Catholic vs. Catholic - 2019-06-20 - Stephen Heiner Part 3
There are 45 episodes in the Versus:Catholic series.
In preparation for this third conversation we mutually agreed to consciously avoid the many issues that separate us so that we could both enjoy a friendly chat about Special Creation and some related topics. I look forward to our next discussion.
Under Construction
Under Construction
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Steve and Heiner part three I'd really like to talk to you if possible about the young Earth Creationism what's your position and what do you think generally of this topic young Earth Creationism is interesting it interprets creation as happening through literal days the 24-hour cycle and that the earth can be anywhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years as far as my research and my reading on it husband and it's not a unattractive idea but it's not anything the church either supports or rejects explicitly okay so do you think it's possible to defend any form of evolution whether it's theistic evolution or a secular version of it no the church doesn't permit of a defense of evolution again in the way that the the world teaches it the so-called scientific community in which we get a succession of creatures creating themselves through mutations and we end up with an eight creating us so no it's not possible to hold that as a Catholic I see so what are the options like what's the sort of spectrum or the range of feasible options well as long as you accept that the worlds and we specifically were created exnihilo and men specifically were created from the slime of the earth then the way the way that that goes about the timeline that that goes about is open to interpretation so the classic example is you know what is a day to God so a day for God it could have been in a 24-hour cycle but but maybe it wasn't but no one was there and we don't have any scientific evidence one way or the other on this matter therefore we can't use science to make our argument what about the doctrine that God created a perfect paradise a perfect world without illness death disease deform it genetic mutations and suffering and all these sorts of things are is that fully supported as I believe it is yes of course we have paradise that's what our Lord gave to our first parents and gave them an opportunity to enjoy that world and merit heaven after that we chose a different path which gave us a much more wonderful story but yes that was the original plan mm-hmm so the story arc is a little bit more interesting because of the fall is this connected with that happy fault the Easter yes in the exalted's the happy fault and and and again it's one of these things if you think about it when you're praying and meditation especially during the Easter season you think in a certain sense only God is able to bring something even more wonderful out of something so tragic as the fall that we were told you can do anything you want except this one thing this is the one thing you can't do and as humans inevitably what did we do we did the one thing that we weren't supposed to do ignoring God and yet despite us doing the one thing that we were told not to do God brings about something even more wonderful than what the original plan was I personally really liked the idea of having a certain proximity to the fall because it makes it easier for me to repent it makes it easier for me to have clarity of vision on my own sinfulness as opposed to having millions or billions of years between myself and that event that historical event of the fall do you not sympathize with that psychologically how I want to be closer to it I understand that Sensibility I myself have not been able to imagine millions and billions of years as I've gotten older and I've learned my faith a bit more and I've read I think particularly reading scripture it's hard to imagine any of those people living millions or billions of years ago it doesn't make any sense to me okay so I don't really see how your position differs from mine in terms of creationism you just sort of talk about why you're hesitant to call yourself a young earth creationist other than the fact that the 24-hour day seemed to be an obstacle well because if I'm talking about young Earth Creationism so there's capital y capital e capital C right and as you've said before this puts a title on you now if it's simply an outline of the fact that the earth was created along the lines of what was told to us in Genesis which is the Word of God well then yes I have to be a young earth creationist that that is the bare bones of it but if it says that it happened in 24-hour cycles the only reason I can't commit to that is because I don't have scientific evidence for that yeah I share your perspective completely I'm not committed at all to 24-hour creation days that's irrelevant to me but I think to your point how would I share this perspective with somebody who's not a Catholic who doesn't hold the faith I would point to the fossil record and I would look at the idea that there was a catastrophe along the lines of a flood and we see the flood not just in the fossil record but we also see it in stories we're told flood stories in Buddhism and in other parts of the world so it isn't something that the Catholics made out for the Jews made up it's something that is scientifically vacaville we have evidence that there was a massive deluge and the earth was covered in this and and we have a paleontological record of it so I would I would point to that and I would say okay well as you can see there was a flood and it covered the earth and we have animals and plants all caught up in this massive disaster so we have the evidence that this happened now for them they're okay with conceding the flood events they're like okay this happened for sure but they need to place it X number of years millions of years in the past or that it's squares with their quote unquote I can't even call it science your current scientific consensus is that the universe as if anyone was there is 13.8 billion years old leading to the earth being 4.5 billion years old and so on and so if you concede that year the thirteen point whatever billion they'll give you a flood and some however millions or billions of years ago as long as you accept their timeline then you can have