Pope Francis's Declining Health and the Next Conclave

[00:00:00] Foreign Pope Francis might be nearing the end of his earthly life. So what's next? What will the next conclave hold? We're going to talk about that and a lot more today on Crisis Point Home, Eric Simmons, your host, editor, chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, you know what to do. Smash that like button. Subscribe to the channel, Tell all your friends and neighbors, hey, I listen to Crisis Point. You should too. Or whatever you would, however you would say that. Also you can subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com put in your email address, you'll get our news articles, our opinion articles, I should say sent to you every morning, usually two a day. You can also follow us on social media risismag all the major social media channels, platforms like X and Facebook and Instagram and some others, I'm sure. So just follow us there. Okay, so let's get started. Also, I want to mention that if you're part of the live chat, this is a live podcast. So any screw ups, they stay on and everybody can see them. But if you are following us on the live, on the live podcast, feel free to jump in the live chat and at the end of the program I'll try to mention some of the thing, some of the comments made, maybe address any questions or anything to that nature. Okay, let's go ahead and get started then. First order of business is probably the number one news in the Catholic world right now. And that is. Is Pope Francis dying? It sure does look like it. He's been in the hospital now for I believe 10 days. He's had a number of issues. The most latest is they call it a kidney failure then I think they backed it up. One thing to note is if you've been around at all in the Catholic world long enough, you know, papal health is something that the Vatican keeps as a closely guarded state secret and they give out conflicting information often. There's no way to know exactly the state of Pope Francis, but it's clear that he is at the point now where it is unlikely he will live much longer. By much longer, I mean, he could be still a few months. This is something, you know, he's 88 years old. He has a partial one of his lungs is only a partial lung from when he was much younger. He's just not in good health. And you can see it when you, when you see him before he went into the hospital. [00:02:31] And so it's possible he will die any minute now. He could still last for a few more months. We just don't know. But it's more than likely this year, this calendar year, we will have a new Pope. So a couple things I want to talk about related to this. The first is we should obviously be praying for Pope Francis. I don't care what you think about him. If you think he's the greatest Pope of the last 200 years, or if you think he's the worst Pope ever, you should be praying for him. Now, there was some debate, because we debate everything. There was some debate on social media about what exactly should we be praying for. There are some people who were praying that he would have a happy death, that they weren't praying for his recovery. And people were pushing back, like, how dare you not pray for his recovery? If it was your father, wouldn't you pray for his recovery? Here's the thing. [00:03:22] Don't, like, tell people exactly how they should pray and what they should pray for in this situation. [00:03:30] Don't be like, okay, you have to pray for this, and you can't pray for that. The fact is, you should be praying for him. Personally, I'm praying for two things. One is that if this is his time, that he will be meeting his maker soon, that he will be prepared, that he will repent of any sins he might have, that he will ask, he will draw close to the Lord, go to confession, and be prepared. That's why I pray for anybody who's about to meet their end. I pray that for him. Also, if it's not his time, if, let's say he has a recovery, he goes back to being Pope and running the. And running the Catholic Church, that he would be a good and holy Pope. But if you want to pray for him to have a happy death, that's fine. I mean, the truth is, I've had two. Both of my parents have passed away in the past few years, and both were older. And in both cases, I was not praying for recovery at the end because I knew it was their time. I knew that soon they would be dying and that what I cared about most was that they were ready to die. And so, yes, of course, you want your parents to live forever and they never pass away. But you come to the point, I think a lot of people who might have experienced a similar thing know what I'm talking about here. You come to a point where you just realize you need to let go. You need to realize this person, it's their time. [00:04:51] And so it's okay to do that with Pope Francis to say, listen, you know, pray for his happy death. A Happy death, meaning he would be prepared to meet Jesus Christ and would be saved. [00:05:04] And so you can also pray for his recovery. You know, it's, let's not, let's not tell people how they should or shouldn't pray for him. Obviously we want him to be like anybody. We want him to be prepared for his meeting Jesus Christ. And also if he doesn't do that soon, then he would be a good and holy Pope for the rest of his life. [00:05:25] One thing though, I've noticed people are not talking about a lot is something I think is becoming a bigger and bigger issue as medical advances happen. [00:05:35] And that's what do we do in the case of an incapacitated Pope? I'm sure in the history of the Catholic Church, we've had popes have been incapacitated at times. And so it's not like this is a brand new thing, but like the idea of a long term incapacitated Pope where we know he's incapacitated. Like, I bet you there's been a pope, the 256 or how many popes there's been that there's been a Pope who's been incapacitated. Nobody knew it except for his inner circle. And they just kind of went on, act like everything was okay. You can't do that anymore. In today's world, if Pope Francis gets a point where he's incapacitated, they can fake it for a little while, but we'll know eventually he's incapacitated. What do you do in that case? Well, here's the thing. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church, the leader of the Catholic Church. He has no, and nobody can tell him what to do. Nobody can overrule him. [00:06:26] So there's really nothing you can do in that case. You can't have like the College of Cardinals say, okay, we decided we're going to sideline this Pope and retire him and we'll get a new one. They can't do that. The College of Cardinals cannot overthrow, so to speak, a Pope, even if he's incapacitated. [00:06:47] You can't have a situation in which other people could make major decisions for the Catholic Church. I mean, you could do administrative things, stuff like that, but obviously you couldn't have like a doctrinal teaching or anything like that from the Vatican as opposed to like the Pope. So that, that would be, that would be something that just couldn't happen. [00:07:06] There's nothing in canon law that covers this. And that's because there's nothing canon law that could Ever cover this? Because the future Pope could just say, no, I'm going to overrule this. If, like Pope Francis had said, in this certain case of a Pope does not respond to stimulus for a period of 10 days, then he's automatically retired or something like that. Well, the next Pope could just say, no, that's not the case. So this is an issue. And I think it's something. And I know there's rumors that Pope Francis, when he became Pope, actually wrote a letter of resignation that he gave to his. He gave to Secretary of State or somebody there and said, you know, if I'm incapacitated, if I'm unable to do my office, then this will go into effect. Even that those questionable, because who decides that? I mean, that kind of gives the Secretary of State or whoever the cardinal was, he gave it to a certain authority over the Pope, which he really doesn't have. [00:08:04] So I think this is something we have to grapple with. And ultimately, I think the answer is we can't do anything about it. The, the way the Catholic Church is set up, divinely set up, I might add, is that the Pope is where the buck stops. Nobody can ever overrule the Pope. And so therefore, if he's incapacitated, we're just kind of stuck in a holding period. It's kind of like when we don't have a Pope, because obviously the Church continues when we don't have a pope, the interregnum between papacies, there's no Pope. It's not like the Church shuts down and we don't get the sacraments. [00:08:38] My thought is if a pope is incapacitated, it's kind of like that. We just simply don't have a functioning Pope at that moment. And so we just move on. [00:08:49] And hopefully there'll be nothing too crazy if that happened. [00:08:54] Now, the biggest thing people are talking about, of course, related to Pope Francis nearing potentially the end of his life is of course, what happens next. [00:09:03] Now, as I mentioned, when the Pope dies, nobody becomes pope automatically. So there is no Pope. It's a setivocante period where the sea is empty. [00:09:14] And so basically, then that means after that, then the cardinals get together and all the cardinals are invited to the conclave. [00:09:22] The only cardinals who are under the age of 80 are allowed to vote, and they vote for somebody. Now, here's the thing people always kind of don't always get is that they can vote for any Catholic man, no matter. I mean, any Catholic man, I potentially could be elected Pope, God forbid. And you know, thank God, that will never happen. [00:09:46] But the point is, it doesn't. People think it has to be one of the cardinals. Now, that's the way it's been for a very long time. But they could decide, for example, to pick Bishop Strickland or, you know, Bishop Snyder or just like Father, so and so they could pick as the Pope if they want to. Now, typically, like I said, they pick one of the cardinals and it's more than likely they're going to do that again this time. Now, I've already talked about this a little bit back at the beginning of the year when I predicted that Pope Francis probably would not. Would, probably would die in 2025. What would the next pope be like? And I'm still on record as saying I do not think it will be a Francis clone. [00:10:26] I realize that most of the cardinals, the voting cardinals, have been picked by Francis, so you would think, therefore, it'd be a Francis clone. But of course, all you have to do is go back to the last conclave. [00:10:39] Every one of those cardinals that voted in the last conclave were picked by Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul ii. I think a couple of them might have been Paul vi, but very few, the vast majority were John Paul II and Benedict cardinals. And who did they pick? They picked Pope Francis, who's not a lot like Benedict and Francis, I mean, and John Paul ii. So let's not act like, okay, we definitely get a clone of Pope Francis. That's just simply, you know, not. You're just kind of, you know, you're kind of guessing. And I personally don't think that's going to happen. That's not guaranteed. Now, one thing that a very useful sign. Let me pull this up on the screen real quick. [00:11:21] I think I've shared this before here, but I want to share it again because it's so good. This is the College of Cardinals report, so just go to collegeofcardinalsreport.com I'll put a link to it in the show notes. I gotta remember to do that. Let me just write a note to do that. [00:11:39] Okay, so collegeofcardinalsreport.com and basically what you, what we have here, boy, this is not my writing. My note isn't exactly working here right now. Okay, here we go. [00:11:55] Okay, I'll put a link to that. Like I said, who they are, where they stand, and what this does is it. It. The, the people who did this website, they picked like 22 leading cardinal candidates to be pope. The, the. Papa. Papa Bailey. I'm not sure. How to pronounce it. And basically they. They list them here. Now, of course, this is their