Rome Fiddles While the World Burns

[00:00:16] The Middle East and Ukraine are engulfed in war. Society has increasingly and violently become anti Catholic. [00:00:25] Millions of souls are leaving the church. [00:00:29] Meanwhile, church leaders are having a meeting about meetings in Rome. What's a Catholic to do? That's what we're going to talk about today on Cris Point Home. I'm Eric Simons, your host and editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to smash that like button, destroy it, obliterate it, do whatever you can. And then you'll have to buy a new phone or laptop or whatever. After you do that, also subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. We really appreciate that when you do that. Also follow us on social media at crisis mag. Subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to Crisismagazine.com. You'll see a form where you can do that. And then a new feature of the podcast, which is you can send a question to [email protected]. That's [email protected]. I announced this last week and I've already gotten a few questions I plan on answering. I'm not sure if I'm going to answer them at the end of a podcast. Just kind of handle some of the questions in or if I'm going to do a brand new podcast that just is about questions I get. Depends on how many I get, I guess. I've already gotten some good ones in the mailbox, so I appreciate that. So [email protected]. Okay, so let's get started. So as we all know, the synod on Synodality is going on it's very long. I think it's about to end pretty soon. Please, Lord. How long? [00:01:51] And I think there's something about the fact that it's just so obvious now to the world, to Catholics, to non Catholics, how out of touch our leaders are, how completely out of touch they are because we have a situation in which we've had a war in Ukraine for a couple years. That has almost two years now that has the possibility of inflating into escalating into a world war. And now we have another conflict in the Middle East between Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Iran, America, another possibility of a world war. [00:02:36] And that's not even the worst things are going on in the world. Believe it or not, war is awful. But the spiritual warfare that's going on in this world is far worse. We have so many souls leaving the church. We have all of Western society just falling apart. Where up is down, down is up. Men are women, women are men. Homosexuality is accepted as normal. [00:02:59] The other day, actually yesterday, I was driving down the street, two men, two homosexual men holding hands. [00:03:06] It's normal now, something that would have been unheard of even maybe 30 years ago, 20 years ago. Now it just happens everywhere. [00:03:14] And like I already said, millions of people are leaving the church. The church is not seen as a moral witness anymore. It's not respected in the world as it used to be. And our church leaders have decided this is the time where the solution? All this is synodality. Synodality will solve everything. If we have a meeting about meetings, that's going to take care of everybody. [00:03:35] It really is. I mean, it's kind of like an ecclesial ivory tower. I honestly don't think most of these people live in reality. They cannot actually be interacting with real people because they're not addressing any of the concerns of real people in any way, shape or form. And in fact, it's somewhat interesting. They always talk about the Holy Spirit leading them. The Holy Spirit seems to be awful obsessed with 1970s progressive issues because that's all they want to talk about. They want to talk about ordaining women. They want to talk about being more accepting of homosexuality, being more accepting of divorce, being more accepting of all the progressive issues of the 1970s. They believe that's the way we're going to solve the problem. Somehow that's going to bring peace in the Middle East. It's going to revitalize the land, and there's going to be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. And millions of people will come back to the church all because they ordained a couple women as deacons, and they let some homosexual people get married or get a blessing or whatever. [00:04:40] I mean, it's just ludicrous on the face of it. And here's the thing, it's not even like sometimes when something is proposed that's new, you're thinking, okay, I think this isn't going to work and here's why. And they say, I think it's going to work and here's why. And really you're just both guessing. We're not guessing though. We know exactly what will happen if all the things that they want happen in the Catholic Church. We'll turn into Episcopal Church, we'll turn into mainline Protestant denominations and we'll collapse. And we're already collapsing. That's just a reality, but it'll just hasten our demise. I mean, that's essentially what will happen because it's already been tried. I mean, really, it's like the Episcopals, the Anklins, they are the vanguard who were the first ones to introduce all this stuff and they ended up collapsing. And so I don't know why we think it's going to work this time. If all of a sudden we just do it again, somehow it will work this time. [00:05:38] So the synod is just a joke. And I want to say something here though. I want to go a step further than just saying the synod on synodality is a problem. [00:05:49] I would argue. Why do we even have synods? [00:05:53] Why are we even having synods in the church? Why are we assuming that this is a good thing that we have regular synods? After Vatican