2024: The Year Things Began to Turn Around

[00:00:20] As we look back at 2024 things, we see signs of hope for the future. Things didn't work out exactly like we thought in 2024. And I think there's reasons that and there's evidence that there's an awaking awakening among many of us. Hello, Eric. Sam is your host, editor in chief of Crisis Magazine. That's what we're going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Before we get started, just want to encourage people to smash that like button. Subscribe to the channel. Other people know about it. We really appreciate when you do that. Wherever you listen to this podcast or watch it. [00:00:49] Also you can subscribe to our email newsletter. You can just go to crisismagazine.com put your email address and we will send you our articles, a link to them at least each morning, usually two a day. And finally, and this is the last time I think I'm going to do this, we are in the midst of our end of year fundraiser. We don't ask for donations all year round because that gets to be annoying. But we do try to annoy you in the month of December and so we're just asking that you please go to crisismagazine.com you'll be asked to donate and you're not required to, but we really do appreciate if you do. We're getting very close to hitting our end of year goal, which is basically $150,000. I think we're close to 130, 120, something like that. And so we just need a few more donations for the end of the year and then we'll stop annoying you and we can continue what we're doing because we do need your donations to keep going. All our content is free, but it's not free to produce. So we really appreciate if you do that. Finally, for joining us in the live chat today, feel free to put your comments or questions and I'll try to get to some of them at the end. Okay, so it's December 27th, Feast of St. John the Evangelist, 2024. So we're into the year. I think this is gonna be our last podcast of the year. I don't think I'll be able to do one before New Year's Day on Wednesday. I'll probably do one again maybe next Friday and I think so it's a good time to do like an end of year wrap up. But really what I want to do is talk about just in general kind of the attitude and direction. I think, I think I see things going and number One is I think we should take a step back and look at where we were a year ago now. So at the end of 2023, a number of things kind of hit. [00:02:31] First one here in America, at least on November 11, 2023, Bishop Strickland was removed from being the bishop of Tyler, Texas. We all know that was done not for any real reasons of like financial mismanagement like that. It was done because he was speaking out for the truth. And so he was removed in November 11th. So that was a big blow obviously to the church, to Catholics in America. Also fit Ducius supplicants came out. I can't remember the exact date, but in middle of December 2023, which was the document from Cardinal Fernandez basically approving blessing of same sex couples. There's a lot of stupid debate online that wasn't really doing that or you know, whatever blessing an individual blessing couples. We all know what it was. It was a blessing of same sex couples. So we had that as well. There was, there were many rumors and, and thoughts of that the, the traditional Mass would be cracked, there'd be a crackdown on the traditional Latin Mass even more than had happened before. There was even rumors that there'd be a total ban would happen on the traditional Mass. And obviously it had, you know, since 2021 there had been, you know, picking off different parishes, teal and parishes and restricting it and all that. [00:03:48] There were many predictions that the 2024 presidential election would not happen. A lot of people were saying it's just not going to happen. They'll shut it down, they'll find some way not to have it. We'll have a Covid like event. Something will happen so we don't have the election. And if, or if we do have the election, it'll clearly be stolen so that Biden can win. So that was another thing that was happening at the end of 2023 that we were looking forward to in 2024. [00:04:16] Also at the end of 2023, we were looking forward to or actually dreading the last synod session, the synod on synodality that was going to happen in October 2024. At the end of 2023 we're like, okay, this is going to happen. It's probably going to approve women deacons. People are saying, might you approve same sex couples or something like that? You know, just, it would, it would definitely do these things that would be terrible. [00:04:42] So this was the outlook of the average Catholic, these faithful Catholic. At the end of 2023, a lot of things were going not looking good for 2024, I think. And I, I just saw a lot of predictions that were very much just like, this is going to happen. And, and to be honest, I don't blame people for those predictions. I understand why they had them. I was a little, I'm a little bit take. I don't really like it when people make it like it's a done deal, like, oh, this is going to happen. There's no way. And it doesn't happen. And nobody ever calls them on it. Well, it didn't happen. But