guess, but these are Vatican insiders, people who talk to Vatican, the cardinals and others a lot. So they have a little bit more knowledge than you or I have. At the same time, everybody knows just because you go in thinking this person can be a pope doesn't mean they'll come out being the pope. Although, let's be honest, John Paul, you know, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict 16th and Francis were all considered papable cardinals going into the conclaves. People think that John Paul II was this huge shock. He was obviously shocked in the sense that he was the first non Italian in like 400 years. But he was on the list as a possibility. So it's not unlikely that one of these 22 people they list. And he lists people like Cardinal Erdo of Hungary, Cardinal Serra, Cardinal Tegel, Perilin Pizzabala. I mean, there's, you know, just a lot of different ones here that are listed. And they have like view all paper bowl. You can click on that. [00:13:16] And it lists what they think are the 22 most likely cardinals to be picked. So I recommend going to this. And you can see now here's the cool thing they have, they have where they stand. You can also do this by age. Let me get to that in a second. So, like, for example, the oldest is. Is Cardinal Bagnasco. I mispronounce names and I apologize for that, for when I do that. I'm just not very good at it. But you keep going down the age because you can. This matters because look at the bottom one is Cardinal Pizzabala, and he's only 59. [00:13:48] And Taylor Marshall was talking about this on X. And I think it's true. [00:13:54] The people think only in terms of ideology when it comes to who are they going to pick as the next pope. [00:14:02] And I think, though, that there's a lot more to it than just that. It's not just strictly ideology of, okay, who is like, who. Who thinks like I do. There's other factors involved as well. One of them is the age. And so Cardinal Pizzabala, who's only 59, it means he's to be a very young pope. He could have a very long papacy. Whereas one of these cardinals, who's 80 or late 70s, early 80s, he likely would have a shorter papacy. And some cardinals might be like, we just want a short papacy. We want the next one to be short so we can kind of straighten things up, clean up any mess that Francis made. And kind of move forward. So that's a real factor. So somebody like Cardinal Pizzabala, he was going to get harmed by that because he's so young. Now, there might be cardinals who think, I want a long papacy, but I'd be willing to bet more would rather have a shorter one. My guess is they'll probably pick somebody in their 70s. You know, you never know what's going to happen. But that's. That's one guess. But there's also other practical matters that you need to think about that the cardinals think about that. Go beyond ideology, for example. So, you know, how long, how old is he? How long do I want the next pope to reign? How will the next pope make my job easier or harder? The reality is, is that Pope Francis has in many ways made cardinals and bishops jobs harder. [00:15:18] Whether you think that's a good thing or bad thing, a cardinal might be thinking, I really want somebody who's going to leave me alone, for example, who's got a personality that's going to be like, yeah, live and let live. It's going to make my job a little easier. That's a factor. They might also be thinking, how will my own government react to the next pope? This might matter for American cardinals. They might be like, you know, I honestly don't want to deal with a pope who's constantly fighting with the Trump administration, For example. They might think, or they might be like, I want somebody who stands up for the Trump to the Trump administration. And it's the same in other countries as well. As far as that thinking, they might think, how. How will the next pope practically manage things? I think this is probably the most important. [00:15:59] Ideology is not probably as important, I think, in the next pope picked as much as management, administration skills, I think they're going to want somebody who can manage the ship, can kind of straighten things out and deal with issues like that. Because I think everybody kind of knows that Francis at times has been a difficult manager. We'll just say that. And so it's been, you know, I think some cardinals believe that. So you might want somebody who's very much known as a good administrator. And another factor, practical factor, is how will the next pope deal with corruption in the Vatican? [00:16:34] Now, this matters in multiple ways, because if you're a corrupt cardinal, and I guarantee some of the cardinals voting are corrupt cardinals, they want a guy who's going to look the other way. [00:16:47] And then some of the cardinals who are not corrupt, who are pure, who are, you know, working for the good of the church, they're going to want some guy who might clean up the corruption. They see the corruption, they want to clean it up. So I definitely think you have. These are factors that go beyond ideology, like what does he think about gay marriage? Or, you know, how much we fight against abortion. What does he think about ecumenism? Those issues are important, don't get me wrong. But for voting purposes, these practical considerations are just as important, frankly, and sometimes more important. [00:17:19] Now let me go back to the College of Cardinals website. Another thing that's very cool about it is they have this where they stand. You click on that link and I'm going to click just the ones who are papable. And so it's 22 and it has things like ordaining female deacons, blessing same sex couples, making priestly celibacy optional, restricting the Old Latin Mass. And they just basically have a checklist. Are they for it, are they against it, are they ambiguous about it? So let's just take. I'm going to find Cardinal Pizzabala. All right, let's do Erdo real quick. Erdo. So ordaining female deacons unknown. Blessing same sex couples. He is against it. [00:17:58] Making priestly celibacy