Catholicism and Conspiracy Hunting

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:11] Since 2020, conspiracy theories have been running rampant, particularly in conservative and traditional Catholic circles. They range from questioning the narrative behind the Charlie Kirk assassination to outright denying the reality of the Holocaust. What are we to make of these theories? That's what I want to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I'm Eric. Sam is your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. As always, before we get started, please smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, and let other people know about what we're doing here. Also, we are beginning our fundraising campaign, our end of year fundraising campaign. So I just would ask that you would consider donating to Craigslist magazine. Everything we offer here is for free. All our content's free, but obviously it's not free to produce. So I would just encourage you to please donate. You can just go to crisismagazine.com you'll probably get a pop up asking you to donate. Or you could also click on the donate button. Okay, first, before I get started, I just want to also note that there's construction going on at my house right now right above me. So if you hear banging or anything like that, that's all that's going on. It's not the end of the world, although it feels like it sometimes when I'm working here. So. So, okay. So I've talked about conspiracy theories before on the podcast a couple years ago. I know. [00:01:25] And something that kind of comes up periodically, and I feel like it's becoming more and more prevalent. Maybe it's more. It's. It's more prevalent in the sense that people are believing bigger conspiracy theories and maybe ones that were out of fashion for a long time. [00:01:41] Now, personally, before 2020, I was always, very, always initially skeptical of any conspiracy theory. I heard. That's just kind of the way I was raised. I didn't really believe them. Now, the truth is, though, for a number of years, for 2020, I had stopped. I had really started to lessen my trust in authorities, obviously, the, The American government, the Vatican, others. I had lost trust. And so I knew not everything was as it seems. But then when 2020 happened, it was kind of like the dam broke because so much was clearly lies that we were being told, obviously everything, all the COVID narratives, Black Lives Matter, the. The George Floyd, all that stuff. The. The 2020 election. [00:02:27] There's a whole bunch that just happened during that time that really made it clear that a lot of what are called conspiracy theories are actually conspiracy facts. And we just have to realize that. And that, of course, also became and so what happened was that became more respectable to believe in conspiracy theories among conservatives. And I think that's a key point here, which I'm going to get into in a moment. And so some of the conspiracies that I have heard being bandied about among conservatives, among, particularly among traditional Catholics, we have, like I said, Holocaust denial, denying the moon landing, the Charlie Kirk assassination, who was behind it? Epstein. Everything related to Jeffrey Epstein, the origins of COVID the COVID vaccines, the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, the existence of UFOs and what the government's covering up. [00:03:27] The French president's wife, whether or not know she is a man or he is a. She is a woman or he is a man, or whatever the case may be, the 2020 election, presidential election. So all these things are conspiracies I keep hearing about and people are talking about. [00:03:45] And there's more. I'm not. That's not all of them, but I'm just kind of. Those are ones that I honestly, I thought of top my head on when I was writing down notes for this podcast. So what I want to do is I will go into each one of those and kind of give my own view of them, whether or not I think they're legitimate, whether I think they're. They're not. [00:04:03] But I want to talk more at first just about conspiracy theories in general, because it's. It's becoming so prevalent. I think it's something we need to talk about as Catholics, and we need to consider how does it impact our faith, our spiritual life, and our witness to the outside world. [00:04:19] And so first, why is there this growing acceptance of conspiracy theories, particularly among conservatives? [00:04:28] Note that conservatives, one of our things is we trust institutions. At least historically, we believe in institutions like the church, like the federal government, things of that nature. [00:04:40] We don't want a big federal government, but essentially, we trust them when they tell us something, and we believe that they have the common good in mind. Now, I know no conservatives believe that anymore. I'm just saying, though, historically, if you look at, like conservatives in like the 50s or 60s or 70s, it was the liberals who said, distrust authority, you know, question authority. It was conservative saying, no, don't question authority, accept authority. It's for your good. [00:05:11] But that's completely been inverted today. Most of the left, they have blind trust in certain authorities. Obviously, if Biden is president, they have blind trust in the federal government, and they push the dominant narratives on every story. Whatever the dominant narrative is, the left pushes it, whereas the right often rejects it. So it is an inverse of the way it was maybe 60 years ago or more. [00:05:38] And I think that's because of the fact that, I mean, frankly, many of us have woken up to reality. They are lying to us, they're lying to you, they're lying to me about so many things. [00:05:53] So many things that we have been told are lies. [00:05:57] I mean, one of the big ones I would say, that I didn't even mention before, I don't know if it's a conspiracy, but just like the American empire and the idea that we are this empire, that we have to have all this power and control around the world, when we've seen that it really is, it's not helping the American citizen, the average American citizen, it's only helping those in power. The military industrial complex, which of course, military industrial complex, was at one time a crazy conspiracy theory. I know Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, when it first coined it, but for decades, if you, if you. I know growing up, if you said. If you said the phrase military industrial complex, that alone