditions that you can look at different parts of the world and different points of history and say,” This is preserving the fullness of the Catholic church and all of its beauty and elements over the ages where we’re able to sit in a mass and experience so much of the powerful things that many of our companions before us who walked the journey of faith and life were grown in and built in and defended and died in, we’re experiencing so much of those traditions in a single setting that people would have loved to see over the last five, six, 700 years.
It’s a big deal. And it goes back to what the Pope is doing in this and what the Vatican is doing working with the magisterium on these concepts is exactly what Jesus told Peter in Luke 22, right? He said, When you turn again, strengthen your brothers or in John’s gospel in John 21 when he says, “Feed my sheep.” This to me is the sea of Peter following the biblical instructions that we see to strengthen your brothers, strengthen these other seas, these other representatives, find unity. And of course, we didn’t compromise the Catholic faith and some of the biggest things that we had to work through before we converted over that year was some of the dogmas. Where do we stand with the Marian dogmas? Can we hold it as a dogma? As an Anglo-Catholic, we held it as Pious opinion. So we already believed they were true.
Were we going to maintain some sort of Protestant idea because we wouldn’t accept the terminology or papal and fallibility because what we thought papal and fallibility is is not actually what the church teaches. And then you sit down and you go, “You know, I’ve heard a lot about papal and fallibility and A, I don’t think Protestants understand it. B, a lot of Catholics don’t understand it. ” And so when I’m actually sitting down having reasonable conversations like with yourself or Jimmy Aiken, it’s like Jimmy’s like, “I’m sending you my book.” Okay, I’ll read the book. I read the book. I was like, “That’s not what I’m hearing. Everything I just read in that book is not what people are saying people and fallibility is. ”
Stephen:
Oh, you mean at the popular level of the discourse?
Trent:
At the popular level. Yeah. At the popular level, it’s like people don’t understand people and fallibility. So what I was protesting against and wouldn’t let me jump over the lines in wasn’t even accurate anyway. I was fighting a system that wasn’t even true to the teaching. So these things became really, really important to me, but seeing that the church has extended its hand, this is something I said to an Eastern Orthodox friend of mine the other day and he agreed. I said, “Rome is doing more to reach these other seas than these other seas are willing to do. ” And he said, “That’s fair. That is fair. The evidence is there that Rome is trying to let traditions. There’s one happening in Europe right now where Lutherans can come back and maintain some of the elements of Lutheranism. It’s on the ground, but these are good things.
These are good things. They’re not bad things.”
Stephen:
Right. And I think that’s important because especially in the online world and in where people are being a lot more polemical, but even people who are really on fire Catholics, and this is something that I’ll butt heads about with people, and sometimes people will have Catholics will have disagreements with me, is I will try to put forward a vision of Catholicism that is broad. It’s Catholic, that’s universal. And so while people may have pious opinions, certain devotions that they prefer, I don’t want to raise the bar for being … I don’t want to use language raise the bar. I don’t want to set the requirements for being Catholic to be higher than that which the church puts forward. If you want to believe certain devotions or practice certain things, as long as it’s still within a court of the church, I think that that’s great.
But I don’t like it when people will try to say, “Oh, to be a good Catholic, you have to do X, you have to do I. You have to be a part of this certain kind of liturgy. You have to pray these certain kind of devotions. You have to do this or that. ” If it’s not one of the precepts of the church that the church teaches, I worry about that saying, “Oh, well, we don’t want Catholics to be lukewarm. We want to be on fire.” And I think that’s a good thing, but I worry that the unintended byproduct is people who are looking for that olive branch to come in from a different tradition could feel kind of put off by that. Does that make sense to you?
Trent:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s happening. It’s happening. I’m seeing it happen. And most people that are not yet willing to swim the tiber, as they say, most of their objectives are not based on something that’s of sustenance, but rather just that of what they’re hearing on a popular level. And I could say that because that happened for me until I actually sat down with those that are considered scholars and those that have already converted. I mean, Michael Ward at Oxford, he was an Anglican who converted and a big, big, big scholar on C.S. Lewis, probably the best in the world writing. I mean, he was a big help to me. He and I, we set up Zoom calls and we would just talk. And the more I listened to him was like, “So what I’m being told isn’t fully accurate?” He’s like, “No.” And so I was like, “Wow, I just need a reset and start all over and drown out all the voices and start reading the documents themselves and start reading what the magisterium has put out.
” And so when I started doing that, a lot of those other voices kind of went out of sight, out of mind and I began to actually be able to think more clearly. And so that started the true path. So I would encourage anybody that’s looking into the Roman Catholic Church, even if you do not end up going into full communion with Rome or anything like that, at least do the due diligence by hearing the documents that have been published rather than popular apologists or something that might be misleading or have a push to go a certain way and you’re not getting the full story or you’re not getting the full truth. And I think that’s a dangerous thing that we all need to be aware of.
