T. A. McMahon & Greg Durel (Part 2)

Program Description:

“Do Catholics Believe That Mary Is Equal to Jesus?”

Transcript:

Gary: Welcome to Search the Scriptures 24/7, a radio ministry of The Berean Call, featuring T.A. McMahon. I’m Gary Carmichael. Thanks for joining us.

In today’s program, Tom continues his discussion on the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church with Greg Durel, pastor of Heritage Bible Church in Gretna, Louisiana. Now, along with his guest, here’s TBC executive director, Tom McMahon.

Tom: Thanks, Gary. Right now we’re interviewing Greg Durel. He’s the pastor at Heritage Bible Church at Gretna, Louisiana. He has a radio—weekly radio ministry, which is devoted to educating Catholics in biblical doctrine.

Greg, we’ve been dealing with dogmas, issues, thoughts, on the basis of what Catholics think. Does it conform, well, first of all to their own church—how does it compare with what the Bible teaches? And, Greg, last week we mentioned the fact that many Catholics don’t believe many of the dogmas of the Catholic Church. Now, how does that work out?

Greg: Well, you know, as we were talking about, Tom, it’s blatant, because if you interview, if you get in discussion with the average Catholic—or try it with a friend or co-worker—just ask them, you know, the Church teaches…for example, the Church teaches that you must be baptized in water if you’re ever going to have a shot to go to heaven. Ask someone if they believe that. And if they believe that, say, “Why is that so? How can that be? How can water—how can physical water wash away something spiritual? How can that occur?”

And you’ll find they say, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t really care about that. I just, you know, I just know what I believe.”

So then, the assumption is, well, they don’t even have a concept of what they believe. They’ll just respond positively to something the Church teaches, or if you ask them, “Do you believe the priest, when he consecrates the bread and the wine during the Mass, do you believe that that that bread and the wine literally—not symbolically, not spiritually, but literally—turn into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Tom: Under the appearances of bread and wine.

Greg: Yeah, yeah. And they’ll say, “Oh, well, no, I don’t believe that.” Now, again, you say, “Wait a minute! There’s been Church Councils, which are viewed as infallible. There’s been Papal decrees, which are viewed as infallible, which declare that your denial of what they determine to be that divine truth—your denial of that means you’ll spend eternity in hell. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Tom: Let me back you up with a quote. This is from Vatican II, again, an infallible Council, which all the Councils of the Churches are—they have to be accepted just as “Thus saith the Lord.” So, this is from Vatican II, lumen gentium. It says, “The bishops, when assembled in an ecumenical council, they are, for the universal church [this would not just include Catholics but…because they believe they’re the head of all Christianity]…

Greg: Right.

Tom: “…teachers of and judges, in matters of faith and morals, whose decisions must be adhered to with the loyal and obedient ascent of faith.” It goes on: “When the Roman Pontiff, or the Body of Bishops, together with him, define a doctrine, they make the definition in conformity with revelation itself, to which all are bound to adhere, and to which they are obliged [or obligated] to submit.” And, as you said, Greg, not to submit is a mortal sin.

Greg: Right. Right.

Tom: So, this business of picking and choosing, in the mind of the Church—now, we know, based on our understanding of Scripture, that many of their dogmas if not all of them just don’t conform to Scripture. So that’s not the issue. But it is an issue for a Roman Catholic who says, “I don’t buy this; I don’t buy that.” They may not buy what we believe, and what we’re saying from the Scriptures, but they don’t even believe what their own Church teaches.

Greg: And that’s the ironic part. Just recently, I went…attended a funeral of a childhood friend. And we grew up together and parted ways. At adulthood, he went his way, I went my way, you know—marriage, business, etc., you know. And anyway, through the course of growing I got into the pastorate, etc. I heard tell that he became a very devout Roman Catholic—even opened up a religious bookstore focusing on Medjugorje, and having all sorts of things from Medjugorje, and all sorts of things about it—sort of like a Marian bookstore kind of thing.