optional, unknown. Restricting the Old Latin Mass ambiguous. [00:18:05] The Vatican China secret accords unknown. And there's other ones as well. Let me just continue to go on to the next page for Erdo. [00:18:14] You know, let me see. I didn't actually go to the next page. Well, something's not working on it. But anyway, it tells you these various views that these different cardinals have. Here's Pizzabala. Ambiguous. Ordaining female deacons ambiguous. On blessing same sex couples unknown. On making priestly celibacy optional unknown. For restricting the Latin Mass and against the Vatican China secret, of course. So they don't know everything about everybody. But the point is this is something that you can know kind of going into the Conclave. Okay, where do these different cardinals stand that we're all talking about? So again, I highly recommend that site. [00:18:53] The last thing I want to talk about when it's related to this idea of Pope Francis dying, having a new conclave soon. I've noticed there's like a trend among Catholics that they want to act like we're above politics, that, oh, this is a holy spiritual activity, the Holy Spirit will decide who the next pope is. We just need to pray and fast. It's unseemly to speculate on the politics involved, things like that. [00:19:21] That's nonsense. That is a very kind of pseudo Protestant false piety going on there to be Honest. Here's the reality. The Catholic Church is 100% human, and it's also 100% divine. It's 100% human in that politics are always involved in how the Church is run. There's humans, there's scandal, there's lying, there's cheating, there's all these type of things going on, and they've always gone on. If you read your history and you look at some of the past conclaves, like in the Middle Ages, places like that, oh, my goodness, it would. It would scandalize you if you didn't recognize that the church is 100% human. [00:20:04] To act like it's just the Holy Spirit. You know, just leave it up to Him. He'll take care of it. That's not how God works and never has been how God works. What he does is, like I said, The Church is 100% divine, but he works through our humanness. His will is accomplished through all the messiness of our humanness, of the way we do things. And so the fact is, the politics involved in picking the next pope do matter. Now, it's true I'm not going to have any influence over who the next Pope is, but there's nothing wrong with me basically saying, here's what I think, you know, how they will decide and things like that. That's how it actually happens. That's exactly how the cardinals will be in the Conclave, deciding who the next Pope is. Now, we pray and we fast that they would be open to the Holy Spirit and that the Holy Spirit would have an impact on the election of the next pope. There's no guarantee that. Because why? Because God respects our human freedom. We're not robots. If you think the Holy Spirit picks the next pope and that's just the end of the story, then you ultimately reject the human freedom. You reject free will. [00:21:19] Every cardinal who enters into that conclave has free will. He can decide who he wants to vote for. God will not force him to vote for somebody. However, if we pray and fast, if they're praying and fasting as well, the cardinals, then hopefully they will be open. They will listen to the whole who the Holy Spirit thinks is the best candidate, and they will pick that. That person. But this idea that the Holy Spirit just picks the pope is nonsense. [00:21:43] Pope Benedict XVI, before he's Pope, Conor Ratzinger, he talked about this as well, and he said this is simply not the case. And if you look at the history of popes, you got there's some real scoundrels in, in the history of popes. Are you really telling me that the Holy Spirit is like, yeah, that's the guy I want, I want the 13 year old kid or I want the 13 year old kid who gave up his off, he sold his the papacy and then came back the second time and then did it again and came back the third time. That actually happened? Yeah, I don't think so. [00:22:14] It's not saying we don't believe in the Holy Spirit and how he guides the church, but he doesn't guide it in this precise way that we want to make him guide it. Where he decides, okay, this person's Pope, this person's bishop of this place, this person's pastor of this place. That's not how it works. So we need to pray, we need to fast, but it's okay to speculate and to say, okay, how do we think the Popes will vote, the cardinals will vote? Who do we think the next Pope is? Who do we think should be the next Pope? [00:22:39] I mean, personally, I made a joke on on X that I would love this the best time. I would be Bishop Schneider. Anthony Schneider is picked out of Kazakhsan and made the next Pope. I don't think it's gonna happen, but you know, wouldn't that be great? My personal favorites are Cardinal Serra. Don't think that's going to happen. Cardinal Burke. I know that's not going to happen. [00:22:59] Cardinal Erdo of Hungary, I think there's a lot I can see good about him. And Cardinal Pizzabala. Those are the ones right. Now, I will admit I haven't done a deep study of each of the candidates, but those are kind of the four or five I guess I named.5 I think that I think are the ones I would love to see. Now note, none of these cardinals are like hardcore trads. It's not like all of a sudden any of these cardinals are going to become Pope and say, okay, we're going to abolish the new Mass and everybody's got to celebrate the old Mass or something like that. They're all the best of them are conservative Catholics and you know, and they can be very good popes. And I truly believe that. But you know, we're not at a point in our church's history where it's likely we're going to get some true radical, reforming Pope who's going to really put things straight. But we can get a Pope that hopefully will lead us in the right direction. So. [00:23:59] So yeah, pray fast, pray obviously for Pope Francis. Pray for him and also then pray for the, the Conclave, the upcoming conclave, all