anyway, the point is there's a lot of reasons to be pessimistic at the end of 2023 on the outlook for the church, for America and for the whole world. And obviously, you know, the, the war in Gaza had just started up in October of 2023. [00:05:32] I mean, it's not really a war. It's more just like Israel beating the snot out of Palestine and Gaza and things like that in response to October 7th. But the point is that things were dire and there was a real reason for pessimism, understandable pessimism at the time. [00:05:49] Now let's fast forward to into 2024 today, December 27, 2024. [00:05:58] And here's the reality. [00:06:00] Things didn't turn out like we thought they would. And in fact, I would argue that they turned out a lot better. I'm not putting on my rose colored glasses and saying everything is awesome. Just watch the Lego Movie again on Christmas Day with my kids. That was always, that's always fun to do. And that, that song, once it gets in your head, you just can't get it out. And so I'm not saying that. I'm not saying everything is awesome. Don't worry, I'm not going to sing it for you. Anybody who's heard my singing is very thankful for that right now. [00:06:30] I'm not saying that. I am saying though that things did not turn out like people thought they would, as negatively as people thought they would. And there's a real reason to think things have turned, at least in some ways in a better direction. [00:06:47] So I mentioned all those things that happened last year. [00:06:51] They're not all fixed or anything like that. Bishop Strickland still is out of office. You know, they just announced his replacement. But like for example, fiducia supplicants, that was a seismic event in the church that all of a sudden the head of the CDF or whatever DDF now I guess the head doctrinal chief of the church was saying, let's bless homosexual unions yet what happened? There was a real resistance among the bishops. There's always been a resistance of some sort among the laity to crazy things that go on at the Vatican. [00:07:30] Oftentimes that's good, sometimes it's bad, Sometimes we resist things that we shouldn't resist. I'm talking about when I say we, I mean the laity, like under JP2 and things like that. But here was the first time in our lifetimes, at least, that you saw a real resistance by the bishops to something coming out of the Vatican. Of course, many of the African bishops were very strongly against the idea of blessings, same sex couples. And there was others, many in America did the same. [00:07:57] And in reality it became somewhat of a dead letter. It's not like you have some massive movement of same sex blessings now in Catholic parishes throughout the world. Now. I'm sure it happens here and there. Of course there was the ones at the beginning, Father James Martin and others who were advertising it. But what I'm saying though is it's not like it's a commonplace at your typical Catholic parish in any country to have a same sex blessing. And not only that, but there was a real decision by the bishops, by many of the bishops, that, hey, we're not simply middle managers for the Vatican. We, we are successors to the apostles whose duty it is to defend and uphold the traditional faith. [00:08:44] I mean, we saw a lot of issues. This is just, we can't do this. I don't care who's telling me to do it. I can't do this because I'm a successor of the apostles. I simply won't do it. I think that was a great sign because it's exactly what they should be doing. Their top priority should be as successors to the apostles is promoting and maintaining the deposit of faith as it's been handed down to us for centuries, for 2,000 years. That's their duty first and foremost. And they were, they did it. They did it. So when that first came out, people thought, okay, this is the end, but yet it wasn't people. The bishop said, no, we're just not going to do this. And there was no real push. In fact, they backtracked. Cardinal Fernandez back himself, even backtracked some. [00:09:28] There was a backtracking by the Vatican of, oh, okay, never mind, basically. And I think this had a real impact on the church, a radical impact beyond just the letter of Fiducia Supplicants, beyond just same sex unions. Because I think what happened was the Vatican realized, wait a second, we just can't get away with anything. We have to. If we don't have any support among the bishops, they're not going to go with it. And so we have to be careful what we address, what we do. And I think that leads to my second point of 2024, and that is there was not a massive crackdown of the traditional Mass. Now, I want to make sure something very clear. I do know that there have been individual parishes have been shut down, including in 2024. And my heart is out goes out to those people who go, those parishioners. I think Austin was one of them, I can't remember. And there's some others. [00:10:24] And it's awful every time it happens. It's a terrible thing and the people don't deserve it when it happens to them. That being said, there was very legitimate rumors that there was a document placed on Pope Francis's desk that would have banned the church Latin Mass