meant you were crazy. You were a tinfoil hat guy. [00:06:44] But now we all talk about that. I mean, I know the left still probably would say you're crazy, but they're dumb. [00:06:50] So I really do think that this is something that is unique to our time, that conservatives are embracing so many conspiracy theories because there has been a breakdown, a fundamental breakdown in trust. And for us Catholics, that breakdown, trust does start with the Vatican, that we have seen that our church leaders, our hierarchy has lied to us many times. They have not had our spiritual good at the forefront of their work. [00:07:24] And so we just have this refusal. Not refusal, because that sounds like it's a negative thing, a distrust, a legitimate distrust of authority, which, to be clear, that's not a good thing. [00:07:40] Objectively speaking, it's a good thing today because our authorities are lying to us. But objectively speaking, a society is stronger. It's better when you trust your authorities, when you, your church leaders and your political leaders are people of goodwill that, you know are basically behind you and trying. They might be, they're sinners, they're going to do bad things, but they're behind you. [00:08:05] And so personally, I don't trust almost any authority as far as, like, institutionally, the smaller the authority is, more directly I'm connected with it, the more I trust it. Like, I trust my pastor 100%. [00:08:19] I trust my archbishop, not so much. And, you know, in the Vatican, not so much. [00:08:27] And so it's like, I trust my friends, people around me, people I know. [00:08:31] I trust certain institutions like certain charitable institutions that I work with, I trust them because I know a lot about them. I know who their leaders are. [00:08:41] But I don't trust the federal government. I don't trust my state government. I don't trust my city government. I don't trust the Vatican officials. I don't trust the UN And I don't think we should. I think it would be wrong to trust them. [00:08:53] And so conspiracy theories, which are basically just theories saying that the dominant narrative that our authorities are telling us is not true. [00:09:04] I'm. I tend to be more open to them. I am more open to them, yet at the same time, this is my concern and this is where I know, like, I part ways with a lot of my fellow traditionalists. And I'm sorry, that's just. This is just, you know, what I feel, what I believe to be true. [00:09:23] I think there's a lot of dangers that have got that. I think conspiracy theories and conspiracy hunting has gotten out of control. [00:09:31] It's gotten out of control and it's to the point where now we're the dummies. The liberals are dummies for believing everything they hear from, from the dominant, you know, the authority, the official authorities. [00:09:44] But honestly, I think a lot of traditionalists are being the dummies when it believing everything they hear on the, you know, on the Internet from certain people they trust as authorities. If Candace Owens says it, it must be true. And this isn't a knock on Candace Owens, by the way. I might mention Candace Owens, some other people here. [00:10:00] Let's be mature, let's be adults. [00:10:03] When I criticize somebody like Candace Owens, I'm not saying everything she does is bad. I'm not saying she's a bad person, anything like that. I'm going to mention Father James Malley later. I'm not saying he's a bad priest or anything like that, but I'm going to have legitimate criticism. Somebody like Archbishop Vegano. Now he's gone off the deep end of my mind, and I really don't trust anything he says. [00:10:21] But at the same time, we're just trusting now different authority, and we're not using our minds, our rational minds to determine, okay, is this conspiracy theory really legitimate? Is there really evidence for it? Or am I just doing what the left is doing? They will trust CNN and I'm trusting. [00:10:42] I don't know what's o N. What's a news site that pushes a lot? Conserve a new site to push, like, you know, conspiracy theory, maybe, you know, Steve Bannon, you know, who, who like I like Steve Bannon a lot. I've been on his show a few times. But I think he does kind of go down this path a little bit. Alex Jones, obviously is a good example. Alex Jones has been right in the past. I'm actually pro Alex Jones along the way. I don't listen Regulators podcast, never have. But obviously he's had some doozies. He has had some crazy things he has said that have been proven to be wrong. [00:11:14] And he's also said some things that have been right that everybody said he was an idiot for saying and was crazy for saying. [00:11:21] My point of this is one of the dangers of conspiracy hunting is we just simply transfer our trust of authority to different authorities and we refuse to use our rational minds. [00:11:33] We just say, okay, we're going to believe anything said by certain people, no matter how crazy it might be. [00:11:41] And that's turning off our rationality. St. Thomas Aquinas would say, don't do that, don't do that. [00:11:47] And we shouldn't do that. I mean, traditionists particularly shouldn't do that. We're all about. We quote the angelic doctrine, we talk about Aquinas all the time. Scholasticism. He would never be going down these paths of just following various conspiracy theories because he read them on the Internet or heard them in a podcast. [00:12:04] I also think another danger of chasing conspiracy theories is I do think it can be a poor witness to the faith we can come across as kooks and crazies. Now, I do know this is always used against us. Like, this was huge. I was called this all the time during COVID because at crisis, we were opposed to the COVID regime. We were opposed to the mandated vaccines. We questioned the morality of the. Of the vaccines. All these things we did. And we were called kooks and crazies by the usual suspects. [00:12:35] So there will be times when we defend our faith, we defend truth, and we're going to be called crazy and kooks. [00:12:40] But sometimes we act like crazies and kooks. Let's be honest. Sometimes we go down and we go down rabbit holes. We start talking about things where we just are crazies and kooks. And so the normal, rational person, the normie, looks at us and says, no, this is if that means what takes, if that's what it means to be a Catholic, that you have to believe in this crap, be a traditional Catholic to believe in this crap. I'm not going to go. I'm not going to buy it. [00:13:04] And