In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Joe Heschmeyer to discuss the authority of the Pope and whether it comes from God. Joe dives into the importance of recognizing papal authority beyond individual decisions and the implications for Catholic belief.
Transcript:
Caller: Giovanni, we’re so glad you’re here, but why aren’t you Catholic? Actually, I did think about being Catholic. I used to watch Joe Heschmeyer a lot. I personally don’t have a problem with the papacy. The problem that I have actually stems from the Pope, that we have to be respectful to other religions. But you have other religions, like people that believe in the Quran, who say that they deny Jesus is the son of God. They deny that he’s God. You got the Jews who deny Jesus at all. So. So if you’re gonna say we have to be respectful to religions that disrespect the God that we say is God, how can I put my faith in you as a pope to lead us in the direction to be the focal point of Catholics when you contradict what God says?
Joe Heschmeyer: Okay. Yeah. I think you did a very good job of presenting that. The exact quote about needing to be respectful to other religions from Pope Leo. He said, our world needs our unity, our friendship, and our collaboration so that as Christians, we can find ways to work with people who aren’t Christian, who still believe in something in a world that’s often very secular and atheist. And I think I would agree with that. Without believing that this makes those other religions equally true or valid or anything like that. There has been a push from the time of the Second Vatican Council onward to say, what good can we find in other people’s belief systems, even when those belief systems are wrong? And you could focus on, where are they wrong? What do they get wrong? And I think there’s a time and place for that. I do that a lot with my show. Seamless popery and not knocking that in the slightest. The danger in doing that can be that people come away with an exaggerated sense of how far apart we are. And the other danger is that you can miss some opportunities for collaboration. The flip side is to say, what do we have in common? And that’s also a good approach. The danger can be that sometimes you can come away with an exaggerated sense of how close we are, and the distinctives of each tradition or belief system, etcetera, can be sort of lost in the wash. That seem fair so far, Giovanni?
Caller: Yeah. I mean, I want to say yes, but at the same time, like I said, I feel like right now, Catholics kind of contradict the Bible. You have James 4, 3, 5, where it says, you adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be friends with the world makes himself an enemy of God and By trying, do you think
Caller: that means like having non Christian friends?
Caller: No, no, that’s not what I mean. Okay, so it’s like this, right? So you can, you can have non Christians friends, but if they’re in sin, we’re going to correct them on their sin. What the Catholic Church right now as a whole is doing is they’re saying, we’re going to hear out the other religions, be buddy buddies with them, but we’re not going to correct their view. Ought to go to God. How can I bring people out like the faith of Catholic to other people when they allow sin in the church?
Joe Heschmeyer: Okay, yeah. So I would say both these things are good. Like you can’t just be buddy buddy with sin, but we are called to love sinners. And so, you know, in Luke 15, one of the critiques Jesus has is that he eats with tax collectors and prostitutes, right? That this is one of those things where there’s a little bit of a pastoral tightrope to walk where you want to affirm people and not drive them away, but you don’t want to affirm sin. And there is absolutely a time and a place to really call people to the carpet for their sin individually as well as collectively. That time and place is not always the first thing you say to someone. And so I agree with you that sometimes I think they err on the side of being too buddy, buddy, too soft on some things, that church leaders are sometimes not strong enough or as. As tough as they should be in some of these. But I don’t think that actually makes them that different than St. Peter. St. Peter preaches this message of how the plan of salvation includes uncircumcised Gentiles. He does this in Acts 10 and 11. It’s reiterated in Acts 15. But in Galatians 2, when he’s in Corinth and he’s with this group of Jewish Christians, he kind of buckles a little bit. He doesn’t teach anything false, but he just doesn’t take a very bold stand. He doesn’t stand up for the Gentile Christians and therefore he doesn’t stand up in this moment that really could have used it for the truth of the Gospel. But that doesn’t make him not the Pope. It doesn’t mean we throw out Peter as an apostle or anything like that. We just recognize that sometimes even good Christian leaders can fail to live out the kind of pastoral leadership that we want from them. And that’s been true literally since the first century. That’s been true literally since the 12 I think if we’re being fair, Pope Leo has said, for instance, in August 24, he gave his Angelus about how Christ is the narrow way. And he, he preaches about that and warns us not to imagine that, you know, religious acts and a sense of self complacency are going to do the trick. Like he does say those things. He also says things where he tries to affirm the. The other things we can, we can rightly affirm, but that’s partly just recognizing, as St. Paul does in Acts 17. One of the challenges is what can we build from in terms of common ground? Not so that people come away thinking all religions are equally valid or everything’s equally true, but precisely so that we can have a kind of meaningful conversation and having a starting place to even have. Because if we just have like nothing in common at all, it’s unlikely anyone’s going to be converted by the gospel or come on board. But if we can interact with the beliefs that they already have that are right and then lead them into the fullness of truth pastorally, that is often a more productive way of getting people to, to see the fullness of the Gospel. I don’t know if that makes sense or not. Giovanni, what do you think?
