What I Wish I Knew When I Converted | Ft. Dr. Scott Hahn

G'day, g'day! Welcome! Today, we want to talk about the subject of conversion. I'm going to be sharing a little bit about how I came to faith in Christ. We are then going to be taking your phone calls and your questions, and then later on in the show, I'm going to be sitting down with Dr. Scott Hahn, and I'm going to be asking him advice for converts, and how to act after you have converted, and what he wished he had have done differently, or advice he might have to an agnostic who is looking into Christianity. So welcome. It's great to have you. My name is Matt Fradd. If you're just joining us, I grew up in a Catholic family in that my mother was Catholic. My dad wasn't until later on. And so my mom, every Sunday, would drag me and my brother and sister to Holy Mass. and the context for this was usually or at least the memory I have is I had just spent the night at somebody's house, friends and then it was Sunday morning and we were in our sleeping bags eating Froot Loops and watching cartoons. My mum would come to the door, come on Matt we're off to mass. Now can I just say God bless my mother, beautiful woman and God bless her for loving me enough to drag me to church even when I didn't want to go but I did not want to go and I remember we We'd go to Mass, and I sat there looking around at what I thought, now maybe I was wrong, but I just looked at people who seemed very disinterested. I remember thinking, if they don't want to be here, and I don't want to be here, and the priest doesn't want to be here, could we just not be here? Because I would much rather watch cartoons. Now, as I got a little older, I had a lot of questions that I don't think were sufficiently answered. Now, it could have been that I was too proud to hear them, but I would have questions like, if God exists, why do bad things happen to good people? Or how do we know where right and the Mormons are wrong or the Jehovah's Witnesses or the Hindus? Isn't religion kind of relative, like what flavor of ice cream you like? and I would say that the answers I got from teachers and priests and others weren't terribly convincing. The memory I have is people saying, well, it's a mystery, as if that was supposed to kind of put my fears at ease, and it didn't. I remember thinking, okay, I'm sure it's a mystery in some sense. God is mysterious, but could you give it a shot? Just any answer will do. well by about the age of 13 or 14 i decided i was agnostic i didn't know if god existed or didn't exist but i just didn't know now this was back in the 90s the word atheism do you remember for five minutes in around 2008 it was popular and atheism it came to mean i'm more intelligent than you that's what it felt like anyway and so if you were an atheist back in 2008 you were one of the intelligentsia. It didn't mean that back in the 90s. So I just said I was agnostic. I kind of liked the idea of spirituality, so long as it made no demands upon me, especially if I'm honest, in the sexual realm. I think this is why a lot of young people are open to New Age spirituality and Buddhism. I'm sure there are, of course, Buddhists who would propose a sexual morality, for sure. But at least in America, the sorts of books that we encounter having to do with Eastern spirituality very often don't, and the people who are attracted to it have no interest in being told what to do. So I was open to spirituality, but definitely not Christianity. I had really bad objections to God's existence. I didn't know they were bad at the time. I had kind of encountered a couple of philosophical arguments and thought that I was really wise because of them. Let me see if I can remember them. Things like who created God, which unironically Richard Dawkins thought was a good objection years later. But yeah, who created God, I would say, as if this would just sort of knock down my opponent and he'd have nothing to say. But of course, Christians, when they talk about God, they're talking about a metaphysically necessary being whose non-existence is impossible. So once you understand what is meant by God, you see that asking who created God is a silly question. It's like asking, okay, if your brother is a bachelor like you claim, what's his wife's name? It just, it misunderstands the point. Or I would say, I don't believe in absolute truth. and the obvious rejoinder to that is, oh, is it absolutely true that there is no absolute truth? You can't deny objective absolute truth without accepting it. Or I would say, and you hear this a lot today, not among sophisticated atheists, mind you, I'm not taking aim at them, but a lot of atheists, and I would say, well, the only reason you're a Christian is because you were raised by Christian parents or in a Christian culture. If you had been raised in India or somewhere else, who knows what you would be? Well, this is not a good argument against Christianity because it commits what's called the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy occurs when you attempt to invalidate a conclusion based on how it originates. And you can see why that's fallacious because I might have bad reasons for thinking something to be the case, but that doesn't follow that it is not the case. For example, if I come to the belief that the earth is spherical because I saw it in a Superman comic or something, that's not good justification for thinking that the earth is spherical, but it doesn't thereby show that I'm wrong. All it shows is that I don't have good reasons to think the thing that I think. But this cuts both ways. You know, if you say, well, you're only a Christian because you were raised in a Christian family, I could say something similar. I could say the only reason you're an atheist is because you were raised in Portland, Oregon, on a strictly vegan diet, and your brain has not received the nutrients necessary for it to develop appropriately so that you cannot assess metaphysical arguments for God's existence or something like that. Now, that's funny, but remember, especially if you're a Christian, don't use that. That's a bad argument because, again, you can have bad reasons for thinking something's true, and yet it could still be the case. Now, when I was about 16 years old, 17 years old, I had stopped going to Holy Mass