In this Clip, Cy Kellett, Edgar Lujano, and Emily Torres respond to Senator Cruz’s bizarre endorsement of AI generated criticism against Catholic Answers.
Transcript:
Edgar Lujuno: Ted Cruz said, read every word of this. It’s the best and most comprehensive explanation of what we’re fighting.
Cy Kellett: I don’t think he read every word of it.
Edgar Lujuno: I don’t think he did. It’s the whole political thing about Zionism and opposing Zionism versus being forced on Zionism. And there’s a lot of equating church teaching to being like a streamline towards anti Jewish or anti Zionist. And he actually name drops Catholic. She name drops Catholic answers in this article. So track one, the Sola Scriptura assault. I’m not going to read the whole thing, but the first mention of Catholic Answers says the online assault on Sola Scriptura has been running for years through Catholic answers, YouTube debates, conversion testimonies and TikTok content to targeting young evangelical men specifically, the argument is always the same. Your reliance on personal Bible reading is epistemologic.
Cy Kellett: Yeah, there you go.
Edgar Lujuno: Epistemologically naive, historically ignorant, and intellectually embarrassing. You need the church. The church says the covenants with Israel are fulfilled, superseded in Christ.
Cy Kellett: So, you know, I actually, when I read that, I think that there are mistakes in it, but it’s not entirely wrong. It’s not true that we are specifically targeting evangelical men. That’s not the case. Evangelical men are finding us on their own. We’re not advertising to evangelical men. We’re not going to their house. Our guys debate Protestants. Our guys debate. But that’s because, I mean, that’s where the division in the church is between Protestants and Catholics. It’s not targeting anyone. So that’s silly. But the fact is we don’t believe in sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is non biblical. Sola scriptura is not true. So we challenge it. So I don’t think we should apologize for that. And it’s also the part where she says the argument is always the same. That’s also not true. If you’ve ever listened to this show, every apologist comes at it in a different way. And if you ask them on Tuesday, they’ll come up with a different way to come. I mean, they’re trying to have conversations with real human beings.
Edgar Lujuno: And then when Protestants come up with a different way to interpret what sola scriptura means, they always come back and say, actually, this is why this interpretation fails. So, yeah, you’re absolutely right.
Cy Kellett: What’s interesting, read Carlo Buccard’s books Meeting the Protestant Challenge and Meeting the Protestant Response, where he is extremely solicitous. Solicitous of Protestant people. He is not at all trying to Own anyone? He explains the Catholic position. He listens to the Protestant response, and he explains the Catholic response to that response. I think it’s very responsible and reasonable. I think. Maybe. I’ll be honest. Insurrectionist. Barbee doesn’t like the debate because you can’t win a debate on sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is non biblical and wrong. You cannot win that. Give us enough time, we’ll win that debate.
Edgar Lujuno: The second mention of us in this is in the headline Vector 6, the Trad Catholic online pipeline. And it says, beneath the major figures runs a sprawling ecosystem of Catholic, Orthodox, Catholic, Catholic, and Orthodox content creators.
Cy Kellett: That is a big. Now we’re lumping Catholic and Orthodox. Okay, sorry about that. So you mean there’s a conspiracy of all the Christians in the world except for Protestants? Is that what you’re. Come on. That’s an incredibly huge lump. Apostolic churches is what the churches that are still faithful to the liturgical teachings of Jesus Christ. Okay, yeah. Okay. Lump us in with them. Good.
Edgar Lujuno: So the Catholic and Orthodox content creators who have been running the theological attack for years. Catholic answers, YouTube debaters, debates, conversion testimony, videos this ecosystem specifically targets. It’s like a. It’s like a repeat. You know what this sounds like?
Cy Kellett: It sounds like chat GPT, right?
Edgar Lujuno: It sounds like chatgpt. And guess what? Even the format of this thing, along with all the different capitals or the. The. The size of the font and the dashes, all of it looks like it was generated by ChatGPT.