all the biblical stories you want but the reality is that that doesn't make any sense because they have no scientific evidence for their dating and and they'll they'll talk about isotopic dating but that method is flawed if you if you and it tells us that the Shroud of Turin was the 14th century why because it has to do they can't possibly concede something as miraculous as the Shroud of Turin because if they do they're ruined it doesn't matter that they don't have the technology to reproduce the Shroud of Turin now it doesn't matter that photographic technology did not exist at the time that they say it's from the 14th century and yet it's the 21st century and they can't replicate it so isotopic radio dating is is flawed you could put samples in there that will give you a date in the future which doesn't make any sense and so if we follow their theory then there's still no evidence for what their postulating they have no proof that the earth is X number of years old so in going back to your original question why don't I call myself a young earth creationist I can't prove that there were 24-hour days but I can look at the fossil record and say there there's evidence there's scientific evidence that supports something from the account that I believe in I believe in the Genesis account I believe in what it says in Scripture and the scripture there there's talk about a big flood and we have a fossil record to back that up and that would be I guess a way to start a conversation with someone I used to be disturbed by the sort of forgery or the fakery of a universe that looks to be millions of years old and then hewo one of the Kolbe Center one of his videos somewhere or one of his talks somewhere he mentioned the six jugs of water that were miraculously transformed into wine and that wine of course has a history the grapes took time to grow and then to ferment and so on and so forth so there was sort of a quote-unquote fake his three in those jugs of miraculous wine so that put me at ease right away with this idea that God can set up a universe with the Stars already in place and he didn't need to go through any sort of stellar evolution scenario he didn't have to do that just like with the wine can you just comment on that on that perspective yes I mean I think too you have to remember that everything is set up exactly how God planned in the time if we think about when was it that our lady conceived when was it that our Lord was delivered where he was delivered the time period Roman Empire and I was reading this last Passion season about why it's called the place of the skull do you do you know why David no that means where tradition tells us that Adam was buried that was his skull oh and for our Lord to be crucified on top of Adam's skull is of course perfect but God would know this God would know this is where the road for carrying the cross ends this is where Golgotha would be and I hesitate to call it poetry because it's much much more than that but this this idea of completion of cycles of course this is the perfection of the mind of God that he would have something like this where as humans who we would say something silly like wow what a coincidence well obviously there's no coincidences with God so when you talk about the timing when you talk about development that's just the way that the perfection of his mind is arranged for us we can't see it as anything other than miraculous I suppose a lot of atheists object to the fact that God orchestrates and that he intervenes and that he knows in advance what we're going to do and they seem to think that that somehow negates the freedom of our will but like I always say to those guests that say this I know exactly what you're gonna do when I stop speaking you're going to start speaking so but I'm not the cause I'm not the cause of your speech right correct in a certain sense I would even I would even say if we want to look at it from the gods point of view if we're if we're standing somewhere where we can see someone is about to get into an accident and we know okay if this person doesn't turn this is going to happen and I could shout at the top of my lungs to try to stop them it's not going to change the fact that they're likely to get into an accident just because we're set aside in a perspective in which we can observe something so in the same sense God stands outside of time he is in the eternal presence and so for him there is no past present or future it's just all a continuum and so for him he just sees everything as it occurs but it's not it's not on on God and again it would completely violate our free will for him to continuously intervene to stop us from doing bad things or to make us do good things that's that's not his job yeah you know when we watch a good movie we see the beauty of how things fit together and people really enjoy seeing the connections and they get a sense of mystery and there's a sort of magic how things fit together and it was meant to be but when God's involved they don't like it why is that psychologically because remember that faith is a gift so if you find something to be wonderful but then you try to set them against the backdrop of something you don't have which is faith in God these people will automatically reject it even though it goes along with their instincts that this makes sense and I really find this as you say enchanting but if it has to do with God I reject it that's just a sort of image in a sense of consistent narrative for them if it has to do with God I reject it and even if it's something that I like I want to talk just briefly about Eve and items rib why did God choose to do that he could have done anything he wanted to do he could have made her from the slime can you just talk about why he might have chosen to create Eve from the rib of Adam please I think going back to this idea of everything God does have having a reason and a purpose it gives us a sense of dependency upon each other so even if you don't end up getting married because obviously some people become nuns and monks and they're still part of the story as well this idea of dependency that one was created from another so in one sense one isn't complete without the other and and God himself said it is not good for man to be alone so I don't think he's only speaking about that in relation to our fellow