Did Radical Traditionalism Lead to Murder?

[00:00:00] Foreign accused of murdering a Kansas priest has been linked to radical traditionalist viewpoints. Can radical traditionalism lead to violence? That's what we're going to talk about today and some other things today on Crisis Point. Hello, I'm Eric Sims, your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, just want to encourage you, smash that like button. Subscribe the channel, let other people know about what we're doing here. I really appreciate everybody who joins us, especially for these Tuesday afternoon live podcasts where you can join the live chat, you can let. You can make your comments, you can ask questions and we'll address some of them at the end of the program. Also, you can follow us on social media. Risismag. Subscribe to your email newsletter. Just go crisismagazine.com put in your email address and we'll send you our commentary every morning. One email a day. We promise not to spam you. Every once in a while we'll send you maybe an email we think you'll be interested in, maybe a book or something like that. [00:01:08] But other than that, you'll just get that single email a day with our commentary. Okay? And like I said, again, if you're in the live chat, thank you very much. Feel free to leave your comments, your questions, interact with other people in the live chat and I will address. Excuse me, some of that at the end of the program. Okay, let me get set up here, which I should have been set up already, but that's okay. [00:01:31] So one of the big news stories of in the Catholic church, at least in America last week is a. There was a tragic murder of a Catholic priest. Father. I apologize for any names I've mispronounced, especially dear father's name. Father. A rule Karasala, who was a priest in Seneca, Kansas, was shot and killed last Thursday, April 3, and father. And very shortly after the shooting, authorities arrested this man, Gary Hermesh. Hermesh. Gary Hermesh of Oklahoma. So which isn't exactly next door to Seneca, Kansas. And he was charged with the murder of Father Karasala. And so this of course was news. And together were just because a Catholic priest was murdered, that's a terrible thing. We should be praying for Father Karasala's soul, praying for his parish, praying for all his family, all those associated with father. [00:02:37] And we obviously pray for if it was Hermesh who was the murderer, we pray for him for repentance, that he and or whoever was involved right now, that, that the accusation against is against Hermesh. Well, one of the interesting things that came out shortly after the shooting was that this, this man accused Hermesh, who was accused of the shooting. He had written a number of letters to the editor to an Oklahoma paper which were then published. And his views are very much something that I think those of us who kind of are in traditional circles have seen people talk about before. So let me pull up a few of the letters here. I'll read them for people who are listening. [00:03:24] I'm not going to read the whole thing because he kind of just goes on and on in these letters. But he's talking about problems in the world and in the church. And he says, how did it all happen? The infiltration, subversion at the Vatican was already fomenting beneath the surface. As far back as the 1930s and 40s, Vatican II was called just to seal the deal. [00:03:49] Talk about cancel culture. That's probably why Our lady said at Fatima to pray for the conversion of Russia. They're the only ones who could potentially be in position to retake it. Maybe they could try an insurrection or something first. If that fails, they've got plenty of nukes for plan B. Yes, it's that bad. The concept of religious liberty is a fallacious joke. The New World Order. [00:04:11] Let me make sure I read that the New World Order crowd believes nothing and actually hates the idea of real freedom. And the letter is kind of rambling. It's kind of hard to follow his thought process here. But obviously that language of the infiltration at the Vatican was filming behind beneath the surface as far back as 30s, 40s. Let's just be honest. We all know exactly when we hear the word infiltration of the Catholic Church, we think of Taylor Marshall's book Infiltration, which was published by Crisis Publications before I was here at Crisis. But still it's a Crisis Publications book published by Taylor Marshall. And so that obviously is a little bit troubling that somebody who would murder a priest is talking about the infiltration of the Vatican. But then there's other letters he wrote. He wrote a total of six. Not going to show them all. But he says things like, for example, in this letter, he talks about the problem with the fake Catholic Church, which he's talking about, you know, the Catholic Church most of us recognize as the real Catholic Church. He calls it the fake Catholic Church. Another letter, he says, then along comes Vatican