II, there was an establishment, I believe it was in Vatican II itself. I should have looked this up. I think a document in Vatican II actually calls for synods. But ultimately I do know that after Vatican II there was a push to have regular synods of bishops. [00:06:18] And Pope Paul VI, he established three different types of synods an ordinary synod for matters concerning the good of the universal Church, extraordinary synods for matters of pressing concern to the Church, and special synods focused chiefly on the concerns of a region or continent. [00:06:38] Now, since Vatican Two, this synod on synodality is actually the 30th synod total that the Church has had in about 60 years, a little bit less than 60 years. The Church has had 30 synods. So that's a synod every other year. [00:06:57] And what do we have to show for it? Can anybody here maybe I'll open up in the chat or the comments, something like that. Can anybody here tell me a synod that has actually had a dramatic impact on the Church in a positive way? [00:07:13] We can throw out the Pachamama Synod as something had an impact on the Church, but that's not going to be in a positive way. [00:07:19] There have been synods on bishops, on evangelization, on the Word of God, on bishops, I think on the family synod after synonym after synod. [00:07:30] What have been the results? Has it made the Catholic Church more authentic in its practice of the Catholic faith? Has it drawn souls to Jesus Christ? [00:07:39] Has it made the Church more efficient in how it's run? Have any of these things happened through 30 Senate, the Senate every other year for the past 60 years? [00:07:51] No, there hasn't been any Senate that really has had a dramatic impact. Now there was a Senate on a catechesis, I believe in 1980s that the Catechism of the Catholic Church did come out of that. So that clearly had a dramatic impact on the Church because the Catechism of Catholic Church that came out in 1992 did have a significant impact. So I'll give them one out of 30. So that's not a very good batting average. So there's been 15 ordinary synods. There's been three extraordinary ones and eleven special ones. The current one is an ordinary one, so it's actually the 16th ordinary one. But here's the thing, it's not just the synods have been worthless as far as helping souls get to heaven. [00:08:33] They've actually been counterproductive. What do I mean by that? The Senate has essentially all these Senates have essentially added constant turmoil to the Church because what it's done is it's created this parliamentary process in the Church that we think things can always be updated, they can always be changed. We're constantly doing this, we're constantly doing that. [00:08:58] When you have 30 synods in 60 years, there's always the thought that, okay, I don't get what I want now, I'll just wait for the next synod, or we do things like this now, but the next synod is going to change that. [00:09:13] There isn't an opportunity just to rest in the faith and say, okay, this is what we believe, this is what we've always believed, and this is what we will always believe. End of story. [00:09:25] That simply can't happen when you're constantly churning out synods, that all promise or threaten to change how we do things or how we practice the faith or even what we believe. [00:09:38] And honestly this harkens back to a previous time in Church history after the great Western schism when you had multiple men proclaiming to be pope and there was a movement, the concealerist, the idea of concealerism boy, I cannot say that word. The idea that basically councils would rule the Church, not just that councils were the ultimate authority in the Church over the pope, which is a heresy, but that they were to be held on a regular basis every five years. In fact there's supposed to be a new council of bishops and that's what would manage the Church. Now fortunately, I think through the Holy Spirit, that never actually happened. They never actually end up having this schedule of councils. [00:10:27] But that's essentially what we have now. We just have these constant synods. And the only difference between a synod and a council these days is a synod is pre planned, pre picked and predetermined. Whereas a council, you have all the bishops coming and it's a little bit more open to the Holy Spirit, I would say. [00:10:49] So this idea of universal synonyms, that's what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about local sinners talking about universal synods. Honestly, I think we could go 100 years without 100 years without ecumenical council, 100 years without another universal synod. That's not to say the church shouldn't have local synods at times, like having a synod of bishops in America or having a synod of bishops in somewhere in Africa to deal with local issues, practical issues. Not okay, because a local synod of course nobody would think or should think that a local Synac can rewrite universal doctrine, doctrine for the universal Church. But they could say, okay, we're going to focus on this and do missionary activity in this way or something like that. So it's not to say that local synods could not be helpful, but universal synods should be very rare. And in fact here's the thing. This is exactly what Rome, the west, was known for in the first millennia of Christian history, for the first thousand years particularly, rome had a reputation for being incredibly conservative. By that I mean it did not change things, it did not want to change things, it wanted to keep things. The weren't the east, however. Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria not Jerusalem as much. Of course it wasn't much of a patriarch because of various situations, political situations, but it was in the east. They were the ones always innovating, always wanting to have new councils, to define new things. And typically it was heresy that they wanted that. They ended up defining it's in the east where all the heresy was created in the first thousand years. And the west was just like you know what we're going to do? We're going to do the same thing we did yesterday. You know what we're going to believe. We're going to believe the same thing we did yesterday. And they said that every day. They didn't bother with having not to say there weren't synods in the west, ever. I'm not saying that, but there was never this idea of let's change things. Rome was always known as a very conservative diocese patriarchy. The whole west was known, we don't change things. [00:12:53] Yet. Now, of course, that's not what's happening. In fact, the opposite reputations apply. Now, Orthodox, east, orthodox or east, is known as we don't change things. In fact, I think to their detriment, they don't address modern issues because they don't have a mechanism to do that. But they stay very much stagnant, whereas the west, let's innovate, let's change, let's always keep things going on. And I think the healthier thing for the west would be to say, okay, let's slow our roll. [00:13:20] Let's just stop making all these changes. Let's just simply hand on what we've been given and proclaim that and nothing else. That is the patrimony of the west of Rome is that it doesn't change things. It doesn't make these changes all the time. So what we really need, instead of synods, what we really need is we just need bishops who live lives of holiness and orthodoxy. That's what's needed. Not a bunch of bishops to get together with priests and laypeople who are hand picked and hand selected for progressive reasons to sit around round tables, talk about their feelings, talk about things that are completely irrelevant to real life. What we need, though, is bishops and priests who live lives of holiness and orthodoxy. Fortunately, we do have some examples. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of them. I mean, the most recent example is the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem who said he would offer himself up as ransom for the hostages taken by Hamas. This is an example of holiness that gives him moral authority. Now, I just want to be clear, he wasn't doing that to give himself some type of authority. He was simply being a gospel Christian. He was simply following his Lord Jesus Christ, but that gave him a moral authority. Cardinal Zinn, there is another great example. He probably of every churchman in the world, he probably has the highest moral authority of anybody. Cardinal Zinn does. Why? Because he's lived a life of holiness and orthodoxy. Bishop Schneider. Of course. Bishop Strickland. There are others. But the point is, by simply following Jesus Christ, being faithful, being holy, that is how you will revitalize the Church, that is how you will bring souls to heaven, that is how you will proclaim the Gospel, make a difference in the world by doing things like that, not by having meetings. [00:15:22] Good Lord. Cut the meetings. Now, I will admit I've hated meetings my whole life. In the business world, when I was working in software companies for a long time. I tried to have as few of meetings as possible and as short of meetings as possible. So I admit I have a problem with meetings, but the fact is that they don't accomplish anything right now having another Synod because remember, this one ain't over next week, there's another synod next year. I think it's considered kind of the same one, just multiple years, but the synod continues again next year. [00:15:59] This is the mechanism for revolution in the church and that's what it's being used for. [00:16:06] Here's what bishops also should do. So I gave those examples of bishops who are doing something. You know what they really should do though? What would make the greatest impact, I believe, if they got sackcloth and ashes sat in front of their cathedrals and begged for mercy and forgiveness for the abuse scandals that either they or their brethren perpetrated, and for what they did during COVID their response to COVID. If they did that and did sincerely and I'm talking I just want to be clear, I'm being literal here sackcloth and ashes. I'm not just saying figuratively or hypothetically, but literally sackcloth and ashes and asking for forgiveness for the abuse scandals, for what they did during COVID that would bring, I believe, many souls to Jesus Christ, to the Catholic Church because they would see these men are apostles of Jesus Christ. They're not bureaucrats. Because what most bishops are seen as right now simply bureaucratic administrators who just follow marching orders from Rome, have meetings, write maybe a few documents that nobody reads, keep things running on time while everybody leaves the church. [00:17:22] But that's what we need to have because authentic faith is what attracts people. [00:17:27] Now, let's say there is a synod. What should the Synod be addressing? I mean, what should they be addressing if there was sin? Again, I don't think there should be. I think bishops should just honestly be living lives of holiness and faithfulness. [00:17:41] But what should they be addressing if there was a sin? I think what they need to look at is the real reasons people