Gerry Matatics

Gerry Matatics is a Roman Catholic Sedevacantist apologist for what he calls "consistent Catholicism" as opposed to "counterfeit [mainstream] Catholicism". Prior to his conversion to Catholicism, he was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). He used to work for the influential apologist Karl Keating as part of his Catholic Answers apologist team.

Matatics graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He earned his B.A. from the University of New Hampshire, where he majored in Classical, New Testament, and Patristic Greek, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude. He received a M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Matatics studied for a Ph.D. in Biblical Interpretation from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia but never completed his dissertation, and he has taken graduate courses in Sacred Scripture at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary.

While a Protestant, Matatics spent three years researching Catholicism in an attempt to PReVENT his friend, former seminary classmate, and fellow Presbyterian minister Scott Hahn (who wrote a popular book named Rome sweet Home and mentioned Gerry in it) from embracing it. Convinced by his studies that Catholicism is the only legitimate form of Christianity, Matatics converted, becoming the first PCA minister to convert to Catholicism.

While he originally recognized the post-conciliar popes (John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI), he eventually came to the conclusion that they had lost their papal authority by virtue of being (as sedevacantist Catholics see them) "manifest heretics." Matatics rejects as "counterfeit Catholicism" the doctrinal and liturgical changes in the Church as promulgated by Vatican II.

Gerry is Founder, President and the only member of Biblical Foundations International, an apostolate that attempts to demonstrate to both Catholics and non-Catholics the scriptural case for Catholicism and criticizes the post-Vatican II Church. He has lectured throughout the US as well as in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Monaco, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

In recent years he has undertaken a nationwide speaking tour. Originally he said he would revisit all the cities in which he had earlier spoken and would do so over a three-year period. That now has been stretched to seven years.

Matatics claims to have taught as a professor in Westminster Theological Seminary, St. Joseph's University, the University of San Diego, the Notre Dame Pontifical Catechetical Institute, Aquinas College, and Christendom College, and served for three years as Professor of Sacred Scripture and Apologetics at Our Lady of Guadalupe International Seminary of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in Scranton, Pennsylvania, before becoming fully traditional in his Catholic Faith.

(This is not an accurate claim. For example, he never was a professor at the University of San Diego and never was listed by that institution among its faculty, but for a few weeks in 1990 he acted as a substitute lecturer of a class whose professor had died.)

Gerry and his wife Leslie homeschool their 9 children, ages 25 to 5.

Criticism

  • Most Holy Family Monastery accuses him of habitually lying to cater to people's opinions.