Protecting an Accused Priest’s Reputation, Criticizing Pope Francis, and Biden Pardons Hunter

[00:00:23] Today on the podcast, I'm going to talk about a host of news, including what to do about the reputation of an accused priest criticizing Pope Francis, whether or not Francis is a valid pope, and whether or not Benedict's Pope Benedict's resignation was valid, and a whole host of other news. Before we get started, however, I just want to encourage people to smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. Also, we are in our fundraising campaign. We do two fundraising campaigns a year, so we don't annoy you all the time. But we are in the midst of one of them right now. And very excitingly, we have a matching donor, somebody who's offered to give up to $75,000 in matching funds. And so our goal is $150,000, including those. So basically we need to raise $75,000. Like I said, we only ask for donations twice a year. This is one of those. It's good time for your end of year donations. [00:01:25] We really do appreciate, we appreciate your prayers, we appreciate your support. Everything we offer is for free at Crisis. We don't off, we don't charge for any of our offerings. And so but it's not free to make. It does cost money to, to make our podcast, to publish our articles and all of that. So we really appreciate if you would get give to our campaign this year and you just go crisismagazine.com and find, just go to the Donate page to do that. So. Okay, so I'm going to be talking about a number of different topics today. And I did this last time. People seem to enjoy it, seem to think it was a good setup. So I'm going to do it again instead of addressing just one topic. I might do that still sometimes, but I'm just a number of topics this time. Okay, so the first thing I want to talk about is I think most people have heard of Father Carlos Martins. He is a priest who was, is in charge of the St. Jude relic that's been toured that's been going around in America. I will be honest, I'd never heard of him before this. A number of people I know and respect did know him though, and said he's a good, solid priest. And so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm sure he is in many ways. I just don't know him. But essentially what happened was a story came out that a diocese where the St. Jude relic was being on tour decide to shut down and not have, not have it the relic displayed anymore. And they basically said it was because of an accusation against Father Martin's. And the pillar ran a story about this, that. The original story, they were the first to break. It basically made it sound like it was potentially an accusation of a sexual nature with potentially a minor, with a student. And so obviously, people very quickly come to that conclusion based upon the fact that we've unfortunately had that happen a lot over the past 20 years. Happened long before that, too, but it's been in the news a lot over the last 20 years. Then father Martin's lawyer came out and said, well, here's what happened. [00:03:38] Basically, at a public event associated with the. With the relic of St. Jude, with students, with many students, hundreds of people there, he basically was making a point. And he took a lock of a young lady's hair and kind of twirled it and kind of played with it for a minute. And it was to make a point, that he was trying to, you know, connect with the kids and make a point. [00:04:02] And the diet. The parish diocese did say there's more to the story than that, but there's. As far as I know, nothing else has come out beyond that. [00:04:11] And so then we. Then it became clear that, you know, obviously it is not an accusation of a sexual nature. It's not an accusation of Father Martin's being with an individual student in an inappropriate situation, anything like that. And so I saw a lot of people defending Father Martin's and then criticizing the pillar for running the story, criticizing the diocese, the parish, for overreacting. [00:04:38] And apparently what happened was the father of the girl, the young lady, he was the one who was upset about when he heard about it. And he's the one who basically said, you have to do something about this. You have to report this. He said, it's the parish. And they did. [00:04:53] So the question is, were they right to report it? Were they wrong? Was Father Martin's wrong to do what he did? Was he. Was. Is he completely innocent? [00:05:03] Honestly, here's my answer. I think we're. The fact is, the situation we're currently in, due to the past, due to what's happened, past is a mess. [00:05:14] So imagine I tried to picture myself as if I have six daughters. I tried to picture myself in this situation. What would I do? Here's the thing. If I saw a priest who was doing something like this, I will admit I'd have. A few red flags would come up. I'd be like, I don't know. Especially if it's a priest. I didn't know, because, remember, he's a traveling priest. Nobody There knew him, he's just coming, you know, he's traveling around. [00:05:41] And so if it's a priest I