Stephen:
Sure. What are some other ways that you think Catholics can be inviting and not set up kind of unnecessary barriers to welcoming, especially Anglicans and other high church Protestants into the Catholic faith? The one that jumps off my mind right away is to not talk about Protestantism as if every Protestant is a member of Pastor Bob’s smoke fog and flying Santa’s mega church, i.e. Preston with Baptist church here in Dallas, which does put on an amazing Christmas show. I will give them credit for that
Trent:
One. We’ve seen the videos.
Stephen:
It is quite the spectacle indeed. So yeah, what do you think will be some ways just for our listeners and others to … They know people within these traditions, you be open-minded how to be inviting or at the very least not put up unnecessary barriers.
Trent:
Yeah. I think the big thing for me on that is that we need to be careful recognizing that everybody is on a journey and they’re coming at it from a different place. Even if they’re putting up a front against you, it doesn’t mean they’re not battling the questions. When you and I debated with Samuel and as well as with Jimmy Aiken, I was battling things that you didn’t know and you were friendly and we maintained a friendship after that and have continued that friendship. And that is a huge part in me being able to listen to my opponent. If you would’ve come after me like I’m seeing on a lot of YouTube videos between Trad this and Trad that, and anthem, an anthem on everything I say, I don’t think I would’ve listened to that person very much, even though I wanted answers but wouldn’t admit it.
It took a calm approach of saying, “That’s a good point. I’m going to document that and I’m going to meditate on that. And then I’m going to ask questions about that. ” So I think our approach is our disposition is just as important as our position. And I think the sooner Christianity learns that, the more we’re going to benefit from seeing converts to the truth and that starts with we can have the right position, but our disposition should ever more match that position. That’s what Jesus did. That’s what the apostles did, reasoning with everybody from the Jews to these Gentile pagans is there was a reasoning that was going on. Let’s sit down, let’s talk. Jesus brought people to a table and said, “Let’s talk. Let’s talk about your view of the law. Let’s talk about this view that you have. What did the scripture say?” It was reasoning with people.
And so it’s a big deal for me. And I know that there’s a lot of people that are one or two steps away from making a shift and the preventatives are the stigmas. And so if we can change our approach, I think that we can actually walk with people side by side. It may take two, three, four, five years, but now we have credibility and we’re able to help people where they’re at and walk with them instead of like, “Well, as long as you’re in that spot, an anthem, you’re schismatic, et cetera, et cetera.” I mean, and then like you said, lumping everybody together as if a high church Anglican is in the same boat as somebody who’s in the concert world of evangelicalism where, like you said, the smoke machines and pastors coming in on swings and buses and all kinds of weird introductions that you see on stage.
Stephen:
My favorite’s the rollercoaster. Look up the roller coaster rollercoaster’s
Good. He built an actual little roller coaster and he rides out. That is still my favorite one. But you’re right to understand, and I think- It’s condemned. Yeah, right. I’m sure there’s an ecumenical council that condemned roller coasters in church. I’m almost positive. That’d be a third Nicia. We’ll say no rollercoasters at church. So I think it’s important to remember that. And yeah, when I dialogue with people, when you can demonstrate to someone you have a deep knowledge of their tradition, it just instantly builds credibility. I met Mormons recently. I was just talking with them and asked them about their ward and their stake and using the correct terminology. And then I had a great conversation recently with a Mormon apologist. And so I think for any tradition, if you can show that, yeah, I see where you’re coming from. I understand what you believe.
Here’s why you should take a look at what I believe is always going to go much better than just running in with ignorance, anger, or a combination of the two.
Trent:
Well, here’s a perfect example, right? Populate of the 13th, the Anglican orders are utterly, void and null. That declaration was made. But most Catholics will constantly look at Anglicans, for example, and say, “All of your orders are null and void.” But there’s so much nuance to that because after Leo the 13th did that, many Anglicans are no longer a part of what he condemned as Edwardian orders. That’s the complexity where I was saying, “There’s Anglicans that don’t recognize each other’s orders over this. ” And so the church, the Catholic church does recognize the orders of old Catholics and Polish national Catholics as valid but illicit, but they don’t see them as invalid and that their sacraments are invalid. So there’s a lot of nuance there where people need to understand there’s a lot of Anglo Catholics that are under those orders, not under Edwardian. And so by just blanket statement and not understanding the issues or like you said, they don’t know the other tradition that they’re arguing against, you actually can wash the whole thing out and make a category error that even the church can’t go so far as to make.
And so I think things like that, it’s just like being careful with details. All of you Anglicans are null and void. All of your orders are null and void. It’s like, it’s not that simple. It was simple in 1896. It’s not simple in the year 2025. There’s a lot of complexities that have come since that encyclical was put out.
Stephen:
Right, because the Anglican communion is so wide and varied to compare Anglican priesthoods that would be traced back to King Edward in the middle of the 16th century. You’re right. It’s a lot different from those. The Anglo-Catholic movement itself that flourished at the end of the 19th century and more so in the 20th, it really does change the ballpark and require, you’re right, a lot more nuance in that regard. So my last question I guess I have for you would be, you are doing an apologetics, apostolate, or a ministry. You’ve been doing Christian apologetics for a long time and with an excellent emphasis on patristics, on early sources. I think in a recent episode, I responded to Gavin Ortland on the papacy and I pointed people back to work that you had done because it’s very meticulous and important, including on important Christian questions like are Unitarians right or did Ignatians of Antioch believe Jesus is God and flesh?