so I do think that's A danger. So we have to, again, go back to using our rational minds. [00:13:10] Another big danger, I think, of conspiracy hunting is gnosticism. [00:13:16] This idea of we have a secret knowledge. Gnosticism is from the Greek word gnosis, which means knowledge. And one of the key points of narcissism, which was very like narcissism, had a lot of different ways of being practiced and different beliefs and stuff. But one of the essential, essential cores where it gets its name is this idea that we have this secret knowledge that saves. [00:13:41] We have a knowledge others do not have. [00:13:44] And I do think this is prevalent among people who are very involved in these, in chasing and studying, researching conspiracy theories. [00:13:54] This idea that we have this secret knowledge that others don't have. We know what really happened. We know the narrative is wrong. We know what really happened with COVID We know what really happened with the moon landing. We know what really happened with Epstein or whatever the case may be, and you don't. And it does have us get. It does foster a certain amount of pride that, you know, I was smart enough to figure all this out. I was smart enough to do the research on the Internet to figure this out, and you're not. And I do think I. I've seen this. I've seen this online a lot. I've seen this in person. [00:14:29] This. This temptation to Gnosticism. [00:14:33] I also think it can distract from the faith. [00:14:36] I don't understand how, like, the amount of time I've seen some people put into chasing conspiracy theories. I'm not talking even about somebody like Candace Owens who's actually researching it and, and like, you know, producing a lot of, you know, doing a lot of work to try to. To. To verify things in a lot of cases. [00:14:54] I'm talking about the people who just spend all day online just, you know, follow, you know, listening to these conspiracy theories and following them and figuring them out, you know, this or that. [00:15:04] I just think that is distracting for the faith. If you're spending your time doing that, guess what you're not spending your time doing. You're not spending your time praying. You're not spending your time, you know, spending time with your family. You're not spending time in various spiritual practices, charitable practices, doing your duties in state of life. Nobody's duty or state of life is to chase conspiracy theories. I'm not saying you can't ever do it. There's a certain entertainment to it. Of course, there's also a certain goodness in, like, during COVID for example, it did help protect others. It was a charitable act to call out the lies of the COVID regime. [00:15:39] So I'm not saying you don't have anything to do with it, but I do think if you're constantly talking about, oh, did you hear about what happened here? Did you hear about the government said this? You know, did you hear about. I heard this guy say that. This guy said that over here. They see these tanks are starting to form over at this location. [00:15:55] Things like that. [00:15:57] I just think it takes away. It really does distract from the practice of the faith. [00:16:02] You start to invent in your mind worse evils than the actual evils. We got plenty around. [00:16:08] We don't need extras to add. [00:16:11] So I really think that is a we need to consider. [00:16:16] I also think, and here's a very important. [00:16:22] I think embracing these conspiracy theories starts to under reality itself. [00:16:29] Because what happens, you don't believe anything anymore. You simply don't believe anything anymore. [00:16:36] When you hear something said by, by anybody in, in slight authority, even on YouTube or whatever or, or government official media, whatever, a friend, you just don't believe it anymore. You just don't believe it anymore. Now again, we should have a healthy skepticism. But when everything is a conspiracy theory, you stop believing like fundamental realities. And like, you stop believing eyewitness accounts. That's something I'm going to talk about in a minute when I talk about one of the specific conspiracies. [00:17:09] But you start discounting eyewitness testimony. If you discount eyewitness testimony, like at the Charlie Kirk assassination or the Holocaust denial or the moon landing, whatever, you have to remember our entire faith is literally built upon eyewitness testimony. [00:17:32] Did you see Jesus rise from the dead? [00:17:34] Did you hear him preach? [00:17:37] No. [00:17:38] Did you see him found a church? No. [00:17:41] You are simply believing the eyewitness testimony of men and women who lived 2,000 years ago and then pass that on to us. [00:17:51] If you start denying eyewitness testimony the historical importance of it, you deny the reality of almost all of history, including the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. [00:18:06] Because we know it through eyewitness testimony. [00:18:09] It's like, I know there's like, for a while there, I think there's still some do this. [00:18:13] There was all of a sudden this like edgy idea that Jesus didn't really exist. [00:18:18] And it was, it was ludicrous from the beginning. Not one normal person or real scholar believed it. [00:18:26] But it was this idea that anything that, you know, that he didn't really exist because all we had was some writings from decades later that, you know, might have been false and you know, all this, various things. [00:18:41] Well, that's just scholarly. I mean, academically, that's just stupid, because that's how we know everything. You don't know George Washington exists other than eyewitness testimony. [00:18:49] And so if we embrace these conspiracy theories where we will deny what eyewitnesses tell us, then we really undermine our own faith. Now, of course, you can have lying eyewitnesses. People who lie, people make mistakes. You know, the UFO phenomenon is a good example where people think it's a ufo. They might sincerely believe it, but they're just wrong. [00:19:12] So I'm not saying, you know, eyewitness testimony is always infallible, but at the same time, you. We have to realize that it is something that, you know, is. Is a reality that we have to trust on some level. Eyewitness testimony. [00:19:32] So, okay, somebody said the sound is going. Is it sound? Okay, Somebody leaving the live chat. If the sound is back, I can check my settings to make sure for those who are in the live chat, somebody was saying that the sound's having a