Pope Leo Disappoints

[00:00:11] Speaker A: Pope Leo recently upset a lot of Catholics, including myself, by seeming to support Cardinal Cupich's decision to honor a pro abortion politician. Does this mean it's time to resurrect the recognize and resist movement? That's what I want to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I'm Eric Sims, your host editor chief of Crisis magazine. So let's just get right into it. So in case you're not clear on the backstory, basically about a week or two ago, Cardinal Cupich of Chicago, who's known as one of the most liberal, progressive, worst cardinals in the Catholic Church, today he, he announced that he was giving a lifetime achievement award to Senator. I think it's Dick Durbin. I think his first name is Dick and Durbin is notorious as being a longtime supporter of legalized abortion. He's also terrible on a lot of other issues, like he's very pro trans and things like that. And so there's a lot of pushback in the Catholic world to Cardinal Cupich doing this. And, and in fact, about eight or ten bishops, American bishops, spoke out and basically said that Cardinal Cupich shouldn't do this. We should not be giving awards to somebody who has supported the Holocaust or the preborn for about 40 years of his career. And it's a real scandal. Now. Cupich came out swinging. He said he was not going to take back the award, that he was recognizing him for other service and things like that. So this controversy was brewing in the American Catholic Church, like what's going to happen is Cardinal. In fact, there was rumors that the USCCB was going to come out with a statement about it. Who knows what that would say? But then Pope Leo was asked about it and this was just today's October 1st. He just was asked. Yesterday on September 30th, he was asked about this. I want to play the video of his answer. It's not very long. It's less than two minutes. The question and the answer and then we're going to talk about it here. So here, let me pull this up here. [00:02:19] Speaker B: Just wanted to ask one thing that has become a bit of a divisive subject in the US Right now with Cardinal Cupich giving an award to Senator Durbin. Some people of faith are having a hard time with understanding this because he is pro, or rather he's for legalized abortion. How would you help people of faith right now decipher that feel about that? And how do you feel about that? [00:02:47] Speaker C: I'm not terribly familiar with the particular case. I think that it's very Important to look at the overall work that a senator has done during, if I'm not mistaken, 40 years of service in the United States Senate. I understand the difficulty and the tensions, but I think, as I myself have spoken in the past, it's important to look at many issues that are related to what is the teaching of the Church. Someone who says I'm against abortion, but says I'm into favor the death penalty is not really pro life. So someone who says that I'm against abortion, but I'm in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants who are in the United States. I don't know if that's pro life. So they're very complex issues. I don't know if anyone has all the truth on them. But I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we see search together, both as human beings, in that case, as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics, to say we need to really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward as church. Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear. [00:04:04] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:04:05] Speaker A: Okay, so I don't think there's any way to make this sound better than it really is. This was a very disappointing answer from the Holy Father. It was just a bad answer. I don't know how you can kind of try and make it and explain it away that it was anything other than just a very bad answer. There's a number of things about it that made it bad. First of all, he starts off by saying he's not very familiar with the issue. I mean, he then goes on to say, like he says, how Durbin has been senator for 40 years, so he obviously knows who Durbin is. Remember, Durbin is a senator from Illinois. Pope Leo is from Illinois. And so Durbin's been a senator for 40 years of Illinois. He knows who Durbin is. He knows about him. He might not know every single detail, what the lifetime achievement award is, stuff like that, but he's obviously far more familiar with this situation than almost any other pope you can imagine could be. I mean, he's literally a pope from Illinois, and we're talking about an Illinois cardinal giving an Illinois senator award. And so he is familiar with it far more than people might think. I'm not saying he's lying. He might not know every single detail, but he's obviously more familiar than probably anybody else at the Vatican is familiar with it, just from his background. But he says that, like, you know, he mentions how the overall Record matters, not just abortion. But I also want to note that Durbin's awful on everything, on just about everything. This isn't just a situation where he's this bad on abortion, but just great at everything else. He's very much supportive of the transgender issues, homosexuality, things like that. I mean, he's just bad on lots and lots of things. Let's even Grant, I