Caller: I agree with you on having a starting point when it comes to maybe other religions, you know, since I guess if they believe in a God, we can have an open discussion as far as that goes. However, the fact that me. You can say that, but you’re allowing transgender inclusion. And even though you’re not exactly affirming marriage when it comes to that, but you’re accepting it, making it seem as though that’s okay. He’s. He’s affirming that because he’s not condemning it. He could still bring it up, but yet he there. The Catholic Church is affirming these actions.
Joe Heschmeyer: I think I agree with that way of thinking about morality. I mean, he has been Pope for under a year. So is the idea that of all the sins in the world, everything he doesn’t personally call out by name, he’s okay with as far as what? Well, I think all the different sins, all the different things he could have spoken on. It seems like your argument is unless he specifically denounces it, he must be okay with it. I don’t think that’s a fair standard to hold anyone to. I’ve heard people say, like, oh, Jesus doesn’t explicitly condemn homosexuality, therefore he must have been okay with it. And I don’t find that line of argumentation persuasive.
Caller: At all.
Joe Heschmeyer: And so I wouldn’t. I don’t think it would be enough to say we don’t have enough words specifically condemning these particular sins from the Pope. Therefore, he’s. He’s condoning it. Is there something he said that makes you think he’s okay with transgenderism or agrees with it or something?
Caller: No. So I’m not saying that he himself said anything. I’m granting him the chance of him being there for a year. But them saying that we need to be open and try to be respectful to other religions that disrespect who Jesus is, and we’re gonna bring these people in, but we’re bringing these individuals in to help them seek God. However, that’s not even a focal point in conversation. I watched a lot of your videos, so most of the information that I. I got from. From your. From your YouTube channel, because you were, like I said, you were a focal point to me deciding whether I wanted to go Catholic or not.
Joe Heschmeyer: Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear on some of that then. I do think, you know, in terms of just like, on the transgender thing or anything like that, if you look up Pope Francis, gender ideology, you know, he had a much longer time of being Pope and had more opportunities so far to speak out on that. And I think he has many really very strong things to say on this. He was very gentle with individuals who were suffering with gender dysphoria and everything, but he was very clear that he thought gender ideology was one of the biggest dangers of our time. Those two things are compatible. And I would view the papacy, whether it’s Leo or Francis or Benedict or John Paul, in the same light, that they’re trying to love sinners and be strong on hating sin. You might think that they could do a better or worse job on that. I don’t think the truth of the papacy comes down to how well you would grade them on that. Like, the. The question is, ultimately, does this authority come from God or not? If it doesn’t, and they’re pretending it does, and we shouldn’t follow them, even if they’re really good leaders, if it does come from God, then we should follow them, even if they’re not always the best leaders, someone in the first century would hopefully not say, like, yeah, I don’t love that apostle. I don’t really like his style, so I’m not going to join his church. That’s not how Christianity is meant to work. So I think I understand the concerns you have. I just want to make sure we don’t end up asking the wrong question of do I agree with all of the decisions the Pope makes? I would venture to guess no one in the history of the Church has ever said, I agree with every decision every Pope in my lifetime is made. But thanks be to God, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t come down to each of our individual decisions. That’s one of the beautiful parts of having a Pope, instead of it all being our own individual judgment. So I would just ask, focus on that question of does the authority come from God or not? Sorry. Go ahead.
Cy Kellett: That’s okay. I was going to say thank you to Giovanni again. I’m so grateful for the conversation. A wonderful opportunity for conversation with you. If you’d like Joe’s book, Pope Peter, I’d be happy to send it to you.