hi I'm Megan and you're listening to Catholic versus Protestant so tell the audience a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe in why sure so I'm Megan as you already know and I Griffon Ontario and I grew up in the country and my parents are both Protestant but from different very different denominations within the Protestant religions we weren't a particularly religious family we went to church sometimes I think my parents had a hard time finding a denomination where they both felt comfortable so we went to the United Church for a long time when I was a kid because it seems sort of middle ground my mum was Anglican my dad came from the Christian Reformed tradition they're both immigrants from different countries and so we went to the United Church for a long time I did Sunday school with my sister at the United Church just tiny tiny country Church not very many kids and so we did go regularly for a while I think the community aspect is a hugely important thing for my father more than the liturgy whatever liturgy there is in the United Church and right around when my sister and I could have been confirmed but we just sort of got out of the habit of going to church I think part of it was there weren't other kids there really so we didn't feel inspired to go as far as the community is concerned and our parents didn't force us we were often busy on weekends with things to do on the farm and we just kind of got out of a habit when I was really small almost before I can remember before they had found this United Church my mum took me and my sister to church occasionally like at Christmas just a little Anglican Church but I barely remember those but that when I went to university I just felt like I needed something I needed to find a religious community that I could connect with and I tried a couple different churches United Anglican and it was funny at the Anglican Church it was a small church near the campus I suddenly just felt these familiar things connect with me so for example just the responses and also with you before thanks be to God that kind of thing that obviously somewhere in my memory that I couldn't specifically consciously remember these things were there and it made me feel comfortable and so I started going regularly to this small church and eventually was confirmed there much later than an average person being confirmed and since then I've yes gone pretty regularly to Anglican services there and then moving to Montreal different churches around what has your prayer life been like starting from when your parents taught you to pray at meals when before bed or if that happened at all I don't know it wasn't regular we would usually just pray at sort of big family occasions like Thanksgiving or when lots of the family was around and it was pretty generic just sort of ready-made prayers that everybody knew and often just sort of thanking God for our family and for the food on the table that kind of thing and that was usually my dad who would promote that kind of thing my mum was much more private in her prayer life and didn't really talk about it religion has always been a pretty private thing for my mom and I followed a little bit in her footsteps that way but would you pray as a child in bed sometimes again it wasn't a regular every night before bed kind of thing but I remember sometimes asking God to look out for certain people or help me with things that I was going through in my childhood when I was in high school my mom had cancer and I remember praying about that even though I wasn't regularly going to a church at that point so even when we weren't going to church God was still just sort of this obvious thing but I never really questioned it was just part of even though maybe we weren't comfortable as a family with the institution of religion the face itself was never questioned was there a relative an aunt or an uncle that was very devout yeah my dad saw a whole side of the family in the Christian Reformed tradition they are still most of them extremely devout and quite I would almost say fundamentalist like pretty conservative in their belief does the reform encompass Calvinism and all those sorts of things yes is presbytery a part of that no presbyterian I would say is more liberal okay it certainly has its roots in Calvinism but I would say the Christian Reformed is much more conservative okay generally speaking and often believing more literally in the Bible and very closed-minded as far as women the role of women and it's just not very open-minded to outsiders and if you do something that is considered for example my dad divorced from his first wife and he was sort of shunned and that made him leave the Christian Reformed Church and eventually his family sort of forgave him and when he married my mother but that sort of colored his experience with that church he considers it a little bit hypocritical that they would cast away someone who was going through a really rough time and he's never really come to terms with that so yeah it's that side of things is always a little extreme for my family are they both for life your parents okay are they getting more religious or less religious a little more they attend an Anglican Church now actually that they really like and they go much more regularly than they ever did before again I think the community is the most important part for my dad what do you check the Anglican checkbox on a questionnaire oh yeah I think you would but I don't know if you asked him what is Anglicanism as opposed to United Church or kind of another brand of Protestant church I don't know if you'd really be able to explain it but you just knows he's comfortable in that particular space are