and he decided not to sign it. Now the rumor is that somebody came to him and argued for it and I go with it. [00:10:49] But I think the resistance to the same sex couple blessing is a big part of it. I think just the idea that, okay, the bishops aren't going to go along with just anything and that there'd be a real resistance, a real harm done, a real revolt if this happened, stayed his hand. And I think also obviously the Holy Spirit, I don't want to act like the Holy Spirit's not the main driver here, but the fact is people were saying it's a done deal, that the traditional Mass will be shut down this year or something like that. It didn't happen. It didn't happen. And you know, like I said, I know it's still happening in some localized places, but it didn't happen on a universal level. [00:11:27] Now Another thing in 2024, I think that surprised a lot of us is the fact that Donald Trump is the President elect. I think most of us a year ago would not have said okay, in one year Donald Trump be his president elect. Now not that we didn't think there wasn't support for Donald Trump in the country. We didn't think it was possible that they would allow him to win, that something would happen to stop him either they would throw him in jail, they would assassinate him, they would steal the election, whatever the case may be. [00:11:58] They would shut down the election there may consider was an election, whatever the case may be. A lot of people thought there's just no way it will happen. Yet it did. Donald Trump is the President elect. Today he won the election Won the election very handily. I mean, very, very clearly, in spite of the fact that he was. There was multiple assassination attempts against him. There was the lawfare against him, like, throw the ridiculous convictions against him, all these things. I mean, heck, even just me personally, at the beginning of 2024, I was arguing I might not. I was saying I might not vote. I have a podcast, I think it was from January. I can't remember exactly when, but earlier this year, where I said I just might not vote because I just wasn't satisfied with obviously not Biden. I wouldn't vote for him or with Trump. But yet over time, I came to realize that was the person to vote for is Donald Trump. And a lot of people did. That's why I think he won pretty handily, because people like me, who were not strongly in his camp or maybe only kind of thinking about it, decide, no, we got to vote for this guy. [00:13:06] And so Donald Trump won. I mean, we cannot overstate how important that is. Kamala Harris was shown to be the fake, completely empty politician that she is. [00:13:18] And so that's a real thing that we have to understand is. And recognize that, really. We just had an article from Sheryl Comer and Crisis yesterday, I think it was, that talks about we got to recognize where we were, where we would be if Trump had not won. [00:13:35] Things would be a lot worse. But they're not. And here's another time I'm going to just say it. There were people saying, Trump will not be allowed to win. They were saying it like it's a fact or they were saying it as a fact. If Trump wins, there will be violence in the streets. That didn't happen. [00:13:52] It just didn't happen. [00:13:54] And now when you say that, they'll say, well, but there will be before January 20th. Okay, you keep on moving the goalpost. People said that there would be violence in the streets, like the day after the election if Trump was declared the winner or even if Biden's declared a winner. That did not happen. You were wrong if you predicted that. Now, again, I'm not talking about people who said there might be. I'm afraid there could be. All that is reasonable. But the people said there will be. I know there will be. I've seen these documents of these insiders who tell us this is what they're planning, stuff like that. You're just lying. You're making it up, and people shouldn't believe you anymore. [00:14:30] So Donald Trump won. That is obviously a turn in the right direction in 2024. Yes, there are issues with Donald Trump. I'm not saying he's perfect. He's not the Messiah. He's got a lot of problems yet. It's clearly a repudiation of everything that the Biden, Harris, Obama, Clinton, those people stood for. And so that's a good thing. [00:14:56] Another thing in 2024 was the Synod. Frankly, Tim Flanders and I did podcasts on this. I argue that the Senate fizzled out. It just simply had no energy this time. All the hype and all the craziness that's. That's followed the Senate over the past however many years since they first announced. I think it was 2020. They first announced it and he had the session 2022, 2023, 2024. All the stuff was, like, just so hyped up, so crazy. It didn't really register that much this year. It really fizzled out. And. And you could even the people who were very pro Synod, very pro, like, wine change, the liberals, like, everybody kind of agreed, okay? It just didn't. Nothing happened. And the fact that Pope Francis decided to just basically sign off on the final document rather than writing his own, I think it was an acknowledgment by him that it fizzled out. I mean, he even released that