humans I think also it's to speak to the restlessness in our own heart regarding him so he says it's not good for man to be alone we have this companion it's a larger narrative of we're supposed to have friends we're supposed to see God we're supposed to seek society and that this is only going to come about through the union of man and woman you can't have Hermits in the desert unless someone had them in the first place so I think it's part of that mystery and it's an in a certain sense it's essential that we were created in tandem in in the way that it is described we're one flesh yes one thing I've been meditating on recently is the fact that Jesus Christ took his flesh from a human being Mary and I think it makes sense that they share the same genetic code have you ever heard anything about that to indicate that what other than other than we know the science behind how a child takes DNA from parents yes so that makes sense to you yes and also this dovetails with Our Lady's Immaculate Conception so what why bother to have an Immaculate Conception if you're not going to take your human matter from this woman and if you do take this human matter from this woman you necessarily take the DNA that comes with so we know that now because of the the studies into DNA that you're going to take this code from your mother and our Lord took it from an immaculate vessel so I like to meditate on the fact that Jesus and Mary are one flesh so in a very real way it was Mary's flesh that was crucified on the cross is that taking it too far or is that Orthodox Catholic teaching it's interesting I hadn't thought about it in this way it was Mary's blood and fluids etc that had nourished our Lord that created that flesh so we know that that flesh could not have been made without her physical contribution and knowing about the Seven Sorrows of our Lady and knowing that his passion causes a sword to pierce her heart makes me favor that idea of your meditation of of her being in a sense crucified with him as to whether that's actually her flesh we can say that in her DNA contributed to that flesh certainly but it's obviously our Lord's flesh and his redemption for us but she contributed to that flesh sometimes people talk about twins having a sort of action at a distance one of them is in danger the other one feels it one of them is in pain the other one feels it maybe you could go a little bit further but at least that much I think we could grant no I would say yeah I would say our Lord and our Lady were at least connected this way it would seem to me and my father was a fraternal twin because he's passed away but he the things that I would observe between him and my aunts and then this just a twin this is a human a human level between our Lord and our lady I think it would be taken up even more and I was thinking about this recently again we're recording this not too long after Easter and our lady is the first person our Lord goes to see and of course our lady was with him all throughout the passion and so that connection physical spiritual mental I don't know that there was a closer connection of any humans in history can you talk about the different dangers of rejecting Mary for the Protestants I think that the challenge is that if we look going back to this idea that nothing's accidental for God that he plans out everything that we don't we don't have any reason to think that our Lord would have missed taking a misstep here with Our Lady and just had her be somebody random I think that's the the challenge that if we if we know that there's nothing random with God so if I can get a Protestant they can see but God has a reason for everything all right if God has a reason for everything why would he just make pick someone random off the street if you yourself and again this I think of our Lord saying if you being evil know to give good things to your children dot dot dot so if if God being God can pick his own mother it is he not going to pick the the best mother possible if we as humans being evil would pick a great mother if we were in the position to choose our own mother why would God just pick anybody it doesn't make sense if we would pick someone special God would certainly pick someone special and not just someone special but the most special person ever the other problem is if she's not immaculately conceived then you have our Lord being born into original sin which makes it theologically impossible for him to redeem us so so Protestants I think sometimes in hating our lady so much don't realize the theological trouble that gets them into by not saying she's immaculately conceived and strangely Muslims because of their you know weird made-up religion they think that Mary is immaculately conceived really yes well because as you know Mohammad just cooked up his religion from a mixture of Judaism and Christianity that was in North Africa at the time so he liked Mary being immaculately conceived and so that's in there huh this brings to mind a question about grace God's grace st. Paul famously said you know remove this thorn from my side he prayed three times and God said my grace is sufficient for you and so Paul didn't get everything he wanted but he got sufficient grace and on the other hand if I look at my conversion and st. Paul's conversion I feel jealous Paul got more grace or he can correspond it more with grace his conversion was more dramatic than my own so there seems to be a wide variety and if we look at the Blessed Virgin Mary the graces that she was given she's full of grace maximally so how do you account for this diversity I think st. Paul said something about God being free to make vessels for Honor vessels for dishonor but can you just talk about that variety and how how to explain that to a non-believer because a non-believer asked me about that recently and I just said it's a great mystery but you might have something more to contribute well from from the Christian side I would refer you to to the litany of humility so we ask that if someone people will be holier than us provided that we become as holy as we are as a Christian we accept that people are going to have different levels of grace but on the human level if I'm speaking again with a non-believer the idea is that we all have different gifts some people are more gifted in one area than another some people are