don't agree with this, but let's say that we'll grant that he's right on immigration, his views on immigration. I don't think he is. But William Grant, he's still terrible on so much. So it's not just a matter of if it's a lifetime achievement war for what, for one issue or something like that. But even though he's been awful, I mean literally against Catholicism on almost everything else. So if we are looking at the overall record, it's very clear Durbin's awful and doesn't deserve it. Even if you remove abortion from the equation, he doesn't deserve it. But then of course, one thing that Pope Leo said that's particularly disappointing is when he said you can't be against abortion and support the death penalty and be considered pro life. I mean, that's literally. Every Catholic until last week has been. Every good faithful Catholic till last week was against abortion in support of the death penalty. Because the death penalty cannot be changed. The teaching on it, Scripture is very clear, tradition is very clear. The magisterium for centuries has been very clear. The death penalty is permissible in certain situations. It's not an intrinsic evil like abortion. Now we can argue about the prudence of using it in the modern state. I'm willing to open that up for a discussion. I think that's a good discussion to have. However, you can't just say supporting the death penalty kind of blanket. Supporting the death penalty makes you not pro life. And also just to have an aside, it shows the, the, the complete ridiculousness and weakness of the term pro life these days. It's been co opted by so many people, it's become meaningless. We're anti abortion, I'm anti abortion. I'm not pro life. By your definition, by a lot of people's definition of it. Because I do support the death penalty. I'm against it in some situations, like practically how it's used, but I'm for it in the sense that I know it's not immoral, it's not intrinsically immoral. And if your views on immigration impact whether or not you're pro life, I mean, it's just a. It's a meaningless term. And so. But to getting back to what Pope Leo said, it clearly was the support of Cardinal Cupich. Yes. He says at the end something about the fact that, you know what, churches are very clear on this. Well, actually, it's not very clear because the death penalty is very controversial. The teaching of the Church on death penalty is not clear anymore because of Pope Francis. Francis. The teaching of the Church on immigration is not very clear, to be honest. I mean, I think it's clear. I think I know what it is, but like, it's not clear in the minds of most people what it is. So I think actually, let's make it a little more clear. And here's the irony of all this. Hours, less than hours after Pope Leo said this, Senator Durbin announced he was declining the award. So the whole controversy could have been averted in the sense that if Pope Leo just hadn't said anything, Durban would have declined the award. We just move on. But instead, now, Pope Leo's made it worse. He's made it worse by doing this. Now because of the Pope Francis era, the Pope Francis pontificate, we kind of have a whole structured song and dance. When a Pope says something controversial that you. That plays out online, plays out on social media. And that is there's two main camps that, that break this down. There's the Pope explainers, the people who say, okay, he actually didn't mean that the translation is bad. Of course, you can't say the translation is bad here. He's literally speaking in English, his native tongue. Or they'll say like, oh, but look at what he said here. And really, you know, it's not really what you're saying it is. And you know, they Pope splain it away. And then on the other side, you have the freakout coalition. Like I saw Father James Altman was like, Pope Leo's not Catholic. You know, based upon what he said here, it's for sure Pope Leo is not Catholic. And you have the freakout crowd. And so that's the main two reactions you get online. You have the set of a contest who jump in. They're basically aligned with the Pope splainers and saying a Pope can never say anything wrong. But then they also know that what he's saying is wrong in this case. So they say he's not really the Pope. And you know, and you have the calm down. You have the people who are just kind of like, oh, it's not that big a deal. But the two main reactions are the Pope splainers and the freakout coalition. I say both are wrong. I say both are wrong. This is what we, we fell into in the Pope Francis era. And I just to be clear, I'll talk about this more in a minute. I've been part of the freakout crowd. I'm not a popes planer, so I have been part of the freakout crowd. Now, I know people are going to be offended by that, calling it the freakout crowd because it's legitimate to criticize football. That I'll explain that in a minute, so just stick with me. I think there needs to be a third way that we respond in these situations. It's okay to be rightly upset. It's okay to be disappointed when a Pope says or does something that is contrary to the Catholic faith, that is confusing to the faithful, that causes scandal. All of those things are legitimate. There's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that is a proper, that is the proper response, I would say. It's