Catholic apologist Karlo Broussard joins Cy Kellett to engage with a college student exploring the complexities of faith. Natalie shares her perception of judgment and hate within Christianity, prompting Karlo to delve into the nuances of Catholic and Protestant beliefs. Together, they navigate the conversation about how to understand God’s forgiveness amidst differing interpretations of faith.
Transcript:
Caller: Hi. I was just calling because I’m a college student and I never had religion forced on me or anything like that, so I’m just kind of exploring. I do want to know more about your religion. And, like, obviously, I’m just going to say from an outside person’s view, from what I’ve learned, like Catholicism and Protestantism, I feel like when people should talk about God, they should talk about someone who’s all forgiving. That’s all like, just like an overall better person that anyone could ever be. And I just feel like there’s a lot of, dare I say, hate and judgment within the religion that I’ve heard so far.
Cy: Natalie, thank you for. I’m so glad you picked up the phone to call Dr. Broussard.
Karlo: Okay. So specifically with regard to your comment, Natalie, and first of all, thank you for calling in. You’re perceiving hate and judgment so far that is manifest on behalf of Catholics and Protestants. So my question to you, Natalie, in order to further the conversation, which particular instance or what exactly makes you think that it’s hateful or that we’re being judgmental? Is there a particular example that you can provide me in order to entertain and have a conversation with you about, like, what’s making you think we’re being hateful? What precisely?
Cy: Okay, go ahead.
Caller: I. I don’t think that, like, Protestants are completely hateful. I think there are perhaps maybe some scriptures or some ways that things are being addressed by followers. I’m not directly attacking the church or the Bible or anything like that. I would say some of the followers perhaps take some of the preachings to another level where I grew up in Texas and people were very hateful towards people who I thought were very, very good people. They gave back to the community. They volunteered, but they were attracted to the opposite sex or…
Karlo: Okay.
Caller: I had one of my friends have a really, really terrible situation where she had to make a really sad decision for her future, where she had to abort a baby, and it affected her, but there was just so much hatred towards her from the people following the Catholic religion.
Karlo: Okay, gotcha. All right. All right. So that gives me a little bit to work with, Natalie, and bear with me. I’m going to try to unpack that and share a few thoughts with you. So if by hate you mean showing a disgust for these individuals and looking down upon them as if they are no good and even wanting, expressing ill will towards them, if that’s what you mean by hate, and if that is what Catholics or whoever, whatever Christian was manifesting, then, Natalie, I would agree with you 100% and the Catholic Church would agree with you 100% that they need to repent because they were failing in charity and love toward another.
Now, if, and I’m going to be very careful and clear here, so see if you can follow me. If by hateful you simply mean a Christian voicing their opinion that killing an unborn baby is wrong and immoral, or that having same-sex romantic relationships is wrong and immoral, then we would respectfully disagree with this hateful charge. And the reason is, is because simply to say something is wrong and immoral doesn’t mean the person is hating them, right? I mean, because you just called in and you’re making a judgment. You’re saying, hey man, those Catholics are being hateful and that’s wrong and they shouldn’t be doing that. But Natalie, that very opinion that you have, that’s not hateful, right? I mean, because you can rightfully recognize wrong behavior by other people.
And so it’s possible, I don’t know what these Christians were saying, you know, so we would have to have more conversation as to exactly what they’re saying. But one thing to keep in mind, especially like in the Catholic-Protestant world, even we disagree with some things. We think Protestants believe things that are wrong and they will, and we’ll say it, and then they think we believe some things that are wrong and they’ll say it. We think certain lifestyle choices are wrong and immoral, contrary to human good and happiness, and we voice those opinions and judgments, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we’re hating the person.
And here’s the reason why, Natalie, think about this. Love. Would you agree with me that love is to wish what’s good for the other person and do what you can to try to help that person experience that good? Would you agree with that definition of love? Do you think that’s pretty sound?
Caller: Yes
Karlo: Okay. All right. Now consider this next step. Consider this next thought. Whenever I perceive somebody in the lifestyle choice of a same-sex romantic relationship, say, okay, we judge that behavior to be not good for the other individual. Like that’s not good for them. Now why is that the case? That’s a different question and that requires a lot of time to unpack. But just follow me for argument’s sake. Here we make a judgment that that’s not good for them.
Caller: The person has a right to make a judgment. God should be able to make that, unfortunately…sorry sir
Karlo: Well, okay. All right, I’ll answer that question, Natalie. I’ll answer that question. I understand. I understand. Notice the type of judgment we’re making. And I recognize that was a buzzword. I shouldn’t have used that word. When I say judgment, Natalie, what I mean is I’m thinking in my mind, you know what? That behavior is not right now. There’s nothing wrong with that, right? I mean, because you’re calling in saying those behaviors aren’t right. So notice I’m just making this thing in my mind like I’m thinking to myself, I. That behavior is immoral. I am not judging their culpability, nor is the Catholic Church, Natalie.