did not know and had never met before, and he grabbed. He kind of touched one of my daughter's hair and kind of, you know, a lock of hair even to make a point in front of a lot of people, I will be honest, I would get a little bit of a vibe from that. And I would say, ooh, I might want to keep my kids away from him. Now, whether or not I would report him, I don't think I would, because here's the thing. I know reporting him would greatly impact his reputation for the worse. And I don't think that would raise the level of wanting to do that, because exactly what happened to Father Martin's, I wouldn't want to happen to an innocent priest if that's all I knew about it. But I will say that I probably would steer clear of him with my kids if he did that. I understand that people are very different in how they interact with people and how they use physical contact. I have a friend, for example, who, when he gets to know. He's a married man, happily married. When he gets to know friends with maybe a wife of a friend like that, when he greets him, he might give them a hug and even maybe kiss them on the cheek. That's just the way he is. Nobody thinks anything of it, and they shouldn't. There's nothing wrong with that. I have another friend, also happily married. If a woman goes to hug him, even if he has known her for decades, he recoils. He just doesn't like physical contact like that, especially with a woman who's not his wife. That's okay, too. Here's the thing. Both of those people, I don't suspect anything. Neither of them are doing anything wrong. Neither of them should be suspected of doing anything wrong. But they're very different in how they deal with physical contact with people, not their spouse or their kids. [00:07:35] And so I'm not going to just say, oh, a man, like, takes a lock of my daughter's hair. I'm not automatically gonna say, oh, my, he must be a predator. He must be. Have worse things. He's doing. He's grooming her. Whatever. [00:07:48] I mean, people who groom, they don't do it in a public setting like that only. I mean, they do a lot more in an individual case. And there's nothing he could have done with that girl. He's. He's leaving town later, so I would not have reported in that situation. Now, if he had, if it had been a priest who was at my parish and there permanently, I probably would have kept an eye out and been like, I might want to keep an eye, make sure, I might keep my, a little bit of a distance, have my kids keep a distance. So the point of this is there is no easy answer here. There is no easy answer to say simply, okay, what should the father do in this situation? It really depends on a lot of factors. It depends a lot on a father's vibe, a gut feeling, which father should have. They don't all have it, but they should have it. [00:08:38] I think that the priest has a right to his good name and obviously a potential victim or a victim has a right to justice. And we need to stop a priest or anybody who is engaged in grooming or inappropriate actions or abuse. [00:08:53] So I don't have a great answer, to be honest. I think it's something we shouldn't be too quick to judge the father or the parish or Father Martin's too quickly. I think we need to recognize we're in a messy situation. Priests are in a bad situation. I do think priests need to recognize the situation they're in and realize you just can't do that. Just don't do it. You solve a lot of problems. There's no good that comes out of it. I get that maybe that's your personality, that's how you were raised. I get you're trying to make contact, you know, identify with the kids and stuff like that, but just got to not do that. I mean, if you're, if a priest is listening to this, I would just say, just don't have physical contact. I mean, I, I know it's not even that easy because often kids will, I, I see kids all the time run up to the priest and, and give them a hug. What's the priest supposed to do? Like yell at them, back off or anything like that? No, so I, I, I, it's a delicate situation. I do think though, like, we should recognize that if you defend a priest who's been accused of something, that doesn't mean you, you support abuse. I of course saw some knee jerk people saying that as well. I remember when Father Jackson, the, the fraternity priest who was, who was accused by law enforcement of having child porn was first accused. I wrote an article where I basically said, let's just wait, let's just wait to see. It's not guaranteed that he's guilty. Let's not immediately assume he is. And I stand by what I said. Now, in the end he admitted guilt and he was guilty and he went to jail and he should go to jail. [00:10:22] But at the same time, I don't regret saying let's wait. And I say that with Father Martin's as well. What's interesting, I was attacked for saying let's wait on Father Jackson by literally some of the same people who are now saying, we need to wait on Father Martin's. Now, I realize what they're being accused of is much different, but in both cases, it is a simple accusation being made. It's not like some