ii, and pretty soon Pope Paul VI declares, are you looking for God? You will find him in man. So he instructs the priest to all turn around instead of facing the altar, to face the people so as to be facing God, he says. Then the rock star Pope JP2, who some say was actually in fact literally the Antichrist in the flesh comes next. And evidently it was him who came with the idea. How about making a personal journey to find God? Maybe that will work. He goes on later he says next comes Benedict xvi who basically just reiterates that it the communion host doesn't literally become Christ in the flesh anymore. With only appearance of bread remaining transubstantiation, the bread is still there, at least according to a priest I was listening to on a radio program one time when I was driving across Texas. Obviously Pope Benedict never said that. He never said that the, the, the host doesn't become Christ in the flesh anymore. He, he believed very much in transubstantiation. And you know, he calls JP2 the Antichrist. An Antichrist potentially. He talks about turning around the priest, turning around the altar at Orientum. So in another letter. Let me pull up this one. He talks about as unfortunately as for the Jews. Unfortunately, most of them parentheses along with I think the, the fake diabolical Vatican II church rejected and to this day still do the Messiah, the only way, the truth and the life. [00:06:32] So it's not just the Jews rejected Messiah, but the fake diabolical Vatican II church. Now I've been around long enough that I have received messages, emails, kind of of this nature. I've seen comments on Facebook on comments that have been made on posts I'll make on social media. I will admit I did a quick search on my email to see if this man had ever written me with some crazy stuff. He had not. Usually what I do is I just delete those emails. When people send me emails with crazy ideas, stuff like that, I just delete them. [00:07:09] And so obviously Hermesh was a traditionalist. I think we could probably classified as radical traditionalists. I'll explain what I mean by that in a minute. And also that he might have been a sedevacantist. Just the way he talks about Pope Paul VI and John Paul ii, Benedict xvi, he talks about the fake Catholic Church. Usually you don't talk about the fake Catholic Church unless you believe the person who claims to be Pope isn't really the Pope. So he might have been a SETI vocantist. We don't know that one way or the other. [00:07:43] Now here's the thing. The reason I bring all this up is because already as soon as this came out, there were people, progressive Catholics in particular, who are insinuating that this is not surprising, that it's not surprising A quote unquote, radical traditionalist would murder a priest. [00:08:00] That this is basically the road that radical traditionalism leads one down is to violence against priests, I guess. [00:08:09] And it just is something that is. It's vile to make the accusation. It's despicable, frankly. Number one, because we have no idea what the motive is. That's something to be clear right here. As of right now, we just know this man has been charged. We just know of these letters. We know nothing else. In fact, there are. I saw something. I had not verified this yet, that he was actually from Hermesh, was actually from Seneca. So he might have known the priest. So this might have been a personal matter that had nothing to do with his views on the Vatican or Vatican II or the liturgy or anything like that. He might have just had a grudge against this priest. [00:08:47] Who knows? [00:08:49] We just don't know yet. It was very quick. People were very quick. Some people, vile people, were very quick to put the blame at the feet of radical traditionalism. Now, one thing we should be clear about is for progressives, any traditionalism is radical traditionalism. They will, if you push them and say, oh, I don't mean all traditionalists. I think the Latin Mass is fine. I'm talking about the radical traditionalist. But when you ask them more specifically, they really can't hammer them down on any distinction between a garden variety traditionalist and a quote, unquote radical traditionalist. And so somebody like myself or Peter Kwasnski or Taylor Marshall or people all who are in communion with the Catholic Church, in good standing and all that, we're considered radical traditionalists simply because. I don't know why, because they want to set the Overton window that anything that is more traditional than maybe a average Novus Ordo conservative Catholic is a radical traditionalist. It's a way to sweep a broad brush, to sweep a lot of people into a negative connotation. Now, here's the thing. I do think there actually is a distinction. I do think there are quote, unquote radical traditionalists. And I do think that does exist in the church. And I think this man, based upon these letters and that alone, I think he probably