Anybody who is engaging in same-sex romantic relationships, or even a young girl who’s aborting killing her baby in her womb, we do not make judgments as to whether those people are culpable or responsible for these behaviors. What we’re saying, Natalie, is, hey, look, those behaviors are not right. They’re immoral. They’re contrary to human happiness. As to why we say that, that’s a different question. We’re gonna have to have a conversation about that. But at least you can see we’re trying to express goodwill toward another because we’re recognizing that these behaviors are not good for the person.
But my point here, Natalie, is to try and help you see that simply voicing one’s opinion that certain choices are contrary to what’s good for us is a manifestation of our love for them as opposed to hating them. And furthermore, we are not judging their responsibility or their hearts and what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling. We recognize it’s super complicated, but what we can voice our opinions about are the behaviors.
And so here’s the summary, Natalie. We judge the sin, not the sinner. And so hopefully that’s helpful. Any thoughts in response?
Caller: My response would be another thing with the Catholic Church. It has been in debate that typically people view Catholics as picking and choosing what they want, what they say is morally and divinely right. But, like, are we picking and choosing what we don’t want at that point?
Karlo: Okay, it’s a great question, Natalie. Now, with regard to picking and choosing, Natalie, we rely upon certain divinely established authorities that can tell us what God wants us to do at one period of time and what God doesn’t want us to do at other periods of time. And some things that we’re going to have to always do or always avoid.
So, for example, Natalie, the Israelites had Moses with divine, miraculous confirmation that they needed to offer sacrifices on the Sabbath every Saturday. Okay. Or they needed to offer sacrifices at their temple to worship God. All right, well, Jesus comes along and we have good historical evidence that he’s the representative of God. He’s actually God made flesh. He rose from the dead and performed all those miracles to provide us miraculous confirmation such that when he tells us, hey, Christians, you don’t have to offer sacrifices at the temple anymore. You can stop doing that and do other things like the Mass and stuff.
But here, Natalie, there are some things that are always binding on us, like taking the life of an innocent human being or same-sex romantic relationships. Those are things that we cannot pick and choose from. Those are things that will always be binding on us for us to reject those same-sex romantic relationships and reject taking the life of an innocent human being.
Caller: I understand. Taking the life of an innocent human being. Like, everyone, like, yeah, you should not take the life of anyone. It’s not your job.
Karlo: Exactly!
Caller: It’s also not the church’s job to tell someone, you know, you’re not going to go to heaven. You’re not going to have a good afterlife if you love the same sex. Because in reality, you know, God gave everyone free will for… No, actually, no, he didn’t. We took it. But what… It’s not like not hurting anyone. That’s what I’m saying is like, why is there so angry? But Natalie, like, they’re not hurting anyone.
Karlo: Okay, yeah, but, Natalie, consider this. And we’re running out of time in our hour here, so I’m gonna have to say this, and we’re gonna probably have to call it a quits here. And I’m so grateful for you having a conversation with me, but notice you said it’s not harming anyone. Natalie, perhaps it’s not physically harming anyone, but if these choices are immoral and contrary to our good as human beings and contrary to what God wants for us within the arena of sexuality, well, then it would be harmful to our moral characters.
It would be harming our souls because we’d be choosing wrongly here. And so, yeah, sure, it might not cause physical harm, but it would cause moral harm to go against what God’s plan is for us within the arena of sexuality. So I would just say if our position is true that those lifestyle choices are immoral, then to engage in them and to celebrate them would indeed be harmful, at least morally speaking.
And we don’t want to avoid just physical harm. Natalie, you’ve already expressed that we want to avoid moral harm as well, like being hateful and being judgmental. Those are bad moral qualities, and you called in saying that we should avoid them. And so what we’re saying is, if same-sex romantic relationships are bad moral choices, well, then we shouldn’t want to indulge in them. We should want to avoid them as well. And that’s an expression of love rather than hate.
Cy: Natalie, I gotta say, first of all, I know that Dr. Broussard and I are both super grateful for this call. It feels like it’s just the beginning of a long conversation because your questions are just wonderful questions, and it’s helpful to us to think through these things with you. If you’d like it, I’d like to send you a book we have called *Why We’re Catholic*. It’s about why we’re Catholic. If you’re interested in it, just give us an address. But also, I would like to continue the conversation. Maybe you’d call back again on another day. Dr. Broussard’s usually on on Tuesdays, but I just couldn’t. I can’t encourage you enough to keep asking the questions because it’s good for us, and we hope it’s good for you as well, and we’d like to be helpful.