there still today a high Anglican and low Anglican churches okay what is the difference the liturgy is where you find most of the differences so in an high Anglican Church more of the services some there's often more bell ringing there's incense a lot of the time there's more formality in the liturgy are they close are doctrinally to the Catholic Church than the low Anglican yes although the doctrines one could argue that the doctrines in the high Anglican and lone Anglican churches are the same it's just how you express them in how you worship but do they mix and mingle and go to each other churches or no it's separated it depends on the person you can yeah I go all over the place I I really like the high Anglican service so you like the liturgy the singing more yeah and yeah that's what I love about it what are the pros of the low angle I like this simplicity I find sometimes in the high Anglican churches just because of the nature of the liturgy the people involved in the liturgy end up spending a lot of time worrying about the details of you know well we have to rehearse the processions and you have to worry about what color the you know every all the vestments are and all that kind of thing which is makes it beautiful but sometimes I think it's easy to spend a lot too much time on that and forget maybe about the actual basic service and so sometimes my parents church is quite low and I like going there okay because it's it's much simpler okay so I'm also a professional singer and I'm singing a lot of the time at church services and I find this sometimes there's so much music to concentrate on that I don't really participate in the service as a worshiper so I like to some days I have off and I can go either to the same church or to a different one and just pray and be present as a parishioner instead of as a someone involved in the liturgy you feel like you're distracted but I think you are in a worship mode when you're seeing definitely and it also depends on what you're singing how well you know it for example if it's something you know really well then you can sort of lose yourself in that experience whereas if it's a piece you're sight-reading and you're worried about singing the right notes maybe some part of you is praying but I think it's harder that way I want to talk a bit more about your personal experience with God and religion how far have you drifted away in terms of indulging in sin and turning your back on God or being angry with God as I've been a point in your life where you've reached a low point I've never really been angry with God I don't think there's much point in being angry with God I've certainly had moments in my life where I've felt closer and then further part of it actually I think is when I feel very involved in a particular church community I feel like I have a church home if you will then I tend to feel a little bit closer to God and that's a very personal thing I don't mean to say that everyone should be connected to a particular church and that's going to help you but it helps me and just being part of that liturgical cycle year after year celebrating the same thing finding new meaning in the same text and that helps me feel closer when I feel less satisfied with a particular place because of some of the people involved or because I find the music isn't good enough or isn't to my taste then I feel less close and I have to work harder personally on my own time sort of not at church to feel that connection do you struggle to perfect yourself with a virtue is there something that's a conscious project for you do you think about the 10 commandments do you do an examination of conscience every day no I don't I think the thing that I continually work on is my prayer life okay that I need to hand over more things to God and not worry so much when I know I can't control certain things I need to rely on him more and talked to him more as far as actual sin and virtue at to be honest don't really think about that much maybe because I haven't gone down into the depths very often and the ten commandments are one thing but sin it's as far as the sort of small daily sins that we all commit they're very personal and and it's the matter between you and God so it's for me it's more of just a matter of that prayer and maintaining that relationship one on one with God that I need to continue to strive to what do you have how many sakowitz do you have we have seven but only two are necessary for salvation they divide them into ones that are explicitly performed in the gospel so that's baptism and Eucharist and then the rest of them that are not really gospel sacraments so they're not considered necessary but they're all done by Anglicans you can for example be anointed as a sick person there's ordination there's confirmation but you don't need them okay can you talk a little bit about the history it's fascinating the kings and queens in the pulpit just just what sort of generally what happened so I mean often people say that the start of the Anglican Church was with King Henry the eighth's and theoretically speaking it was he broke from the Catholic Church and became of the head of the English church and started this Anglican tradition however his view of the Anglican Church was really just a church that he could control that was pretty much the same as the Catholic Church he just wanted to be able to divorce his wife basically the reforms came from Luther where all the other reforms came from and were slowly integrated into the church some in King Henry's time but more in his son's time King Edward the sixth and after that so King James the first which is where you get the King James Version of the Bible is really where the