qualifies. If you start calling the Catholic Church the fake Catholic Church, if you start saying things like that Pope John Paul II suggests he was the Antichrist and things of that nature, then yeah, I think you've now gone off the reservation. [00:10:27] Because a traditionalist to me is a regular garden variety traditionalist, is somebody who simply is trying to live out the Catholic faith. [00:10:39] Generally, as it was lived out before all the major changes in the church that happened, particularly in the 1960s. So they go to a Mass that was from before 1962, you know, or 62 or before, you know, the Latin Mass. They, their spiritual reading is typically of books from before the conciliar period, before Vatican ii. The prayers they say, things like that. Their basic spirituality that is all fostered and fed by the Catholic Church as it was before the many changes in the 1960s. And that's it. Nothing more than that. It doesn't mean that you think the Novus Ordo Mass is invalid or you refuse to go to it or anything. That just simply means that in general, your Catholic life is shaped by the spirituality, the liturgy, the ethos of the pre Vatican II era. [00:11:34] A radical traditionalist would be, in my mind at least, would be somebody who rejects everything that happened since Vatican II and everything since then, and even and basically says the Catholic Church today is a fake church. And so the question is, is there a connection, though, between this radical traditionalist viewpoint. Let's just, you know, a radical traditionalist and violence? And no. I have encountered some crazies in my day, and I'll talk about this a little bit more in a second, especially online, but not once have I ever thought that they were fostering or encouraging violence of any type towards anybody. [00:12:16] I mean, the whole point of traditional Catholicism is a deeper embrace of the Catholic faith as it's always been practiced through the ages, through tradition. And so you're going to pray more, you're going to strive to be holy more, you're going to try to live out a faithful life as a Christian in prayer and penance. It's not exactly conducive to violence. In fact, it's the exact opposite. Opposite. Now, even the people who I think like one example I saw online was posted was somebody calling out Father James Altman, and they're accusing him of previously basically calling for the assassination of Pope Francis. This is just nonsense. I am not a fan of where Father James Altman has gone in recent years, and I have criticized him publicly on X and other places he has criticized me. We've had some back and forth. I think a lot of the work he's doing now is very harmful for souls. I want to make that clear. I'm not a fan of Father Altman. That being said, he has not encouraged anybody to commit violence. He never once said somebody should murder Pope Francis. He simply used biblical language to talk about Francis having a millstone around his neck. And being thrown in the sea. Anybody who knows the Bible, knows Christian imagery, knows exactly what he means there. He's not saying I should go put a millstone around his neck literally and throw him into the sea. He was saying the words of Jesus. This is what happens to people who give scandal. And so he was saying pope Francis is giving great scandal. And therefore that's kind of the result of that according to Jesus. So not once would any rational person think that he was calling for violence. And so even if you take somebody like a Father Altman who I think has gotten very extreme and like I said, is not, is really leading some souls astray, he's not calling anybody to violence. So to connect this man's actions hurt Mesh's alleged actions, let's be clear about that. In the murder of Father Karasala. To like having radical traditional views is just, is just crazy. The truth is, if we want to just play this game, well, what about all the people who attended a Novus Ordo parish that was lame, frankly, and that they left the Catholic Church because it was so lame, they became atheists and then they go murdered somebody. Is that the fault of the Novus Ordo parish? Do we blame the Novus Ordo for that? Because it's led so many people out of the church that people are. And some of those people ended up becoming crazy people who end up killing people? No, of course we don't. It's silly to do that. But it's the same logic that you'd apply here for the radical traditionalists. If you're going to apply it equally, you have to now put the blame for every former Catholic who grew up after Vatican ii. Why don't we blame the changes in the church for them committing their crimes, any of them that committed crimes. [00:15:13] That's, that's not something that we, we obviously would do. [00:15:17] Now, I do want to address somewhat of an elephant in the room and that is the fact that it's a well known stereotype that within the traditional Catholic movement there are some crazies, there