Welcome back to Shemus Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and you all voted overwhelmingly for me to do a debate review of Sean Luke

on the question of whether the alleged Marian apparitions in Fatima were really Mary, or whether, as Sean Luke claims, was really a demon.

Now, this is not going to be a full blow-by-blow of their whole three-hour debate.

I'm going to actually sit down with Ethan for a fuller

conversation tonight on Cameron Bertuzzi's new channel capturing Catholicism, so you can check that

out. But if you don't have a chance to watch the whole debate, I hope you'll at least watch the

opening statements between those two gentlemen, because I think this debate will be incredibly

helpful for anybody who may be honestly, open-mindedly trying to find a biblically grounded answer

to the question of whether or not Fatima is a real miracle and how to judge alleged miraculous claims

more broadly. And I don't think it was particularly a close debate. And I'm not just saying that as a

Catholic, one of the top comments says, Protestant and fan of Sean's here,

Ethan crushed it. I have a lot to think about. Prayers appreciated. So how did this happen?

How did a debate actually give someone food for thought, something to think about,

rather than leaving both sides simply crowing about how right they are? Well, as we're going to

see, Ethan's opening statement is an

absolute masterclass in number one, explaining why we should believe Fatima is an authentic miracle,

but also number two, giving objective, biblically grounded standards by which we judge

alleged miracles. And number three, showing why the objections to Fatima, the people like

Sean Luke raised, are the same exact objections

raised against Jesus and Christianity more broadly by the Pharisees. But we'll get into all of that

in just a moment. First, I want to give a few words of praise for both debaters, as well as for

Cameron who moderated. It was honestly refreshing just to see a debate that wasn't the same

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