gifted in all the areas you know we can meet these people and and it seems that they're physically gifted mentally gifted emotionally gifted why God has given them these gifts now their Christian reflection is that sometimes not only are people given gifts but they're given blessings insofar as God is not able to bless them in the next life so if we see some you know some of these celebrities or some of these fabulously wealthy people God is in his great kindness even though these people are sinning are evil and have no intention of living with him he's giving them blessings now because there's no blessings to be had on the other side and they're enjoying their time now so if we think about the diversity that that's spread it's not only God choosing different levels but it's also an expression of his different levels of grace so for some people living a hidden quiet monastic life versus let's say st. Philip Neri or st. Francis of Assissi out and the analyzing the st. Paul these are expressions of these different gifts and we're just in the period after Pentecost so you think about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how those are expressed in us and how we seek to cultivate them and and their expression within us so I think a secular can understand just on a natural level that that gifts are distributed unevenly for us as Christians the added level is that that makes us more accountable more responsible may be more mindful of what we're given and what we need to attain I know that there are abundant graces that God has given me they're like presents that I've not yet unwrapped so one of my favorite prayers is to pray for the grace to accept the graces I've already received and to unpack them and to cooperate with them can you just talk about the psychology of that so for for our listeners I think I would start by the difference between sanctifying grace and actual grace so sanctifying grace is the life of grace within us provided that we are in the state of grace that we haven't committed mortal sin and killed life of grace within us and an actual grace of actual grace is that momentary grace which are available even to people who are not in the state of sanctifying grace so non-believers can be given actual grace as all the time and these are the graces that move you towards other things so when you're talking about unpacking the graces that are already given to you I think that you're speaking about that life of great the sanctifying grace within you so provided that you're in the state of grace that there's so much richness there that we can't comprehend it it's the life of God within us so there's an endless deposit that we can sort through the actual Grace's can assist us in appreciating that so if we're in a moment of Prayer and we get a specific movement to ask us you should read this or you should pray for this person and these are directives to help us dive deeper into you could I you're calling it the unpacked Grace's but I would say that's the sanctifying grace within yourself and yes that makes sense those work together and when you're talking to somebody who you're interested in converting you can ask them have you ever had moments where you were moved to pray or you were interested in reading the Bible and they say yes so that was a moment of actual grace that we can specifically say that was God moving you in that direction now what you did with it afterwards maybe you refuse to do it you didn't do it that's on you but if you have a movement towards something and that is specifically spiritual you should pick up this part of scripture you should talk to a priest you should think on your sins etc we know those movements are from God but those of us who make it to heaven by the grace of God we will reflect on our earthly time and we will of course will not be able to regret anything but if we could regret anything it would be that we did not take advantage of the graces that we had available to us is that not correct theologically what I'm saying well in heaven we're in a state of perfection so we are in the vessel that we have created and that vessel is full so if we've created a thimble sized container that symbol sized container will be full if we've created a gallon sized container that a gallon sized container will be full so it's not possible for us to regret insofar as we will be fully happy on this side of the veil yes and that's why we encourage people make your container as large as possible because you obviously want want that but it's it's like another way if we think about how Dante talks about this in the Divine Comedy that we have dimmer stars and brighter stars but stars are still stars and so we can't regret on the other side we can only I suppose pre regret here and I think that's good enough I think it's good enough for us to not want to regret and therefore work hard on on this side to make sure that you don't but you you in certain sense you cannot regret on that side I was pretty devastated when I met an ex-catholic woman and she said she lost her faith because her prayers were not being answered the way she wanted them to be answered so she said what's the point in praying so she stopped praying and in one month without prayer she became an atheist so this to me emphasizes what Saint Alphonsus Liguori says about prayer if you want to be saved pray if you don't pray you cannot be saved can you just talk about this this very very clear and direct lifeline that we have to our own eternal salvation not that we can do it without grace but if we make a decision to stop praying we're in deep danger can you just talk a little bit about that but I would say I would I would question that premise as did she really have faith if if God is simply a divine candy maker a deliverer of delights to you then who do you believe in you know what what is this entity that you believe in so if that was the entity she believed in well no she didn't believe in God in the first place well she didn't want candy she wanted her sick child to survive or whatever it was something tragic and and you know it was a big deal it wasn't just a small thing she was asking for frivolously you know right but again the idea of faith is not for God to do as you command him so I told you that this is what I wanted and you gave me something else our job as Christians