problem. [00:19:44] It looks all okay on my end, so it. Hopefully it is. Okay. I'll keep going, though, and I'll talk to myself. So we'll just have to see. [00:19:54] Okay, sounds back. Good. Thank you for letting me know in the live chat. I appreciate that. [00:19:58] Okay. Another. And kind of like one of my last things I want to talk about with. When it comes to the dangers of conspiracy theorists, you know, being too much of a conspiracy hunter, it's like, literally impossible. Arguing with them, having a logical discussion with somebody about these things. [00:20:18] Because everything you say, they just come back with, well, that's what they want you to think. Or you just believe. You're just believing what you're told. [00:20:26] We're both believing what we're told because neither of us were there. Like, let's say, the Charlie Kirk assassination. Neither of us were there when it happened. We're both believing what we're told. I might be believing different people than you're believing, or we're both believing what we're told, mostly by people who weren't there either. [00:20:43] They might just. Another thing is, like, they just call you a boomer. Oh, you're just a boomer. [00:20:48] If you believe something like the moon landing. [00:20:52] But it's like, that's not an argument. That's not an argument at all. [00:20:56] And they assume you're ignorant. They're like, oh, if you just read this book, if you just watch this documentary, then you'll. You'll come around. [00:21:02] I've been Told that on a number like, the moon landing is a perfect example. So many times I have read the books, I have watched the documentaries. I've heard all the arguments denying the moon landing. [00:21:14] I'm not ignorant of the arguments. But you know what I've also done? I've also looked at all the arguments for it, and it's obvious it happened. [00:21:25] And if you just say, oh, well, you didn't really. You didn't watch this video. You don't really. Or you're just unwilling to accept the reality. [00:21:32] These aren't arguments. Because what I found is most arguments on conspiracy theories that aren't really legitimate, when you're arguing for them, it's like what you're really doing is what the person often does is just tries to undermine one piece of evidence for it and act like that, then everything falls apart. Well, no, you're just looking at one thing. You have to look at the total picture with the Charlie Kirk assassination attempt. That's a perfect example we'll talk about in a minute. [00:21:59] But, like, they just. And then they pull in experts in some field that neither they nor I am an expert in and say, oh, well, experts say this. Well, I got experts that say the opposite. Neither of us are experts. [00:22:12] So you didn't really undermine. You didn't really undermine the dominant narrative by saying that. [00:22:17] Or they also say, like, well, how can you believe that when people who lie. We know, have lied, they also think this. Like, this has been used on the moon landing. Holocaust denial, the idea that they lied to us about COVID And so they're like, how can you believe about everything? Well, I mean, I've been told that when I was. When I've said I believe that we land on the moon, people said, well, they lied to us about Coven. You're gonna believe them about that? Like, it's the exact. Like, the Venn diagram is exactly the same. Like, the exact same people. [00:22:47] I think a lot more people than lied about COVID are. Believe that we know that we landed on the moon. [00:22:55] Neil Armstrong didn't lie to us about COVID And so it's like this idea, though, that you're just like, there's. There's not. There's no logical leap from they lied to us about COVID therefore they lied to us about the moon landing or the JFK assessment or even things that might be conspiracy, whatever. They're not connected to each other ultimately. Often there is plenty of evidence out there if you want to look. [00:23:21] And so, like, for example, I don't debate people Whether or not we land on the moon. You know why? Because there's countless evidence out there that we have. There are YouTube channels where people explain, go through exactly why this. They're not like NASA scientists. They're not like, you know, they're not like people who work for NASA, I mean, or work for the government. They're just regular people who do all the research. Like, here's why we know we landed on the moon. And they will debunk all the arguments against it. [00:23:49] They don't bother to watch that. They don't really engage with that. And so often I just don't really, you know, you can't really argue another. And the other thing I find is a lot of times conspiracy theories, crazy arguments are made and then they're forgotten. Like during COVID I heard a lot of crazy things on our side, people who question the. The dominant narrative that were really insane, though, like things they were trying to do and how they were trying to kill everybody and they're going to kill everybody. And all this stuff that within by 2023, you know, 10 million people are going to be dead or 100 million people, whatever, and it didn't happen and it was just forgotten. [00:24:28] Well, I'm sorry, I'm definitely not going to trust you anymore if you proclaim definitively that you've heard of a plan by the government to eliminate 100 million people by 2023 and it didn't happen. [00:24:42] I'm not believing the next thing you tell me yet. They just forget it and move on. I mean, there's, there's grifters in this spaces, in every space where they make videos claiming these things, they write content claiming these things. People just follow it. I mean, Alex Jones does this. [00:24:57] I mean, he's had a million and one crazy theories in his time, and yes, he's gotten some things right, but he's gotten a lot wrong. And we just supposed to ignore that and act like, okay, it doesn't matter. If you throw enough crap up on the wall, some of it will stick. And so we'll believe you that all of it sticks. That's not how it works. [00:25:18] And so I really do think that being obsessed with conspiracy theories as a Catholic, a conservative, traditional Catholic, is very dangerous for our spiritual health. [00:25:28] I really do think that it can harm your spiritual life because it will undermine trust of legitimate authority. It will undermine trust in legitimate reality. [00:25:39] It will undermine, like your spiritual life because you will not believe anybody. You will not believe anybody. And I just think that becomes a