Tom: Explain briefly “Medjugorje” for our audience.

Greg: Medjugorje’s a place in formerly Yugoslavia. And in the early ‘80s, around ’82, something like that (I could be off a year or two because my memory’s not what it used to be), but it’s believed that Mary started appearing to three young children in Medjugorje, and speaking to them, and giving them directives for the Church, etc.

Now, this went on for, I want to dare say over ten years before any formal investigation or anything came to pass. And what occurred was that the Vatican, under John Paul II, impaneled 20 bishops to investigate the appearances—or the reported appearances—of Mary in Medjugorje. So this panel of 20 bishops spent four years investigating all this apparition in Medjugorje. Their conclusion was 19 to1 abstention that there was nothing supernatural occurring, and Mary was not appearing. As a matter of fact, on a national Catholic periodical, the front page of it was, “Mary Up in Smoke.”

Now, knowing that, this friend of mine has this store, and he’s promoting Medjugorje. So, again, the Church authoritatively under John Paul II, who probably without any argument, was the most prolific and the most famous pope of all time, John Paul II, under his auspices, said nothing was occurring in Medjugorje.

But yet individuals still believe. As a matter of fact, we still have people from New Orleans that still travel there today because they believe things are happening there.

And so, what you have is you have this…it’s not a mental thing, it’s a spiritual thing, but it’s not of God, obviously. It’s misdirected. And the source of this is “self.” In other words, I, then, can determine what I want to be true. So I don’t care what the Church says; I want to believe this. So, then… and I started out by saying I went to attend his funeral, and at his funeral, he was purported to be a good Catholic, and the priest was saying he was in heaven. But he’d had two divorces and presently living with a woman. Now under the Catholic Church, then, he was living in sin, if the second marriage didn’t get the annulment like the first marriage, then he was living in sin as well, again.

So you say, “Well, wait a minute. How can he be in heaven…how did he bypass Purgatory?” And I’ve been to a lot of funerals. I’ve never been to a Catholic funeral, Tom—maybe you have—where the priest said, “We need to pray for so and so because he’s in hell because he rejected the truth of the Church,” or “He’s in Purgatory….” or “she’s in Purgatory.” All the funerals I go to, the people who are dead—they’re up in heaven looking down with the angels…

Tom: Yeah.

Greg: So again, it’s subjective.

Tom: Right.

Greg: And the Church makes no argument about it as long as you’re not anti-Church, and you’re compliant, to a degree, and you call yourself a Catholic, or whatever, you’ll get no argument from the Church at all, because they want to keep the herd together.

Tom: On the other hand, how many of those people attending the funeral filled out Mass cards, which…

Greg: Oh! No question!

Tom: …not a bad moneymaker for the Church. And I’ve seen and heard of so many widows whose savings had just been drained by the Church.

Greg: Yeah.

Tom: And then when they ask, “Well, Father, how much more? And how long?” And the response usually is, “Only God knows, my sister, only God knows.”

Greg: You know, or you could get a—what I like to call a “Get out of jail free” card. As a matter of fact, this same friend of mine, in talking to a family member, you know, I was kind of…a funeral’s not the place to bring up lifestyles of the, you know, departed. But I was kind of intimating that he had it rough, etc., and what was told to me: “Oh, yes, but he died at the hour of divine mercy.”

And I said, “I beg your pardon?”
“Yes, he died exactly at 3 AM in the hospital, and that’s the hour of divine mercy.

I said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

He said, “Well, Saint So-and-so appeared to somebody and told them that 3 AM is the hour of divine mercy, so anyone who dies at 3 AM automatically goes to heaven.

Tom: Obviously, that’s not official Catholic teaching…

Greg: That’s the point! That’s the point though! But does it have to be official?

Tom: No…

Greg: It’s almost like cartoons. One of my favorite cartoons was the Roadrunner. You know, in the Roadrunner, Wile E. Coyote is going after him, and he’s setting a trap for him, and he’s going to blow the Roadrunner up, and the Roadrunner, you know, does his little thing, gets behind the coyote, and the coyote blows up. Now, the very next scene, he’s back to normal, and he’s chasing him again. Why? Because it was just make-believe. You don’t really die. You don’t really get blown up. It’s make-believe. It’s whatever you want it to be.