not like, again, we've talked about this so much on this channel. It's not like we have to agree with everything a Pope says. It's not like everything a Pope says is dogma that we have to accept that's not our religion, that's a cult, that's not Catholic Catholicism. But there's no reason to make it like it's the end of the world, you know, where we, we have to change our ecclesiology or our view. Whether or not Pope Leo is a legitimate pope, just because he said something interview we disagree with. That's not good, frankly, that, that's, you know, it's this hyper papalism rearing its ugly head that we, and my hyper papalism, I don't just mean like somebody's doctrinal views about the papacy. I mean an attitude where the whole church revolves, all of reality revolves around a pope. And every word he says, everything he does, we really need to just go away from that. I just did a podcast a week or two ago about papal minimalism and we talk about this. I mean, here's the thing. Pope Leo, I think I said this last week or recently. He's basically an average American bishop. This is when average American bishop, how they would answer the question. If you asked this exact question to every American bishop yesterday, I would say the majority of them would give an answer that's essentially the same as what Pope Leo said. And so it shouldn't be surprising that that's his answer. The thing is though, this isn't the big deal that Some people, the, the people who probably want to generate clicks, the people who, who are upset about everything, people who are demanding people condemn Pope Leo as an anti pope or not Catholic or whatever. It's not the big deal they're saying it is. Yes, it's scandalous, but there's levels of scandal. First of all, it's not like everything is, you know. You know, every single action that scandalous is at the, at the Mount, on Mount Rushmore of scandals. There are, there are real, significant, major scandals. You know, Ropnik is a big scandal. You know, bishops covering up abuse is a big scandal. The Pope saying something that's not that great in an interview, off the cuff, yeah, it's bad, but it's not. It doesn't reach those levels. There's been plenty of scandals in church history, plenty of papal scandals in church history. This doesn't even make the top like 100,000 in scandals. So why do we make it like it's the end of the world? Why? Because we can all pontificate about on social media, I guess. And we're, and we've been, we've been created, like. I'm sorry, not created. We've been basically prepped under the Pope Francis era to freak out about every papal misstatement. Frankly, it does us no good to do this. It does us no good to, to escalate every single negative thing that comes out of the Vatican, as this is the great moment in which we can condemn France. I'm sorry, Leo. And make sure everybody knows how terrible he is. It's not good for us, first of all, it's not good for us prudentially because it does harm our dealings with the Vatican. There is something called prudence. I'm not saying that we compromise what we believe. Like I said, what Pope Leo said here was disappointing. It was wrong in a number of places. But at the same time, if we act like everything that comes out of the vacuum, that we don't agree with, that we, that is, you know, DEFCON 5, is it DEFCON 1's the highest DEFCON or DEFCON whatever, that's, you know, the worst thing on the world. We need to go to the nuclear weapons in response. Well, then we're never going to be able to work with the Vatican. This Pope has made it very clear, Pope Leo, that is, that he's willing to talk to us, he's willing to understand our concerns and understand, by us, I mean traditional conservative Catholics understand where we're coming from. And I think we should take him as word for that. He hasn't shown to be like a liar or anything like that. I mean, Pope Francis said things that were clearly not true that he had to know weren't true. That's not happened with Pope Leo. And so I don't think it's good for that purpose. But secondly, I don't think it's good for our spiritual health. I think we need to take a step back and look at the spiritual dimensions. This is something I've been thinking about a lot for the past year, and I want to talk about that a little bit. I think this is kind of the more important thing that we want to talk about. I want to talk a little bit about my own views of this, about the whole recognize and resist movement and the spiritual damage it can do. Here's the thing. We have to do better than we did under Francis. Francis was uniquely difficult to deal with, let's be honest, because he hated us. He hated us. There's no indication Pope Leo hates us, but there's every indication that Pope Francis hated us, that he was very much opposed to us. He thought we were a great danger. He wanted to crush us and basically remove us from the church. I mean, so many actions. I'm not even going to try to prove it, because if you don't think that's true, you just weren't paying attention. And so it's natural. It's understandable that we got riled up, that we got very angry, and that we escalated every conflict to a nuclear level. We escalate every conflict to the highest level of conflict. And I just think that was a mistake. And I think this is something to recognize and resist