very dangerous thing. [00:25:50] Now I want to actually bring up some of the more common ones I mentioned earlier and tell you my opinion. Now I will say before I give my opinion, I don't claim to be an expert on any of these things. I don't claim to have infallible knowledge. Of course, I could be wrong or more information could come out later that proves me wrong. What I think right now is wrong. [00:26:13] But I do think that on all these things I have looked into them and in some cases I believe the dominant narrative. In other cases I don't. That's okay. Like, I feel like there's sometimes, you know, because of traditional Catholics and we know the world is against us. We do. [00:26:30] It is. [00:26:32] So therefore, it's almost like pride makes us say we cannot believe any of the dominant narratives. Because if we do, that's a real problem. [00:26:43] And so I just think that we have to look at each one. Here's what we have to do. Look at each one individually and say, okay, is the dominant narrative on this correct or not? [00:26:58] It might be. It might not be. [00:27:00] It's not 100% either way. That's what reasonable people do. So first let me just talk about the Charlie Kirk assassination. [00:27:08] I'll do it by just simply sending you to a. I'll try to put a link in the show notes. I forgot to do that. Let me pull it up here so I get the, the name of it. Right. [00:27:16] Matt Walsh wrote a great op ed called why I Don't Buy the Charlie Kirk Conspiracy Theories. It's on Daily Wire. I know there's probably Daily Wire. Don't. Like, that's another thing. Don't do, don't do that. Because that's a, that's a classic move of conspiracy theorists. Like, because Daily Wire has some serious problems immediately. It's like, okay, anything from there or anybody associate that we have to, we know they're lying or whatever read the actual article. [00:27:45] But Matt Walsh did an excellent job explaining why he believes it was Tyler Robinson the dominant narrative is. Right. It was a trans influence leftist kid who shot Charlie Kirk exactly like they say he did. Like the dominant narrative says he did. [00:28:04] And there's just too much evidence out there. And like I said, Matt Walsh goes through. I'm not going to go through it here, but on. And so. And he even says he, like he's friends with Candace Owens. He's, he's. Because Candace is the one who's promoting alternative theories the most right now. And Matt's friends with Candace Walsh. Candace, sorry. Candace Owens. [00:28:24] And he's still friends with her, but like a mature adult, he's just simply saying he disagrees with her. And I do, too. I think Candace is off on this. I think she's, you know, going down paths that are just not legitimate. [00:28:37] And I think the evidence is just pointing very much to Charlie. That Charlie Kirk was session by Tyler Robinson. [00:28:46] And so I, I just recommend you go read Matt Walsh's article. Why I do not buy. What is it again? Why I don't buy the Charlie Kirk conspiracy theories. The next conspiracy theory I want to mention is another assassination attempt. This time, fortunately, it wasn't. It wasn't successful. Now, of course, assassination temp on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, back in July of July 13, 2024. Now this one, I don't believe the narrative at all. I don't believe the dominant. I can't remember what the kid's name is. Who, who, who shot him. You know, whatever. [00:29:20] There is way too many holes in this one. [00:29:23] I mean, the fact that he could get to where he was, the fact that, you know, the Secret Service just like broken down. I was at a Donald Trump event a month before the assassination attempt. It was a turning point. Charlie Kirk was there to turning point, usa. Let me tell you, when Donald Trump showed up, you wouldn't believe what they did, the Secret Service did. They basically made everybody get out of the main arena and then come back through, secure their security. [00:29:49] And then they realized about halfway through letting everybody in, somebody had left a door open in another place to let people in and some people had not been checked. They made every single person leave the arena and come back again. [00:30:03] And you're telling me some kid could get on a roof, what was 100 meters away, something like that, and take a shot at the, at President Trump? No, I'm just not buying that. I don't know what happened. I don't have an alternative theory of who was behind it, you know, who, who, you know, who was controlling the shooter or anything like that. I don't know. I just know what we're told is lies. [00:30:25] That, that one is very clear to me that I'm totally buying the conspiracy theories about the, about the, the assassination. And I don't understand why Trump doesn't seem to care. [00:30:38] Like that is a little bit. That's even, that's more scary the fact that Trump doesn't seem to be wanting to look into these things at all. [00:30:47] But it is what it is. Okay, next one. Jeffrey Epstein, obviously, I don't think this is a theory anymore. Everybody knows there's A conspiracy that Epstein was connected to powerful people, Lots of people implicated lots of people I think will. [00:31:01] Hopefully it will come out, you know, that, that who was implicated in this. [00:31:06] But let's talk about the Trump connection for a moment. I actually don't think Donald Trump was doing anything like, let's just say things he shouldn't be doing with minors he shouldn't be doing anything by other than his wife. But you know what I mean. [00:31:18] But I do think there's a lot of connections between him and Epstein. I mean, he doesn't really deny that. [00:31:23] And I think he fought so hard at the end to prevent it getting out because I think he thought it would distract from his agenda. It would, it would tar him. [00:31:33] He believed unfairly because he wasn't. Yes, he was associated Jeffrey Epstein, but everybody associated Jeffrey Epstein was, you know, doing things with kids or knew he was. What was going on with, you know, what he was doing and all that stuff, trying to keep this family friendly people. [00:31:46] I also think it's possible that he knew that there are people close to him who would be implicated as doing some terrible things and he wanted to protect them. But I don't know. But I definitely think this is obviously conspiracy theory where the, the kind of, I guess it's dominant narrative that I don't even know if it's a dominant narrative anymore. But the idea that really