leave the Catholic Church. I'm not talking about the progressive cliches. You see us online all the time. When we just saw this a week or two ago, I think I mentioned on the podcast where there was a eucharistic procession in downtown New York, like thousands of people went to it and some progressive was like, oh yeah, that'll really attract to use a bunch of old white men walking down the street. Of course that shows a complete lack of faith. [00:18:11] Not 1oz of supernatural faith can exist in a person who says that. [00:18:16] But more importantly, it's against the progressive things. We have to be intersectional or whatever, we have to be antiracist, we have to be welcoming to LGBTQ, ABCDEFG people, all of the progressive causes. That's what's going to supposedly bring people in. But again, like I said, that's what the Episcopal Church is here for. They do that to show us that we shouldn't. [00:18:43] But instead we need to look at the real reasons. And this is now a challenge to my own listeners as well and myself. [00:18:51] Traditional Catholics, faithful, conservative, orthodox Catholics we need to be honest about too. [00:18:59] Trads if we just have the Latin Mass, that's not going to bring thousands, millions of people back to the Church. I'm sorry, that's just not going to happen. If all of a sudden every Catholic Church just switched to the traditional Latin Mass, I'm not saying that would be a bad thing, but I'm saying that it doesn't mean all of a sudden people would flock. [00:19:17] That's simply not the way it would work. I think what we need to do is we need to look at the world and see how much it's left us behind, so to speak. And I mean that obviously we want to be behind in one sense, traditional. What I mean by that is the culture is so anti Catholic, and I don't mean explicitly anti Catholic like in some aspects it is like, for example, on the homosexual issue and abortion thing, that it's very anti Catholic. I just mean the culture just assumes God does not exist, or at least God is not active in the world. [00:19:55] It assumes this. And so everything is based upon that assumption. And so you see that everywhere. You see that in the culture of how we live. And also another thing I think we have to address very squarely, this is something the bishops seem to ignore because they all get excited because they have their tech at the Senate, of their screens and all that stuff. [00:20:15] We need to be upfront and honest about how are screens, how's technology leading people away from God. [00:20:23] This isn't a luddite anti technology screed I'm talking to you over the Internet, on YouTube and other social media channels. So clearly I'm not anti all technology, but I am saying there has been a huge decrease in a religious affiliation in this country since the advent of the Internet. And I think it's true in other Western countries. I think they actually started a little earlier and I think there's a connection there. But I don't hear one church leader talking about this directly. I think that in fact, what they do is they all are still trying to act like trying to catch up to 2003 and be like, oh, let's get online, let's do all this online stuff. But instead they should also be saying, wait a minute, what is the negative impact of being online and of the Internet? Not that we can push the Internet back into the box or something like that, but we just need to realize what impact it has. [00:21:20] And instead of saying, okay, the culture gives them X, so what we're going to do is we're going to give them X. But with a prayer attached to it. Instead we should be saying I want to give them the church can give them y, we'll give them something very different. I mean, in my own life, for example, I live with technology every day. I spend most of my day on the computer, I spend most of my day I don't use a lot of time on social media but I spend at least probably half hour a day on social media typically for my job and for other reasons. [00:21:57] And so I'm very immersed in it. But I tell you what the highlight of my week is sunday high Mass at my parish, which is completely transcendent, has nothing to do with technology. I don't bring my phone with me or anything like that and it's above and beyond this world. [00:22:18] And I think that's something that I think we need to recognize instead of what we have is a lot of times parishes lean into the technology. I mean, you'll hear in Homilies, they'll take out your phones and do this. It's like what the heck? I don't want to be thinking about my phone and all that is attached to it when I'm at Mass. I want to be thinking about heavenly things, not earthly things. [00:22:39] But I don't see the church actually addressing this in any way, shape or form. It's not being talked about. The synod, there's nobody there saying wait a second, let's consider the impact of technology maybe that we need to not be anti technological but at least recognize, be at least something as an alternative to somebody whose complete world is immersed in technology. [00:23:02] I also think that we have to the church, if there was a synod, it should be addressing things like the fact that there's been a rejection of reality in our culture. We see it most clearly in obviously the trans issue where a man claims he's a woman or vice versa and demands you agree with that and say that's true when we know it's not, it's false. But you see it in so many different ways. The rejection, for example, the reality that marriage, the purpose of marriage is appropriation and education of children but