doctrines of the Anglican Church began to be really written down and solidified how many years since Henry the eighth's death was that three generations so James the first was King after Elizabeth the first okay so she died in 1603 I think between Henry VIII 8 and James everyone on the throne was Protestant no so King Henry was technically Protestant but then his son was much more Protestant as in less Catholic and then Queen Mary was Catholic and so there was I don't remember how long her reign was but there was a period of time where England was very anti Protestant and then her sister her cousin sorry well half-sister Elizabeth the first became Queen and she was Protestant although she was not as anti-catholic as Edward the 6th was so there was a little bit more leeway as far as freedom of religion less blood shows maybe yeah less bloodshed for sure what are the numbers of people killed explicitly for their religion I don't know a period I don't know ten people ten thousand and ten million I would say more like ten thousand as far as okay I mean even in Queen Elizabeth's time there were there were lots of persecutions of Catholics and I think it was unclear for a lot of time how illegal Catholicism was and so there were secret masses and music that was composed illegally for the Catholic Church and with James the first I think it became more clear what the boundaries were and Protestantism was the rule of the day who are the good guys in that sort of lineage like that who are the shining heroes even if it's a false assessment of history but what is the assessment generally speaking in the mainstream as far as a religion is concerned or yeah in religion and in the secular world who are seen as the heroes and the villains of that sort of succession Queen Mary for sure is seen as a villain partly because of how many people she killed and I think also she wasn't considered a very good ruler she also wasn't a ruler for very long Elizabeth the first is obviously a great heroine she was great for the country and a little more open-minded about religion which i think is what people wanted Henry VIII ate himself was seen as a buffoon or a fool or what a little bit of a fool I think because of his six wives more than for his religion religious beliefs he was a very devout Catholic and his decision to part with the church was I think probably more influenced by his Protestant leaning advisers and wife at the time he did quite a lot of good things for England but he's generally seen as a villain because of the way he treated his wives how do you as an Anglican see Saint Thomas More is he accurately depicted do you think yeah I see him as a good man who died for his principles in a very confusing time when the average person couldn't really tell you what was right and what was wrong according to the realm hmm did that crystallize some of that ambiguity do you think for the rest of history that was to flow from that I think so partly because King Henry and Thomas More were friends more than anything so at that point I don't think King Henry the eighth's had been known to be particularly ruthless in his punishment of enemies until that point where well if this guy can kill his really good friend then watch out you know maybe we're in unchartered territory basically as far as religion is concerned I mean they used to discuss theology in a very jovial fashion they liked to talk about it and they liked to argue about it and have many similar beliefs so I think more than about the religion itself it was a line in the sand about how ruthless this King could be and who came before him his father his his older brother was supposed to be King and may have even been King for a very short time now I can't no I don't think he was but his brother died when he was quite young what was it Henry Henry the seventh okay yeah and they were his father was the first of their line the tutors and considered by many to be sort of upstarts they weren't particularly royal in their family connections but because of different marriages and some battles that they won I think it was Henry the seventh father who sort of got them on the Royal track what's a technic stock did they come from Welsh partly Welsh and English English which was a mixture of Norman and Saxon it's already mixed up by that point yeah and how old is England at that time it's hard to say yes sir I mean England as we know it as as far as the royal lineage is concerned sort of began in 1066 this is when William the Conqueror came from Normandy and sort of United the kingdom but there were many people living there long before that who had their own duchies and kingdoms and even before that there were the Celtic people native to the islands who lived there so hard to say how old it is one last historic question for you I know you're not an expert you're just an amateur you you love that part of history right is there a golden age of the monarchy in England is there a high-water mark in the English monarchy um even if it's only in your own opinion I guess in my opinion Elizabeth the first would be a pretty high mark because she won a couple of big battles against the Spanish who were always threatening England so she kind of got rid of that threat and she sort of calms down the Scottish question one could argue in a not very nice way but she just made things feel more settled and peaceful in the territory of England this segues nicely in my next line of questioning which has to do with you as a woman mm-hmm can you just talk about what it means to be a woman and to be religious generally in general mm-hmm what I like about being a woman in the Anglican Church is that there's freedom for women we can be priests we