Emily Dinneny: So the ironic part about this is that I’m pretty sure from what I read in the X threads, she is not an evangelical. Oh, she’s not. She’s. She’s Jewish. Oh. And so she’s. She’s. She’s describing this attack that. That Catholics are making against evangelicals. But she’s not an evangelical herself. She’s not even Protestant. Interesting. Oh. So she’s just assessing the lay of the land as kind of an outsider to this whole debate. She is, sort of. Because she’s gonna say that evangelicals are more in line with Israel and support Israel as a nation because of their dispensationalist theology that they tend towards. And Catholics are pulling them away from that. And Catholics don’t believe, as she mentions here, that the Catholic Church will teach that, you know, the covenant, that New Covenant is all of those that believe, that have faith. It’s not just the biological descendants of Israel or Jacob, she calls it. That’s what’s replacement theology is what she’s saying.
Cy Kellett: I mean, I’m not an anti Israel guy, but I might respond to her. Christians have been in that part of the world for thousands of years. Evangelical Christians have not. I mean, Orthodox Christians have, Catholics have. Evangelical Christians have not. So maybe you should learn the story, and I was going to say of your fellow Christians, but she’s not a Christian. She’s Jewish. But I mean, maybe Ted Cruz should find out what has happened. And look what, look what happened to Christian populations in Iran or Christian populations. I mean, remember a few years ago, blowing up churches on Easter in Egypt? I’m not saying that the Israeli state is somehow worse than these other manifestations, but learn the history of Christians in that part of the world and then tell me you’re just in favor of everything that goes on as far as what Israel does. You can’t be. You have to be critical of at least some of it.
Edgar Lujuno: Yep, I completely agree. So her second tract, she gets into replacement theology mainstreaming. So she connects that to eventually the people who are running the operation and says people like Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes, and Candace Owens who are all calling themselves or for a replacement theology or, you know, to that effect and, and calling Christian Zionism a brain virus. And it’s like, I never thought Catholic Answers would be affiliated with all those.
Caller: Yeah. With it. With them. It’s especially like. Yeah, especially. That’s a case of lumping. Yeah.
Cy Kellett: Like you’re basically just not listening to what people, the differences, what people say. Just lump them all in together.
Edgar Lujuno: Yeah. So I just, when, when you start throwing all these things lumped in together, it’s just like, all right, so the argument to me is really, really starting to fall apart because if you look at those three individuals and you try to lump us in with them, there’s a really big disconnect. There’s no real association with any of them there with Catholic Answers. In fact, I know some of them have called out Catholic Answers.
Cy Kellett: At least there is a good amount of Catholic anti Semitism out there. We don’t want to pretend like there’s not.
Edgar Lujuno: Yep. And I mean, we’ve addressed it on the show.
Caller: We try to.
Edgar Lujuno: Yeah, we’ve had plenty of shows. And then you. Usually it’s the followers of some of these individuals who come and come after us. It’s like, all right.
Cy Kellett: Oh, yeah, yeah, we’re. We’re babies for them. Like, we’re just, we have no courage. We have no guts. We won’t stand up for. To these Jews, I guess, that run the world or something. I. I don’t know. But, yeah, Okay. I mean, I don’t. Ted Cruz probably doesn’t even know who we are, so I don’t think he’s picking on us.
Caller: I don’t think he even read it.
Cy Kellett: I mean, well, maybe that’s the case, but I think we’re not. I think we’re not political. I mean, everybody’s political. There’s no such place as neutral for a human being. Nobody has a neutral. So I’m sure we’re political in a million different ways. But, I mean, we could probably fight with each other for a long time over Israel in here and how to talk about Israel, how to think about, like. We don’t have a Catholic answers view of modern Israel. We don’t have that, do we? Did I miss a meeting? No. We try to bring people to Jesus Christ into his one true church. Come on in. It’s great.
Caller: That’s the point.