definitive proof. It's not admission of guilt or anything like that. So I just feel like in the current environment we're in, it's a, it's a, it's a. [00:10:56] It's a nasty business we're in, and we just have to be careful not to jump to conclusions, but at the same time not be. To understand that abuse does happen and we need to defend the rights of the, of victims as well, and abuse victims. Okay, so the next thing I want to talk about is this is. Is criticizing Pope Francis. Now. In early October, I made a video I posted on X, but I've never put it here on the, on the YouTube channel, on the Crisis podcast or, or at Crisis. So it's possible people don't know this. Only if you follow me on X would you have seen this. But I basically said I'm not going to criticize Pope Francis publicly anymore. And there's a lot of reasons. I just go to. If you go to my X page, profile page, it's. It's a pin tweet right now, so you can look at it and watch the video to see why I say that. But I wanted to address that a little bit here because I do think it's a prudential thing. As I said in the video, I'm not saying he's not. [00:11:58] Doesn't do anything that's worthy of criticism. I'm not saying I agree with everything he does now. I'm just simply, I'm not going to publicly criticize him anymore. [00:12:06] And I got a lot of pushback from that. A lot of people said I'm giving in. I'm like becoming a popesplainer or I'm not really defending the faith or whatever the case may be. Some people, you know, said thank you and things of that nature. [00:12:18] I think it's just a prudential decision here that I'm making, and it has to do with the diminishing returns, as I see it, of criticizing him. [00:12:29] Pope Francis has Been Pope for almost 12 years now. It'll be 12 years in March. [00:12:37] Everybody knows where he stands on everything. I mean, essentially it's very rare you're going to find Catholic doesn't know his basic views, where he stands on various issues, on religious indifference or on communion for divorce and remarried or whatever the case may be. [00:12:55] And so continually, every time he says something that I believe is contrary to the Catholic faith or is imprudent or whatever the case may be, jumping in to criticize him has diminishing returns. Because what it does is it just gives an overwhelming. It gives a sense of over and over. If you're continually criticizing him. I do think what it does, it has a. It begins to erode the office of the papacy. Now, to be clear, a Pope who does something wrong does more to erode it than anything else. But I do think there's a certain psychological or whatever sociological impact where the case may be. If all you're doing is criticizing the current Pope, I believe it in some point that becomes a negative thing. Overall, it's not worth the benefits. That's probably the best way to put it. The costs are not worth the benefits of making the criticism. [00:13:52] Now, if we get a brand new Pope soon, we will before too long and he does something wrong. I'm not saying you can't criticize him because nobody kind of knows where that Pope stands or anything like that. I just feel like with Francis, we've been there, done that, and the continual kind of cycle of he says something controversial, certain people take to the Internet to criticize him, certain people take the Internet to defend him, and then we just go through and then, you know, rinse and repeat. I just think becomes. That cycle becomes actually a net negative for the Church. And so that's why I just decide I'm just not going to bother with it anymore. Now, the fact is, is that I'm still going to proclaim the truth. It's not like I'm caving in and not going to proclaim what, what the Church teaches. So if Francis were to say something that I thought was contrary to Catholic faith or maybe imprudence like that, I may say that the truth of the Catholic faith and do that without even mentioning him, because I do think the truth needs to be proclaimed and that would help defeat any confusion or things of that nature. But the fact is I'm just simply going after Pope Francis is a. Each time you do it, I feel like it has less return. And eventually in my mind, the benefits of making sure it's clear what he's saying is wrong. Wherever out, you know, are outweighed by the cost of what that does psychologically, sociologically, whatever you want to call it, of attitudes of Catholics towards the papacy and towards the authority of the Catholic Church. So I just wanted to kind of bring that up in the podcast here for people who might not realize, they might have realized that I had not done anything like that. I actually decided to do this back in August, but it was in October. I kind of announced I was not doing this anymore. [00:15:43] So that's just kind of where I stand. I just wanted to bring that up as a point to, to bring it up. So. Okay, so the next story is President Biden pardons his son, Hunter Biden. Now, I think this was a shock to no one, even though we know, you know, President Biden said numerous times he would not