Tom: Yeah.

Greg: So then, my religion can be whatever I want it to be. It doesn’t make any difference if the pope says a certain thing. As long as I’m doing my thing, that’s okay.

Tom: Yeah, although the Church would say, “No, it’s not okay…”

Greg: Absolutely! Yeah!

Tom: “You are moving in the range of mortal sin, which will separate you from God forever.”

Greg: Or the Church would say, “You’re anathema.” And that’s exactly right. You’re going to hell when you die.

Tom: Right. Now, Greg, I want to go back to apparitions, because, you see, on the one hand the Church more than discounts—rejects Medjugorje. On the other hand, growing up, did you ever wear a Miraculous Medal?

Greg: Yeah.

Tom: Okay, now for some of our listeners who don’t know what that is, this is a medal that, well, let’s go back to Catherine Labouré, I think it was 1830. Supposedly an apparition of Mary appeared to this—I think she was a nun—and said, “I want you to have a medal struck in my honor, and on the medal…” And she described—the apparition described what it would look like and what it would say, and it says, “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us.”

Now, somebody would say, “Okay, it’s a medal.” Wait a minute! This had become, through an apparition, a major dogma, a major teaching —you know, the teachings in the Catholic Church, yeah, there’re some ideas that the nuns made up, and so on, but there are what’s called “de fide” teachings, which a Catholic is obligated, under the penalty of mortal sin, to believe.

Greg: Right.

Tom: Am I right?

Greg: Right.

Tom: Now, so, what’s the deal with this medal? Well, folks, listen to what it said: “O Mary, conceived without sin.” This is called the Immaculate Conception, and a lot of non-Catholics think, “Oh, that was Jesus and a virgin birth.”

No! It has nothing to do with Jesus, at least directly, but it says that Mary’s birth—that she was born sinless, okay?

Greg: Right.

Tom: Without arguing—or just showing how ludicrous that is, wait a minute! If she was born sinless, what about her mother and her father? What was their state? Now, here’s the problem. We have a doctrine called the Immaculate Conception, a dogma, and it says Mary is sinless. Well, doesn’t the scripture say, “The wages of sin is death?”

Greg: Right.

Tom: Well, wait a minute. Mary can’t die because, according to the Catholic Church, because she’s sinless.

Greg: Right.

Tom: Now, we’ve got a problem. So, where is Mary? Is she still running around today, and so on? Well, the Church recognized this—I think it was in the ‘50s—and they had to come up with another doctrine, another dogma, trying to deal with Mary. It’s called the ….what?

Greg: The Ascension.

Tom: Exactly. And the Church readily admits there is no biblical basis for this, but they had to cover their backside with another dogma. So, what’s my point in all this? Yes, there are things that Catholics make up, that the nuns taught us, that maybe the priests taught us, just some of the things that you articulated, Greg.

On the other hand, the Church itself, making up these dogmas, have to cover their own backside to make this thing fit. So you have man making up teachings and dogmas and doctrines and so on, which are just outright false.

Greg: Well, you know, it’d be one thing if they’re creating dogmas and teachings that deal with generic things or daily life, etc. But when you’re talking about declaring Mary to be born sinless and to ascend on high, etc., and then what they’ve done with the whole—the idea of a communion of saints, being a group, an embodiment of individuals that they say are distinct from everyone else, you know, “reach sainthood,” if you will, then you’re entering something completely new.

And when you contemplate, and you think what they’re saying, they’re saying, “Listen, Mary was born sinless, Mary—just like Jesus. Mary didn’t die; she ascended on high—just like Jesus. Now, Mary is in heaven, just like Jesus, and you can pray to Mary, and Mary can hear you. And then Mary can respond. Or you can pray to St. Anthony if you can’t find your keys or something is lost, and St. Anthony can help you find your keys, etc.”