altogether. Occasionally my mom could force me to go, but I made it so difficult for the good woman that sometimes she would just sort of throw her hands up. But one night she comes home from Holy Mass and she says, Matthew, there was a lady speaking at church tonight about a trip that some people are taking to Rome to an event called World Youth Day. She said, it's going to be great and we'd be happy to pay for you to go. Now, I got really excited and then skeptical. I got skeptical because for a moment, I thought that maybe Rome was an obscure town in South Australia, population 15 or something. And so I remember saying, Rome, like in Italy, it was so unbelievable to me that they were offering me to go to Italy. So I said, Italy? She went, yes. I said, all right, well, I've given her some thought, and yes, please, I'd very much like to go. Now, the next thing my mom said to me, I don't fault her for, and you shouldn't either. She said, I'm not paying all this money for you to go make a bloody idiot of yourself, which, again, if you knew me as a 17-year-old, and if you had to put money on makes a bloody idiot of himself or comes to Jesus, you would have 100% sided with my mom. I remember saying, no, no, no, I want to go. It'll be great. Now, my motivations for going definitely weren't spiritual. They weren't even really virtuous. I mean, I wanted to go see another country, and there's something beautiful about that. But I also thought, because they told me there'd be 2 million young people coming to this event. There ended up being 2.5 million people, which was the largest gathering of human beings in European history. That's what I attended. So I thought, okay, 2 million, 2 million, 2.5 million, whatever. That's a lot of young women who I could maybe get together with. So I didn't have the best of intentions, but I started packing for my trip and I was really jazzed to go. Now, while on the trip, I encountered young Christians who loved Jesus Christ. And that really shocked me. Not that they loved Jesus Christ, but they loved Jesus Christ and were normal. they were good looking they weren't weird like some of not all but some of the christians i had met as a teenager i remember they were saving sex till marriage i remember thinking why would you do that like i get why i have to i'm kind of forced to nobody's offered but you you know like you're a good looking person why would you save sex till marriage you know it shocked me i think what blew me over more than anything was how uncynical they were. They weren't sarcastic. They didn't have to get drunk to share their feelings. This is how I acted as a teenager. They were just kind, good, normal, intelligent people. I started asking a lot of questions about God, about Christianity, about Catholicism, and my heart began to open to the possibility that maybe this is true. I mean, I didn't have good reasons to think it wasn't. And these people were giving me what seemed to be decent reasons to think that it was. And so I began to pray, not eloquently, but simply and directly. And it was what you may have heard of as the skeptic's prayer. It was something like, okay, God, if you exist, would you please reveal yourself to me in a way that I would understand. And I remember thinking, as I was praying this once, because I think I prayed that prayer multiple times, I remember thinking, I'm probably just talking to myself right now, which is kind of embarrassing. But then I thought, yeah, but is it? Because it's not nearly as embarrassing as living under the delusion, I will call it, the delusion of atheism, living as if my life has no meaning, that objective moral facts weren't true. That's not the case. And so to live as if it were the case, that's more embarrassing, actually. So I began to pray sincerely, God, show me. If you do, would you show me? and over time he did unmistakably. I came to believe that God loved me as I was and too much to leave me that way. So I came home from Italy like one of those Christians who's so happy it makes you sick a little bit, you know, like the kind of Christians who are so enthusiastic about telling you about their faith that you just wish they would blink more. That was me. I was just on fire for our blessed lord now that was that was over 25 years ago and i would say that over the course of 25 years it's not that i haven't had questions it's not that i haven't struggled with sin right it's not as if i came to christ and then i was perfect my goodness far from it just ask my wife and children. But I would say that I am more convinced today of the truth of Christianity and the truth claims of Holy Mother Church, the Catholic Church. So, I don't know you, and maybe I have no right to say this to you because of that, but I'm going to anyway, and that is pray the prayer I did. Christ, if you are who the Christians say you are, reveal that to me blessed lord if the catholic church is the church founded by jesus christ reveal that to me because ultimately i want your will not my own now let's take some of your questions we've asked you to send in your questions and you have so we're going to get to them right now starting with our first caller howdy matt first of all just please be to the Good Lord Jesus Christ. I just recently came into the church on the feast of Christ the King. Beautiful. So very new, maybe Catholic. And I just have to say your show, your guests, your wonderful dialogue have all been immensely helpful to me in my conversion as I learned what Catholics said about their own beliefs rather than my preconceived ideas. I'm a Protestant. Oh, I've got to pause it there. That's a great point. Glory to Jesus Christ, too, that this little show could have affected you in that way. That's one piece of advice that I give to Protestants who are looking into Catholicism. Don't just listen to or read from those who believe the Catholic Church to be an error, because they might be wrong in what they're portraying the Catholic Church to teach. instead if you want to know what the catholic church teaches and you want to reject the catholic church then you should reject it based on what it says about itself what she has to say about herself so one piece of advice would be buy a copy of the catechism of the catholic church it's all there everything we believe or