Audio only:
Joe reviews the recent debate on Capturing Catholicism between Ethan Muse and Sean of Anglican Aesthetics over the apparitions at Fatima.
Transcript:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer, and you all voted overwhelmingly for me to do a debate review of Sean Luke versus Ethan Muse on the question of whether the alleged Mary and Apparitions and Fatima were really Mary or whether, as Sean Luke claims, was really a demon. Now, this is not going to be a full blow by blow of their whole three hour debate. I’m going to actually sit down with Ethan for a fuller conversation tonight on Cameron Bertuzzi’s new channel, Capturing Catholicism. So you can check that out. But if you don’t have a chance to watch the whole debate, I hope you’ll at least watch the opening statements between those two gentlemen because I think this debate will be incredibly helpful for anybody who may be honestly, open-mindedly, trying to find a biblically grounded answer to the question of whether or not Fatima is a real miracle and how to judge alleged miraculous claims more broadly.
And I don’t think it was particularly a close debate. And I’m not just saying that as a Catholic. One of the top comments says, Protestant and fan of Sean’s here, Ethan crushed it and I have a lot to think about. Prayers appreciated. So how did this happen? How did a debate actually give someone food for thought something to think about rather than leaving both sides simply crowing about how right they are? Well, as we’re going to see, Ethan’s opening statement is an absolute masterclass in number one, explaining why we should believe Fatima is an authentic miracle, but also number two, giving objective biblically grounded standards by which we judge alleged miracles. And number three, showing why the objections to Fatima, the people like Sean Luke raise are the same exact objections raised against Jesus and Christianity more broadly by the Pharisees. But we’ll get into all of that in just a moment.
First, I want to give a few words of praise for both debaters as well as for Cameron who moderated. It was honestly refreshing just to see a debate that wasn’t the same five or six topics that Catholics and Protestants often debate. And yeah, I realize the irony of me saying that since I just did a debate on Solo Scriptura. But honestly, cheers to these guys for finding a topic that is both fresh and interesting to debate. But what’s more, it’s also a really important topic. Now this is something I’ve talked about a little bit before, but I honestly need to spend more time talking about the miraculous evidence for Christianity generally and for Catholicism specifically because the New Testament is really clear that one of the ways that the early Christians prove the truth of Christianity is through confirming signs and wonders. The Gospel of Mark ends by telling us that the apostles went forth and preached everywhere while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it.
Amen. When God confirms the miracles by signs, that’s what’s sometimes technically called a vindicatory miracle. God doesn’t just heal somebody miraculously. He does it in such a way that it vindicated the apostles teaching because after all, a mere miraculous thing could happen anywhere. God is free to miraculously heal the very worst person you know, for whatever reasons that are known only to God. You don’t need to know them. It doesn’t need to mean anything deeper other than God is good and can heal people whenever, however he wants to do it. But if somebody’s out there claiming to be a prophet or a visionary, and then they can back it up with a supernatural act that cannot be explained away, that seems to vindicate them. And I know modern Christians can be a little embarrassed by this miraculous evidence. It seems too credulous, seems too silly.
We want smart sounding syllogisms and logical proofs rather than miraculous healings or heavenly visitations. And after all, you might add, what about non-Christian religions, which also purport to have miracles as well? So good news at the outset, Sean and Ethan both agree. Not all purported miracles are real, obviously. So broadly, we can say there’s three types of explanations. We can call them divine, delusional, demonic. So maybe an angel really does appear to you. It’s coming from God. We’ll call it divine. Or maybe you imagine the angel or you mistook the reflection on the water as an angel. The whole thing is explained through natural psychological motives. We’ll call that delusional, not in a pejorative sense, but simply that you were mistaken. This second category is also going to include cases where someone’s not innocently mistaken. They’re outright lying. They’re pretending to be a visionary for prophet or to attract a crowd or something like that.