What they have done, they’ve given attributes that God says belong to Him and Him alone. These are divine attributes. Divine attributes that God says are His. Now, the Church now claims that Mary is in heaven, and just like God, she can hear a prayer. She doesn’t even have to have it specifically enunciated—you don’t have to communicate the intent of your heart. You can recite a “Hail Mary,” and she’ll know the intent behind it because she’s all-knowing. And then she can respond to that because she is all-powerful, etc.

So what the Church has done is created another deity. And then, if St. Anthony can find your keys when they’re lost and direct you to them, well, then he’s another deity. So then you have the plurality of gods. So then, is not Roman Catholic, then, polytheistic, which is the greatest commonality in pagan religions. They’re polytheistic. They have a plethora of gods and deities of which some are higher, some are lower, etc. The same system that Rome has invented.

We have bumper stickers riding around New Orleans: “If you can’t find Jesus, look for His Mother.” And people, they don’t think that’s funny. They actually believe that. And you could just ask Mary, and Mary will do it for you, because Mary has power. And Mary’s the Queen of Heaven, and now she’s even the Queen of the Universe. She’s the mother of all saved, the mother of creation, etc., etc.

Now, what do you do with that? Well, as a believer, you’re incensed by that. You say that’s blasphemous! That’s grossly unbiblical! But to the poor Catholic that has not read the scripture, their intention is not to blaspheme; their intention is not to do anything wrong. Their intention is to please God and because they have now been taught that God respects the individual and God wants you to pray to His mother, and God wants you to do these things, and as a result, then God’s mother will respond, or God’s other children who are saints will help you, etc.

They think they’re doing good things.

Tom: Yeah, Greg, let me underscore this with some…Vatican… this is Vatican II. We mentioned last week, we were talking about Purgatory, and how Christ is our Purgatory. He purged all of our sins, and if He didn’t do it, then it’s not going to happen. We’re separated from God forever.

But as you’ve been talking, this is from Vatican II. It says, “Canonized Catholic saints also contribute to expiating sins of others. They [that is, the saints] have carried their crosses to make expiation for their own sins and the sins of others. They were convinced that they could help their brothers to obtain salvation from God, who is the Father of mercies.”

It goes on: “Indeed, the prayers and good works of holy people were regarded as of such great value that it could be asserted that the penitent was washed, cleansed, and redeemed with the help of the entire Christian people.”

So, obviously, Christ didn’t pay it all, couldn’t pay it all, but, as you said, we have these little gods who have attributes not only to see what’s going on and to find your golf ball—you can find your golf ball praying to St. Anthony, and so on—but worse than that…I mean worse in the sense of how tragic it is, they are helping to expiate sin.

Greg: Well, and then, what’s the whole purpose of the Cross then? What’s the purpose of Christ? If we could satisfy one sin, one sin, obviously, then, there would have been something to communicate that to believers from the Garden forward. You know, “Hey, Adam, listen, while you can’t redeem yourself completely, but you can work on modifying your sin balance by making small payments, incremental as you go along.” But that’s just not the case. Man is incapable. We have nothing to offer. Nothing to offer! To suggest to someone that by me kneeling on some rice and staring at a statue of Mary and saying 50 Hail Marys in some way, shape, or form is going to pay for sin is absurd, number one. But number two, secondly, why would I want to attempt to pay for something if it’s already been paid for? And that’s where we originally started…if Christ is the satisfaction of the sins of the world—if He is the Messiah, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the entire world…and Paul tells the church at Corinth, that, he says, “To wit, that God was in Christ, not imputing their trespasses unto them, that is, the world.”

So is God is no longer imputing sin because the Lord Jesus took it away, and the psalmist says He took it an infinite distance: “As far as the East is from the West,” if that’s the case, and He doesn’t remember the sin any more, then why would I think for a minute that I need to, firstly, but secondly, why would I think that I could pay for one? It makes no sense.