the cardinals and whoever the next pope is. You should be praying for the next pope. Right now, he's praying for Pope Francis and the next pope. That that's what we should all be doing right now. [00:24:18] The next thing I want to bring up in today's podcast, we covered that the papacy a lot. There is. I have an aid to a great length. This is going to come across as an advertisement. It's not. I'm not getting paid for this, but you'll see why in a moment while I'm doing this. And I think it's very important. And that is the Stations of the Cross in Slow Motion, A Daily Devotion for Lent, written by Suzanne Sammons, my wife. Yes, I just want to put a bug in your ear. I'll put a link to how you can buy it in the show notes. But this is a great book. Lint is a week from tomorrow. And this is a great devotion for your whole family. It goes through the stations across one devotion per day. And so it will take a certain station and we'll go for two or three days for that station and really let you meditate upon it individually or as a family. So I. I just. I want to recommend it. It's next week is Lent. The station's across in slow motion. You can get at my website, I'll put a link to that. You can also get Sophia Institute Press directly as well. And you can get at that other place that. That shall not be named. So. And I just want to say Lent is, in my opinion, the most spiritually important season of the year. I don't know about you, but everybody, I mean, me and like, just by everybody I talk to, they talk about how much they need lint, how lint kicks them back into gear. Most of us, we get into bad habits. We get into kind of a lethargy about our spiritual life. And lint is that great way to, you know, kick you in the tail and say, you got to get better. And I feel like that every single year link comes along and it's a perfect timing. I really need that kick in the rear to get spiritually moving. And I feel like it's coming up again and I need it again. And I'm sure you probably do, too. So anyway, the Stations across in Slow Motion, A Daily Devotion for Lyn. I highly recommend. And why do I highly recommend? Because, yes, it's written by my wife. Of course I highly recommend it. What do you think I am? Some loser? Some loser husband? That's exactly Why I recommend it. I also think it's a great book. So next I want to talk about. [00:26:12] You know, I titled this this part of the podcast. Will the Tech Bros Lead Us to the Singularity? Will the Tech Bros Lead Us to the Singularity? Elon had a tweet the other day where he said, we are on the event horizon of the singularity. We are on the event horizon of singularity. And by the time I captured this earlier today at 62 million views and 192,000 likes. So obviously Elon's tweets always do well because he owns the platform and he makes everybody see him. We are on the event horizon. Singularity. What does that mean? [00:26:47] What does that actually mean? I know people freak out about that and they probably should freak out about on some level, but I willing to bet most people have no idea what he's even talking about. Like, don't really know what he means. And so I actually wrote about this for Catholic Answers about, I don't know, seven years ago or something like that. I've kind of been following this for a while. You know, I'm a tech geek. I like the tech stuff. [00:27:09] The Singularity is a vague term, and so it's difficult to define exactly what somebody means when they say it. It's like artificial intelligence. That's a vague term that can mean a lot of different things. [00:27:22] But essentially what it means for most tech people and they say, and I'm willing to bet what Elon means by it, is that our technology advances so far that the technology itself can advance the technology. [00:27:38] So we build technology that then it itself builds technology. And it gets to the point where this happens. The technology is building greater technology so fast, that's beyond our ability to comprehend. It's beyond our ability to really grasp how much we're advancing, how quickly. And so it's like the idea of singularity is like, you see a graph that's going up and it's going up in value, like, let's say a stock dress like that, and then all of a sudden it goes vertical. That's what they mean by the singularity. That it's our. Our tech is advanced. We know this. We can sense this. It's advanced a lot over the past 50, 60 years. I mean, 100 years ago. Think about technology in 20, in 1925 compared to 2025. And then compare 1925 with 1825. The advances are getting greater and greater every century. And in fact, over the last half century, they've gone, you know, got a Lot more advanced and over the last maybe 20 years they've gotten any more last 10 years anymore. So it's, it's that that line's going vertical. [00:28:43] So Elon is saying is the event horizon right there at the moment. The event horizon of a black hole is like we, where you're kind of moving into the black hole right at the kind of the border, so to speak. What he's saying is we're going to enter into the singularity. And there's reasons why he says this and I think are legitimate. If you look at for example the latest release of Grok, his own X's AI Grok 3 and it has some abilities to write code. Like I've seen some demonstrations where you basically tell Grok, you say okay, write a game, write a Tetris like game or something like that. And it will write the code for you like that. And you will have a fully functional game that you, that you created, quote unquote, that really you just, all you did was write one line in AI and now you have that. Now somebody who's an actual computer programmer, which I am, I used to be, I should say I was a computer programmer for 15 years. [00:29:39] That's amazing to me. And it's something that I remember being kind of what we talked about in college 30 years ago. But like it was like in a far off world and now we're here. We actually have computer programmers, I'm sorry, computer programs, writing computer programs. [00:29:56] And they're. And the advancement