the you know the absolute sort of summary of what we believe is to be found there so it's a good idea if you're going to reject the church again to reject her now i don't want you to reject her, don't get me wrong, but based on what she says about herself and not what her detractors say. Imagine my surprise when I see the Dr. Scott Ahn on your show while I was in the midst of reading Rome Sweet Home. Your show's just been truly a tremendous blessing, so thank you for it. Now for the question as a new convert I would appreciate any guidance you and your guest might offer regarding how to have constructive conversations with family or friends about our beautiful Catholic faith I mean, I can lead a Protestant to the beauty of Mother Church, but I can't make them see it, if you know what I mean. Obviously, my family knows about this conversion. I've been excited to share it, but how do I get them to this side, the fullness of the beauty of our faith? So anyway, thanks for the time. Thanks for this avenue to ask questions. I pray God blesses you and your family, and thanks for all you do, Matt. Well, thank you very much. This is a great question. Now, I think what's important is to make a distinction between what we could call rash evangelization and prudent evangelization. So it's one thing if I'm on an airplane and I'm sitting next to somebody and they ask me about the Catholic faith. Okay, so I've got a few hours maybe to discuss with them why I'm Catholic and why they should be. But it's another thing, I think, when you're sitting around, let's say, Thanksgiving dinner or something with your in-laws who might not be Catholic. Like, okay, so saying, yeah, could you pass me the gravy? And would you mind if I talked to you about what Vatican I taught about papal supremacy? So that I think would be rash evangelization. So prudence is that virtue which enables us to act in accord with right reason. And so I think it's obvious, right, that there are times where we should hold our tongue, that we should ask the Holy Spirit to give us an opportunity to share our faith, but that when we share our faith, we do it with gentleness and reverence. This reminds me of 1 Peter 5.8. Peter says three things. He says, number one, in your hearts, reverence Christ as Lord. And then he says, always be ready to give a defense to anyone who calls you to account for the hope that is in you. And then he says, yet do it with gentleness and reverence. And I think these three things can really help us. So reverence in your heart, Christ as Lord. In other words, to be primarily concerned with your own sanctification, with repenting of your own sin, with growing in virtue, so that those around you can see, even if they disagree with your decision to become Catholic, that they won't be able to disagree that, wow, you've become kinder, you've become more humble, that sort of thing. And then after it says to always be ready to give a defense, which I think is partly what you're talking about, it says to do it with gentleness and reverence. And I think that is really, really key. Fulton Sheen says it's entirely possible to win the argument and lose the soul. And so we don't want to do that as we're addressing these issues that mean so much to those we're interacting with. We really want to be reverent as we're talking to them. That doesn't mean that we should pretend that something that is false is true. I'm not talking about a sort of false ecumenism where we all just get along but don't look at these subjects that really matter. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we share the truth of the Catholic faith with our friends and family. We should be gentle and reverent. Now, the other thing I think that should take a lot of weight off of your shoulders is the realization that it is never you or I who converts people, right? Truly. Now, we can give good arguments. We can demonstrate humility and affability that make the gospel or the truth claims of the Catholic Church more palatable to those that we're interacting with. But ultimately, it's not you who converts your friends or family, and it's not me. It is the Holy Spirit. This reminds me of a verse from 1 Corinthians 3.6, where Paul says, I planted, a polos watered, but God gave the growth. So whether we're talking about colleagues, friends, or children, and I know that this can be a source of great pain for those who maybe have come to the faith later in life and realize that the way they had raised their children was subpar, let's say. do not allow the devil to discourage you that's what he wants to do he wants to discourage you don't let him do that say to our blessed father in heaven father make up for the ways that i lack i surrender my children to you pray for your children fast for your children do not lose your peace, recognize that Adam and Eve had the perfect parent and look what they did. So no need to take, I mean, look, if you've done things that have been wrong, that were wrong, then to apologize for those things, to go to the sacrament of confession over those things, but to not let the devil steal your peace. So thank you very much. And we are going to move on to the next question. Hi, my name is Nigel. became a Catholic four years ago. And I'm wondering that in view of the fact that our Christmas is a movable day and the Jewish Passover also was a movable day, and that if the Passover was, say, on a Wednesday, that takes good care of three days and three nights between our Lord being crucified and rising again. In that case, why does the church insist that the Lord Jesus was crucified on a Friday? Thanks, Brian. Okay. I think what's being asked here is we say that Christ died and rose again three days later, but how can that be if he died on Friday and was risen on Sunday? So I think it's because Jews in the time of Jesus counted any part of a day as a full day. So Friday, even part of that day, is day one. Saturday would be day two. And Sunday, even before sunrise, would be day three. So that's why Scripture and the church say on the third day he rose again. It's based on Jewish inclusive counting, not modern Western counting. So I hope that helps. And on to the next question. Hi, I come from an evangelical home church background. And as I explore the Catholic Church, I am experiencing this