document on the Sacred Heart, like, a day or two before the synod ended. Like, he took the limelight from the synod itself. [00:15:57] So I think even he recognized, okay, it just nothing happened here. Now, people could use parts of the synod to try to bring about bad things happening, but ultimately, again, the predictions, oh, there will definitely be women deacons, there will definitely be recognizing homosexual couples, something like that at the synod, they didn't happen. They didn't happen. [00:16:18] And I think we need to recognize that and understand that. Some other things. I'm going to keep on talking about some of the things that happened this year and like, the good, the positive. Another one is the rise of RFK and the Hell and the Maha movement, Make America Healthy Again movement. I think this is a very important thing. I know RFK has got issues. I know he's not like an ideal devout Catholic or anything like that. Yet at the same time, the fact that the country started to waken up to the severe chronic disease and health crisis we have in this country, that's something we all should be extremely thankful for and grateful for and excited about. Because the fact is, is that we've been, you know, our nutritional system, our health systems have been slowly killing us over the past few decades. And it particularly has been awful for kids. Kids have. Have Just such higher rates of chronic diseases and other health issues that they should not have. It should not be normal for a 12 year old kid to be overweight. It just shouldn't be. That's been normalized. Your average 12 year old kid is overweight and they shouldn't be. [00:17:32] I mean you, nobody should be overweight, obviously, but it's understandable, you know, in our sedentary lifestyle with most people working at computers and desk like that, that you're going to have a higher rate of at least being overweight. You shouldn't have any obesity. And I also understand there's certain people, it's much more difficult than others, but it shouldn't be normal, it shouldn't be. The average 12 year old is overweight. That's just ridiculous. And yet that's what's happened. And we've just, and nobody was willing to do anything about it until RFK came on the scene. Now all of a sudden there's a real movement to make it stop, to try to reverse the decline in our health. And I think that's something we have to be enthusiastic about. And okay, do you really think, let's say two years ago if somebody told you, listen, RFK Jr. You know the guy who's known as being the anti vax crazy guy, he is going to be, he is nominated, he probably will be the next Secretary of Health and Human Services and that he will have a huge following and a lot of people really excited about improving their health. People will laugh at you. People said that's ridiculous, that's insane. But that's exactly what happened. And 2024 was a big part of that. I mean 2024 is really when RFK came and really kind of solidified his position as a real influence, influential person in this area. So I think that's something we need to be very excited about. Another thing I think was very good for 2020 24. This is something a lot of people might not really get why I'm saying this, but there's been big increase in the embrace of bitcoin in the political sphere. And this is something I'm very interested in, of course, and I think more people should be because bitcoin is a solution to a lot of the monetary problems we have that people don't understand. People just don't get that a lot of the economic issues we have is because we have a broken money system, a broken monetary system. And Bitcoin is an alternative that could potentially be a solution to fix that broken system. Not going to go through all the details, I had a podcast about a month or so ago with Devin Rose. We talked about a lot of this, but I really think it's a more moral type of money. And so I think it's something that we should be excited about that. Now all of a sudden, the political class which had gone against it under Biden, the Biden administration was very anti bitcoin. Now we have a Trump administration that's going to be very pro bitcoin. I think it's a very good thing. And again, just a year or two ago, if I said there's going to be a very pro bitcoin administration entering the White House, people would just thought, you're crazy. Because people back then didn't know Trump was for it yet, because he wasn't really for it yet. So it just didn't seem. It seemed to be unthinkable, yet it happened in 2024. [00:20:24] Also, I'm just seeing an uptick in people embracing either explicitly Christianity, Catholicism, or just a better life, a more wholesome lifestyle. And I see this particularly. You know, I'm somewhat tuned into, like, the libertarian world, the bitcoin world, cryptocurrency world, things like that. And like, you know, honestly, that world often is very, very libertine. Not libertarian, just libertarian, but libertine very much not caring about social issues, not caring about, like, how we live, like, morally and family and things like that. But I've seen more and more of an embrace among that crowd of things like, hey, let's have kids. Let's