And that’s bad, but the third possibility is worse. Maybe a spirit being did appear to you, but it’s a fallen angel, a demon. After all, as St. Paul warns in two Corinthians, they’re false apostles, deceitful workman disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And similarly, even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So we need some means of discerning well, authentic from sham miracles. So are there objective ways to tell true apparitions from demonic imitations? Both Sean and Ethan are going to try to answer that question, but as we’re going to see, only one of them really gives a well-formed biblically grounded answer. Now, in the particular case of our latest appearances in Fatima, Portugal, I know some of you are not going to be super familiar with it. Just a few basic things to know. Mary is said to have appeared over the course of several months to three shepherd children, Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta.
The culmination of this is her appearance before a huge group of people, thousands and thousands of people on October 13th, 1917. Now, if you want my own thoughts on the matter, suffice it to say, my wife and I got married on the 13th of October and we honeymooned in Fatima. So clearly we are believers. Because when you look at the evidence, you have not only the testimonies from the children who appear to be holy and simple and credible witnesses. You also have literally thousands of eyewitness accounts of the miracle of the Son on October 13th, as well as a huge number of medical miracles, including some attested to by doctors. And I don’t mean somebody has a backache and it went away, the kind of thing that happens naturally. I mean things like the lengthening of shortened limbs. And Ethan does a good job briefly explaining this in the debate.
So when we’re considering whether Fatima is divine or delusional or demonic, I think Sean and Ethan are right to take that middle option off the table. And particularly this is true if you’re a Christian, because if you’re going to just hand wave away thousands of 20th century eyewitnesses to Fatima, you can hardly defend Christianity on the basis of hundreds of first century eyewitnesses to the resurrection. So it appears that we’re left really with two options. Either Fatima is authentic, Catholics are right, or Alfatama is the greatest deception ever played by the devil. And in this, I’m actually impressed that Sean is willing to bite the bullet and simply make the demonic claim explicitly. But I think too many Protestants simply wave away the Marian apparitions and wave away the Eucharistic miracles without ever seriously examining the evidence that points to their truth. And it’s the same frustration that many Christians have with atheists who kind of laugh off the resurrection without ever bothering to look at the evidence for it.
So with that said, let’s take a closer look at Sean’s case against Fatima before seeing how Ethan counters it and thoroughly answers it. So the core of Sean’s case consists of two major arguments. First, he says that Fatima encourages a theology of sacrifice, that in his words, makes mince meat of the singularity of Christ’s sacrifice taught by the book of Hebrews. Now, Sean admits that plenty of Catholic scholars and saints, people like St. Thomas Aquinas have held the same theology of sacrifice that he’s critiquing without believing it contradicted Christ’s unique sacrifices taught by Hebrews in any way. But Sean argues that it does, and to support this, he appeals to Anglican scholars like Amy Peeler and David Peterson. He also appeals to David and Moffitt, who I believe is either Presbyterian or Anglican, but whose denominational affiliation, I’m not sure of. But in any case, as Sean says of Moffitt’s view of Hebrews-
CLIP:
And that’s actually not even a dispute, that’s not just Mufed in a vacuum, right? He actually stands on a tradition of interpreters that have held that view since the time of the reformation possibly earlier.
Joe:
So I think we can all agree. Fatima agrees with the Catholic reading of Hebrews and it agrees with the Catholic theology of merit, but it disagrees with the standard Protestant reading of Hebrews and a standard Protestant theology of merit. Of course that’s true. There’s no disagreement here. But this, by the way, is what makes for a bad debate. The kind of argument Sean’s making here doesn’t work well. And for this reason, I want to see if you can recognize the flaw because if you want to debate Hebrews or if you want to debate merit, debate those topics, have a debate about that resolution. But if you want to debate Fatima, debate Fatima. And if your argument only works, if somebody agrees with you on the merits or in Hebrews, or if you’re forced to try to speed run an explanation for your theology on those subjects, that doesn’t make for a good debate.