movement that I was a part of. I mean, I think I'm considered one of the spokesmen for it. At least I've seen that online. People often mention my name when they talk about the recognize and resist, along with Peter Kwasneski, Michael Matt, Taylor Marshall. People like that. Now, the truth is, I never liked the term recognize and resist. It was given to us by others, and I accepted it. Like, okay, I guess that's what will be called. But I never did like it. And there's a reason. I didn't like it because I felt like it. Like, I didn't like it, and I didn't really know why for a long time. I just was very uncomfortable with it. That word resist, like, I know what it means for those who aren't clear, it meant we recognize that Francis really was the Pope. We're not sedevacantus. In other words, but we resist any errors that come out of his papacy, his pontificate. That's what it means. And under that, like, I get that, and there's nothing technically wrong with that. The problem, though, is this is something I came to see late in the Francis pontificate, is that I think it really does cause problems for the spirit in which we approach our faith and approach the papacy. And I came to this because last year, for the first time, I participated in St. Michael's Lent. That's the time from the Assumption through feast of St. Michael. We just finished it this year, I participated again. But I did my first St. Michael's lint, and I did these prayers every day. And there's like nine supplications. There's a litany and there's a prayer. I got to think from the fish eater side. I can't remember the, the sixth supplication which you pray every day. It's. It says this. These are supplications to St. Michael. It says, o glorious warrior of the Most High, we implore you, do not permit us to become contaminated by a spirit of rebellion against God and against the Holy Mother Church. Do not permit us to become contaminated by a spirit of rebellion against God, against the Holy Mother Church. That phrase, spirit of rebellion really hit me. If you remember or if you. You might not know this, but I kind of. I did announce last year, during St. Michael's Anti. Actually, the end of it, that I wasn't going to criticize Pope Francis anymore. And I decided that during. Publicly anymore. And I decided that during, you know, for the rest of his pontificate, I decided that during St. Michael's Lent, it was really because of this prayer, because I felt like while we were right, the recognize and resist movement, while we were factually right on just about everything, that doesn't necessarily mean we were always spiritually right. And I know that sounds like. Might sound like gobbledygook. It sounds like you were talking on both sides of our mouth. But I do think we have to recognize there's more than just being factually right. This is, this is something that, let's be honest, we fall into. It's kind of like this autistic view of, like, okay, we're just looking at the facts, and we're not looking at human beings and the totality of our relationships and how we look at things in our. And our viewpoints and our worldviews and our spirit and all that stuff. And I think that at times, I'm pointing The finger at myself here, by the way. I'm not trying to point the figure, figure, finger at other people saying they did this, like, you know, Peter or Taylor or Michael or anybody like that. I'm pointing it at myself and only myself. But I felt like we fell into just, how can we attack this Pope? How can we find reasons to be upset? And how can we find reasons to attack the Pope? Again? Francis made it easy because he did so many things to show he despised us. And so it's natural when somebody attacks you, when somebody hates you, you're going to look for ways to be upset by them. But I think that's unhealthy. I think it turned into a spirit of rebellion. Not that we rejected the papacy, not that we rejected even Francis that he was Pope, but it was a spirit of rebellion. It's kind of like spirit in a very generic term, kind of like the spirit of Vatican ii. You know, it's like it covers. It's an umbrella term for a lot of bad stuff. I think spirit of rebellion, it's like an umbrella term was our attitude, like, basically, okay, I have to find reasons to be upset. You know, anytime anything happened, I have to get on social media and make sure everybody knows that Francis is wrong on this and how terrible he is, he's the worst Pope ever, and blah, blah, blah. And I just think that is a spirit of rebellion. And that's why I decided that I wasn't going to publicly criticize Pope Francis, you know, as long. As long as he was alive, because I just felt like there was no purpose to anymore. Everybody knew what Pope Francis thought. Everybody knew what he believed. Everybody knew that he rejected tradition in so many ways. What's the point of bringing it up over and over again? It's not like it was news to say, oh, Pope Francis said this, and look, it goes against tradition. Yeah, like, that's like dog bites, man type of story. It just doesn't. It doesn't mean anything anymore. And so I think the problem with this is that it is a spiritual, like, death cycle spiral. It basically goes into. It can really get you spiritually unwell. If a papal interview gets you on social media railing against the Pope, that's your first