build a family. Let's. Let's do these things like that. And that might not be explicitly Christian, but it's good things that will lead, that can lead people to Christ. Just the idea of, like, let's have more kids. Let's, you know, let's be more positive, optimistic about the future. I think that's a very good thing. And also, I just saw. This is kind of crazy. I just saw, okay, Spike Cohen, he was the Libertarian Party nominee for vice president in 2020. And he's very good on a lot of things. You know, he actually is the presidential nominee. That year was awful, but he was. He's very good fight, Cohen is. And he's Jewish. He grew up Jewish. [00:21:45] But, yeah, I just saw, like, a post on X the other day where I believe he has now become Christian. [00:21:52] And this is not unheard of. Now in the libertarian world, more and more people are talking against, like, transgenderism, pro life and pro Christianity. So I think we're seeing this impact I mean, you saw, for example, somebody like J.D. vance being picked by Trump as his running mate. Somebody who is explicitly Catholic, explicitly cares about his Catholic faith, practices, Catholic faith. These are good things. This is very good. [00:22:18] And so I think this is another example of 2024 being a time when things seem to turn around. The direction of everything at the end of 2023 seemed to be in the worst possible direction. Let's be honest, that's what it seemed to be. Now, however, it does seem like, at least in some areas of culture, of the church, in politics, what have you, the direction is starting to turn, turn towards a more positive direction. I think that's something we need to be thankful for and we need to proclaim and not be afraid to say, hey, you know, this is positive. A quick aside. My guess is, by the way, this, this podcast episode will not be very popular. I've done this long enough to know when you ask anybody if they're being honest with you, any podcaster will tell you. If you really want to get clicks, want to get more views, more listens, you just talk about bad news. You talk about the world is going to fall apart. That will get you more people to listen. I guarantee I will say this. I know this is a fact. I know I can't prove it, but I know if I had, if this podcast was 2024, why everything is going to crap, I guarantee I would get more viewers and listeners than what I'm doing right now. I think it's human nature. It's also the nature of kind of social media and the nature of the beast. That's just what it is. I'm not complaining. I'm not claiming to be a victim. Just that's what it is. But I think as Catholics, we need to resist that. Call out things when they're bad, but also be willing to acknowledge when things aren't so bad. And maybe when we were wrong about some of our pessimism. [00:23:50] Now, to be clear, I'm not saying everything is awesome. And let me give you a few examples, things that really are a problem. [00:23:58] The wars in Ukraine and Palestine are clearly a major threat to peace in the world, obviously, but just stability and future problems. I mean, there's no question the, the craziness of what Biden administration is doing in Ukraine is just insane. They're trying to start. They are trying. I, I believe this with all my heart. They are trying to start a hot war with Russia before the inauguration of Donald Trump. Now I have hope for Ukraine, the Ukraine war being resolved under Donald Trump relatively quickly. But there's no guarantees, of course, but they're trying, the Biden administration is trying to start that up. That's a real problem. That's a potential catastrophic problem. I mean, because we could have World War III and nuclear World War III could, could result from it. So I'm not denying that what's happening in Gaza, Lebanon, Palestine, all that area, what Israel is doing is awful. And, and let's be honest, here's one of the, I think one of the biggest, you know, there's, there's white pill, there's black pill, there's red pill. I think one of the, you know, white pill is good things. Red pill meaning understanding what's going on. Black pill means like things are awful. They, one of the biggest black pills. I'm, I'm like, I'm white pill in this episode. I admit it, I'm white pilling because I think there's reasons a white pill. But a big white, a big black pill for me is the influence of the Israeli lobby in the United States. Now, I know that make me be called anti Semite by some and that's fine, whatever. But I do think that the influence, the political influence of the state of Israel is just too extreme, too much in this country. And we see it in too many ways. And I think that's a real reason to be pessimistic about our ability to really resolve what's going on in the Middle east where we have a true, just peace in the Middle East. It will never happen as long as America refuses to, refuses to be 100% behind Israel, for better or worse. I'm not even saying America can't favor Israel. I'm not saying that perhaps that would be a good political move to favor Israel in that region. But that's not what they do. They, they allow Israel to do whatever it wants with no, no pushback whatsoever. And they never