type of inner duality. Part of me is drawn to the Church's historical and sacramental life, while the old part of me, the part that I grew up with, worries that I'm slipping into what would be called a spirit of religion and abandoning my belief that God's kingdom wasn't meant to be institutional. My question is, how can I discern if this tension is actually the Holy Spirit leading me into fuller faith or just my own wanting for what I'm discovering? Thank you. Such a beautiful and humble question. I always love it when people, because you go to any comment section and people aren't usually humble. And this is because, as my friend Matt Walsh has said, if the Internet can choose between sympathy and mockery, it will always choose mockery. And I think for that reason, people tend not to be vulnerable on the Internet. But this was a beautiful, vulnerable question. So a couple of things you're talking about why you're talking about the spirit of religion. And I want to address that in a second. And then your reluctance or hesitancy to embrace an institutional church. is that somehow at odds, maybe you're asking, with the heart relationship we are called to have with the Blessed Trinity. So I would say that Jesus Christ himself established an institutional church when he appointed apostles, gave them authority, commanded them to teach, and promised to be with them always. So it's true that institutions go bad when they forget their mission, but the church's structure is not a man-made bureaucracy. It's Christ's own design to safeguard the gospel and pass on grace and the sacraments. And I don't think you can really get away from this idea of hierarchy, because what's interesting is you hear hierarchy and you think maybe, I'm not saying you think this, but maybe people might think some sort of oppressive regime, something that restricts you. But that's not how we should think of hierarchy. The etymology of hierarchy, I believe, has to do with order. And so the good order, holy order, sacred order. So the opposite of hierarchy isn't freedom. The opposite of hierarchy is anarchy. And I remember I went to a friend's church once upon a time. It was a fundamentalist Baptist church where they were handing jack chick tracks to me as I walked into the church to give you an idea of the kind of anti-Catholicism, I suppose, that was to be found in that church. And I remember after the service, I went out to lunch with the pastor and my friend and all these sorts of people. And I said, who's in charge here? Like, how does it, like, who's the head guy? And they said, well, we actually don't believe in a hierarchical institutional church. We're all equal here, actually. And I said, okay, but who's in charge? And she pointed to a guy at the end of the table and went that guy. So you're not going to get away from an institution, I suppose, in that sense. The question is, which church did Christ establish and promise to safeguard until the end of time? And I think that that's the Catholic Church. Now, regarding the spirit of religion, what is meant by that? I think when people use this term, first of all, I don't like the term because the epistle of James, for example, James talks about religion in a healthy sense. And I think we can do that and should do that. I think when you're talking about a spirit of religion, you're probably talking about adhering to mere externals. So we're kind of somehow moving away from this heart relationship with the good Jesus. and we're doing all of this busy work to try to make him like us more or something like that, but we've left that heart-to-heart relationship. And that's just, I mean, yeah, the Catholic Church would condemn that as well. It would condemn moving away from Christ in that heart-to-heart relationship. And it reminds me of this quote from Teresa of Avila. She says, how can the Lord listen to us if we don't listen to ourselves? I think that's a great line. You expect God to listen to you while you're praying, but you're not even listening to yourself. So to realize that this intimate relationship that we are called to have with the Holy Trinity, the church is not in opposition to that. It not only encourages that, but facilitates that through its teaching, through the teachings of the saints, and through the administration of the sacraments. I've written a book that I think helps people grow in intimacy with Jesus Christ. You might be interested. It's called Jesus, Our Refuge. You can get that on Amazon or Audible. Let's go to the final question. Hi, my name is Kathy. I'm Locals. I'm Matea of Carmel. I have a young lady that I've been working with. She's interested in converting from Orthodox to the Catholic faith. though all of her sacraments that she's had are valid in our Catholic faith. A couple of things. First of all, God bless you, Kathy. We need people to walk beside people on their journey home to the Catholic Church. It's not enough for people like me to put out videos into the Internet and to expect that to be enough. Everyone is going to at some point need someone to walk beside them. So God bless you for doing that. And yes, of course, the Orthodox have a valid priesthood, say, unlike the Anglicans or other Protestant denominations who claim to have a priesthood. And so their sacraments are valid. And so the Catholic Church does accept them. She still has, you know, there are so many differences between the two. There are some deep dives. And, you know, some of them like the papal privacy and the filioque. but her biggest hurdle is the Immaculate Conception of Mary. She said she was taught all her life that Mary is a sinner just like all of us and so she's just having a difficult time with that. I was just wondering if you had any advice or suggestions on how to help her with that. and I also want to say thank you Matt I love your show and especially I love it when you interview those who have converted and what their journey was like so I thank you for your ministry Matt thank you God bless you Kathy and as I said at the top of the show we have Dr. Scott Hahn coming to join us soon and we're going to get into advice for converts and those seeking to convert others so be sure to stick around for that okay so first of all, I like what you're doing here. Not only are you walking with this young