pardon Hunter Biden. Everybody knew he would. I mean, let's be honest, we all knew it. And of course, the, the pardon was very broad. He didn't pardon him for specific accusations or specific crimes. He basically says he's pardoned from January 1, 2014, until today, until, I think it was until December 1 when he issued the pardon. You can't pardon somebody in the future. Even a president can't do that. It is interesting that he picked January 1, 2014 as the beginning because 2014, for those who are aware, is when everything started going down in Ukraine. That's what I mean. People think, people who are not very knowledgeable, think that the whole Ukraine, Russian war star started in 2022. It actually started 2014. Really, before that were the, the, the bait, the foundations of it. I'm going to actually have somebody on the guest this week on the podcast. We're going to talk about that situation over there, along with other foreign conflicts. But Hunter Biden, of course, is very involved, Joe Biden, very involved with the whole corruption in Ukraine. And so you pardon them back to that date because there's probably a lot of funny business that happened that year. Ukraine. [00:17:16] I got, I tweeted yesterday, I posted on X, whatever you want to call it, that honestly, most fathers would do the same thing. And I, in that situation, and I know I would, and I definitely got pushback from that. And I understand the pushback. In fact, I mentioned it to my wife and she pushed back. So I know what I said was not the common thought among a lot of conservative Catholics, but I still stand by it. And here's the reason why. [00:17:43] A pardon, by definition, is not about justice, because most of the arguments against Biden pardoning Hunter is people should have to deal with the consequences of their actions, or this is going to encourage future abuse of the pardon. Like, what if John Jr. Donald Trump Jr. Like, he's like, I can do anything I want for the next four years because Dad's just going to pardon me before he gets out of office. [00:18:11] I understand those arguments. And as a, as a father, trust me, I believe very much in punishment for infractions. I believe in consequences for your actions. I mean, as a parent, I have. Asking my kids, I have. I punish them if they do something wrong. You know, there's consequences. There's consequences to negative, to bad actions. I totally believe in that. And I think that's. That's important as a parent that you do that. [00:18:37] However pardon is, I feel like it's a Christian part of our kind of society, our culture. It harkens back to the fact of the pardon from the Old Testament, the jubilee years, things like that, where basically debts were forgiven. There was. And you could say, well, if debts are forgiven, that kind of encourages, what are the consequences? They rack up debt and they don't realize that they shouldn't do that and things like that. Yes, you're right. [00:19:06] But a pardon really is based on the merciful love of God. Somebody responded about me saying, a father would, any father would pardon his son in this situation, saying, well, I'm glad that the Father didn't pardon Jesus. And he didn't, you know, he let him get his punishment, get the punishment on the cross. It's a terrible analogy, to be honest, because of course, Jesus was innocent. There's no need to pardon him. But the better theological point is, is that you and me, everybody, we are pardoned of our sins for no reason. I mean, we don't deserve to be pardoned. All we have to do, if we're baptized, everything we've done in the past is wiped out, all the bad things. We don't have to do anything else. If you die right after your baptism, you're going straight to heaven. That is a pardon without consequences. And the truth is, some people have abused that in the past. There have been times in church history when people would wait until their deathbed to be baptized for exactly this reason. Now, of course, they're taking a risk. They're taking a risk. What happens if they die suddenly and they don't. And they don't have time to get baptized? They're in trouble. Likewise, Don Trump Jr. What if he does do us and all of a sudden Trump his dad dies in office before he pardons him, he's in trouble, potentially. [00:20:23] But a pardon really is something that isn't supposed to be weighed by the scales of justice. It's just an act of mercy. It's an act that's not deserved. Hunter Biden does not deserve to be pardoned. Nobody deserves to be pardoned. I mean, obviously, the president's pardoning an innocent person. That's different. Who's actually. He believes is innocent but was actually charged with a crime. That's one thing. But most pardons, the person's guilty. Nobody's debating whether or not the person's guilty. They're just saying, yeah, you just get a pardon. Because I had the power to do this, and I think that's a good thing. I would never want to take away the presidential pardon. Yes, it can be abused, yes, it can be used in corruption, but I think ultimately it's a sign of the pardon that we receive