say, okay, we're not going to start, we're not going to give you money or we're not going to send you weapons or no matter what they do. And there needs to be real pushback from us when they do something we think is not justified. And I think a lot of things they do are not justified. So that's a black pill. I admit another black pill is immigration reform. [00:26:40] I don't see it happening. I don't see, and this is when I'm just praying that I'm wrong, praying that I'm just being too pessimistic. I just don't think we have the will to really have a true immigration reform where we really. Here's the thing. I'm not even looking for a complete shutdown of immigration. I know some people want that. I'm not saying that's not the best thing, but I'm just saying I'm more realistic. All I want, honestly, as a first step is just get rid of all the illegal immigrants who've committed a crime since they got here. I mean, that's it. Just do that and secure the border so more legals can't keep coming in. If you did that, that would be such a huge improvement. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think we're sending anybody back except for maybe a few token people. We might be able to secure the borough more under Trump we did in his first administration. Hopefully we will again, but I just don't see it happening. And so I think that's a root cause for concern also. Another cause for concern, and I'm just kind of showing that I'm not just positive here, is that the MAGA movement does not seem to be truly concerned about social issues like abortion, homosexuality, things like that. And that our country's not going to really turn around until we. We recognize that the family's the most important thing, our children. [00:27:56] Those issues have to be front and center at some point, and they're not. And that. I think that's going to be an issue. And I will say there's. Obviously, it's way better than if Biden or if, I mean, Harris, whoever had been the next president. But, you know, I think that's a cause for concern. And then when it comes to the church, we all know the issues. We all know there are many bad actors still in very high places in the church. And we just saw where Cardinal Cupich was trying to tell people not to kneel for communion idiocy like that. We still see TLMs getting shut down here and there. [00:28:33] There are bad actors. We, you know, clearly we still have big problems inside the church. I just feel like that they're the worst. Did not happen in 2024. And. And I think that's something we should be thankful for, I think. So just to kind of wrap it up here, some lessons I think we need to learn from 2024. The first one is I think we need to remember, don't black pill. Don't black pill about everything. You know, that you hear people engage in social media, they get. They get paid. Literally, they get paid more. The more they give doomsday scenarios. As Catholics, we have to smarten up about this. We have to recognize that this is the case, that people will be more, will get paid more the more they do this. Now. Okay, little full disclosure here on X Twitter, whatever. I am monetized, which means I get paid every two weeks for my, my post. Now, the amount I get paid is very small. It's on average less than $200 a month. I think a lot of times less than $100 a month. It's not a lot, but I know what I could do to make more money on Twitter. Fortunately, I don't really care about that. It's like I said, I just. It's not that much, but I could make a lot more. I could make. I bet you I could make with the number of followers I have and everything. I bet you if I wanted to, I could make a thousand dollars a month, something like that. Maybe. Maybe even more. And that's real money. That's not like, you know, I don't know about you, but that's real money to me. If I did certain things, and most of them would involve trying to stir up people's negative emotions, I just don't think that's the way we need to go as Catholics. But more importantly for the people who are just not, not necessarily the ones getting, who are monetizing this, but the people are following that. Remember that, that people are getting paid to do these things. To say the worst possible thing. If they say, like if you have, you know, the Senate's coming up. If you say, I think the Senate probably won't, nothing will happen. They'll probably fizzle out before the Senate happened in October or versus you said in September. Women deacons, I know women deacons are on the table. It's going to be approved. You can just count on it. [00:30:54] The second post is going to get a lot more engagement and therefore make more money than the first engagement. The first engagement that was the. Is the one that's true. That actually came out to be true. But here's the thing. Nobody goes back and calls that person out. And people continue to listen to that person who say it says that. [00:31:11] And so there's no consequences, no negative consequences for people who do that, only positive ones. And sometimes they're right because bad things do happen. [00:31:20] So I do. And so, and I'm not saying you can't say bad things, obviously, I do that too. I complain about