of this is, is incredible. And so this is what they mean by the singularity. Now the problem is, is that there's a lot of like from technology side that's what's meant. There's a lot of though like psychological, philosophical, spiritual mumbo jumbo thrown all in in it. And it's hard to like really grasp what, what a lot of them are talking about. Because here's the biggest thing is this misunderstanding of human consciousness, of the human mind versus the brain and what that means. And that's because most of these people, these tech bros, the Elon's, the San Altman's people, like, like that is, they don't, they're not Catholic. I mean that's always the problem with somebody who's not Catholic is that they're not Catholic. [00:30:43] And so they, they don't really understand the human person fully like they should. They don't understand that we're not just meat space, we're not just you know, brains inhabiting a body. [00:30:56] We have souls, we have minds. The mind is not the brain. And so when they see an AI that can think, quote unquote, think like even better than a person can, they start to ascribe to it certain, like characteristics of consciousness and things like that. But that's nonsense. [00:31:17] Computers cannot have consciousness. I mean I, I've watched all the sci fi movies and shows and I love them as much as the next guy. But like it's, it's nonsense to think that a machine can have a consciousness. It can, it can emulate being very human. Like there's no question about that. I mean already AI, the large language models are very human. Like in their responses they're not, not quite there, but they're pretty good. [00:31:42] And so, but that's not the same as being human. And so I think that's where our real danger lies in this whole singularity talk and things like that is that we don't, we were blurring the line between humanity and technology. There is a line, it's a very clear large line. But what we're doing is we're obscuring it, we're making it so people don't really understand it and they're starting to not get the differences. And so you literally will have people, if it's not already happening, will happen soon. Like humans having relationships with computers, with robots. And I don't mean just, you know the type that maybe you first think about this disgusting. But like just having like a companion that's like your friend. [00:32:28] And that's kind of scary because we need human companionship because ultimately an AI robot is not human. And so it's not going to react like a human is all the time. And that means even the messiness. A real human relationships includes a lot of conflict. It includes often misunderstandings, things like that. It's not the case in AI, you just program it never to basically disagree with you or whatever the case may be. And so this is really, this can be very harmful to the human soul. And I think also just the speed of advancements can be harmful for humanity because I think we've seen a lot of the negatives of how fast technology has advanced over the past 20 years. And we've seen what it's done. Like for example, just the rise of the smartphone and how that's caused a lot of social anxiety, loneliness, depression. There's no question it's caused those things. And so as we advance even more, what's that going to mean? I think this is something as Catholics we need to be thinking about, praying about and working towards Understanding this, what I see some Catholics do is they want to reject it all. They just want to say, okay, it's all demonic, it's all evil. I don't think that's the way. I don't think that's the way. Because simply. What, what. I mean, if somebody wants to live without technology, I'm all, I'm all for it. If you want to do that, you want to live like the Amish, God bless you. But the idea that we can just simply say, okay, we reject it all, that's not going to be what works. It hasn't worked with any technology ever in the history of man, that you just simply say, okay, we're just going to be gone, act like it doesn't exist or reject as demonic, whatever. What we have to do is really grapple with it and understand what are those lines between humanity, between technology, where are the proper uses of the technology and what are the improper proper uses of it. This is something we really got to be thinking about. I mean, it's amazing how quickly this is moving and I, we have to get on board with this. Not on board like supporting all this stuff, but just understanding it, grappling with it, and applying our Catholic faith to it. Actually, you know, the Vatican released a document about a month or so. Cardinal Fernandez of the, of the, you know, Congregation Doctrine of the Faith released a document about AI that wasn't bad. It, actually, I would recommend you read. I don't remember the name of it right now. Maybe I'll put a link to that as well. [00:34:48] But, but the, the, the. It wasn't bad. I mean, it kind of talked about where we are, the differences and, and how Catholics should, should evaluate that. So I'd recommend that, you know, so there's that. Okay, next, let's talk about the scourge of pro life feminism. What am I talking about here? [00:35:08] I have seen that there has been. Okay, I was very involved with Pro Life Movement 30 plus years ago, in the early 90s when I was in college, out of college. I worked for a pro life group for a number of years. I've done, you know, pro life protests, prayed in front of abortion clinics, all that stuff. I've helped out, you know, crisis pregnancy centers, pro life groups, whatever. I will admit I have not been super involved with pro life work over the past, you know, decade or two. But I've always been on the, at least like, aware of it, cognizant, helping out when I can. [00:35:39] And one thing I've noticed is that there's a real shift from 30 years ago to today when it comes to the leadership of the pro life movement. And specifically what I mean by that is we've gone from being led by men to being led by women. In the 1980s, almost every pro life group, national pro life