there's not much there. I think there is a lot there. I don't think we'll probably ever find out. [00:32:11] Okay, the next one is the French president's wife, Macron. I think it is Brid. Bridget. Bridget, something like that. Macron. [00:32:18] You know, Candace Owens has been doing a lot saying that she is actually a he. [00:32:24] Here's my thoughts on this one. [00:32:28] I don't care. [00:32:31] I really don't care. [00:32:33] And I just don't understand her Candace's obsession with trying to, to determine one way or the other. [00:32:41] I just don't see how it's relevant for my life as an American, as a Catholic or anything. Yeah, it would be weird if it came out it was true. It'd be kind of like, it'd be kind of nice to see some of these evil people get a comeuppance and all that stuff. But really I don't care. And this one I think is a perfect example of distractions. If you're spending a lot of time trying to determine if the first lady of France is actually the first dude, I don't know. It just doesn't seem to me something that we should really Care about or spend time worrying about. [00:33:14] Okay, Covid. [00:33:16] I already kind of talked about this a little bit. The COVID origins of the actual virus, I think. I don't know if this is a theory anymore. Clearly it was man made. I think that's just obvious now. I also think it's likely it was part of testing that might be related to like weapon bio weapons testing and things of that nature. [00:33:35] But it was clearly something funded by the American government. I think there's no question about that now. The vaccines. [00:33:42] I'm very much opposed to the vaccines. Like, I don't think, obviously there's been a mandate. I refuse to get any of the COVID vaccines. [00:33:49] Nobody in my family got the COVID vaccines. I never recommend anybody get the COVID vaccines. I think they were immorally created. I do think there is an argument to be made that the connection isn't so straightforward, that it's not as immoral as some Catholic, like somebody Bishop Schneider was saying, who I love and respect. But it definitely was connected to unborn babies. And we had no duty to take it like certain Catholic officials said we did. [00:34:14] But I also did hear theories at the time that it was basically an injection to like kill people and eliminate part of the population. That's obviously not the case. I mean, we know that now. It's been long enough because they weren't just claiming that, okay, it'll make people, some people die over. I mean, people have died from getting the COVID vaccine. I fully acknowledge that. [00:34:37] I don't want to say I believe that that's been proven. [00:34:40] But at the same time, it clearly wasn't what some people claimed it was. Some of the theories were crazy. And this is where we use our brains. We use our rationality. Okay, yes, it's true that the covaccine was not tested. Yes, it's true that COVID vaccine was dangerous to take for many people. It's true it wasn't necessary for anybody really to take, but it doesn't mean it's true. That was made in like a, you know, created by the government or eliminate, you know, 50% of the population, like Thanos or something. [00:35:10] So the, the next one I want to mention is UFOs, like UFO sightings. [00:35:16] I just don't believe any of them are aliens. I don't believe any of the UFO sightings that, that have been said over the past 60, 70 years are actual extraterrestrial intelligent life. I do think there are some that are difficult to explain. [00:35:32] The vast majority of them are easy to explain. There are some that are difficult to explain, and I don't claim to have an explanation, but until there's more evidence of actual aliens, like, you know, beings, you know, you know, alien beings, intelligent life that we can prove, I'm just going to chalk it up to that. The unexplained ones are maybe, you know, classified military ships or something like that. I just, I just don't think going down that path. I don't see many conservatives going down the path of believing all those, but it is a popular one these days, and I don't think any of them are. Are actual aliens. Okay, the next one is the moon landing. I've already talked about this. I admit this is a pet peeve of mine because this one, I really. Okay, I will say this. And I'm gonna annoy some friends of mine who, who deny the moon landing, and I'm still friends with them. Here's the thing to note. [00:36:26] We don't like, you know, let's act like adults. Just because I disagree with you on your, your thoughts on, on conspiracy theory doesn't mean I think you're a bad person. Or, I mean, I'm not your. I'm not, you know, think you're dumb or anything like that. [00:36:38] I, I know a guy who accepts a lot of conspiracy theories, and I can, I trust him explicitly, implicitly. I would. Like he could watch my kids, you know, I mean, so it's not like, you know, let's be clear about that. But the moon landing one, I just simply, I question your, your reasoning ability, at least in this, in this instance, if you deny the moon landing, there's just so much evidence. I found that what's happened is. Used to be almost nobody denied it, but in recent years, a lot of people started denying. I feel like it's like you, you like being part of a secret club. A part of a club that. Oh, yeah, I'm not buying, you know, what they're saying. Like, it's like you can kind of look distant and apart from everybody else. [00:37:21] The evidence is ridiculously overwhelming that it happened. I mean, there's just so many points of evidence. Like I said, I watch the conspiracy theory videos, I read their articles, things like that. And they're always a matter of, like, trying to chip away at one thing, like, oh, that couldn't have happened over this. This guy said this. [00:37:39] But then when you look at the totality, it's like Matt Walsh did with the Charlie Kirk assassination thing. You don't look at one thing when you're, when you're building a case. If you're a lawyer building a case, you have lots and lots of different pieces of evidence, and they all come to not one. Usually there's not one piece that's like the smoking gun to everything. [00:38:00] You know, obviously, if you don't have a confession or something like that, and the same thing's true with the moon landing, you might be able to say, well, was this really, you know, this seems a little bit fishy. This guy said this, whatever. But if you look at the totality of the evidence, it just is overwhelming. [00:38:15] And, you