What often happens instead is that people who already agree with you are going to agree with your conclusion and people who don’t already agree with you aren’t. So even if your arguments are internally valid, even if you’re perfectly right, it’s just not a persuasive way to debate. Now, Sean’s case here in terms of his theology and his reading of Hebrews is coupled with a kind of disgust at the mortifications and self-denial that the shepherd kids underwent. Now I want to stress, this is on their own initiative. These kids would make sacrifices out of love for Jesus, including what are called mortifications. As Sister Lucia would later describe, they would sometimes tie a belt around themselves until it hurt. Other times the kids would hit their legs with nettles, so as to offer God yet another sacrifice. Now she’s clear this happened just occasionally, and this is coupled with other forms of self-sacrifice that I think Protestants are more comfortable with, like giving their lunches to poor children.
Now, as a Catholic, I hear these things and think that’s a beautiful expression of their love for Jesus. And by the way, a thoroughly biblical one. Recall St. Paul’s words in one Corinthians nine, when he says, “Do you not know that in a race, all the runners compete, but only one receives surprise. So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we, and imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air, but I pummel my body and subdue it. Lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.” I think that analogy is really good. Adults and even kids will push themselves to physical extremes to train their bodies for sports. They’ll weight train, they’ll moderate their food intake, they’ll do all those kind of things.
Now, can those things be unhealthy? Absolutely, of course. Almost anything can become unhealthy, but St. Paul still presents this as a good model to think about how we should approach the spiritual life. And then he talks about pummeling his own body and subdoing it. Now, by comparison, pummeling yourself with a little nettle seems like a clear way of Christian children imitating St. Paul’s example. But Sean, for some reason, finds this horrifying and demonic.
CLIP:
The Roman Catholic who defends Fatima must say then that God is pleased when children tie ropes so tightly they hurt or strike their legs with nettles so long as those children intend to make reparation for sin and sacrifice to God. And if it would be wicked for a father to tell his children that it is a good thing to strike their legs with nettles to make reparation for sins offered for the sins of the world, then one has to offer an explanation for why it would be wicked for a father to tell his children that and not for the apparition to tell these children the very same thing.
Joe:
He’s making a little bit of a mountain out of a nettle hill. The word nettles appears twice in Sister Lucia’s autobiography, the part that I quoted from earlier, but it appears 28 times in this debate. Sean seems obsessed with the idea that it must be demonic child abuse for a kid to mortify their own body.
CLIP:
Would that the children who were told that God was pleased with them squeezing a rope so tightly around themselves that they would suffer immensely whacking their own legs with nettles? Sister Lucia and Jacinta flogging themselves with nettles, it remains the case that someone like Lucia-
Hogging
Her own leg with nettles, a conviction in these children that they need to whip themselves with nettles. They’re being inspired to whack their legs with nettles to make reparation for the sins of the world is not a good thing. Does that mean they should actually flog themselves with nettles?
Joe:
Is it kind of appeal to moral intuition to revulsion? But as Sean quickly finds out, Ethan does not share this revulsion, and neither I think do most Catholics. To put it another way, kids can and do fast. Now, obviously, fasting is something that has to be done in a moderate way, so it’s not going to be damaging to their growing bodies, but it’s clearly Christian teaching to fast. We hear it from Jesus himself in Matthew six, and yet fascinating is, if anything, more dangerous than the kind of mortifications that he finds so horrific. So if it’s demonic, child abuse to mortify yourself in this way, it seems like you would have to say the same thing about fasting, which doesn’t work. So it’s just possible here that this says something more about our own modern moral laxity and failing to mortify our bodies than it does about the alleged demonic origins of Fatima.
But again, whether you agree with me or not on this, this is again, the kind of argument that only works if you start out with sharing his moral intuition, and that’s not a firm foundation for an argument. Later in the debate, in the Q&A section, a viewer claims that Fatima must be demonic because it affirms the existence of hell and a loving God would never send anybody to hell. Now, hopefully this at least shows the weakness of the kind of argument that Sean is making an unmoored subjective emotional appeal. And the simple truth is Sean, Ethan, and you might all have different moral intuitions. So that’s his first major argument. His second major argument is that Fatima is demonic because it encourages people to worship Mary. And his source on this really kind of is just, trust me, bro.