Now, obviously, the enemy cannot have people believing the gospel, because it’s a joyous thing. The work is finished. I can enter into the rest of God and cease from my human achievement. I can cease from my works. I can put an end to what Paul called “dead works.” They’re dead works because they can never produce life.

Tom: Right. Now, you know, Greg, just let me interject this. You see, after I became a believer, I thought it may be because of all the rituals, all the liturgies, all of the ceremonies, all of that within the Catholic Church, maybe they have the gospel, but it kind of got confused, or diluted, somehow, with all of that. Then I read from The Council of Trent. We said earlier that the Church claims to be an infallible church, and its councils are infallible. In other words, they can’t make any mistakes. If they did, guess what?

Greg: They lied.

Tom: It all goes down the tubes. There’s no basis for it. However, the Council of Trent, sixth session, Canon 9: “If anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, let him be anathema.”

Anathema means “condemned,” “excommunicated,” whatever you want to say. It’s a really bad deal. So there it is. They know the gospel, and they reject the gospel. I’m talking about the Magisterium of the Church—the bishops, the pope, the Church itself rejects “by faith alone,” and it’s the…Greg, that was a hard thing for me. That was the most difficult thing for me to believe, to come to, because of my Catholic background, my Catholic thinking. But on the other hand, it’s the only way anybody can possibly be saved.

Greg: Well, you know, let me give a challenge to the listeners. Here’s my challenge: The Gospel of John is the oddball out, where gospels are concerned. You have the three synoptics, same viewpoint. Then you have John. John’s written…John uses purposeful clauses. In John’s gospel, he tells us that he wrote this gospel so that we could be saved. My challenge is this. You read the Gospel of John and then ask yourself, “What does God require of me to possess eternal life?” What does God want of me?

And surely —surely, the Lord Jesus would communicate in the Gospel of John through John, the Lord Jesus would tell us what is necessary for us to do in order to be saved. And I would like an answer. You tell me what does the Gospel of John tell us we need to do to be saved.

Now, if you can’t find the answer, read the Book of Romans, and see if you agree with the Apostle Paul. But lastly, Acts 16, which follows Acts 15, which was the first ecumenical council, Acts:16:30And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved?
See All..., we find the definitive question asked: “What must I do to be saved?” And Acts:16:31And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.
See All... gives us the answer: “You must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.”

Surely the Apostle Paul—the question is being posed by the Philippian jailer contemplating his own death, the Apostle Paul would have responded and said: “Listen, you must believe, you must be baptized in the Church, you must get the Last Rites, you must observe the Sacraments, you must…” you know, etc., etc.

But that’s not even mentioned. Why not? Why wouldn’t it have been mentioned? It would have been the issue. But it’s not mentioned at all. So if you’re truly honest—intellectually honest—and if you’re a devout Catholic, I challenge you, read the Gospel of John, and just ask yourself, “Am I compliant with what the Lord requires of me?”

Read John 3, a very simplistic chapter: Nicodemus comes down, about verse 11 he says, “How can these things be?”

Jesus declared that you must be born again, and if you’re going to receive the Kingdom of God, etc.

Nicodemus said, “How can these things be?”

And then read the following verses and see definitively what the Lord says Nicodemus must do to be saved, to possess (present tense) everlasting life and not come into condemnation.

I think you’ll be amazed if you take the time to read it.

Tom: Greg, we’re out of time now, but thanks so much for joining us, and we’ll pick up on this again, because it’s a huge issue, and my great concern—you’ve seen it, I’ve seen it—this isn’t just for Roman Catholics out there to give them a better explanation of what the Bible says as opposed to what their Church teaches, but this is for evangelicals who have drifted, you know, Hebrews:2:1Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip.
See All... says, “Take heed, lest ye drift away.” Lest you slip away. That’s what we see happening, and we need to keep encouraging one another to get back to the Word of God. Let the Word of God speak to our hearts and minds and live it out.

Greg, again, thanks for being with us.

Greg: Thanks, Tom.