from our Lord when we. When we come to him. So I, I'm, I'm not like, I'm not a. I'm not caring that much, honestly, about President Trump. I'm sorry. President Biden's pardon of Hunter Biden. [00:21:21] Okay, next topic at hand is. Has to do with the. Okay. Some articles at LifeSite News and some other places recently have been about the question of whether or not Pope Benedict's resignation was valid. There is a movement among a small number of Catholics that basically says when Pope Benedict resigned, it wasn't a valid resignation. Now, there's kind of two camps to this. Some say he did that unknowingly. He actually meant to resign, but he screwed up the resignation because he had a fundamentally wrong understanding of the papacy, and it's off and the office of the papacy. Others say he did it on purpose. It was basically, he knew what was coming, and he. [00:22:05] I don't really understand this one, honestly, why this is the case. But basically, Pope Benedict, he purposely messed up the resignation, thinking, I'm going to remain as Pope because that's best for the Church. But it's going to be like a hidden papacy. Nobody's going to know I'm really the Pope, except for me and some people who understand the clues I'm giving of that I'm really still the Pope. [00:22:25] And so there's a number of, you know, like I said, LifeSite News ran a couple articles, and then Archbishop Vigano came out, and we've known for a while that he's a set of accounts. I mean, he said that Francis isn't the Pope. And he basically just said that he believes that Benedict's resignation was not valid. I think he punted on whether or not it was done on purpose or not. Now, I can't remember. I read it. I read his letter, but now I can't remember if he said he thinks Benedict on purpose or didn't do it on purpose, but ultimately he thinks it's not valid. So, and if, let's be. Let's be clear here, if Benedict's resignation was not valid, that automatically means that Jorge Bergoglio was not validly elected as Pope because obviously his election was done when there was still a reigning Pope, supposedly in Benedict. So that means that. And since Pope Benedict has since died, that means we do not have a pope. Now, I know the people who are argue for this hate being called sedative incontus. I just think it's the best term. I don't have a better term for it because sedi vacantis means you do not think there is currently a Pope. They do not think there's currently a pope. Therefore, they're set of accounts. I realize that lumps them in with some people they find distasteful, they do not like and they do not agree with a lot of things. People who, for example, think there hasn't been a Pope since the 1950s. But ultimately it's a general category, sedive incontus, of which they fall under as a specific kind of subcategory. Now, I think that I agree. I love Bishop Schneider's take on this because it's the one I've been trying to express and I haven't always been able to very clearly. And it also expressed my frustration in this debate. [00:24:08] Honestly, when I hear the arguments, when somebody starts breaking down, why the munus and the whatever, you know, the different Latin terms for the way the office, the ministry and the office and all that. When they start breaking down and explaining this, also when they break down, like why if they argue that Pope Francis's election wasn't valid for even though they think Fran Benedict was validly resigned and all these different arguments, to me, it always comes down to one thing. It comes down. And there might be some other arguments, but the main arguments we're talking about here, it comes down to a different understanding of the law. I posted on X about this last night. [00:24:48] And there's different understandings of the law in different cultures throughout the world, throughout history. [00:24:56] Our understanding, when I say our, I mean like American, Anglo, Saxon kind of our understanding of law is Very legalistic. And I don't mean that even in a negative or positive way. I just simply mean that the letter of the law matters. [00:25:08] If something violates the letter of the law, then no matter what that means, the consequences of violating that, that means it was violated. That means it applies. That means whatever you did was invalid. Whatever the case may be, no matter what, that is the way it is. Now, I'll be honest. This is my way. I traditionally have thought about the law, that any violation, even the smallest violation, is a means that whatever comes after is invalidated. So in this case, for example, if Benedict did not follow specifically canon law, I think a lot of people argue that he did, and I actually think he did. But let's just say he did not exactly follow canon law on how he resigned from the papacy. [00:25:57] In this kind of American, Anglo Saxon understanding of the law, that means, okay, it's an invalid resignation. He remained pope whether he wanted to or not. [00:26:06] But there's another understanding of law that has been very common, probably the more common understanding