CLIP:
I’ll close with a story from Scott Manich, a church history professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Dr. Manich was once traveling around in Rome with a bunch of his friends, a bunch of Roman Catholic theologian friends being led by a lei tour guide, and they were all having a good time. And then they approach a statue of Mary and the lei tour guide actually says to the Protestants, “I want you guys to know that Mary is God.” Now, of course, the theologians were like, “What the heck?” No, she isn’t. But the importance of that story is that she had thought through these sorts of prayers being prayed through the Fatima prayers even was one of the prayers she referenced that Mary was actually the equivalent of God.
Joe:
I’m going to be honest, I find these kind of stories super sketchy. It’s basically never a person saying in writing, “I think Mary’s a God.” It always seems to be some Protestant who finds themselves in a foreign country talking about how backwards the Catholic natives there are, but here it’s Rome. Look, I lived in Rome for three years. I never once heard a single person say, “I believe Mary’s a God.” But somehow this Protestant is traveling around Rome and tour guides are just telling him this stuff, and all we have to go on for proof of this is Sean’s version of Scott’s version of what this unnamed lady said, and she just happened to say that it was because of the Fatima prayers, the very thing Sean’s trying to prove in the debate. Somehow her theology is so good that she knows about the Fatima consecratory prayers, and also so bad she doesn’t realize Catholics don’t think Mary’s God.
When pressed, Sean eventually admits that he might have fudged a little bit by making up the part about the Fatima prayers, being why this alleged lady worshiped Mary.
CLIP:
Scott Manich mentioned this as well. It was on account of some of the prayers prayed. Now, I don’t know if they were the prayers in his case for the Fatima abortion in particular, but prayers that are similar in structure where someone walked away with those prayers with the impression that Mary actually is God.
Joe:
But notice, once he admits this, his whole argument falls apart because as Ethan readily concedes, you can find badly formed Catholics and badly formed Protestants who believe all kinds of unbiblical and false things that are not taught by their churches or denominations. But assuming that there are some Catholics out there who mistakenly worship Mary, Sean has to prove that they do this because of Fatima. In other words, that they wouldn’t have worshiped Mary, that they didn’t worship Mary, but then they read about Fatima and somehow that led them to believe Mary was a goddess because otherwise the argument that this is demonic makes no sense. As Sean points out, Portugal was at the time a Catholic country rapidly losing its faith and the effect of Fatima was to turn people away from lukewarm Christianity or outright atheism, free masonry and the rest into devout Catholicism.
Now, Sean admits Catholics are Christians. So this would be demons allegedly leading people to follow Jesus better than they had followed him before, and it’s not clear how remotely this is supposed to work. So okay, that’s my rough recap of the two major halves of Sean’s opening statement. And these are the two arguments he comes back to over and over and over again. Eventually, when the Rome example kind of falls apart upon being pressed, he tells us, no, totally his wife went to Peru. She also met people who were inspired by Fatima to worship Mary. But again, all we have are these third-hand accounts of things that look very sketchy and very convenient for the debate. Now I want to compare this with Ethan’s opening statement, which is such a masterpiece that in all honesty, it basically ends the debate. And I know that sounds like hyperbole, but let’s just go through it a little bit at a time.
It starts like this.
CLIP:
The Pharisees and Sadducees rejected our award under the pretext that he contradicted their understanding of prior revelation. On many occasions, rather than engaging them in a protracted debate about their theology, our word responded by appealing to vindicatory miracles.
Joe:
Notice how he’s framing this. You don’t have to satisfy the other person’s theological objections. Sean has theological objections to Catholicism. The Pharisees had theological objections to Christianity, to Christ himself. And how does Jesus answer? He doesn’t get into a protracted theological debate with them. He simply shows them miracles which should be enough to persuade them.
CLIP:
In John 10, our word commands, the Jews, “Do not believe me unless I do the works of my father, but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am the Father.” In John 14, our word reiterates, “Believe me when I say that I’m in the Father and the Father is in me, or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.” In John 15, our Lord imputes sin to Jews that rejected the evidence of miracles. “If I had not done among them the works no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. As it is, they have seen and yet they have hated both me and my father. “In mark free, when our word’s Jewish opponents ascribed as exorcisms to the power of Satan, he approved them by declaring,” Truly, I tell you people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven.