You’re doing very important work. How will your work as a Christian apologist be moving forward in light of your being fully received into the Catholic church?
Trent:
Yeah. So I recognize that there’s going to be a lot of upset people. I’m not on the planet to make everybody happy. My goal is to continue to do what I’m doing. I’m not going to really shift positions on like what’s the emphasis of my channel. The emphasis of the channel is to talk church fathers, different apocryphal works, canonicity, textual criticism, church fathers, scripture, anything that’s related to these subjects, that’s going to be what I emphasize.
Stephen:
Similar to your PhD research and all your doctoral work.
Trent:
I believe in staying in my lane. Obviously, I’ve changed views on some things and if anybody’s been watching my channel for the last year, they’re not like, “I wonder if Steven’s changing his view on some of these things like Mary and devotion.” It’s not a secret. I mean, it’s pretty obvious. I’ve done entire series on things and have brought people on to talk about the Marian dogmas and I’ve affirmed things like trans substantiation on my channel months ago. It’s not like people are going to sit there with a big wow factor. They’ve been suspicious for a while anyway, but my goal is to continue to work within the ordinary side of this. I mean, the priest in North Carolina, he’s going to continue to contact and work with Bishop Lopes and he’s going to be coming to this area, I think in the spring, and we’re going to probably all sit down together because I want to make sure that every time I’ve done this channel, whether I was under Bishop Wood at one point, I went all the way to Charleston to meet with him to make sure he was fine with what I was doing when I came under Bishop Jones, I made sure that he was fine with what I was doing.
And so I always want to make sure that there’s accountability, that I’m not doing something that’s going to hurt the church, especially under the authority of a bishop, because we’re supposed to be under the authority of a bishop, and that’s right there in the second century. So I want to make sure that everything is lined up, priests are good with what I do, and then eventually my newest bishop will be talking to me about those things. And if he feels like I need to emphasize other things or help the ordinary more, I’m going to do those things. I’m going to honor and respect the bishop. If he says, “Hey, can you do more that’s in relation to the English patrimony or talk about the ordinary more? Can you do a couple more episodes on this? ” I might even invite him on. I mean, we’ll do it.
I feel like that’s important for me to continue what I’m already doing and make sure I’m doing it under the authority of the bishop and the priest that I’m working with and then continue to do what I’ve always done and open the door for … I don’t want to be like, “Oh, that’s a Catholic channel.” I am a Catholic, but my channel is open for anybody to come to the table and have a discussion. And my door’s open to have conversations with people. I’ve seen people with our channel convert to orthodoxy and Lutheran and Anglican and Catholic. And you know what? Everybody has to make a decision by conviction and conscience for their own mind and heart and their family at the end of the day. I’m not going to sit there and say, “Well, if you don’t be Catholic, if you’re not going to be Catholic, then that’s it for you.
You’re an anthema.” I don’t feel like that’s my place. My job is to share the history of the church and let people wrestle with it. That’s my goal.
Stephen:
Well, I certainly wish there are several apologists, Catholic influencers who I wish they would listen were in such close communication with their bishop and willing to listen to their bishop as you are. So that’s certainly a model that we all should emulate. So I’m really excited to hear this. I’m excited to work with you more, especially as topics related to patristics and early church history, textual criticism comes up, which involves discussions between Catholic Protestant Orthodox, but also these issues come up a lot in just Christian apologetics, Unitarianism, Mormonism, Atheism. The historical textual critical questions are incredibly important and we need a good scholarship on those issues. So I will be including in the links below everybody, link over to Steven’s channel, go and subscribe to his channel and check it out. Also, links and information about the Ordinariate. If you’re an Anglican who finds that to be interesting, check that out on the links below.
I think you’ll find it to be very helpful. So Steven, thank you so much for sharing your story here on the Council of Trent today.
Trent:
Thanks, Trent. Thanks for having me, as always.
Stephen:
Of course. And if you would like to be able to hang out with us, I don’t know if you’re still going to be able to hopefully make our conference in April. I think you gave me a high probability, decent chance maybe you would be there. We’ll see.
Trent:
Yeah, that’s the plan. It’s on the calendar plan, but crazy things happen when you have children, so we’ll do this.
Stephen:
I know how that happens.
Trent:
It’s on the plan.
Stephen:
Well, that’s great because if you would like to be able to say hi to Steven and to over 30 other invited Catholic creators, all of us who are going to be there, we have sold over half the tickets have already sold. It’s going to be Saturday, April 11th here in the city of Dallas. It’s going to be a great time. Go and check that out at conferenceoftrent.com. And if you want to help support us, help us to keep doing all of this good work, then please visit us at trrenthornpodcast.com. So thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.