of law throughout history, and that is the law serves the common good. The law isn't the highest authority in one sense. The common good is. And so if a violation of the law, if it's understood that prosecuting that would be harm the common good more than not prosecuting it, then you just don't prosecute it. You just simply kind of let it go. I mean, it's kind of like we do have that understanding even ourselves. Like speeding, for example. It's well understood in America at least, you can go a few miles an hour over the speed limit. You will never get pulled over. If the speed limit's 65 and you're going 68, you are violating the law. But you'll never get pulled over. Because jurisdictions, police departments, have realized pulling people over at 68 miles an hour going in a 65 is not good for the common good. Now, pulling somebody over, going 75, 80, that is good for the common good to do that. [00:27:12] And so even if Benedict did not resign validly, like according to canon law, like I said, I think he did, but let's just say he didn't. [00:27:21] Another understanding of law is you basically recognize, okay, it's better for the common good that we simply do not prosecute that. In other words, we just simply say it still counts as a valid resignation. And the fact is, that's exactly what the Church has done. The fact that all the cardinals got together, not a single cardinal or anybody for that matter, not a single person brought up that the resignation was invalid when it happened. Not one. It wasn't till later that people started realizing that they weren't very happy with Francis, that they said, okay, let's look back and see. So not one, every cardinal came together in a conclave. Every one of them elected. I mean, you know, the majority elected Pope Francis. Every single cardinal accepted that election. [00:28:11] Every single bishop accepted our election when it happened. [00:28:15] Basically every single Catholic, except for the existing city of a contest, accepted that election as valid. [00:28:22] That in and of itself is proof that it was valid in this understanding of the law. And this understanding of law is the Church's understanding of the law. If you look at the last canon of canon law, it actually states that I'm going to butcher exactly what it says. But what it basically says, paraphrasing, is that the good of souls, the salvation of souls, is the ultimate law. All laws fall under that. [00:28:51] And the Church, by recognizing Francis, Pope has basically said, going back and saying, okay, now we think maybe Benedict didn't really resign badly. That would be such a disaster, because the consequences that are far worse than people want to recognize because now all of a sudden, everybody that, that Francis has elected, named as a cardinal is not a valid cardinal. I mean, you know, so the next election's a mess. I mean, there's a lot of problems going on with this. And here's the thing. For the people who are uncomfortable with this kind of loosey goosey interpretation of law, this is how the Church has always done it. Bishop Schneider brings this up in his article it's at LifeSite News about defending that Francis is the valid Pope. He basically notes that if you look back in history, there are elections, papal elections, that were pretty clearly invalid. I mean, there was force in it, there was bribery, there was lots of things that clearly invalidated it by the letter of the law. [00:29:49] Yet the Church recognizes those popes as valid. Why? Simply because the good of souls, the good of the Church, the common good, it just is not, it's not feasible, it's not practical to go back and rewrite history. And that's exactly what's happening here. Even if you are convinced that Pope Benedict did not follow the letter of kind in law and violated it in his resignation, that does not mean you have to believe that he was, he remained Pope and that Francis is not the valid Pope. So I think that we basically, that is the understanding that I think we should have of the law, because that's the Church's understanding of the law. So I think we should have that law It's a more Roman, frankly. It's more Roman. I mean the Romans before, you know, the Roman Empire, that was their understanding of the law. And so we have to recognize that. [00:30:39] Okay, I think that's, that's an important point. I think we really just have to drive home when we, we talk to somebody who's nitpicking about the law and like whether or not Benedict followed it, whether or not Francis, like the St. Gallen mafia, for example, you know, electing Francis and people saying that wasn't a valid election. We need to keep hammering home that the, the acceptance of Francis as pope by the universal church is a proof of its validity. [00:31:08] Okay, next story is debank political opponents. I think this is something, I'm not sure if it's on the radar of all Catholics, but I think it's a big deal. I think it should be of all Americans, of anybody really. [00:31:22] Marc Andreessen recently was on the Joe Rogan podcast. Now first of all, who is