are some unbalanced people. I think those of us who have lived. I've personally been attending traditional Catholic parishes for almost 15 years now. And it's true, there are definitely a segment that are a bit unbalanced at times, a bit odd. I mean, it's hard. I'm trying to be, I want to not be too judgmental here because sometimes being odd is not like wrong, it's not like a bad thing. It's just somebody who's different, somebody who's different, who maybe doesn't have the greatest social skills or maybe just is a little too earnest when he's talking about what he's talking about. He kind of gives a bad vibe. So like that there's no sin in that, there's no like immorality in that. That just simply is that who that person is. And the fact is, I do think the traditional movement attracts a higher percentage of those people. Why? Because the traditional Catholic movement is against the mainstream and the mainstream rejects anything that's not normal. And so in the traditional Catholic movement they find a home often because we're not going to reject you just simply because you're a bit odd. [00:16:39] You're not going to be be told, just you have to, you know, have to leave or be feel unwelcome just because you're bid odd. Because the truth is every parish should be like that. Every parish should welcome oddballs. I mean Jesus Christ came for everybody, including the oddballs. And yes, some of them are odd enough to make you uncomfortable. I'm the first to admit that I'm uncomfortable at times around some people that I might, you know, meet and interact with in traditional Catholicism. I think they sometimes have weird ideas. I'm sure they think I'm weird at times. [00:17:10] That's just not a big problem. [00:17:13] And so. But I've never ever experienced a case where I met somebody in like traditional Catholic circles who I felt was prone to violence or was suggesting violence. Like I've never thought. I've never heard. Never ever once have I heard somebody say, oh yeah, we need to take out so and so or oh yeah, we need to take care of that problem or something like that. Never, no matter how harsh criticism of a church bishop or pope or priest might be that you might hear in some traditional Catholic circles, never once has it been okay, we need to resort to violence to take care of this problem. I mean it just is non existent in the traditional Catholic movement. So this man Hermesh, who is alleged to have killed the Catholic priest, if he was part of the traditional radical tradition, whatever traditional Catholic movement and he committed this has nothing to do with him being part of traditional Catholic movement. It has to do with the fact that he probably has a mental illness. I mean that's the reality. I'm not saying everybody who commits murder or shoots somebody is mentally ill. But the chances are very likely that they, that they, that the person might be mentally ill. So just like we don't like, you know, the idea of let's ban all guns when Somebody shoots somebody. But we're going to ignore the fact that the guy was maybe, you know, on certain drugs and he had mental problems and things like that. Likewise here, if we're like, okay, let's find radical traditionalism, we'll. We'll declare that's the problem rather than look at, okay, what was the actual motive here? Did he know the man didn't know the priest? Did he. Did he have mental problems? Had there been any signs that. That he was prone to violence or anything that. Then we can, you know, that's what we should really look at now. If you can find some radical traditionalist or traditionalist, whatever you want to call them, leader, you know, commentator, influencer, where you want to call them, who has suggested violence in any way, let me know and I will condemn that person outright. I just don't think you're going to find it. I'm pretty familiar with everybody in the movement who at least is semi prominent, and none of us ever call for any violence of any kind. So I just think that this is just an example of taking advantage of a tragic situation to make political points, make ideological points. It just simply is a matter of, oh, this is a great way we can make the traditionalists look bad and make it look, you know, like, let's continue to oppress them and persecute them, things like that, because, look, they're harboring violent criminals in their midst. That it's an ideological method and it's despicable. It's despicable, frankly. Okay, I want to talk about a couple other things tonight. Today, I guess not really tonight yet, a couple other things. The next One is Theodore McCarrick passed away last week. I think it was 94 or something like that. And I think we all know exactly who Theodore McCarrick is. He was the former cardinal who was one of the most influential men in the Catholic Church in the world and probably the most influential man in the Catholic Church in America for a number of years. And he was also a monster who