reaction, is, I got a comment on this. I got to make sure everybody knows why this is wrong. I got to make sure everybody knows that I'm standing for the truth. I'm standing for Catholic doctrine. I am a crusader, I'm a warrior, blah, blah, blah. Then that's a real problem. That's not a healthy attitude. The first thing that should happen when you see something that a Pope said that is scandalous is it should make you go to prayer. I'm not claiming I did this. In fact, I'm claiming I didn't. But I'm trying to do it now, and I think we all should try to do it more and more again. Doesn't mean we don't criticize. It just means we have a different spiritual attitude. We don't have a spirit of resistance. It's a real problem otherwise. So what should be kind of the attitude? The motto I would use, maybe this is my English heritage saying, is Keep calm and carry on. Keep calm and carry on. That's the famous motto of the English. But we need to recognize where it comes from when we say keep calm and carry on. It's not a pacifist type attitude. It's not a let people roll over you attitude. The origin of that motto is World War II, when the English were facing the bombing by the Nazis. So it wasn't like keep calm and carry on means, okay, roll over and let the Nazis defeat you. No, it was like, we're going to whip their tails. We're going to fight until we can fight no more. We're not going to compromise. We're not going to step back, we're not going to stop. But we're going to do it in a spirit of calmness, because that's the way to win. We're just going to keep doing our duty. We're going to keep our heads down and do what we need to do. So it's not giving in. It's not compromising. It's fighting with calm. And I think that in many cases, the recognize and resist movement, of which I am a major figure, supposedly didn't always do this. And I think we need to do it under Leo. It's not the same thing as Francis. We're not in the same situation. We need to keep calm and caring. We need to be the calm Catholics. Calm does not, again, mean compromising Catholics. It does not mean that we're just. We're pushovers. It simply means we don't freak out every single time the Pope or the Vatican says something or does something that is scandalous or isn't, you know, is confusing to Catholics. Now, this does. I want to address some accusations that have been made since Pope Leo was elected. And that's the whole tradinc accusations. There are some trads who are saying trad Inc. They're basically, they decided to roll over for Leo. Not fight back, not, you know, they decide to compromise because it's always basically implied or stated because that helps the money keep rolling in. It's a way to basically make kissy face, make nice with church authorities so that we keep our audience and people, you know, keep on donating to us and things of that nature. Well, the whole. The whole thing is just stupid. First of all, there was no discussions among trads. At least I wasn't invited to them. You know, trad. Influencers, whatever you want to call them, just say, okay, now we have a new Pope. Let's have a different attitude. I think, at least for me, like I said, it dates back before Leo was elected. It dates back to last year when Francis was still Pope. And like I said, My St. Michael's Lent resolution. And I think other, you know, recognize and resist type Catholics might have seen the same thing. And with Leo, they just thought, let's have it. It was a mature thought, frankly, of let's turn the page. Let's have a new outlook as far as, like, it's a new Pope. Let's try to work as best we can under him. The truth is, here's the thing. I would get more clicks. I would get a bigger audience if I did freak out. That's what drives traffic online. We all know it. I would do. I would do better. My. My podcast would do better if I was freaking out every time that Pope Leo said or did anything that was slightly controversial. That's how you drive traffic. And so the idea that somehow I'm helping myself by being calm, calm does not work online. It does not work on social media, does not work in the podcast world. Anti, calm, freaking out. That's what works. That's what gets you the audience. Also, I don't even know my donors. I have no contact with them except for when one of them might write to me and say, hey, by the way, I'm a donor. Or they might say, hey, I'm not donating anything anymore. The fact is, is that, like, I don't know, like, my suspicion is if I was harder on. On Leo, I. I might have more donors. I don't know. I don't even know. That's the thing. It might be true the other way. I don't know. And here's the other thing. I've already burned my bridges. And so if people like Taylor Marshall, we're not getting invited to regular Catholic events. We're not getting invited to a parish, hardly any parish or any diocese. I'm not even allowed to speak at the diocese where I used to work. I'm like, on the band list there. So it's like we've already burned those bridges. Being kissy, you know, playing kissy face with the Vatican supposedly isn't going to help me all of a sudden get more speaking engagement. And the truth is, I don't even do speaking engagements. I hate to travel. I will do a few if they're local, if there's something special. But I. I don't even. I'm not on the circuit, but, like, I'm