things. I say, you know, bad things are happening. But I just want people to recognize, don't get Caught up that the world is ending because you read it on Twitter or Instagram or something like that. I mean, I would argue you should stop following people. When somebody makes a prediction and like says this is going to happen and it doesn't happen, why are you still listening to that person? Like, if they say, I'm worried this is going to happen, I'm afraid this is going to happen. I think this is going to happen. There's a good chance it's going to happen. Okay, fine. That's not what some people do. So I think we need to remember that. Another lesson I think we need to have is we need to realize we need to always keep fighting. We need to always. We can't rest on our laurels. We had some good news happen this year. That's good. But we need to keep fighting. We know we haven't won yet. We're not going to win until the second coming. I mean, it's like Tolkien said, you know, the Catholic faith, it's like one long defeat. We're going to lose many battles in this world. And so we have to though keep fighting. And we have to recognize that God is in control. [00:32:27] I believe, and you can believe it or not believe it, it's up to you. I believe the turnaround in 2024 is due to more prayer, more fasting, more penance by Catholics. Cardinal Burke, for example, had the very long novena that he did this year. Now a lot of people were engaged in. Bishop Strickland was calling for things of that nature. Different people were doing different fasts and novenas and prayers. Bishop Schneider was calling for some. You know, I think that really makes a difference. Of course it makes a difference. Are we Catholic or not? If we're really Catholic, we believe that that makes a big difference. And I think that was a big difference. Here's the thing, things won't all of a sudden get perfectly fixed through prayer and fasting and penance. It's not all of a sudden like everything will be perfect all but what it does is it gives openings for grace to enter. It gives openings for people to see Christ and to meet Christ. And that's what we're looking for. So I would just say remember God is control. Always have a basis in prayer and penance as your basis for when you're thinking about what's going on in the world. Don't black pill doesn't mean you have to have rose colored glasses and white pill about everything. But don't black pill about everything. Know that good things do happen Sometimes. And don't be like upset almost when good things do happen. But embrace it and thank God when it does happen. Okay, let me look at a couple of comments here in the live chat. Again, I always appreciate people join the live chat. That's great. Okay, we have, Let me take all my glasses, read this. Bear Palermo Chapani. I apologize for my butchering your name. Probably more. Catholic YouTube creators should talk about Pope Francis declares French martyrs of Compion saints via Impulman canonization. Hey, I, I, I'm called out on that. That's great. I can't believe I, I said something on X about it, but I, I want to mention that the martyrs Compion, I'm mispronouncing that well are just awesome. Know that story about these sisters during the French Revolution who were basically went to the guillotine singing and praising God as they went and each one got killed and the until there was only one left singing and she was also killed and they were not canonized saints. But Pope Francis did. He basically said okay and it's this, I never heard of this process. Basically it's like, okay, you're canonized. We don't have to go through a formal process. You're a saint. And they, of course they are saints. So I agree. But that is a, you make a good point as well though that there's a reason we don't have a lot of YouTube creators, Catholic YouTubers talking about that. It doesn't generate as many clicks as saying okay, Cardinal Fernandez did this or Pope Francis did that. Again, I'm not saying we can't, we shouldn't ever criticize when it's needed. I'm just saying that there needs to be some more of a balance. [00:35:09] Okay. Nick Stone says regards from Bulgaria. Hey Bulgaria. That's always great to hear from somewhere else. I am Greek Orthodox and appreciate your input in these times. Nick, thank you very much for watching the channel. I appreciate you joining us. God bless you. I think your Christmas is know coming up here soon depending on the calendar use what have you but God bless you. Help you. I appreciate you checking us out. I've noticed that you know the majority of our, our listeners are from America and Canada, but we do get a lot from Europe and other places around the world. I appreciate every single one of them. Okay, so that is, that's it for 2024 I think my last podcast a year. Be thankful, be grateful to God. [00:35:53] You know, maybe offer up something in thanksgiving to God for what he has done for us this year. Many good things happened. A lot more still needs to be done. We need A lot of souls still need to be saved. A lot of sinners need to be converted. But let's be thankful for the good things that did happen in 2024. Okay. Until 2025, then. God love you, Sa.