abused seminarians, abused many people, and was just a. [00:20:26] I mean, a monster is probably the best way to put it. Just a terrible person. And he died last week. And so we should pray for his soul. Even though he was a terrible person, he's not beyond God's mercy. Nobody is. We should obviously, first and foremost pray for the victims. Those of Theodore McCarrick pray for the victims that they might find some consolation, they might find peace, and they might draw closer to Christ through their sufferings. But I bring this up because I think we need to realize Even today, Theodore McCarrick has a tremendous influence in the Catholic Church, particularly in America. [00:21:08] I mean, he, like I said, he was the most influential bishop in America for a long time. His influence wasn't him like preaching or writing books of theology that were maybe heretical or something like that. That wasn't him. You know, his, in fact, I don't think he ever wrote a book. If he did, he might wrote a column a little bit, but that was never theology wasn't his thing. His thing was that he was a magnificent fundraiser. He could raise lots and lots of money. I know that I lived under personally because I lived under his when he was Archbishop of Washington, D.C. i lived there and I saw his fundraising prowess. While he was there, he could just raise millions and millions of dollars. That gave him a lot of influence at the Vatican and in the church because if you can raise lots of money, you're going to go places in the Catholic Church. And that's just reality. I hate to be crass about, but that's just the way it is. [00:22:03] He also was very influential because he could recruit seminarians. I know the first thing we're going to think is, what do you recruit them for? But the fact is he recruited a lot of people to the priesthood, to the vocations. However he did it, he was able to do it. But he also was very influential because he was the one. He often would be very influential in determining who were going to be picked bishops, who's going to be the next bishop of this city, this diocese, things like that. And so his tentacles reached out throughout the church, particularly in America. And the fact is, it still is there today because a lot of his proteges, a lot of his people, Cardinal Tobin, Cardinal Cupich, Cardinal McElroy, who all are kind of part of his school, they might not have all been direct, you know, right under him, but they were influenced by him. Some of them were directly kind of his proteges. But he really set the standard of how a Catholic bishop in America would be in his image. And it was a terrible standard, even if he wasn't a terrible abuser. Just him as an archbishop was a terrible standard. But the fact is, is that, you know, he is still influencing the Catholic Church. And I think until we can really remove from the church now, again, remove based on what we were talking about just before talking about ecclesiastically, I'm not talking about like killing people or something like that, but until his proteges, his school of disciples, so to speak, is leaves the church you know, leaves ecclesiastical ministry. We're still going to have his influence. So I think it's going to be here for quite some time. And so my hope is, my prayer is the next pope will kind of see that anybody who is connected in any way with McCarrick needs to be, at the very least, move to the most influential. I'm sorry, the least influential diocese in America or maybe made an auxiliary somewhere or made a hospital chaplain or something like that. Because the days of. Because right now, Cardinal Cupich of Chicago, he's the most influential bishop in America today because he's the one who's making it. So all these new bishops are coming along, are in his image, which. And he is in McCarrick's image. So we're still seeing McCarrick's influence just trickling down through the church. And so we really need to pray that that influence would eventually be eliminated from the church. [00:24:36] I do want to mention one thing about McCarrick, but now that he's dead and we probably won't talk about him much anymore. [00:24:44] Cardinal McCarrick not cardinal anymore, but he was at the time, really. He's the one who made me much more publicly traditional. I started going to traditional at Mass in 2011, but I worked for diocese, so I wasn't really public about too much because there's just politics involved. When you work for diocese, if everybody knows you go to the tlm, they're not likely not. They're not likely to listen to you and take you seriously and things like that. That's just the way things are. So I kind of kept it quiet. I started writing for 1 Peter 5 even before I left that position. So it's like I was associated with that. But my. My articles at 1 Peter 5, early on especially, were. Were a light touch. They were traditional leaning, but they were a light touch. And I kind of stayed like that until 2018 when the McCarrick