of course everybody accepts contraception. So there are all these rejections of reality. Another thing is the financial world, how so many people feel completely helpless because of all the money printing going on, all the money being spent by our government, our money, how prices are going up like crazy. Inflation, do you hear the bishops talking about inflation and how unjust it is? [00:24:05] Inflation is a social justice issue and yet you don't hear any of them talk about it. Why? Because it's not a progressive talking point. [00:24:13] And these are just a couple of examples that just kind of came to my head of things that have to be addressed that aren't ever even talked about. [00:24:23] And I think there's also this idea of this idea of how that has to be addressed, and that is the liturgy. Now, I know in Catholic circles, as soon as that's brought up, we immediately think of the liturgy wars, let's fight over the traditional Mass versus the Nova sordo and things like that. [00:24:43] But here's the reality. Yes, there was a deep sigh there because I'm tired of him as much as the next guy. Here's the reality. [00:24:51] The number one way that almost every Catholic connects and interacts with the Church is through Sunday Mass. [00:25:01] And if Sunday Mass is outwardly very boring, very beige, cringy even, I mean, just music from like the 70s with a woman who just cannot hold a tune. I don't understand how that happens, but I can't believe how many parish I've been to in my life where there's a woman cancer who just simply can't sing. [00:25:25] What do you think people are going to think? And I know you'll hear the argument, oh, well, there's Jesus there. It's still Jesus there. I realize that if obviously assuming it's a valid Mass, but Jesus is cringing too. I'm sorry. [00:25:42] And the fact is that for somebody whose faith is weak, who maybe is just going there because their parents are bringing them or going there out of some sense of obligation that's just kind of lingering from their own parents or something, their spouse, there's nothing attractive about. They can't see through that human, the outside human part to see the spiritual realities underneath. [00:26:08] But there's not one effort all to really address that by our bishops. In fact, at the Synod, father James Martin was bragging about how a St. Louis Jesuit song was being sung at the Mass of the Synod. I can't remember which one it was, but it was one of these typical 1970s 80s schmaltze like, oh, just cringeworthy songs that literally nobody likes unless you have just become ideologically attached to it. [00:26:38] So all of those things are things that the bishops are not going to address at the Synod, but they're things that really do impact real people's lives. [00:26:48] Now, let's say that they did do some of this stuff I'm talking about a lot of times people will say, oh, you Trads or you conservative Christian Catholics, whatever. You think that all of a sudden if you just have a nice Mass, all of a sudden there'll be people flocking. I actually think if people start doing, if the bishops start doing what I'm advocating, I think the Church would shrink at first. I think what would happen is a lot of people would head for the door because they've been so poorly catechized, they have such a poor understanding of the faith that they would reject what the actual Catholicism that being presented to them, because they don't know what real Catholicism is. They only know what the pseudocatholicism of the past 60 years is. [00:27:31] So when the fullness of Catholicism presented to them, they're going to reject it. But the fact is they're already two to five years away from leaving anyway. So all we're doing is hastening. They're leaving because we've already seen millions have left. They're already out the door. [00:27:48] I also think it'll be increased persecution of Catholics. I think that because of standing up, for example, against transgenderism homosexuality, against abortion, even against contraception, things of that nature, the persecution will increase both just from the culture, but also from the state, from government. [00:28:10] However, I also believe what will happen is those good souls with open hearts will be attracted and they will come. [00:28:20] Just last night I met the people who are coming into the church at our parish, or at least are thinking about it, made a final decision, all of them. And it's always so encouraging because even in the midst of all our confusion and crisis, they're coming to church. And I tell you what, I didn't poll them, but I guarantee not one of them is coming to church because of the synonymous synodality. [00:28:43] I thought it was interesting. It was a high percentage of the people there who have no religious background. Typically you'll see a lot of former Protestants and there are some former Protestants. But I was surprised how many people said they just have no religious background at all. And now they're becoming Catholic and embracing the church. And they're not doing it because of synod, on synodality. They're not doing it because of Father James Martin. [00:29:04] They're doing it because they see something beautiful, they see something timeless and true. [00:29:10] And that's what the Catholic Church has to do. [00:29:14] The culture is zigging. The church needs a Zag. That's what I say over and over again. I really believe it because what happens is the culture is saying, okay, we need to embrace LGBTQ stuff. We need to embrace all the lies about human sexuality. We need to