“In Matthew nine, when Jews thought in their hearts that it was blasphemous for our word to absolve a parodic, our word declared,” But I want you to know that the son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins. So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” Then the man got up and went home. When the crowd saw this, they were filled with awe and they praise God who had given such authority to man.
Joe:
Now notice what he’s doing. He’s showing this grounded in scripture. He’s showing you how miracles and particularly vindicatory miracles work in the Bible, which Sean really doesn’t do. So he’s telling us these are the kinds of things Jesus did and he’s presenting us with a problem. You can have a theological objection to Jesus, to Christianity, to Catholicism specifically, but if you see this vindicatory miracle, you can’t deny the evidence of this divine action except at your own peril.
CLIP:
Sean’s approach to spiritual discernment in this debate is exactly the same as that of the faithless Jews that rejected our ward in his day. If an apparent miracle vindicates doctrinal content that’s inconsistent with Sean’s understanding of prior revelation, then Sean reflexively dismisses it as demonic. That’s exactly the same logic that our wards opponents used against him. Since our ward’s doctrine was inconsistent with his opponents’ understanding of prior revelation, his opponents inferred that his miracles must have been demonic.
Joe:
So here, Ethan is simply calling Sean out for simply making Pharisaic arguments that if you took them seriously, would justify the Pharisees repudiation of Jesus. The cross-examination goes on for quite a while and it’s not structured, so it’s actually kind of complicated to follow because they’re both talking over each other quite a bit. There’s no leader and it’s kind of a muddled mess. But in the course of the conversation, Ethan presses this point a lot. He asks, “Can demons do X? Can demons do Y?” Because this puts Sean in a real bind because some of the miracles connected to Fatima are things like opening the eyes of the blind. Biblically, demons can’t do that, but if Sean just says that, then his case is gone. And so he hymns and haws and finds himself in this situation where it seems like he’s not willing to say there’s anything that Christ does that a demon can’t also do.
But as Ethan points out, that doesn’t work because if that were the case, then miracles would be of no evidentiary value. If you can never tell an authentic miracle from a sham miracle, except whether it agrees or disagrees with your theology, the miracles have very little evidentiary value at that point. So instead, as he points out, our Lord sets up basic criteria by which we can tell authentic miracles.
CLIP:
Our word made it abundantly clear that hisoponent’s reasoning was backwards. Since our word’s miracle satisfied criteria that only true miracles could, our word expected his opponents to recognize that they proved that their understanding of prior revelation was mistaken without any further argumentation or demonstration.
Joe:
That bit about any further argumentation or demonstration being unnecessary is crucial to understanding this. That simply put, we have to accept, even if you still have some holdout about what Jesus is saying, it seems wrong, you can’t deny the power of God. You see a man raised from the dead? Okay. God’s at work. Clearly, I’m wrong. My reading of scripture is wrong. My interpretation of the tradition is wrong because God has shown his hand with this divine power. But by Sean’s argument, you have to actually answer this whole reformation tradition of reading Hebrews in a way that contradicts Catholicism to his satisfaction or he won’t accept no matter how great the miraculous evidence is. Now, this is a problem because as we’ve already seen and as we’ll continue to see, that’s not the role miracles are supposed to have for a Christian.
