(LifeSiteNews) – The host of the Christian apologetics YouTube channel “Capturing Christianity,” which currently sits at 156,000 subscribers, recently announced his conversion to the Catholic faith from Protestantism.
Capturing Christianity host Cameron Bertuzzi explained that he investigated the arguments for the papacy and was eventually convinced by them that Catholicism is true.
Bertuzzi announced his conversion in a video on his YouTube channel on November 17, 2022.
“On September 20th, 2022, I decided to become Catholic,” Bertuzzi said. “I’m currently in an RCIA program and will be confirmed this coming Easter.”
“This decision came at the tail-end of a deep study for and against the papacy,” Bertuzzi continued. “As a Protestant, I went into this study with an open mind. Ultimately, I told myself, that I would follow the evidence wherever it leads, even if that conclusion is uncomfortable for me or for my family.”
“What I found is that the evidence strongly suggests that the papacy is true.”
After hearing about the news, Matt Fradd, host of the YouTube channel Pints with Aquinas, paid for Bertuzzi’s flight to Rome to interview him and talk about his conversion story.
The interview took place on November 18 at a terrace in Rome, with St. Peter’s Basilica in the background.
Bertuzzi provided a detailed account of his conversion process. He said that once he became less convinced about his initial objections to the Catholic faith, the Christian YouTuber called his Protestant friends to ask them for advice.
“I didn’t call my Catholic friends, I called my Protestant friends because at that point I wanted to remain Protestant,” Bertuzzi told Fradd. “And their advice was: ‘Bro, you’ve got to look at the papacy.’”
“When you look at the papacy, first of all, it’s a distinctive doctrine, so if the papacy is true, pretty much Catholicism is true. But if it’s false, Catholicism is false so it’s a very distinctive doctrine,” Bertuzzi stated.
Bertuzzi laid out his very analytical approach to the arguments for and against the papacy. He created a spreadsheet where he entered all the arguments he could find and then used a statistical Bayesian analysis to calculate the probability of the claim that the papacy is true.
In his analysis, the Christian YouTuber focused on the so-called “typological Eliakim argument,” which draws an analogy between the office of the first Pope St. Peter, and the office of Eliakim, governor of the palace for King Hezekiah in the Old Testament.
“There is a textual allusion between Mathew 16,19 and Isaiah 22,22,” Bertuzzi explained. “So, the argument goes that Peter, who is mentioned in Matthew 16,19 is the fulfillment of Eliakim. So, he is the new Eliakim.”
“I was not convinced about this argument for a while, but what I saw was that if this argument is true […] it is so unlikely that Protestantism or Orthodoxy is true.”
Bertuzzi said that he had paused the process of his investigation into the argument for a while, because he needed to reflect on how following the evidence and becoming Catholic would change his life.
“How would this change me, my ministry, my relationship with my wife?” Bertuzzi asked himself. “And so I had to really think about that.”
“I wanted to be very sure about this because I realized how it was going to affect my family.”
The Christian YouTuber eventually investigated the typological Eliakim argument for the Papacy further and watched the four-hour video of Catholic apologist Suan Sonna laying out the argument in great detail.
After watching Sonna’s video, Bertuzzi became convinced that it is a “good argument.”
“When I updated the Bayesian analysis, I think it took me up to like 0.95 [meaning a 95% probability that the papacy is true].”
The next day, Bertuzzi said to himself: “I just need to do it. I need to follow the evidence. I need to be consistent with where I’m at in my ‘seemings,’ what seems to me to be the case. I need to be consistent with that. And it was not easy, it’s been very difficult.”
When addressing the fact that he might lose subscribers and donors as a result of his decision to convert to Catholicism, Bertuzzi said that he appreciates every supporter but that he understands if people feel like they cannot support him anymore because of his beliefs.
“People need to support ministries that they really believe in, and so if you feel that way about Capturing Christianity, you can’t support it anymore. I think that’s the right move to make,” Bertuzzi stated.
At the end of the interview, Fradd offered to pray a Hail Mary with Bertuzzi, who had never recited the prayer before.
“Do you know the Hail Mary?” Fradd asked.
“No, I don’t. I know the first line of it,” Bertuzzi replied.
The interview concluded with them praying the Hail Mary and Bertuzzi receiving a blessing from a priest.
Bertuzzi said that Capturing Christianity will remain a channel for defending “Mere Christianity,” which means presenting philosophical, historical, and other arguments for the existence of God and the resurrection, as well as hosting debates between Atheists or Agnostics and Christians. He said that he intends to talk about his Catholic faith in interviews on other channels.
You can find Bertuzzi’s Channel Capturing Christianity here and support his ministry here.