woman, but you have figured out, discerned, perhaps because she just told you directly, what her primary concern is that she's trying to overcome on her journey to the Catholic faith. I think that's really important. Protestants, for example, have many objections to Catholicism. Why do you call priests father? And why do you think Mary was ever virgin? And what's with the Eucharist? And why do you pray to saints? And so on and so forth. And fair enough, these are all fine questions and we ought to answer them. But I think sometimes it's like there's too much on the table to try to respond to. And so it can be helpful to say to somebody, in this case, your Orthodox friend, what's your biggest objection? So Kathy, you say to this lady, I understand the filioque, papal infallibility, the immaculate conception, these are difficulties for you. What's the biggest difficulty And I think one of the reasons this can be helpful when trying to help somebody come into the fullness of the Christian faith is because if you can show that this one thing is true when it was their biggest obstacle it sort of has this effect where it shows the person okay if this biggest obstacle that I had this biggest objection I had can be responded to then maybe these other objections that are less problematic to me can also be responded to So I think that's really good. Okay, so first of all, the Eastern Orthodox do not teach that Mary was personally a sinner. So I don't know where she's picked this up, but they don't use the term immaculate conception, but they absolutely affirm her personal sinlessness. So I would just say that she hadn't been well catechized by her Orthodox community, or maybe she was and misunderstood. But you can read the writings of St. John Damascene, Gregory Palamas. John Damascene, for example, says the Holy Virgin is holy, completely free from every stain of sin. Gregory Palamas, who is highly respected in Orthodox circles Talks about her being undefiled, all pure, alone, holy, without stain And then one of my favorite saints and a doctor of the church is St. Ephraim the Syrian So he actually referred to her as quite close to how a Catholic might speak of her today Of course, I would think that Ephraim was a Catholic, but the Orthodox might want to say that he's not going to teach what Catholics today would teach. I would disagree. But Ephraim, he says something like, you alone, he's talking to Christ, you alone and your mother are in all things fair. There is no blemish in you nor any stain in your mother. So, yeah, the Orthodox do not articulate Mary's sinlessness the way that a Catholic would, but they certainly wouldn't teach that she was a sinner. And so that's what I would say to that. Anyway, so thank you so much for sending in your questions. And now, as I promised, I'm going to sit down with Dr. Hahn and ask him his advice about conversion. Pregnancy can arrive unexpectedly. For those facing an unplanned pregnancy, fear and uncertainty can feel overwhelming. Past decisions and abortions may carry lingering grief that's hard to navigate alone. And that's where our sponsor Preborn steps in. These clinics offer compassionate support without judgment, providing honest conversations, accurate information, and a safe space to process difficult emotions and explore real options. One of the most powerful tools Preborn provides is ultrasound technology. Seeing a developing baby on screen and hearing a heartbeat can bring clarity in moments of confusion. For many, that simple appointment becomes a turning point transforming fear into hope and uncertainty into confidence. 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Because things traveled from the heart to the head too often, too easily. and so much of my interaction with non-Catholics, with my own wife, with my family members and colleagues was just simply brutal, you know, and I wish now that I'd prayed for them more than I would kind of target them, that sort of thing. You know, another thing too would be spiritual direction. I ended up finding a priest and getting spiritual direction before I entered the church and I wish that I'd done it even sooner because the, uh, the idea of balancing not only the head and the heart, but also my professional life, studying, preparing for a new career, having given up the ministry, my professional as a Presbyterian pastor, you know, and at the same time, focusing on family life as a, as a husband, but also now as a father. Uh, and I look at all of the mistakes and I realize, okay, God's grace made up for all that I lacked. You know, I just wish I didn't lack so much. in terms of spiritual direction. You know, you can't go to confession until you're actually received into the church, you know, and once I, once I was brought into the church, I began going weekly and nobody ever suggested that was too much, too frequent. Another thing too, I would say is that in my marriage, I should have prioritized that more. My wife had a master's degree in pseudonym. I was pursuing my doctorate at the time. And so I wish that I had found a way to really focus more on, as one of my spiritual directors said, focus more on dating rather than debating. She has her master's, you know, but she's a full-time mom, and she's thinking about her own family of origin. She's thinking about our future together, and she would never have dated a Catholic, you know, and now she's married to one. She tells me, and I think she's honest, that in retrospect, as long as she felt free to leverage her Protestantism to kind of prevent me from becoming a Catholic, she would have done it until the cows came home. You know, there would have been no end. And she was not looking into it until, you know, really two years after I became a Catholic. But in that process, another thing I would say is don't confuse yourself with the third person of Holy Trinity, Scott. I really acted as though I was the Holy Spirit and I could invade that space, which Newman describes as the conscience, the sanctuary of the soul, where nobody goes except the Holy Spirit. And I don't think I honored her in the way that I would invade that kind of space, especially when she was tired, when she was needing me to be more attentive of as a husband and a father. Um, and then the last thing I would say is this, um, enter