can be bishops depending on which area but most areas in the developed world so yeah I like that there can be women in authority in the Anglican Church that it's generally regarded as equal and there are many women in authority is queen elizabeth ii we head of your church yes it's a different kind of hierarchy than the Catholic Church she doesn't claim infallibility writing it's more of a sort of bureaucratic hierarchy the Archbishop of Canterbury is considered the sort of leader of the Anglican Church but also not in the same way as the Pope he sort of is the political leader and you could say even though it's not politics it's its church but he doesn't claim any extra connection to God just because he's the archbishop the hierarchy of the Catholic Church bothers me a little bit some one reason why I feel like I couldn't be Catholic one big reason because it makes people unequal we're all equal in dignity mm-hmm and we're all equal in terms of being completely dependent on God the grace since we're talking about women what role does Mary play in the Anglican Church it depends on which you go to what kind of person you are some high Anglican churches pray to Mary and have altars to Mary and just our values icons will work very similar to Catholic Church the of Rose would do pray the rows are not you personally but is it permitted to pray the rosary mm-hmm other angle contrition fairly talked about her especially the lower ones in general the Anglican Church regards her as the mother of Christ but doesn't regard her as a deity nobody regards yours I know that but just to clarify copper kisses it's nice you shouldn't say nobody I'm sure there's someone out there that does yes again this is an aspect of the Anglican Church that I like is that there's a lot of leeway in what you believe in the doctrine there's a lot of gray area and you can choose things that suit you personally are you allowed to believe that Mary was not a virgin before during and after the birth of Christ are you allowed to believe I'm not go out to believe that right are you you know I'm not actually sure about that you should look into it maybe not as much leeway as you think you right right know what I mean yeah there's a lot of Catholics I meet that think they have a lot of leeway but they're just ignorant of what the Church teaches right so there are a lot of Catholics I mean they think that they have leeway to choose if they want to go to Mass on Sunday or not but they don't have a choice they have to go to Mass but they just don't know that they have to go right so it's not leeway it's ignorance so there may be some of that I'm sure I'm sure there's some of that in what I don't know exactly all graces they come to us to Mary she's the neck Christ is a head the church is the body and Mary is the neck and all the grace is flowing from Christ ahead to place the body go through the neck which is Mary so she's the Mediatrix of all graces and that's a strong doctrine it might be the case that the Anglicans believe the same thing or they may have jettisoned that yeah they don't again I'm pretty sure it's one of those things that you can pray to Mary as a mediator to God but it's not necessary okay yes the Anglican Church of course of life is need to believe in the Trinity okay yeah there's no leeway there okay so on a personal level who are you most drawn to in terms of praise in terms of petition Thanksgiving and all the aspects of prayer I think probably most often I'm praying to God the Father but I'm often asking for God to send his Holy Spirit in a particular direction or to someone in particular or especially actually when I'm worshipping and I'm singing I tend to translate that kind of prayer as the Holy Spirit because it's just more sensual in a way around Easter when we're specifically talking about Jesus and his crucifixion then I spend a lot more time talking to Jesus specifically vated and when I'm looking for compassion I think more about Jesus but often it really is a combination I guess as it should be what about the the passion and the sufferings of Christ the Catholic Church is frowned upon by a lot of other Christian denominations because of our emphasis on suffering and death it's not the whole story but it's a significant part of the story can you talk a little bit about sufferings of Christ yeah I mean in the Anglican Church one can choose during Holy Week for example to really engage in that side and really go find a service to go to every day you can do Stations of the Cross at many Anglican churches some of them on Good Friday do like a contemplation of the crucifix but it's definitely not something that everyone feels comfortable with as you were saying and a lot of Anglicans will just go Easter Sunday morning and celebrate the resurrection inherent in the Anglican service even if it's not a required sacrament inherent in the Liturgy of every Anglican Church is a general collective confession every week and less so you are confronted with that you say it all together and the priest absolve you before you take your communion so it is sort of Catholic light like it's a little harder because you're doing it everyone together maybe you don't certainly I don't every week confront specifically the suffering or my suffering or the things that I've done wrong but it is something you go through each time you go to math yeah I think the Catholic theologians are fond of referring to that as a virtual intention so there's a sort of set it and forget it mentality that we have I when I converted in 2009 I was confronted with a whole host of set prayers especially when I was just a monotheists I didn't believe in the Trinity I believed in the Incarnation but I I was