know, there's tons of proof offered for why it happened if you really just want to explore it. But I just don't think some people want to. They just like they'd rather be part of the club of, hey, I'm not going along with the crowd. I'm different. [00:38:31] And again, just because they lied about you about COVID doesn't mean they lied about, about the moon landing. You know, it's not the same. They. [00:38:40] The last conspiracy theory I kind of want to address my own thoughts on is probably the most serious one, the one that has the most, it's the most controversial, the most touchy, the most that has an impact on the world we live in, and that's Holocaust denial. [00:38:57] And just, I'll put my cards up front, I, I, I believe the Holocaust happened basically how it said that it's happened. Now, I'm not going to get in a debate over specific numbers, like it has to be exactly 6 million or, or you're a Holocaust and a hire. No, I, I don't think it matters that much. The exact number millions were killed, let's just say that which makes it a tragedy, makes it horrific, makes it a Holocaust. [00:39:26] But what I've seen though, is, and this is, I will just say it, this is too prevalent among traditional Catholics, the Holocaust denial. And a lot of times it's not outright denial. [00:39:36] I'm just asking questions. Okay, fine. I think it's good to ask questions. St. Thomas Aquinas would agree with that. [00:39:43] But are you listening to the answers? [00:39:46] Are you listening to the answers? Are you just, you know, just asking questions or to, in order to make a point, to try to undermine another point. [00:39:55] A lot of Holocaust denial today, particularly in traditional Catholic world, is based upon the post Holocaust narrative in the world, which is the idea that basically you can't criticize the Jews, you can't criticize anything related to Judaism because that's the first step to another Holocaust. And this is believed by many People, like many people do. And you see this in the church, you see this in the wider world. [00:40:29] This idea that if somebody criticizes Jewish people, then basically you're. You're just calling for another Holocaust, which is ludicrous. Everybody should be open to criticism. I should be open to criticism. You should be. The church should be. Everybody should be, including the Jews. They're fallen human beings, just like we are. They make mistakes, they sin, they do awful things. Sometimes when I say they, I just mean some of them, not saying all of them. [00:40:55] Like, I'm terribly opposed to the government, the government of the modern state of Israel. I think it's evil and does evil things. [00:41:02] It's run by Jews. But I don't think all Jews are evil, of course. But the idea of that all of a sudden means I somehow that will lead to another Jewish Holocaust is just ridiculous. [00:41:14] But here's the reality. [00:41:16] You don't combat that narrative, that false narrative that Jews can do no wrong with basically trying to undermine historical truth. [00:41:26] That's not the way forward. [00:41:28] You basically instead use logic, use reason to explain. Yes, the Holocaust happened. It was awful. We never want it to happen again. [00:41:37] But at the same time, Jews today are doing. Some Jews are doing terrible things. I think you could argue that potentially what Israel did in Gaza was a genocide. [00:41:49] You can say that and also acknowledge that there's a genocide committed against the Jews back in the 1930s and 40s by the Nazis. [00:41:58] But what this also does is it under. It's like. There's also this like, okay, Hitler wasn't so bad type of thing. [00:42:06] No, Hitler was bad. He was awful. I'm not saying he did everything wrong, because nobody does everything wrong. If you got the trains to run on time as Mussolini, you know, okay, that was good. [00:42:15] Obviously, you could pick and choose certain things that Hitler implemented that are positive things, but that's not how you judge somebody. [00:42:25] Their overall work. Stalin did things, some of them, that were decent, you know, but like, he's overall. Was a monster. [00:42:33] And so was Hitler. He was a monster. [00:42:37] And I just. What I always come back to, a couple things I come back to. [00:42:41] One is look at the great Catholics of the time. What did they think? [00:42:48] Who experience it and live through it. St Maximilian Kolbe, servant of God, Teresa Newman. Dietrich von Hildebrand. Dietrich von Hildebrand is. Is considered like a godfather of the trad movement. [00:43:02] Dietrich Hildebrand would not have your. Oh, the Nazis weren't so bad. Hitler wasn't so bad. The man was a tireless fighter against the Nazis. And he knew how evil they were. He knew how evil that Hitler was literally an Antichrist. [00:43:17] So I'm going to side with them. I'm sorry. Rather than somebody like Father James Maudsley, who again, writes some good stuff at times. He's a traditionalist priest. You don't know over Covid. He was right on Covid. [00:43:31] If I'm getting this story wrong, I'm sorry, I apologize. But I think the story is he was a fraternity Saint Peter priest, but he left the fraternity because he didn't want to harm the fraternity by speaking out against the COVID regime. [00:43:44] God bless him for speaking out against the COVID regime. However, this might be an example we've seen before of priests really do need to have an authority over them because this kind of like Hitler wasn't so bad. [00:43:57] The gas chambers didn't really kill anybody. You know, scientifically, that's just not possible. Or that we have so much eyewitness testimony, like the commandant who ran the concentration camp that Maximin Colby died in. [00:44:11] He testified to everything that he had done and he converted before he died to Christianity. [00:44:18] So are you just going to say they're all lying about it? Like, yeah, like I said, there might be specific, certain details that might be off, but the overall idea that the Holocaust really didn't happen or it was way, way, way, way, way less than we think. And Hitler wasn't so bad. He, he had, you know, he was actually a good leader in a lot of ways. [00:44:43] It's just a anti intellectual, anti rational way to combat the narrative today about Jews never being able to be criticized. And also like the whole idea the Jews are behind things, which I reject this idea. I've written about it before. I'll probably write it again in the future. I'm not going to go into it now. We're already going a little