is not to question in fact if we look at all the spiritual writers the spiritual writers always say that the superior position is always to dispose yourself completely to God's will to not seek your will it own it is a lower class of spirituality not that there's something flawed in that it makes you sinful it doesn't but it's a lower class of spirituality to demand your will in a certain situation like god I want my father to live in the sense it's much preferred to say God I want your will to be fulfilled in this in this particular case that's what I want I always want my life to be conformed with what you want for me and so if we talk about faith and specific circumstances like this the tragedy the death of the sick child that is a horrible thing I can imagine especially for a mother but it's a much greater tragedy to impose your will on God and to say this is how it's gonna be and if you're not going to be this I'm gonna take my marbles and go home and I'm done with God it was the severe test but that test broke whatever faith that she had and God tests those whom he loves he doesn't test idly he tests so that we can express our virtue so that we can express our faith that's what we saw with with Jobe he doesn't permit us to be tempted without giving us a triumph if we stand up for him and so in this sense that prayer is not simply this this great conversation that we have with God but it's an ongoing submission to his will and in asking for it because we as tub where humans don't want to we we always want our way you want not you know especially I'm visiting the United States at this time and I remember here in this country they're always big on substitution so can can you bring this with peas instead of carrots whereas I live in France normally and you'd be thrown out of the restaurant if you asked anything like that so we're very much into things our specific way not just in the United States but but everywhere and with our home we'll and it's important to keep in mind in prayer to always be asking for the grace to conform our minds and our hearts to what God is asking for us and to accept our disappointments because there will be many disappointments I mean and in a certain sense I would refrain for this lady and say alright you're disappointed with what God said or did in this specific situation how many times have you disappointed God so I think if we don't make it about ourselves and if we remember that prayer is always this ongoing conversation I think sometimes I struggle with this a bit because when I was younger I would see prayer as more petition I'm gonna tell God what I want I got to a certain point in my life where I was doing the things that I wanted in providing for myself and and I thought I don't really want to ask God for this like I can do it myself which is of course the silly way of thinking but to put it to him and say this is what I'm thinking this is what I would like even though he knows even though he's God it's the same thing that Protestants say well I can just confess my sins to God directly okay but it's a lot harder to say it out loud isn't it and to another man and there's a psychological purpose for confession what it does for us psychologically how it helps us to move forward same thing with prayer there's a psychological purpose for prayer and helps us articulate the things that are on our mind on our heart and to put them back to God he knows it yes but it's important that you say it it's important that you have this conversation with him because he desires this conversation with you and we fulfill his will I having these conversations back to the quote that you said he who praises safety who does not is damned that's just the reality of it I want to go back to something he said about the Shroud of Turin and the miraculous in general I was just reading about the house of Loretto I hadn't really heard much about that before it really struck me as an interesting miracle for many reasons another one of my favorites is Our Lady of Guadalupe with that tilma what prevents non-believers from acknowledging these facts which really should move someone to submit to God Almighty well I could go on all day about the tilma of Our Lady of Guadalupe I suppose that would be a great place to start with someone because I would start from the very basics that cloth is not built to last 500 years and we think about any clothing we go to a museum and we think about well what are the things that we can find clothing-wise that are still with us five six seven hundred years later and the tilma was made from this peasant type coarse cloth it should not have survived if we examine the eyes of Our Lady we see the people looking at the tilma if you move a stethoscope over her heart you can hear a heartbeat the tilma itself stays at a constant temperature remarkably exactly the same as our body temperature the constellation in her clothing her vestments those are the arrangement of the stars on that day in Mexico on that date so that's what the stars would have looked like and I can just I could go on and on but you look at all that and so if I place that evidence which I have on occasion I say okay I know about this thing they're gonna say all right even that's fine you're telling me all this but I'd have to see it so they're going a little Saint Thomas on me that's fine but then I'll say okay if I bring you to Mexico City and we see this thing will you believe and they'll say no because again this goes back to what I said faith is a gift you can present someone with a miracle in the face and they can still refuse or having seen the miracle a few later they'll say yeah you know what that was just a dream we think about the seeds thrown onto rocky ground right so they spring up with enthusiasm but a few days later they're choked off there were tens of thousands of people who were converted to Fatima when the miracle of the Sun occurred and did all of those people go on to become Saints I can hope that some of them did but some of them a few days later they're like yeah that's son miracle thing that was that was just a dream and they went back unfortunately to their way so you can confront people with miracles not just documented miracles but miracles in their own lives and they themselves will then choose to do otherwise so I would say Our Lady of Guadalupe