not going to be on Catholic Answers Radio. I love the Catholic Answers people, by the way, Trent Horn is great. I mean, he always is willing to, you know, he'll come on my podcast and things like that. But the, the Catholic Answers radio show is not having me on. I mean, about a year or so ago, a couple years ago, I was like, I had made an agreement with another organization, not Catholic Answer, another organization, to do a video series for them. And then they. And once it started, they had to cancel it because they got complaints from normie Catholics who didn't like me, a papal critic. This was during the Pope Francis era, being. Being, you know, being used. So it's like, I'm not, like, that's not going to change anytime. I'm not complaining, by the way. I'm not a victim or anything like that, you know, that I don't care. But the point is, is like the idea that all of a sudden now I'm making kissy face with the Vatican in order to get more speaking engagements or more donors, something is just. It's silly. The problem is the people who make these accusations, they really have lost sight of, like, the real world. They need to touch grass, as they say. Really what they need to do is go to adoration or something like that. But, like, they're keyboard warriors acting as if they're holy crusaders in some grand battle, when really what they're doing is they're just spending time in their basement attacking everyone on social media and saying they're right and everybody else is wrong. That's not healthy. That's not good, frankly. It's loser behavior. It's loser behavior to do that. If you're spending all your time online basically saying why all these other trads are wrong and you're right and why you are in this holy crusade, and all you're doing is typing on a keyboard, by the way, that's my job, is to type on a keyboard and talk into a microphone. So I'm not saying that people shouldn't do that, but if you think that's some holy crusade, you're a loser. You need to like really get back into reality. That's the problem with this world is that you can fall into making yourself far more self important than you are. I know what I do in the grand scheme of things isn't like some grand quest. It's not some grand crusade or anything like that. I hope it helps some people, I really do. I hope and pray that it helps some people to be better Catholics in their life. That's all I hope for, honestly. If it helps a few people, that's great. But I don't think it's like, oh, me against, you know, the pagan hordes within the Church or something like that. And again, I want to emphasize you can be factually correct and spiritually wrong. You can be factually correct and spiritually wrong. So yes, maybe your criticisms of Pope Leo or Pope Francis are correct, but that's not enough. That's not the whole picture. Are you entering into a spirit of rebellion? Are you leading people astray by them getting them more and more upset about things that frankly, we don't need to get that upset about? Like this, this interview, this, this answer Pope Leo gave. It's really not something to get that upset about. Yes, it's scandalous. Yes, it's, it's not good. It's disappointing. I think disappointing is probably the best word to use. I wouldn't even raise it to like, you know, I don't even know if it raises to scandal, but it definitely is disappointing. And you can think that you can be upset about it, but you have to keep calm and carry on. Don't get caught up in the social media driven cycle of perpetual anger. It's okay and healthy and probably right to ignore the Pope most of the time, ignore what he does most of the time, because it doesn't affect your life. You should be engaged primarily in prayer, penance, you and me, by the way, I'm not pointing the finger at other people. This is something I need to do too. In prayer and penance. Yes. Criticizing the Pope if necessary, to make it clear what we believe and why we believe it, defending the perennial teachings of the Church. All those things should and can be done. But let's not get into a spirit of rebellion. A spirit of rebellion is not what we want to do. As we pray to St. Michael, do not permit us to become contaminated by a spirit of rebellion against God and against the Holy Mother Church. Contaminated is a great word there, too, because if you're part of the recognize and resist movement, it can be a contamination. You don't even realize it's happening because you're right so often. I mean, I firmly believe, like, I don't. If I went back and looked at all the things I said and, you know, wrote back under the Pope Francis pontificate, I'd be willing to admit that I still agree with probably 99, 98. Maybe I made some mistakes. I mean, you know, I'm not perfect or anything like that. I believe I still was right about what I said. But does it always need to be said, and does it always need to be said in a certain spirit of antagonism? I don't think so. And I admit this is somewhat of a change for me, but I think it's something that we need to. I think the Lord has been speaking to me about it, you know, through the Saint, through Saint Michael, and through Our Lady. But I think that's something we all should realize. And so let's keep calm and carry on, Catholics. Okay, I'm gonna wrap it up there. Until next time, everybody. God love you.