into friendships with anyone who's willing to talk with you, but not in order to win arguments. Um, I really began to act as though all of my Protestant friends were like potential scalps, you know, that I could collect. And it really backfired because I think I burned more bridges that I built for sure. And so, you know, over time you make so many mistakes, you learn from some of them, but not all of them. You know, these are some of the ones that I think I made that I learned from. Archbishop Fulton Sheen famously said, never forget that it is entirely possible to win the argument and lose the soul. Yeah. So it sounds like... Been there, done that. And it's difficult, isn't it? Because when you're so enthusiastic, I mean, for me, I went from agnosticism to Catholicism in the matter of a couple of weeks. Right. I came home from Italy just out of my mind excited. And I really thought this. I thought, okay, I didn't think it was true either. Now I know that it is. So I just have to tell them that and they will understand. I really thought it was that clear. And I think I know I did too. I burnt some bridges. Yeah. I think this distinction needs to be made between deep-seated beliefs and then trivial beliefs. And it's really difficult for any of us to just give up our deep-seated beliefs, especially in a heated conversation. That's a really good point. Because if you talk to Scott in 1976 when I was a freshman in college, and then in 86 when I was a freshman in the Catholic Church, the disparity would be so great that you'd almost think that I abandoned the entire project of faith. Kimberly knew me in the middle section. So we met in 77, we got married in 79. So she knew that I was anchored in the word of God and not any less in becoming a Catholic, but arguably more also in the sovereignty of God as a Presbyterian from the reformed tradition of John Calvin, and yet no less a believer in the sovereignty of God. The change for me really became something of discovering that God is a sovereign father and that he's not arbitrary, that his power and his knowledge are always ordered as a father's should be to raising his sons and daughters, especially the broken ones. The other thing was the notion of the covenant, that I was so firmly convinced that the key to the Bible and the key to God being sovereign was that he keeps the covenant even when we break it. but I still had that subliminal sense that what we mean by covenant is sort of like a sacred contract, that a personal relationship with Christ, you know, he took my sins, so I give him, I receive the gift of his salvation. And then so to upgrade covenant in terms of sacred kinship bonds, not just this is yours, my sin, that is mine, your grace, but I am yours and you are mine. And now I discover, okay, there's a father, there's a whole family, there's a mother, you know. And so the covenant doesn't in any way get diminished. If anything, it's multiplied exponentially. Kimberly saw the before and after. So she knew my commitment to scripture, the commitment to God being sovereign, the Lord of history, the Lord of my life. And then also that he keeps covenant even when I fail to. You know, I think in retrospect, she admitted that the sense of continuity ended up looking more than the discontinuity. There is a quote attributed to St. Francis erroneously, preach the gospel at all times and when necessary use words. All right. So you take the fact that that is not an actual quote of his and you couple that with this reluctance to evangelize. Right. We tend to be suspicious of that advice, but I think the advice is still good. I do too. I think it's a really important point that actions speak louder than words. And so if you're always talking about the faith, but you're not living it in any conspicuous way, you could be undermining it. You could make faith and conversion harder for the other people. At the same time, I would say Protestants need to rediscover the corporal and the spiritual works of mercy, but Catholics also need to discover how to find their voice, you know, whether it's just the minimal core gospel, what we call the four spiritual laws. Let people know that God loves you, but like me, you've fallen short, you've sinned. But like me, Christ died for you, you know, and so you can choose what to do with that and enter into a personal relationship. I mean, that's more than an elevator pitch. That really is the core and it never ceases to be, you know, so preach the gospel at all times. when necessary, use words, to me, ends up becoming a lame excuse for some people. We wouldn't fall for it if we said, feed the hungry at all times and when necessary, use food. You don't want to shove it down their throat. But on the other hand, you don't want to just pretend that my life is just so authentic. All you need to do is just study me and you should be on the verge of conversion. Give me a break. Wow. Wow. Well put. Now, I was chatting with a fellow recently who said, what advice would you have for me as I'm discerning Catholicism? And one of the things I said to him was pray say to our blessed Lord if you don want me to be a Catholic please slam the door I don want to offend you I want to go where you want me to go I wonder what advice you may have given him especially those who are very afraid of offending the Lord I've met Protestants who, for example, have an attraction to the Holy Rosary, but they don't want to pray it. I think this was your story because they didn't want to offend our blessed Lord. What advice do you give to someone like that? Well, I mean, it's where a relationship of commitment can easily slip into a relationship of convenience, where you're my Lord, and I say it, and I mean it for the most part. But when the going gets rough, and your Lordship and the authority of Scripture seems to be pointing me in a direction I do not want to go, that's a reminder of where I was when I was a troubled teenager at 13 and a half, ensconced in the Allegheny County Juvenile court system in Pittsburgh, you know, for a long list of felonies I won't get into for my parents' memory. But I would say the key is to recognize that conversion is not reducible to what we were taught. That is that one time event when I said to Jesus, I know I'm a sinner, you died for my sin, you rose and you