Marc Andreessen? I don't, at my people my age, I don't need to say that because we all know exactly who he is. But I realize a younger generation might not recognize what a big deal Marc Andreessen is. He is the creator of Netscape, which was the first really available browser, Internet browser. And that's what made it so people started going online in the mid-90s, early mid-90s is Netscape really was the first browser that allowed you to get on the Internet in a user friendly way. And so he's a big deal. He's also very rich from doing all this. And he became a venture capitalist, a VC that funds other tech companies. What's interesting is like Elon Musk and like some other tech giants, he came out in support of Trump in this election period, which is a big deal. It was a big deal when he did that. He's like a lot of these tech people who's pretty liberal socially, a little bit libertarian, but really they lean Democrat historically. Well, he's another one that went, went for Trump just like Elon Musk during the election cycle. Well, he was on Joe Rogan and he was talking about the, the phenomenon of debanking. Basically he claimed that 30 tech founders, tech company founders, were debanked over the last few years. What do I mean by debanked? Basically what it means is the bank contacts a company and says we're going to shut down your bank account. They may give a reason, they may not give a reason, but the point is they do it under pressure from the government, like a bank. If it was truly a private business, it should have a right to discriminate who it banks and who it doesn't. Obviously it shouldn't just be able to be forced to accept a bank account for anybody, maybe a terrorist or something like that. [00:33:05] The problem is that this was done outside of the legal realm, essentially. Here's an example. I'll give an example. One Facebook. This isn't technically debanking, but it's the same type of idea. A few years ago, Facebook came up with an idea of doing their own cryptocurrency. They call it Libra. And it was a terrible idea, by the way, I thought, but it doesn't matter. They had this whole idea they would do a internal cryptocurrency so that people, Facebook users could send money to each other very easily via this cryptocurrency. And so they had all figured out and then they went to the regulators to make sure, okay, are we allowed to do this? I mean, are we following all the appropriate regulations? Sec and you know, treasury, all that stuff. And over a couple year timeframe, they finally got approval that, yeah, you basically, they didn't get, they didn't get approval as much as they said, you're not breaking any laws that we know of or any regulations that we know of. [00:34:02] Well then when it looked like, okay, we're good to go, then what happened was basically the Treasury Department contacted the banks and said, facebook's about to do this. They contacted like Visa and MasterCard and things which would be organizations that would be connecting through Libra, using Libra a lot themselves. Like they would be the back end for a lot of this. [00:34:22] And Treasury Department says, just so you know, if you get involved in this, we might take a closer look at what you're doing and we. There might be consequences in the future. It was basically a mafia, a Godfather type thing. You don't want to do this is what they said. And sure enough, they all dropped it and Libra was dead. [00:34:43] Remember, Libra did not violate any regulations. They did not violate any law. Facebook was not violating law. [00:34:51] Whether or not it's a good idea or not doesn't matter. Basically, they just got debanked. [00:34:56] All the banks said, we're not going to support this. And Facebook had to kill it. [00:35:01] And this has happened, I mean, in the cryptocurrency world, this has happened a lot. Things like this where individual, even our company founders who, who had a bank account and then all of a sudden they had some transaction with a crypto company, cryptocurrency company. All of a sudden, the bank content said, we're shutting down your account. [00:35:19] I know somebody who had a cryptocurrency related podcast and they accepted money from a cryptocurrency firm for advertising. [00:35:29] And when those funds came in, the bank saw it from. Was from a cryptocurrency company and shut down their account. [00:35:35] There was nothing illegal in what they did. [00:35:38] There was no, like, there's no proof of, like, no, no even accusation of them doing anything illegal or weird transactions or anything like that. It just simply was, we're not going to bank you because. And here's the key, because that's what the government officials were basically telling them to do. [00:35:53] This is ludicrous. And what it does is basically allows you to shut down dissidents, shut down political opponents, because that's what this is all Biden administration. This is all happening in Biden administration very much. And so what the Biden administration doing was it was trying to shut down dissident opinions, opinions of people