Cy Kellett: Jesus is beautiful. Can I ask you a question? I’m going to start with you, Emily, on this one. Do you think. See, because we don’t try to fight with evangelicals, we try to be bold in proclaiming the truth. Do you think that as we make all these evangelical. Because we have tons of evangelical friends and supporters and callers and all that the fact that we are not their enemy. Do you think that there are some people that want to stoke that enmity? Because if you’re not protesting against the Catholic Church, you can’t be Protestant anymore. They got to keep the protest going because once you realize, oh, my goodness, the Catholics are not a bunch of statue worshiping weirdos who are pagans. I mean, most of them aren’t. Most of them aren’t.
Caller: You are.
Cy Kellett: I mean, come on. But you know, I think once the truth gets out about Catholicism, you got to really work hard to keep the protest going because there’s just not that much to protest. We believe in Jesus Christ just like you believe in Jesus Christ. He’s the Lord, he’s the Savior. And I would even go so far as to say, he is the King. I know. Oh, that’s a dangerous thing to say. But the truth is, when we say Christ is the king, that’s a good thing. The little baby born in the manger, the one who laid down his life for others, this is the King. We’re not saying he wants to trample on everybody. We’re saying this is good news.
Edgar Lujuno: My ancestors were saying, long live Christ the King. When? Exactly? And the persecution back in the 20s under the Mexican government, they were trying to stamp out Catholicism.
Cy Kellett: But I know that people say, well these anti Semites are using Christ the King as a phrase to be mean to Jews. I don’t argue with that. I’m sure that that’s going on. That has probably always gone on. But that does not mean I can stop saying Christ is king because Christ is king.
Edgar Lujuno: I’m sure Emily, you can attest to this. But working with high schoolers, any phrasing can be used as trying to be like a smack in the face. And so you’ve been in the classroom long enough that where you know that even if you see something that just non threatening a teenager who’s clever enough will find a way to make that an insult.
Caller: You look nice today. Say that to somebody. There’s certain people who’ll be like, oh what? This is the first time I’ve ever looked nice. I didn’t look nice yesterday, I didn’t look nice today. I look nice.
Edgar Lujuno: See, Johnny’s laughing because he understands like yeah, yeah. I don’t, I don’t know. The whole trying to lump us in with this major group of people that just because you oppose us on this or it’s not even we even oppose them. It’s just a complete misunderstanding of what Catholic answers is. We’re not, we are not the enemy of Ted Cruz. Senator Cruz, we are not your enemy. We are Catholics just trying to live our faith and explain what we’re trying to.
Caller: We are barely even aware of what you’re doing. We’re in California, not Texas. We’re ruining your career. But we certainly aren’t against you.
Edgar Lujuno: So Senator Cruz, if you’re watching this, which you’re probably not, I Recommend going to catholic.com. we have a lot of great resources that help clarify what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
Caller: And we love our evangelical brothers. Absolutely.
Cy Kellett: We love them. We love being on the pro life lines with them. We love, you know, speaking up for basic morality and for the person of Jesus Christ the other. But you’re wrong about Sola scriptura. You’re wrong about sola fide. That’s not the Christian faith. That’s not an adequate expression of the Christian faith.
Edgar Lujuno: I’ve got an idea. Maybe this will be a little too petty, but maybe we can send a couple of the Carlos books.
Caller: That’s so petty. Yes, I hear what you’re doing.
Edgar Lujuno: Send him a couple of books. Send him the Meeting the Protestant Challenge and Meeting the Protestant Response to his office and you know, hopefully and just a warm note saying, hey, we love you, we’re praying for you.
Caller: And what do you think Emily, Is that passive aggressive or is that. It’s not meant to be passive aggressive, though. It’s not. He’s gonna be. He’s gonna be confused because he didn’t even read this entire 20 page letter that this chatgpt or woman wrote. So he’s gonna be like, why am I getting these books? Is Ted Cruz a Protestant? I mean, I would assume. I don’t know. He’s an evangelical, I think everything. Oh, his father was an evangelical preacher, right? I don’t know. Do you think it’s a bad idea to send him a book? I mean, why not send him evangelicalized to anybody?
Edgar Lujuno: Yeah, just send it to him as a. As a way of hope, maybe. Engaging. Maybe. That’d be a great conversation between Trent Horn and Ted Cruz.