offer me this grace, this gift, forgiveness and salvation. I want that. You know, I ask you to come into my heart as my Savior and Lord. I did that as a very early teen, and it made all the difference in the world. And I was assured, you're saved. Once saved, always saved, you know. And so I did some backsliding, you know, because once saved, always saved gives you a false sense of, you know, of assurance, a false sense of safety. And then I began to wise up as I saw other people really falling away in a way that was severe, denying the faith, you know, kind of not just turning their backs on it. But then I discovered that my relationship to Christ as Lord had almost become exclusively my Savior, but not my Lord. And so I was living a spiritual life on his terms and mine, and it was a kind of compromise. It was a relationship of convenience. And so even before I became a Catholic, I was in seminary, and Kimberly was in a graduate seminar, Christian ethics, and she decided to be in a small group focusing on contraception of all things, which was a non-starter. It was not an issue for us as evangelical Protestants until it became one for her. And my classmates were telling me, you know, you better talk to her about this because she's got some convincing arguments stronger than we expected, you know. And given the subject matter, I realized we better talk. And when we did, I was challenged. But it wasn't just, you know, Genesis 38. It wasn't just the fact that all of the Protestant founders agreed with the Catholic Church entirely. It was really a sense that I was living my own marriage and timing and spacing on our terms. And so she expressed to me that this is surrendering to the Lordship of Christ for her, and obviously for her as a potential mom, more drastically than for me. And so allowing myself to recognize the Catholic church got it right for once on one area that's not unimportant. I don't think it ever gave me a conscious sense that what else are they right about, you know, but submitting to the Lordship of Jesus Christ for her and then for me and then for us, you know, and then be becoming parents. You know, I think the idea of conversion to get back around to the first point for us as Catholics, it's ongoing. It's not one and done. You know, conversion is lifelong, but it also has to be sort of ongoing and daily, or at least, you know, weekly or however often you can get to confession, you know, or you get to mass and you've got to prepare for that. And I think that's one of the greatest contributions of the Catholic Church to the spiritual life. Even if you're never going to become a Catholic, when you recognize that conversion is something that I've got to do because taking up my cross every day is an imperative, but it never gets easy or never starts to feel like fun. What advice specifically to those who are afraid they're offending the Lord? So in this instance, we're talking about Protestant Christians who are open to Catholicism being true, but really don't want to offend their Lord. And I know you've used this example before of praying the Holy Rosary. What kind of practical pastoral advice would you give to those watching who are in that position? Yeah, I mean, it's going to depend, obviously. One size doesn't fit all, and it's one year at a time, one person at a time in our relationship with our Lord. But I would say I reached the point where the Catholic Church was right not just nine out of 10 times. It was feeling more like 90 out of 100. And the last 10 had to do with Marian doctrine and Marian devotion, and how can they be right about so many things? how can Jesus, did he mean what he said on this rock? I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. And you've got these Marian devotions that were so for me problematic. I just felt like taking it from the head to the heart would mean taking a rosary and saying, okay, Lord, if this Mary is the gift of your own mother to us, and she was there at the foot of your cross. And I want to give her something that I've struggled with as an adolescent man, and even as a young adult, and even as a husband and a father. I want to give to her my own struggle for chastity, fidelity, and purity, and ask her to do what nobody else, nothing has helped me really with. And I prayed the rosary, apologizing in advance if it offended God, but saying your Lordship is so challenging now in my life. I'm going to do this. And it felt more like a divine dare than daring to offend the deity. And so I didn't think about it again after I was done. I think weeks passed, maybe months. And when I came across the rosary, I realized what I had prayed and the period of time that had elapsed and the degree of freedom that I had felt not since my pre-adolescent days. And so I just picked it up and I'm like, I'm sorry, what an ingrate, so unaware, so ungrateful. And I said, I'm going to, I'm going to pray this every day from now on, if I can, if I'm deathly ill or whatever, you know, and then that's where the Lord is never outdone in generosity. If you're doing something and you really fear that you're offending him, I would hold off. But if you're doing something that you haven't done because you're afraid to. Recognize the difference and just say, help me overcome my fear. Help me trust you. Help me entrust something about my life to you and maybe to her that I never have. I want to say a big thanks to our sponsor, Hallow, which is the greatest prayer and meditation app in existence. If you don't have it, you should, especially because Lent is here now. Lent is one of the most important times of the year. And Hallo has a Pray 40 Challenge this Lent that all are invited and encouraged to join. Hallo's Pray 40 Challenge is guided by lots of amazing people that you and I know, Jonathan Rumi, Sister Miriam James Heidland, Father Mike Schmitz, Jeff Cavins, Chris Pratt, and so on. Hallo is literally thousands of prayers, meditations, and music to help you create daily habits of prayer, especially during Lent. You know, we started using Hello years ago and we have never deleted it from our phone. We use it all the time. Deepen your personal relationship with God today. Visit hello.com slash Matt Fradd to get three months free. Excellent. Now, what about to the atheist or agnostic who's taking another