that they didn't agree with and they didn't support. And the fact is they did not like the cryptocurrency world particularly, but even other things that tech world was involved in and they didn't have a legal way to shut them down. [00:36:24] And so they basically use this kind of extra legal way of debanking them. And so I really feel like this is something that we need to be aware of. I'm hoping under Trump administration this is going to go away. Trump has made some decent appointments in the, in the area of treasury sec, things like that. So I'm hoping this will go away. But as Catholics, I think we need to be aware of this, that, you know, remember the FBI was literally investigating traditional Catholics just a year or so ago. And so this is a major means that they use to try to shut down dissent because money is, you know, often is a voice that gives you a bigger voice. And I had my podcast, you know, two weeks ago on bitcoin, so I'm not going to go into that again. But bitcoin is the answer to this, because bitcoin cannot be shut down at its core. So, okay, so the last thing I want to talk about today is what I like to call the white pill of the week. And that's our good news something, because often we are Crisis magazine. We're going to talk about the bad things going on, talk about how we deal with it. But I think it's important that we keep a good perspective that good things are going on in the world. And the white pill of the week is Sister Wilhelmina's order expands to England. So Sister Wilhelmina, for those who are not aware of her, first of all, watch my. I think I have two podcasts on her. You need to find out about her. If you don't know about her. She is the. [00:37:45] She was the founders of a traditional order of, of Nuns founded in 1995 when she was in her 70s. I believe she passed away in 2019. And then when they, they dug up her body, her sisters dug up her body to move her to a new tomb. They found her body was incorrupt. So I believe she is a saint. I am praying and hoping that she will one day be canonized as a saint. But her order is in Gower, Missouri. They have a. They have a daughter house another location in Missouri. I believe they're setting up a daughter house in Indiana as well. They're growing like crazy. They're getting lots of novices, lots of vocation requests, but now they're going to expand to England. This is their first time out of the country. But why this is so great is why they're expanding England. [00:38:30] Basically. They had a sister who had joined them a number of years ago from England, and her visa was not renewed last year. I don't know why. I don't think they were given a reason why. But basically her visa was not renewed. She was forced by law to move back to England. Well, the sisters were like, okay, we can't just, we're not kicking her out of the order. She's. I don't, I don't know exactly how far along she was, like, if she was a fully professed sister or if she was, what level she was on. But they're basically, we're not going to kick her out for this. So what they said is, okay, we're going to send a couple sisters with you back to England. We'll set up a convent there. And so that's what they're going to do. And the story even gets better because they just purchased a abbey that they can use that's been used as an abbey for centuries and was actually an abbey founded by, let me get this right, the great great granddaughters of St. Thomas More. [00:39:22] I mean, this is awesome. So the great great granddaughters of Thomas More, St. Thomas More, I think there was two or three of them. They founded an abbey in England that has since gone under in, I think in more recent years, but now it's going to be used again as an order with traditional nuns. And so this is a beautiful thing. And I just love this because this is the way you cannot shut God down. You cannot stop God. You cannot keep him from his purposes happening. And so, in fact, what happened here is God used the government, you know, telling the sister, you have to move back to England, a negative thing. He turned it for good. And which is, which is always a good, you know, which is always a great thing. So I wanted to bring that up as our, as our white pill of the week. Okay. I think that's, that's all we're going to talk about today. I appreciate you joining this. [00:40:16] Let me know by the way, in the comments or somewhere, let me know if you like this format of me covering a number of news stories rather than just going more of a deep dive into one. I still imagine when big stories break, I'll do just cover one topic, but I kind of feel like I like this of covering multiple topics in one podcast because I feel like it allows us to talk about various things. So let me know if you like this better or if you like the more deep dive into just having one topic that I go into for like a half hour or so, or if having multiple topics I take maybe 30, 45 minutes on is a better format. So just let me know in the comments and I'd appreciate that. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love.