CLIP:
Furthermore, since an argument is the useless, which may prove both ways, miracles would be useless in the confirmation of revelation if we’re not possible to distinguish true miracles from false miracles without presupposing the revelation in question. Scripture clearly, emphatically and repeatedly teaches that God works miracles to confirm revelation. Acts two relates on Pentecost, St. Peter evangelized by declaring, “Fellow Israelites, listen to this. Jesus Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and science, which God did among you through him as you yourselves know. ”
Joe:
As I said, I think this is a simple masterpiece. By the end of the two opening statements, I thought, man, if Sean has any chance to salvage this debate, he has to scrap his entire argument and come up with a new argument from scratch. And he doesn’t do that. He just continues to recap the same two arguments that he makes over and over again. But Ethan shows that is not just that his arguments are wrong, but that is exactly the wrong way to even try to arrive at the truth here because you’re imposing your Protestant theology on the question of whether or not you’ll accept this miracle all the while taking way less plausible miracles as if they’re authentic. This becomes very clear in the cross-examination when he affirms the existence of an alleged Anglican Eucharistic miracle, that pretty clearly isn’t a real miracle.
CLIP:
There’s an Anglican Eucharistic miracle in 2017. Yeah, it’s
Completely
Safe. I don’t think that’s completely different. I think that’s actually very … If we’re just going by the idea that this happens in a context that can be interpreted as vindicatory of a doctrine, right? Well, an Anglican Eucharistic miracle, I think in 2017 can very much be interpreted by the faithful as, oh, God’s actually with this Eucharist, therefore this idea of bread and wine being elevated into divine glory rather than being eliminated at substance is actually true. I don’t think that’s actually a far leap either.
Joe:
Fortunately, Ethan is ready for this. He points out, as even Anglicans have pointed out, this is really obviously not a miracle. So here’s a picture of the alleged Anglican Eucharistic miracle where the light is shining right behind the chalice and it looks like the host is pretty obviously the reflection of the chalice itself on the prayer card, if you look closely. I’ve also circled there several areas where you have similar circles that looked vaguely hostlike. It’s a reflection of the lights. And this is very obvious if you look at other pictures of this church in Arkansas, and even other Anglicans have pointed out like, “This is really clearly not a miracle.” But Sean is willing to just completely prejudicely accept this miracle with very bad proof, with a very obvious natural explanation because it agrees with his theology while rejecting way bigger miracles. In fact, he wouldn’t pressed, would not even say which was a bigger miracle.
Our lady appearing to thousands of people, the miracle of the sun, medical miracles all wrapped up together in Fatima, or some lights that looked kind of like the host at a church in Arkansas. I mean, those two things, he couldn’t decide which one was bigger when repeatedly pressed about that in cross-examination. And meanwhile, he acknowledges Catholic Eucharistic miracles, but claims that this isn’t vindicatory, but actually disproves Catholicism.
CLIP:
Even Roman Catholic sort of Eucharistic miracles, they certainly don’t confirm transsubstantiation at all because as Aristotle says, accidents are differentiated by the matter that underlies them. So if anything, if one bleeding host is differentiated from another, that actually applies underlying matter in which those accidents in here by which that host can be differentiated from another. And if in any case, if at all it actually contradicts transubstantiation-
Joe:
So the danger here should be straightforward. If you take this kind of Phariseical approach, you’ll only accept the supernatural if it agrees with your theology, then yeah, sure. Protestants should logically reject the Eucharist, should logically reject any Marian apparitions. But similarly, the Jews in Jesus’ day should have logically rejected Jesus and the apostles. What’s needed instead are things that only God can do. He can vindicate these disputed claims, these disputed theological interpretations, these disputed allegations of whether this sear is real or fake with actions that show divine power. And we have that in Eucharistic miracles. We have that in Marian apparitions. And I think when you analyze it that way, Ethan shows exactly why this trumps getting into the weeds of whose interpretation of Hebrews is better because we’re trusting in God here rather than trusting in man. So I thought this was, as I said, an absolute masterclass in showing how do we use miraculous evidence?
Like miracles exist in Christianity, how do we use those effectively? Now, if you’re wondering, I thought it might be kind of cool to share a little bit more about the role of miracles. So for instance, when there’s an alleged medical miracle, are we just taking somebody’s word for it? Oh, I totally saw somebody in Italy one time get healed? No. It turns out we have a much higher standard of evidence. And you can see this in this episode I did on Dr. Jacqueline Duffy and the role of atheists like her in confirming medical miracles. For Shamus Popri, I’m Joe Heschmeyer. God bless you.