group, state pro life group, where you name it, was led by a man. But then there was this idea, oh, that looks bad because we always say, you know, it's men telling women what to do. That's what the pro board say. And we kind of just bought that lie and said, well we have to, we have to go against that argument by, and we'll have women in charge. Look, we have so and so. Mrs. So and so. Ms. So and so. She's in charge of this national plus group. We're not anti women. See, we have a woman in charge. [00:36:22] Of course that's conceding the, the, the argument that they're right, that it matters, that we, that we were anti woman. That's what it's conceding. Which of course was nonsense from the beginning. But what's happened is most of these pro life women leaders are basically feminist. They basically, they argue for things like all the women involved in abortion are victims. [00:36:45] They, they talk about the, the idea that, that there's like when you see it like the idea two victims in abortion, the, the, the baby and the woman. They talk about like, they make it very much like I've seen some of these pro life leaders like blame men for the problem of abortion, say women, you know, that's not, it's not their fault. And one of the biggest things is they, they talk about you can never prosecute women who have abortions for crimes. Like in a pro life world, if a woman got an abortion, the only one you could throw into jail is the abortionist. And maybe the people work at the board but never the woman. [00:37:23] And that's nonsense too. Now I've been, like I said, I've been involved in enough to know the women who go in for abortions, they're very, it's a very diverse group of people. There are the 15 year old girls who are forced to go there by their parents or their boyfriend or whatever the case may be. And those poor women are victims. [00:37:42] But there's also the 25 year old, you know, career woman who doesn't want to be slowed down, gets pregnant because she's been sleeping around, you know, at the bars or whatever and then she's like, I don't want this baby and she kills it and doesn't Even care and just moves on. There's a lot of those. [00:37:59] And you're telling me that woman is a victim. That woman shouldn't be punished by, by law for having her baby murdered, for hiring a hitman to kill her baby. I'm sorry, but I think the law should cover also some of these women. Now every abortionist should be jailed, should be, you know, probably get the death penalty in a just world. [00:38:22] But I think the women and the fathers too, who go along with it, they're accessories to murder. [00:38:29] So I think that the parents of the murdered child who were murdered because of the decision of the parents, yes, they should be legally responsible at times. But the pro life feminists will never say this. They will in fact say that's awful. And we see this. Like for example, I think it was like a week or two ago recently there was the proposed law in North Dakota, pro life law that would have included some prosecution for women who got abortions. And the pro life leaders fought against it, like Students for Life, Kristin Hawkins is a good example. And some others, they actually argued against it, against a pro life bill. And one of their arguments, like all these bills, they never pass. Well, that's because you oppose them. [00:39:11] If the pro life groups wouldn't oppose them, maybe they would pass. Ever thought of that? [00:39:16] So ultimately, I think we're not going to win. [00:39:19] The pro life movement is not going to win as long as it continues to kind of embrace a feminist outlook. I mean, it's like saying, okay, the very ideology, the very demonic ideology that led to abortion on demand, I. E. Feminism, we're going to embrace that and somehow use that to end abortion on demand. It makes no sense. We would have abortion on demand, not for feminism. So therefore we shouldn't embrace feminism. We should reject it wholeheartedly. [00:39:50] So I just think that we need to get back, I mean, I just say bluntly, we need to get back to have men in charge of the pro life movement. I'm not saying there aren't good women leaders. There are some good women leaders, I am sure. But I am saying that on a whole, it, I think it would be better if men were the main leaders of the pro life movement. And you know, you can, you can call me a missing misogynist or whatever, I don't care. But I think that's the reality for the babies, for the, the protection of the unborn. I think that, that we'd be in better shape today if it was men meeting leading most of these pro life groups. [00:40:26] Last thing I want to talk about is my white pill of the week. As you know, I always have these white pills. By the way, sorry I didn't have a episode last Tuesday, a live episode last Tuesday. I had a stomach bug and just. I was not able to do it. But my white pill of the week is honestly it just about me. Not just about me, but today, February 25, 2025, is my 33rd anniversary as a Catholic. Not when I was receiving the church, but the day I decided to become Catholic. And I take that as a big day, because when you decide to become Catholic, that is. That is meaningful. I understand. I had to go to confession, receive first communion, and go to. And get confirmed, all that. And I did that at the following Easter of 1993. On February 25th, 33 years ago today, I made a decision. After praying my third rosary of my life, I decided I will become Catholic. And it is the best decision I ever made. I mean, a lot of people like that, like to say. Lahman will say, like, best decision I made was marrying my wife. I told my wife, sorry, your second best. My best decision was becoming Catholic. And she says, yeah, that is exactly why I wouldn't have never married you, you schmuck, if you hadn't become Catholic. So she wouldn't say it like that. But anyway, she's nicer than that. But today is my anniversary. But I also want to bring this up as a white pill, because there's still people coming into church today, and there's a lot of people. I've