scandal broke. And basically what I saw was it was like the culmination of. I got tired of the loudest voices in the traditional movement always being right. [00:25:43] Like, it's like, I love the Latin Mass for a long time before this. And I. And I was developing a traditional spirituality, and it's kind of a traditional ethos. But I didn't really like the traditional online presence, the traditional kind of the Michael Mats of the world, for example. I didn't really like their style and things like that. Even the Taylor Marshalls somewhat, and even Steve Skocheck, who I wrote for it. 1 Peter 5 I got uncomfortable sometimes at what they said and sometimes how they said it. But the fact is, is After McCarrick, I realized they were right in so many ways about what's going on in the church today. And I just. It made me realize I need to speak out more clearly about what's going on in the church. I can't just simply sit back and only give a light touch. When people like McCarrick, monsters like McCarrick, has such influence in the church, we need to speak out against it and we need to say that. And so, like, my style is still not the same as, like, a Michael Matt or even a Taylor Marshall or even a Peter Kwasnowski or something like that. [00:26:47] But that was really the moment, the summer of 2018, where I just said it's ridiculous to kind of hold back and only say things that I think would be. Be like a light touch on the traditional side. We need to be forthright, need to be clear about what's going on. And McCarrick, you know, made that very clear to me that. That. That needs to be done. So hopefully we'll never talk about McCarrick again. He has gone on to his reward, which whatever that might be, we can pray for a soul, but, you know, based on his life and what we know, it doesn't look good for him and his judgment. That's. That's for sure. [00:27:23] Okay, next thing I want to talk about is the USCCB announced it's no longer going to participate in federal government funding programs. So this is a huge deal. I was a little surprised. It didn't seem to make the news as much as I thought it would. So if you remember, like, we've talked about this on. On this podcast before, and other people have talked about it, the USSCB since, like, 1981 has been receiving millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds, primarily for children's services and refugee support. That's kind of what, how they describe it. And over the past few years under Biden, they're receiving over $100 million a year. Now they defend it and they said it's for, you know, and even their defense of it, you know, let's take it at its word, even though I'm not quite sure if we can. But they say we only help refugees that were approved by the US Government for entering into this country. So they weren't helping illegal aliens. They said illegal immigrants, wherever. Whatever the case may be on that. The fact is, is that they were receiving hundreds of millions of dollars. And this was a huge amount of the USCCB budget to coordinate this and to do all these services. But then when Trump came into office and Elon Musk with Doge and they started to cut and slash a lot of these services, and the USCCB sued the federal government. I'm not, I don't actually know what the status of that lawsuit is. They sued the federal government and they basically said that, you know, you can't do this. But basically what they just announced was, okay, we're just not going to do these programs anymore. And they had this. The language they use was kind of pitiful. It was like, oh, we've done so much great work over the years. This is going to be all awful, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But eventually, But I like this is their quote. As a national effort, we simply cannot sustain the work at our, on our own, at current levels or in current form. In other words, without federal funds, without federal support, government support, we cannot do these services. [00:29:22] I think that line itself is damning enough. What it means is this was not a charity and never was a charity. If it requires you taking money from one person to do it, which is what taxes are, which is what federal funds are, then it's not charity anymore. It's not voluntary. Nobody's voluntary, say, I'll give you some money to do this, or at least not as much as they were doing. And I think so. I think this is excellent news. I think this is great news because ultimately, the usccb, the Catholic bishops, needs to be as distant as possible from the federal government. It just does not work out for the church. If the church was a very strong institution today, I wouldn't be necessarily opposed to relationships between church and state. Obviously, for thousands of years, we've had relationship between, deep relationship between church and state. But the fact is, with the church being as weak as it is today, it's not a good idea for it to be in bed with the state, with