When I started this channel earlier this year, my first goal was to be a strong support for the Catholic YouTubers who are on fire for leading seekers and skeptics to our rather mysterious, yet fantastically rich and fulfilling faith that, as Bishop Robert Barron describes, “offers the fullness of Christ”.
After all, our faith is a journey. It is based on the necessary marriage between faith and reason. It demands that we mirror Christ’s love for us. It leaves plenty of room for us to ask questions about our existence, our purpose, our relationship with God — yet it also gives us Sacred Scripture and Tradition as two crucial pillars upon which we grow our salvation through Jesus Christ.
But what exactly does it mean to have salvation through faith? Why is there such a big divide between Catholic Christians and Protestants about “salvation through faith and works” versus “salvation through faith alone”?
While there are scores of Catholic resources – Fr. Mike Schmitz, Trent Horn, Jimmy Akin, Scott Hahn, Tim Staples, Karlo Broussard, Fr. Mitch Pacwa, Catholic Truth, How to be Christian, just to name a few!) – who have painstakingly explained why Protestant claims such as “salvation through faith alone” and “once saved, always saved” are not quite accurate, this subject is still frustratingly alive and kicking.
Which brings me to the video links below: Recently, Bryan Mercier from Catholic Truth released a video showing Todd Friel, a Protestant / evangelical pastor from a channel called “Wretched”, giving a cringe filled, verbal smackdown of a Catholic gentleman he interviewed on the street one day about salvation through faith versus works. During the exchange, the Catholic Christian refers to James 2:24 – ““You see that a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” – but he also qualifies that it is the only passage in Scripture that specifically equates works with justification.
Apparently – and as you will see in the first recommended video, linked below – Todd Friel unleashes other Scripture passages that refute James 2:24, though the Catholic in the video was NOT suggesting that Salvation does not come from faith, or that Salvation by Grace is not a crucial component of salvation. Instead, he simply points out that there IS a passage in the Bible that refers to works, while he also agrees that salvation by faith is at the core of justification.
Sadly, Friel doesn’t stop there. As Mercier points out, and as I witnessed when watching Friel’s video, Friel verbally throws Thor hammer-like attacks at the Catholic’s response. But it doesn’t stop there either: It’s one thing to refute a comment in a mature, balanced way, while still being direct. It’s another thing to spend the next 10 or so minutes being a massive a-hole while vomiting out condescending word wizardry in a swanky, ultra-modern studio with a bizarre number of TV screens – all proudly branded with a big, snappy looking “W” for “wretched”.
For those of you who have watched my other videos on this channel, I am generally not one to hurl insults – it’s certainly not my goal in life to be a poster child for ad homonym attacks. However, if you watch Friel’s video, I imagine you may be just as disgusted with how Friel seems to relish in being the epitome of arrogant. And, of course, this is a volcano of fuel for all the atheist and spiritual-but-not-religious folks out there who think Christianity is just a platform for self-righteous jerks to trumpet that they are right, and that everyone else is one big step closer to Hell.
In my former, militant atheist life, I would have had a proverbial field day shredding Friel’s video to bits, and further showing why religion is poison and needs to be burned to the ground. However, as hopefully most of you already know, this isn’t about Christianity itself being a problem. Rather, this is about how we as humans communicate; what are the most effective ways to dialogue without turning into, well, a self-righteous jerk. I mean, what did Friel’s video really accomplish? Sure, some of his followers may be cheering, “Way to stick it to those Catholics!” – but, again, what does that accomplish? What does it solve?
All it shows is that the past 500 years of now countless Protestant denominations – splintering from each other again and again – has led to this: a whole lot of Protestants who have made it a mission in life to stomp all over the Catholic Church.
And sure, many fellow Christians in the Protestant camp are wonderfully ecumenical with us Catholics – yet videos like Friel’s often can have a much more sweeping impact on viewers, even if the information in the video is painfully wrong. It’s as Bishop Fulton Sheen once famously said about Catholicism here in the U.S.: “There are not one hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be”.
Thankfully, the recommended videos provided here drive the point home about we Catholics actually believe and do not believe. Hence part of the reason I have started this Recommended Videos series: We Catholics need the right resources and instruction on how to answer our beliefs. We all should be able to give an articulate, yet concise answer on how we understand faith vs. works. For instance — and putting aside St. Paul showing that works in the “Jewish traditions” sense were not the sole path to salvation — we Catholics understand works as **moral obedience**. In other words, if we are constantly immoral – and if we are especially living in a perpetual state of mortal sin – then our salvation through faith is just another empty platitude to post on social media: It’s just an idea without any real value. Bottom line: We are not really *saved* if we never take it seriously.
The video links go into this in much more detail – and I am confident that if you study them carefully, you will be more than ready to defend the truth of our Catholic Christian faith.
Catholic Truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoRlPF6SwQY&t
How to be Christian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U-h-jgggI8&t