had podcasts about this before, but just this week I met, for example, a family that has 11 kids, and they started going to our parish, and they're. They're going to become Catholic. They've been Protestant, and now they're going to come into the church, and they started coming to our Latin Mass, and they have 11 kids. I mean, this is. Is this not just beautiful? As my wife said, they're. They're almost already Catholic, already having 11 kids. But this is still happening. This is happening a lot. And they. And when I talk to a lot of them, they tell me they see things on the Internet. They follow certain people. Like this, this. This gentleman, he mentioned Joshua Charles, who we've had on this podcast, who does great work. And so there's these. There are people coming to church, and they continue to. And we need to always do that. It can be easy to get down on things, but ultimately we still got people coming to church, people still understanding that Jesus Christ wants every single person to be a member of the Catholic Church. And so today is my anniversary, so happy anniversary to me. But also welcome to all those who are coming to church this Easter who are deciding to become Catholic now. In fact, I just taught our parishes RCIA class this week, and we have a great group of people coming into the church this Easter. So it's exciting. Stuff happens. And let's keep our perspective on the. The. The small things like that that aren't necessarily in the news. So last I want to talk. Let me do the live chat. Let me see what some people have said in the live chat. James says, I'm betting on moderate Italian Pope. You know, I think that's not a bad bet, because I could see it's like, okay, we had the Polish guy, we had the German guy, we had the guy from Argentina. Let's just go back to a nice moderate Italian. I could definitely see that happen. Now, the thing working against that is that we have so many people, so many cardinals are outside of Europe now. They don't really have that attachment to an Italian Pope. So I could see that it being a moderate but not necessarily Italian. That's one thing I didn't even mention before was that we just have a lot of cardinals from all around the world who aren't, like, bound to the Western European, American mindset. And so I think that's going to impact the conclave as well. [00:43:56] Victoria says this is very interesting. It's nice to be somewhat prepared for what may be coming. Thank you, Eric. Well, thank you very much, Victoria. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think it's good to know what's going on. I don't think we should obsess about it. I think we should be, first and foremost, our duty is prayer. But I think it's also kind of to understand, okay, what's going on, what are the different factors? Who are some of the people who might be the next Pope? I mean, it affects our lives in a great deal, as we know from Pope Francis. He affected our lives greatly, and the next pope will, too. So James says nations are racing to be the leader of A.I. yeah, and I think this is a little bit scary. They're racing to be leader of AI Because I don't think any of them are thinking, what are some checks we should have on AI? What are some checks and balances we should have to make sure it doesn't get out of control. I don't mean, like Terminator type out of control. I just mean, like, it's. It's more harmful than good. And I don't think the nations care about that at all. But definitely, there's no question about that. China definitely wants to be, America wants to be, various countries want to be. Okay, last one is AI says AI is a scop. [00:45:00] I don't know if that's AL or AI, but I wanted to say it's AI. I don't even know what that means to say something is a scop, really. I mean, I understand a little bit what it means. I mean, AI does exist, depending on how you define it. I mean, the problem of course is in the term intelligence means something. And true intelligence only humans have, and angels have as well, and obviously God. But like, you know, true intelligence, like, what do you mean? But like even animals have an intelligence, just not the type intelligence we're probably talking about here. And so AI, artificial intelligence, it is a way of. I mean, we use the word thinking. The problem is a lot of these words get redefined and they're. And we got to be very precise. There's no question though, that computers have the ability to mimic human thought. That's probably the best way to put it. They don't think themselves. It's not like there's some brain or even mind in their thinking. It's more a matter of they're mimicking human thought. They've been trained to do that and they can do it quite well. I mean, if you've interacted with the large language models, you know how good they can be in mimicking. I've, I've come to use them much more than Google when I have questions for research, for different things I'm writing about, or for understanding some topic. Normally I would have gone to Google, find the website, read it, whatever. [00:46:16] Now I just use one of the AI at large language models and it's much faster, much easier, and it mimics human thought. It's not human thought, but it's mimics human thought. So I think that is something that we have to consider as Catholics. We have to understand how this is working and we need to make sure. [00:46:34] I think ultimately with AI, when it comes down to is, we need to make sure we're always emphasizing the dignity of the human person and the uniqueness of the human person. And that technology will never replace the human person. It might replace our ability to do certain jobs. Heck, my job might be eliminated by AI one day, I don't know. [00:46:53] But it will not replace who I am or who you are fundamentally as a human person. I think that's, that's something we need to, to always remember. So, okay, I think I'm close up there. I appreciate everybody who joined the live chat who were here watching us live. I really appreciate when you do that. Until next time, everybody, though, God love.