is a very favorite all the stories of Padre Pio there's Padre Pio flying Padre Pio by locating there's in the United States I think it's in New Mexico there's a famous special staircase that was made for some nuns by from all accounts st. Joseph's which which makes sense obviously being a carpenter he built this this staircase which which is still there you can go and see the staircase yourself at the at the very least naturally speaking the staircase seems to be wondrous how could someone have made this there's no nails so you can start a natural conversation with someone say well how did you do this architectural II and then maybe take it on to a discussion in the faith but I think this is the challenge with miracles when I was younger I remember being in Novus Ordo school and finding out about some of these Eucharistic miracles where the host turned into flesh and I would you know talk to my my my non-believing friends about and they would again they would just dismiss it but I thought I had this trump card that I was carrying with me I said check out this miracle what are you gonna say now when people are always free to disregard miracles they really are because think about all the miracles performed by our Lord and what happens the Pharisees get upset they don't dispute the miracles raises a man from the dead Pharisees grit their teeth write it this passes over their head and he just erased someone from the dead they're just said and so our own will can really get in the way of the supernatural so something wonderful can be happening in front of you something in a sense a certain miracle in your own life can happen but if you aren't tuned in if you aren't paying attention if you aren't open to grace you can miss it yeah there's so much more I want to talk about with you but maybe to wrap up the show you can talk about what you're excited about why you're in the United States what your projects are that are coming up just talk generally about what you're looking forward to in this sort of short term or near future sure before that I just would wrap up our discussion about young Earth Creationism and and and evolution by by saying that I think that people who accept the so-called scientific narrative they are in a much stronger position of faith than you or I insofar as they believe something on no evidence I have evidence for for my belief I have scripture I have the things that have happened in my own life I have my own thought process that that confirms it they have to believe a bunch of guesses from people that say these raw okay first of all the universe created itself then a bunch of rocks hit each other created the earth and then lightning struck the water and some amoeba crawled out involved itself and then some number of years later Hamlet was written by Shakespeare so that's what they believe which to me is the biggest leap of faith in history I can't imagine someone who has more faith than an atheist right they have to believe this ridiculous narrative so who has more faith me or this this person who believes this crazy story so I think that's where I would normally start this conversation is saying all right you think that I believe this crazy you know this fable from the Bible but tell me about what you believe because it sounds pretty fantastic to me so I think that's that's usually well at where I'll start conversations and hopefully with a friendly and open spirit I think that's the thing just make sure you don't get emotional and you'll get wrapped up and really just keep your voice level and and how enjoy an exchange with someone have you seen any good fruit that I think I just nor I'll normally get resistance and so far as like they'll say all right even I can see that your explanation is only slightly better than mine so if they're willing to concede that it is possible for there to be a creator they'll still say Stephen you don't have any evidence there's a creator you only have indirect evidence so this goes back to a recurring theme of our conversation today it's the gift of faith you can't give that to someone you can't impose that on someone they have to accept it freely but it's there for anybody who wants it they have to ask for it though if they weren't born with it if they weren't given it at a young age you have to ask for it yeah I wonder if the family that Maximilian Kolbe gave his life for I wonder if they were touched and converted if they received the gift of faith more readily at that point Maximilian Kolbe as much was my confirmation Saint and I don't know the fate of that family and be interesting to follow up with that but it's possible that the act of love could have softened their hearts yeah yes well we have a saint who was attacked by somebody and he ended his turn end up becoming the same as well Maria Goretti is killer yes so what am i doing in the United States so I'm here visiting my family I have 13 nieces and nephews here and they they're growing up very quickly so if I don't come and see them they'll be all grown up before I know it so I'm here to see family I'm here to work on some business including recording some some podcasts for a restoration radio and also to engage in some other business projects I'm recording some some courses some video courses and doing some collaboration on on another startup that will be coming out next year and in between that exploring the great natural beauty of the United States I always say that it's pretty hard to find a country that's got a better collection of national parks than the United States the diversity everything from Joshua Tree and Grand Canyon to Mount Olympia to Yellowstone Yosemite it's an all-star cast of national parks and so I'm in between business and family I'm going to be some of these national parks I'm pretty excited about that yeah and I guess the Grand Canyon is a good talking point for evolution versus creation lots to say there and I think the science is on our side there are a lot of new science about sedimentology and all this everything there's there's there's no opposition between science and faith the question is is your science good or is it a bunch of guesses driven by an agenda mmm-hmm thank you so much I've got to run off to work now okay well I enjoy having these conversations and what we'll talk more soon for sure thanks for taking the time