entering the Catholic Church nonetheless because I needed to worship God I did my rigorous analysis and I prayerfully looked at the prayer and said it seems okay don't worry about it and I just pray it and a lot of new prayers that I encounter I think about it deeply mm-hmm but not every time I I just I just sort of make sure it's okay that I understand it maybe do a couple of passes to get deeper insight maybe read what the Saints have said about this prayer and then I can I can just pray it without thinking about it too much and I think that's normal and I think it's the same thing with liturgy in the mass you can sort of to a certain extent go through the motions and it's okay because there is that virtual intention mm-hmm what about the credo you must have had you just didn't say the credo when you first started going to Mass well I had to I did undergo six months of education Catholic education to to accept intellectually the Trinity and the Incarnation okay so the way that I did it is sort of like the way that I approach my love life I married a woman without knowing everything about her I took a leap of faith I trusted her I said well seems to be this I'm drawn to this woman there's probably a reason for that and I want to give myself to her so instead of proving that it's safe I'm just going to give myself to her and then time will tell Matt and twenty-one years later I'm still married to her I'm happy she's not so happy that I'm Catholic but but it's the same thing with religion I said I'm drawn to worship God I don't have a chav to wish as soon as I realized that God is God I had to worship and publicly mm-hmm so I took the leap of faith and I for pragmatic reasons joined Christianity and to me Christianity is the Catholic Church I joined the Catholic Church and I've questioned everything since when I continued to question and I'm still ready to leave Christianity already no regrets I don't wanna believe a lie so what do you think would be a game-changer like what would be the content of can't you leave contradiction if they dogmatically permit the ordination of women I will leave Christianity because they've already dogmatically forbidden the ordination of women that's within the realm of religion within the realm of science when I talk to a theist I'm often told that I have confirmation bias and that I'll never leave my faith because I will just always interpret everything in a way that's favorable to what I want to believe but I come back with the answer that it wouldn't take much to falsify my Christianity with natural science hmm show me that the human race does not descend from one human tear if you can convince me of polygenism I will leave Christianity because it's a dogma of my church that we come from one human pair that all humans descend from one human pair if that's not true then Christianity is a false religion period so my dogmatic faith in my faith is dogmatic it's based on revealed truths many of which I can't prove or disprove but there's a whole web of dogmas and they're all interconnected and if one of them is contradicted by the church or by science then the whole house of cards collapses so it's very telling that my religion is the only religion that puts its neck on the line and says this is the truth it always was the truth you know it always will be the truth and if we ever contradict ourselves it's a false religion I don't know any other religion that does that so going specifically to Adam and Eve for a second how literally do you take the Bible there's a lot of wiggle room in terms of interpretation but there are principles that guide interpretation one of the principles is that we first look at the literal meaning of any given passage and on top of that literal interpretation there are other spiritual readings and more symbolic meanings okay now having said that it may not be the case that the particular passage we're looking at literally took place as it's described and a good example of that is the two creation stories in Genesis right that's what I was specific we because we cannot take both stories at face value we have to conclude there's something higher that's being described here and therefore we reject the literal interpretation in those points where there is contradiction logic forces us to reject the literal but we still have the symbolic and the spiritual reading so which parts can we rely on in terms of that literal interpretation an example that springs to mind is Adam and Eve that we do spring from one couple another example is John 6 the church has dogmatically said that he meant it literally that we are eating his body blood soul and divinity that's how we put it that it's really truly and actually present under the appearances of brethren why so that's an example of a Bible passage that gets the sample of a pool for its literal interpretation but they're very very few right and these stamps of approval are made by men or humans right I even though the instrument the men that penned infallible Scripture they were men but they were inspired and they were protected from teaching error concerning faith and morals when they put their pen to parchment if you're comfortable with that then you should be just as comfortable with papal infallibility if you're not comfortable with papal infallibility then you should also be uncomfortable with the inerrancy of the Bible do you believe in the inerrancy of the Bible no not at all what sets the Bible apart from any other religious book or self-help book part of it is this age it's historical tradition is this your opinion resist the Anglicans my opinion all exams generally argue that the four Gospels are the Word of God looking through these four