embrace, relativism, all that stuff. And too many church leaders say, okay, this is what they think, let's give it a blessing because then they won't leave. [00:29:45] But the fact is, if they embrace all that stuff, they've already left in their heart, if not physically, most of them physically walk out the door, but at least in their heart, they've already left. What the Church needs to do is say, okay, the culture, you present this, this is what you're saying is the way to live. We're going to go over here and say this is the way we think you should live. This is the way we think is best to live and let the two compete. Because frankly, I will every day and twice on Sunday take the gospel life over the culture of death. And I think souls who are open to God will also do that. That's the thing, is it's not like a trick to get people's souls in. I mean, I've been doing evangelization work for 25, 30 years. Written a book about it, written a lot about it, worked as the director of. Evangelization. And the one thing I will tell you is evangelization is not about tricks. It's not about just saying, okay, if we do this program, if we do this one thing, then all of a sudden people come flooding in. If we just bless homosexual unions, if we just ordain women, or if we just have the traditional en masse, then all of a sudden everybody's coming in. No, that's not the way it works. The way it works is that we have Catholics living the faith authentically from the baptized, the newly baptized, all the way up to the Pope. If you have that, you will have a revival. You will have people being drawn to the church because we'll see that authentic faith. I also think if you have people living authentically, I think we'll see the miraculous happen more often. If you look at the stories of saints and how they brought people into church, there are miraculous stories almost always surrounding them. [00:31:38] St. Francis Xavier did not bring all those souls and baptize all those souls without miracles happening around him. St. Francis Assisi has miracles happening around him. All these saints, st. Teresa of Avila, these people who are really made an impact, they always have miracles. Saint Philip neary you name them. St. Ignatius Loyola, you name the saint, the great saint. Miracles follow their lives. And I think we don't see a lot of miracles today because we don't have saints. But if we do have people living authentically, we will see miracles, and the miracles will attract people to the faith. I mean, don't discount the importance of miracles. Jesus Christ himself used miracles. So if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for us. Now, this isn't me saying that we should go chase miracles. [00:32:22] I don't want to be like that. I'm not saying we go chase miracles, but I am saying that what we need to do is we need to be authentically Catholic, be faithful, be saintly first in our own lives, in our families and in our parishes. And then that will spread. Because if you have one parish where you have authentic Catholic souls living the gospel, people will be attracted to it and it will start to grow. If you have another parish where they're going through the motions, they're singing the Marty Hagen songs, they're got the felt banners up, the homilies are insipid. The mass is just boring. [00:33:02] People will leave, and what will happen is, over time, the only parishes left will be the authentic ones. I'm not saying that's the way I wish it would. I wish it would happen that every parish was like that, but we just know that's not what's happening. So instead of having meetings on meetings, what we really need to have, we need to have bishops first, living authentically, being witnesses, getting insidecloth and ashes, asking for forgiveness, asking for mercy, begging God to help us. [00:33:34] We also need to have priests, obviously, doing the same and laypeople in their families. [00:33:39] Ultimately, the way forward, I mean, this is the progressive cause, right? Is always looking forward, progressing to the future. Here's the paradox. The way forward is to look back. I'm not saying we should be exactly like and live exactly like they did in the 1950s. I don't think that. However, certain things are timeless, and that is living a sacramental life abiding by the teachings of the perennial teachings of the Catholic Church. Not the new made up ones that we find coming out of the synod or out of certain bishops'mouths, but the perennial teachings. If we just stick that, if we return to that conservative Roman outlook, the conservative Roman outlook that's simply we believe what was handed on to us and we pass it on to our children, that's it, end of story. I think if we do that, that's when we're going to have the Church really have an impact on the world. Yes, it will have to go through persecution and a shrinking first, but that's when it's really going to be authentically, following Jesus Christ, not from having a meeting on meetings by a bunch of progressives. Okay, I think I'll leave it there for now. I just ask you to pray for our bishops. Pray for your bishop specifically. Like, I really have been encouraged lately that some bishops have started to speak up. Why can't it be your bishop? Pray for him that he might speak up, that he might be an authentic apostle of Jesus Christ. I mean, that is your duty as a Catholic, to pray for your local bishop. So do that. Pray for your local bishop that he might and of course, pray for your parish priests and pray for your own family as well. Okay, everybody, that's it. Until next time, god love.