bit long. [00:45:06] But like the E. Michael Jones, Nick Fuentes idea that, like, the Jews are behind lots of the evil in the world. I think there are some Jews that are involved in very evil things, but I just don't do the conspiracy theory of the Jews are behind it. So, yeah, I reject the Holocaust denial categorically. Call me a boomer, I don't care. That's not an argument. So, you know, say whatever you want. [00:45:30] So I want to wrap it up here before I get to some of the comments in live chat, but just say, as Catholics, we should always seek the truth, but we can't be obsessed with uncovering every single lie out there. There's lots of lies out There our job is not to uncover them all. [00:45:50] We should actually start from a point of skepticism, but towards this conspiracy theories as well. [00:46:00] Like what I feel like all we're doing is we're just replacing a blind trust in institutions with a blind trust in certain Internet personalities. [00:46:11] We have to start, you know, we have to be. [00:46:14] We have to stop doing that and have skepticism towards these claims. We need strong evidence to overturn. What is the easiest answer, you know, Occam's Razor, like in the Charlie Kirk assassination, everything basically fits with the dominant narrative. I know there are going to be little things on the edges that don't fit. That. That's. That's human. That's human life. That's the way we live. There's always going to be things like that. Whenever you have any event, if you have 20 people say what happened? You're going to get generally 20. [00:46:44] You're going to get 20 testimonies that are, if they're all telling the truth, that are generally consistent, but they're going to have discrepancies. [00:46:52] Well, Occam's Razor just said, I mean, you know, you got to have strong evidence and Candace does not have it. And there isn't strong evidence to overturn that. And that's the case with a lot of these elements like Holocaust denial, things like that. [00:47:03] But it is true. And like the assassination attempt against Trump, that we can, you know, the easiest answer that that guy just did by himself doesn't does fall. It does fall apart. [00:47:17] So our duty is not to discover all the unhidden truths out there. Our duty is to be faithful to Jesus Christ and follow Him. [00:47:24] Anything that disturbs our peace in Christ, we should not be chasing after. And I feel like that's what this does in a lot of times. And we have to always remember, ultimately, Jesus Christ is in control. [00:47:38] He is king. He is in control. [00:47:40] No matter what conspiracies might be out there, ultimately they don't really affect us where it matters, our salvation. They shouldn't affect us in our salvation. [00:47:52] For faithful to him, no matter what's going on around us. [00:47:55] I'm not saying we don't try to. We don't fight evil, we don't fight lies. [00:48:00] But we have to have a balanced viewpoint of this. So. Okay, let me just check out some of the live chat. [00:48:07] Okay. Elizabeth says, don't forget those who claim that Die Hard is a Christmas movie. [00:48:11] Oh, Elizabeth. Oh, Elizabeth, I'm sorry, but you're wrong here. Die Hard is a Christmas movie. [00:48:19] The conspiracies are True. [00:48:21] We're just going to have to agree to disagree on that one. [00:48:24] Okay. Yeah. Mentioned the sound going out and oh, I like this. Anna Kate said when the sound went out, the aliens got the helm. Probably true. [00:48:32] IM Rizzio says now with AI generated fake news, we are really primed to make rash leaps of trust and reactions that could be catastrophic. [00:48:39] It really is a. [00:48:41] I'm writing a book about AI right now, and this is one of the things I bring up because not only can the authorities use AI generated fake news to like, undermine things, like, you could create a, like, you know, some, some liberal, like, you know, positives. Create a video of Trump doing something terrible that's fake. It can also be used by the conspiracy theorist just as much to show. Oh, actually see where this shot did come from from Charlie Kirk, it did do this and it's a fake news. [00:49:09] So it's going to be even harder and harder to trust what we see. Even used to be if you saw something, at least you knew it wasn't lying. You know, these eyes aren't lying. [00:49:19] But now that might not even be the case anymore. So that's another reason why not to go down all these paths of like, constantly being obsessed with conspiracy theories. [00:49:28] Okay. Sageheart says, I saw Matt Walsh episode on and it was very good. Yeah, Matt Walsh. You know, this funny, there's certain things about Matt Walsh I just, I'm not a big fan of, but boy, he. When he is right, he is right. And I think, you know, I saw him talk about, I think it was on Tucker Show. Tucker, I think, gets into conspiracies that are wrong. Like he's. Tucker thinks that, like, we don't know how the nuclear bombs are invented. That was somehow like demons that create it. That's just not true. We definitely know how. I read books about it, but. [00:49:59] And Matt Walsh was on there and he was talking about how he's loyal to his friends no matter what. Like, he's not going to denounce Candace Owens. He's not going to denounce Tucker, he's not going to denounce whoever. [00:50:11] And he's absolutely right. Absolutely right. [00:50:14] That whole thing is just stupid. But on this, on this Charlie Kirk thing, he's absolutely right. I urge you to read. You know what he was saying about it? [00:50:22] TKO Tradish says, I feel the same way about the moon landings you do about the Macrons. I don't care. You know, that is a healthy attitude. It's because I'm a space nerd that I care. [00:50:33] But I do know it has no impact on my salvation. So God bless you. You know, you. You have the better attitude there than I do, probably. I just, it's a, it's one of those things where it's the one that is a pet peeve of mine because I have read and studied so much about space in like, how. And, and spaceships and, you know, and moon landing and all that stuff. I just know it's ridiculous, but it's better just not to care. I'm with you. [00:50:58] Okay, thank you everybody who joined the live chat. I saw there's a good, healthy chat today. I appreciate that. Thank you everybody who joined live. And even for those who don't join live, I really appreciate it. So just pursue Jesus Christ, not conspiracy theories. That's the message for today. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you.