men the rest of it is inspired by God but not necessarily the Word of God okay and so I appreciate the Bible very much as some of it being the Word of God and a lot of it being historical information a lot of it being historical traditions that have been passed down through generations but I really do think that all of it needs to be examined and not taken I'm not saying that you're taking it at face value but I think a lot of traditions do in it I really disagree with that there's a hierarchy in the Catholic Church a hierarchy of dogmatic truth so it wouldn't make much sense to get excited about the divinity of Christ and then undermine the very notion of God right so the divinity of Christ hangs or depends on the reality of God and so on and so forth there's this whole network of dogmas or teachings or doctrines that hang together in a web but some are more fundamental than others and I think that if you're an atheist you also have a set of dogmas which are in a hierarchy and if you're a Hindu you have a set of dogmas and if you're a Scientologist you have a set of dogmas and if you're an angle can you probably have a set of dogmas so there's no difference there in kind there's only a difference in degree and in which particular beliefs you put where and how you hang them altogether and your little hierarchy so you believe in the Trinity remoter established that the Anglican Church believes in the Trinity and if you stop believing the Trinity you stop being an Anglican I think there are many many dogmas in the Anglican Church that hang together and infallibility is in there somewhere it is in there somewhere if not the whole thing is meaningless just like I said with God and we can't throw away the most fundamental aspect God is infallible mm-hmm religion is connecting to God so you would expect infallibility in religion right one thing I have trouble agreeing with with the Catholic Church is society in general has changed since the beginning of time and things that used to be law are now no longer law and for good reason I think a lot of people would agree with that like contraception that the Catholic Church is against I have an issue with that I feel like that's something that maybe used to be more generally believed that contraception is a bad thing but times have changed and it's an important I think good thing that's out there for for women to use and why does the Catholic Church hang on to this but I think is an old-fashioned view that actually seems to harm women in a lot of ways if I disagreed with their stance on contraception I would have no qualms of walking away from Christianity the principle is life are you pro-life or you you are pro-life okay so the principle is my sign pro-choice oh you're pro-choice okay yeah you're pro-choice okay so the principle is life we have a human nature which God gave us it wasn't scientists that gave us our human nature it wasn't a pile of swamp water that was struck by lightning that gave us a human nature it was God that gave us our human nature he designed us with the purpose to be happy and to be fulfilled and to partake in his life forever so it's good news they call it good news for a reason right now it hits the good news so life we are made with a human nature and we need to correspond with that human nature so we can't cheat the system we can't go against our human nature and sexuality is real it's good but if we pervert it or make it something it's not we try to isolate one aspect and reject another aspect or deny an aspect there are consequences and we need to we need to be careful about that just like if you take your pen and you have a can of baked beans and you want to open your can with your pen you're going to ruin the pen and you're not going to open the can so there's a sort of respect that you need to have for your tools and a respect you need to have in an analogous way for your body and for sexuality what is it what is it made for and if we twist it no matter how much pleasure we get in the moment there will be negative consequences so when god forbids us from doing something which is pleasurable it's because the long-term consequences are bad for us and that could be confusing because we're short-sighted and we just would love pleasure hmm so sex as a unit of function and a procreative function and they're both essential and we can't separate those we can ignore one without consequences so that's that's the sort of medium short answer has to do with our human nature has to do with goodness and has to do with life and maximizing our happiness in the long term mm-hmm because there's a way that seems right to man but it's end is destruction and we are free we can follow our instincts and we can follow our gut but I think we're better off listening to God I like your answer or I find it problematic is in cases where this unity this partnership that is inherent in sexuality isn't equal and it sounds like you're saying that women are sort of a passive receptacle for men semen it's just like oh no here comes more pregnancy juice or something like that in some cases I don't think this is the primary motivation for having contraception I think the primary motivation is sex is fun but responsibility is not so fun right well it's not like if there's there bunch of big strong Muslim men raping their wives daily and oh if only I didn't have 13 kids it would be a little bit less wearisome on my body and on my energies I have no idea what the numbers are and I should hope that that's not the norm in the Western world in the Western world women are pretty intimately we're very much in control I wouldn't thought we could argue that too but I agree with you in the Western world it's way less