the federal government. And so this is, this is a very good thing. And it really reveals the Catholics did not support this. If we supported it, we would have given money for them to do it. And we didn't give them money to do this. [00:30:34] It was forced from our pockets by, you know, basically threat of violence from the government. That's, that's how they got the money to do this. So if they want to continue certain services with the, with donations, go ahead. I don't have, you know, that. That's fine. Obviously, if you're doing any type of charity that's helping people break the law, that's not fine. But if you're doing charity supported by Catholic donations, voluntary Catholic donations to help legal immigrants in this country, God bless you and keep up the good work. And nobody's going to have a problem with that as long as it follows church teaching and what it does and it doesn't do anything that violates the law. As long as it does that, Catholics are going to support that. We're not going to support, though, what you were doing by taking our money and doing it. So we should be thankful that this is over. [00:31:26] We should be thankful for President Trump because if he had not got elected, this would not be the case. They would still be getting hundreds of millions of dollars to do this work, which is very questionable at best. [00:31:35] I just wonder, what does this mean practically? Does this mean they're just going to shut down the organizations that are involved, like the Catholic Charities that were getting the money, things like that? Are they going to just fire most of their staff? I don't know. I do think, though, that's probably the way to go, start over from fresh. Because it just is. It's what's been going on. The status quo for the past couple decades is not feasible. It's not really in line with Catholic Church teaching. Okay, last thing I want to talk about today is my white pill of the week. Han goes to Harvard. What do I mean by that? Scott Hahn, I just saw this on a news article about this. I think it was today or yesterday. Scott Hahn went to Harvard, Harvard to speak at the Harvard Catholic Forum. And I thought this was interesting because of what he was talking about. Now, Scott Hahn, of course, is a brilliant guy. He is, you know, has a, has a PhD in theology. He is written all these books. People often think of him as kind of not an intellectual because he does such a good job of explaining things at a non intellectual level. And his books are, most of his books are written at that popular level for the average layperson who doesn't know theology in depth. But that's the funny thing is like, it doesn't mean he's not intellectual. It just means he has a gift of explaining these concepts, these complex topics in simple terms. That's a gift. But people think that means his knowledge is at that level. The fact is, if you've read his dissertation, if you've read his academic works, which I have, he is as high a level intellect as any scholar, biblical scholar today. He's right up there with any of them. He just unlike most, here's the thing, most biblical scholars, most Scholars in general, they can't talk to a popular crowd and make sense. They're just not able to do that. He can. And so here he is, this really bright guy. He's at Harvard, where of course, we. We kind of idolize, idealize our culture does as where all the smartest people go. And I read, I heard, I read a quote that he said at this that I thought was just great. He was talking about basically scriptures and you know, his typical stuff he talks about. He said the foolishness of divine condescension. That's one of his. In fact, my. My paper, my final paper I wrote for a class with him that was like a 20 some page paper was on divine condescension in the Church Fathers. This is a topic that he's been talking about for years. I wrote this 20, 30 years ago, almost now. Yeah, it was 30 years ago. Exactly 30 years ago. Now I think about it. The foolishness of divine condescension urges that we lay aside our educated conceit in approaching the biblical words. It calls for intellectual humility in which the mind bows before the mystery. And I thought that was a beautiful quote. The intellectual humility in which the mind bows before the mystery. This is something he's been hammering for a long time, and I think the crowd at Harvard is perfect for it, is that we, in our intellectual pride, we think we know everything. We think we know the Bible better than, for example, the Church fathers did. We think we know the Bible better than God himself does, practically. [00:34:43] We slice it and we dice it and we say, this is what it really means. This is who really wrote this. This is when it was really written all this stuff. [00:34:51] But ultimately what we don't do is we don't recognize that the Bible is not like other documents. It is the Word of God is divinely inspired. And if you do not understand that, if you