look at Christianity? I'm of the opinion that Pascal's wager when properly understood, and it often isn't, is really helpful in this regard. But what advice do you have to the agnostic or atheist viewer who's open to Christianity being true, but maybe for the last several months, several years, they've kept God up on the chalkboard, as it were, weighing the pros and cons, not knowing how to make the next decision, the next step? Yeah. You know, I had a college friend way back in the 70s who had transferred from a fundamentalist college, and I watched him become an atheist in one semester and not a gentle atheist, but really militant, combative. You know, we stayed friends, but nothing worked, you know, in terms of the five ways of Aquinas that I felt were so compelling. But it wasn't until nearly his, the end of his junior year, becoming a senior, it was Pascal's wager that just struck a chord, an existential chord in him. You know, I'm reacting against stuff that really are things that are repugnant about fundamentalism that he, but I'm throwing everything out, you know? And so what have I to gain by completely denying God? What have I to lose, you know? And I would say Pascal's wager is a really good thing, not just for atheists who are ex-fundamentalists, but for atheists, for agnostics, for anybody, you know? Because when Pope Benedict was writing as Cardinal Ratzinger, he indicated that it really comes down to two options. Option one is, is the world really subject to chance, random processes, and conflict, and a conflict of wills, people seeking pleasure and power? You know, is that all it is? Or is there a love that is lurking with its own logic that explains more than conflict? And what you have to recognize is it isn't a choice that's reducible to the intellect surrendering to greater or lesser evidence. It really is looking at the world and deciding. There are good arguments to say it really is a Faustian pact, that it really is about a will to power, like Nietzsche would say. But on the other hand, there really is a logic to divine love because it demands of me more than I want to give, but it also bestows upon us more than we could ever imagine. And so in the scales of my own interior, my own interior scales, I felt, and I still feel that Ratzinger was suggesting something that would have hit me sooner. Because when I was 13, I was an atheist for almost a year. But it was just to justify my lifestyle, because if I was a believer, I couldn't possibly do the things that I was doing and live with myself. And so accepting a kind of deeper logic of love, to me, is another way of approaching Pascal's Wager and approaching atheists and agnostics. I want to wrap up by suggesting a couple of books that people might pick up if they're on this journey. I'll offer a couple, and then I'd love to hear your advice. If you are agnostic or atheist, I co-wrote a book with a professor named Dr. Robert Delfino called Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas. For those who believe in God but aren't yet sure of Christianity, what would you say? Yeah, I would say Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheet is one of my favorites. Another one that I've found helpful to many people is one that I wrote a few years back called Reasons to Believe and how to explain and defend the Catholic faith. I've just heard from so many people who were not Protestants becoming Catholics, but either non-religious or just sort of vague, you know, who've been helped by that. I don't mean to kind of feather my own nest, but that was what came to mind. Yeah. And then finally, for those who are Protestant looking to Catholicism, I would suggest Trent Horn's book, Why Wear Catholic? It's excellent. And then also your excellent book, Rome, Sweet Home, which was written by, well, you can say it. Yeah, I mean, Scott and Kimberly. Yeah. I mean, she's my co-author, but she really was the one who initiated the whole project and saw through to the end. And it's not a series of arguments. It's just telling our story. And in some ways, I find that proves to be far less threatening, more inviting than coming up with some really winsome arguments that are out to convince and convert people. I also think there's something to be said about removing yourself from the things you're consuming. So here we are giving more things to consume, as it were. But I think sometimes you just need a break from consumption. And so what does your screen time look like on any given day? Are you just sort of gorging yourself with online debates and TikTok reels or what have you? If you're really discerning, step back from that noise, from that distraction, devote more time to prayer. And then there's something about a book that you're never going to get from the phone. It's more contemplative. I think it respects our humanity in the way that the phone often doesn't. So that would be my final piece of advice. That's a great point. You know, I think how unmediated social media is, it's almost overly direct, you know, in terms of the comment boxes and that kind of thing. Whereas a book mediates a person's experience in a way that gives you more space, more freedom, you know, and more honesty, I think. The way I look at it is you act on the book, but the phone acts on you. And so I think we're a lot more free when we... One last thing, and that is the book. I would say the scriptures and especially the gospels. Very good. You know, go back and renew the encounter that you have with the Lord Jesus so that it's not just Christology. It's not just subject matter. It's not just theological or doctrinal truth. It really is something that enriches and deepens a bond that is meant forever. Dr. Han, thank you very much. Oh, Matt, you're welcome. Well, God bless you. Thank you so much for being here. Do me a favor. If you are a convert or if you're in the process of converting, I would love to read your stories below. And it would be kind of cool if you had encouragement for those in the comment section right now who were looking to convert. You could really help them. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for being here. God bless you. If you have not yet subscribed to the channel, I'd really appreciate it. Click subscribe, click the bell button, and I'll see you next time.