of an issue but in other parts of the world I think it's much more of an issue I would like to go to the heart of the issue and sit down with your macho bully husband and your timid submissive rape victim wife do you love and respect and honor the dignity of this your fellow human being that you married ceremoniously so if your family and friends present I mean come on this is a basic level of education that we need to address we can't just throw them some condoms we need to get to the heart of the humanity of this big bully and I'm not denying that there are these big macho bullies with more testosterone than brain cells but we need to go to the heart of the issue otherwise it's just going to be raped with a condom that's true we do need to go to the heart of the issue but in the meantime I like that part of the issue is something that will obviously take more time to educate and tease out yeah and I just feel like in the meantime there's a lot of abuse happening sexuality is a really really really hot topic whenever Catholicism is brought up whether it's the deviant sexual behavior of those who are in the priesthood god help them or whether it's the hypocritical behavior of the people in the pews who are silently complicit with the dogmas of the church but secretly sleeping with their secretary or using contraception at home or masturbating whatever it is I'm not here to judge anyone God knows our animal passions are difficult to tame if we don't give ourselves to God completely it's a losing battle mm-hmm but there is a POC recei in the church and that doesn't help when it comes to trying to sell the church to non Catholics or when it comes to apologizing for the behavior of the pedophile priests or the the idiots in the pews it's not till battle trying to do PR for this church of course yes any Church any charity Seth Apocrypha of course no and I don't mean to be - argumentative about all just one of these sort of thorny issues that I find problematic with business Catholic Church so it's just interesting to hear how you think about it and how the church thinks about it yeah I tend to be conservative by nature so it's easy it was easy for me to accept all the dogmas of the Catholic Church whereas a lot of people I meet it's a stumbling block for them because they're part of a world that's very sexually liberated and I sympathize with them I sympathize with the homosexuals who think that loves love and love is love mm-hmm I encourage them to love each other just don't have sex with each other do you think it's okay to have sex outside of marriage yes okay is that the position of the Anglican Church hmm I don't know is there a resource where I can go and find out what the Iowa can Church teaches yeah I used to have a book that explained some of these catechisms organ in the Anglican Church not like one sort of resource who who are some of the heroes of Anglicanism that speak for Anglican theology and Anglican ecclesiology do you have Saints but do you have Saints which are specifically Anglican the earliest one that came up with the three-legged stool of Anglicanism is Richard Hooker he's very early I think he was in the 16th century already and so anglicanism was just being established but that three-legged stool that he came up with is an important part of the Anglican theology scriptures reason and tradition that sounds pretty good yeah in your personal life have you found yourself tending to maybe downplay your faith just to fit in a little bit better is that something that has ever happened to you yeah a little bit if someone specifically asks me about my faith I will answer truthfully and tell them what I believe and say that I go to church on Sundays but if I'm not asked specifically I will often not talk about it not because I'm ashamed of it but because I think it's an issue that is often fraught with tension and a lot of people have strong opinions one way or the other and I don't like making people feel uncomfortable so I tend to step away from talking about it unless I'm specifically asked would you ever step in to defend Jesus Christ if he's being maligned in public yes as it happened yes and Christians in general sometimes you know I will step in and say well and yes that's true but that's not all Christians that kind of comment or yes Christians did that in in the past but there's also a lot of good that the Christian Church has done that kind of defending I will also eagerly see have you even gone so far as to defend the Catholic Church well in the fact that the Catholic Church was the church historically yes yeah at the end of my interviews I always asked my guests to wrap up so just as a closing thought to the people that are out there what would you say religion and belief I think is is a very personal thing and what I find especially helpful in my religion is that personal connection that we were talking about between me and God no matter how I choose to manifest it or worship that is I think the most important thing about any religion that I know about and if you can find comfort in that personal connection even if it's not with a God but with a fourth or even another human being feeling connected with something or someone is the best way to find love and to find compassion and I think that should be the goal for everyone in their lives is to find ways to connect to other humans to connect to a deity to connect to the universe when it comes down to it that's what religion is doing is giving you a way to connect to something other than yourself and I encourage anyone to do that I think it's important can I get one of you if you can get this awesome questions at the end okay all you got to do in it all you got to do do