do not accept that, you will not understand it. I don't care how many PhDs you have. I don't care how much you might know the original languages. I don't care how much you might know the settings and things like that, you know, form criticism and all those different methodologies of the historical critical method. You can know all that, but you do not know the Bible if you do not bow before the mystery of the Word of God. So I thought it was my white pill of the week because it was a Catholic, a faithful Catholic, going into the belly of the beast, so to speak, the intellectual belly of the beast and proclaiming the truths of Catholicism. [00:35:40] He's an intellectual himself, but he, he's, he's saying that that pales in comparison to the mystery that we encounter in the Holy Scriptures. So that was my white pill of the week, I thought was a good, a good story I thought I'd share with you. Okay, let's go with the, the live chat. Some comments from people. TK O'Rourke says odd people who might just be introverts could be attracted to the TLM because they don't feel forced to respond, sing, shake hands. [00:36:09] You know, this is great, TK thank you for bringing this up, because I actually, I've thought of this before, but I completely forgot about it when I was talking about today. But I'm so glad you brought that up. [00:36:18] There is a definite introvert feel to the traditional Latin Mass and an extrovert feel to the Novus Ordo Mass. You know, sort of often you're, you're kind of forced. You have to say this, you have to sing this, you have to shake hands with people at the sign of peace. You have to meet the greeter when you walk in. All that type of stuff happens more typically at Novus Ordo Mass, whereas a traditional at Mass, you can slip in, be in the back pew, be left alone, and go home. Now, I'm not saying you should always do that. I think you should be part of a community. I think you should get to know the other people at the Mass, things like that. That being said, I'm an introvert myself, so I very much understand this and I can feel this, that sometimes, especially at Mass, you're not there to be happy clappy. You're not there to, you know, pat somebody on the back or, you know, listen to father's jokes ad nauseam, things like that. You're there just simply to pray and be quiet. And so I do. And odd people. [00:37:15] I mean, there's odd extroverts, yes, but there's probably a higher percentage of introverts who are odd or odd people who are introverts than extroverts. And so I do think this is probably something TK Makes a good point with. [00:37:28] Okay. FEMALE Casey Royals fan from Nebraska says it's not good. The successor from Kansas City has just been named. It's not good. It's somebody that opposed banning giving Eucharist probation. Yes. I just, I've not looked into this carefully, so I didn't want to talk about in the podcast, but yes, Cardinal. Now, I'm sorry, Archbishop Naumann, who is a very solid bishop, very good bishop, has his resignation has been accepted. He turned 75 recently. And the new bishop, McKnight, I believe. Sean McKnight, I think who's Jefferson City, there's some red flags. I think female Casey Rolls family must live in this area. [00:38:02] Might know this, but yeah, we need to pray. Need to pray for the bishop, the new bishop of Kansas City, for the people of Kansas City. Pray that this might be, that the new bishop will be a good one, you know, despite maybe some pressure, previous red flags. So thanks for bringing that up. [00:38:20] Joseph Clark. How about progressive Catholics who espouse state sanctioned murder of little people? Yeah, I mean, if you want to talk violence, let's talk about the violence of doing nothing about abortion for allowing unborn babies to die like crazy. Or how about the violence of supporting transgender nonsense in which young people are castrated and violently treated with barbaric medical treatments all because of, you know, their parents think they're, they, they should be a boys of a girl or something like that. I mean, if you support transgenderism, you support violence. There's just no other way to put it. And so, yeah, I mean, it's kind of crazy to think that radical traditionalists supposedly are the violent ones when progressive Catholics are supporting action, state sponsored violent actions. And I think that that's, that's, that's terrible. So, last comment is loyal. The truth says great news about the USCCB not getting federal funds anymore. Yeah, I admit I'm surprised. I did not. I thought that the USCCB would go down kicking and screaming that they would try to extract that money as long as they could. And I'm, I'm very happy that somebody there realized, okay, we need to just get out of this business. It's not a good one for the Catholic Church. We need to focus more on our mission. I'm hoping at least that's what they're going to do. [00:39:36] Okay, that's it for now. Until next time, everybody. God love.