The Bishops Are Wrong on Immigration

[00:00:20] Well, the American bishops have finally found their voice. Unfortunately, what they are saying undermines Catholic teaching. Today we're going to talk about what the church actually teaches about immigration and what the USCCB is actually telling people about immigration. Hello, I'm Eric Simmons, your host, editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Welcome to the program. Before we get started, just want to encourage people, smash that like button, like, Donald Trump is smashing the presidency. Let other people know about us. Subscribe to channel. Don't hit the notify button, because that just means you're being told what to do by your phone. And that's not good. That's not healthy. Just like. And subscribe. Stick to that. Not the notify one. You, you know how to get to these videos. You know how to get to videos. You're, you're an adult. You don't need to be told what to do by your phone. Also. Okay, diatribe over there. Also, subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com, put in your email address, and we'll send you our articles every morning. To a day. Every day except Sunday, and we only usually do one on Saturday. Other than that, to a day. [00:01:25] Also, you can follow us on social media risismag, and we'd be happy to see you there. Okay, so I'm going to talk about immigration, the bishops, all that, but I just first want to bring up Trump's first week. I wrote an article for the editor's desk at Crisis last week about this, and I call it the greatest week in presidential history. [00:01:49] And I don't see how you can't, how you can argue against that, because what Trump did in his first week was just beyond all our expectations. Even the biggest Trumpster, who was, like, completely convinced Trump was going to be different this time was going to be so great. Even I bet you that person was shocked by how much that was done in Trump's first week. Clearly, there was a plan. There was a plan in place even probably before he was elected, of exactly what they would do once he went into office. And the entire, I, my guess is the entire week was essentially scripted from all the balls, inauguration on stuff, but from the executive orders, the order they would be done when he went to North Carolina and California, all of that. I think that whole first week was planned out ahead of time. And it was brilliant. I mean, there's just no other way to put it. It was brilliant. [00:02:40] And I think that we just have to remember that, that this is the Trump. This is different than Trump 2016. There's no question that Trump 2.0 is better than Trump 1.0. Trump 1.0 was okay, but I think if we're honest, we would have to say it wasn't that different from a standard Republican presidency. [00:03:09] Trump 2.0, however, promises to be very different. And so, I mean, just obviously, I mentioned already last week some of the things he had already done in his first day. But since then, he pardoned the pro lifers. I'm going to talk about that a little bit later. But pardon the pro life prisoners, which is the best thing he did. You know, he recorded a message for the March for Life. JD Vance went for the March to Life. He pardoned Ross Ulbricht. He, you know, he got us out of the World Health Organization. He got, I mean, just, it's so much. I can't even remember all of it. I mean, I literally made a joke on X that Trump was right. I am a bit tired of winning. Can he take a day or two off so we can catch our breath? [00:03:54] And I just think we have to, you know, realize this is not the Trump of 2016. This is a new Trump, and he is not. He's not joking around anymore. And I think he realizes, listen, in 2028, he's gone. He's probably got only two years, really, hopefully four years, to really get things done. He knows after that he can't get anything done. You know, he's out of office or Congress is taken over by Democrats or whatever. I'm hoping that doesn't happen in 2026. But the point is, this first week of Trump's presidency, we just had to be very thankful for all that he, he did during that week. And hopefully it'll just continue. And it looks like it is continuing. I'm not saying that he's going to, like, taper off, but just that first week was amazing. [00:04:40] Okay. But the main thing I wanted to talk about today is why the bishops are wrong about immigration. [00:04:48] And so obviously, this is all coming on the heels of Trump as well becoming President. Trump triggers everybody either positively negatively, but Trump just brings about a reaction in everybody. He's also brought about a reaction from the usccb, from the bishops. There was a number of stories, you know, so first of all, Trump obviously said, we're going to start enforcing our immigration laws. We're going to do things to secure the border, but more specifically, we're going to deport illegal immigrants. [00:05:21] And they're focused particularly on illegal immigrants who committed crimes in this country beyond just being illegal immigrants. Coming to the country, country, but they create some type of crime. So we're talking murders, rapists, people assault, you know, whatever the case may be, they're going to round them up and send them back to their countries. There's a hilarious exchange on Sunday, I think it was, when the United States tried to send back a few of these people to Colombia, their native Colombia. And the President of Colombia, who's a left wing nut, he talked big like, and he's like, we, we're not taking them. And he tried to make it like, you know, we're doing what's best for them, stuff like that. You can't make us take them. Well, Trump was like, at the golf course, he basically tweeted out, well, true, social. But he basically posted and he said, we're going to immediately impose 25% tariffs, which will increase to 50% in a week. We will, like, recall your diplomats. We will. I mean, there are a bunch of stuff they were going to do against Colombia if you don't accept these, these criminals. [00:06:22] And sure enough, the President of Columbia caved within like two hours, I think. And not only did he cave and say, okay, we'll take them, he's like, I'm sending my presidential plane up there to get them. [00:06:32] And so Trump is serious about deporting these immigrants, these criminals. And the usccb, though, and certain Catholic bishops have been speaking out against this. [00:06:45] And it's an interesting thing. And the media, the legacy media, is loving that. And they're using the bishops as pawns basically in their anti Trump agenda. And the bishops think they're important now, but really it's just the legacy media, it's another opportunity just to knock Trump and they can use him. It's not like they're going to invite them back to talk about abortion or something like that. But speaking about that, all of us have noticed, I mean, I think I'm not the only Catholic who notices. I think most of us noticed the rank hypocrisy of the bishops now talking tough against the President of the United States of America. [00:07:26] Why is it hypocrisy? [00:07:29] What have they said over the past four years against the Catholic. I'm putting that in scare quotes for those who are just listening. The Catholic President of the United States, Joe Biden, who promoted, supported, enabled, defended everything you can about the killing of unborn children. He promoted homosexuality, same sex marriage. He literally had performed a same sex a wedding in the past. He promoted the transgender nonsense he went to, he supported wars and military endeavors everywhere else. And the bishops on a whole were silent. Sure, they'd have a statement here and there, but they were basically on a whole, silent. They did not really stand up to Biden like they appear to be wanting to stand up to Trump. Now, some might say I'm being selective here, like, only thinking my own political views. [00:08:19] But the reason it's hypocrisy, particularly hypocritical. Not just because they are speaking out so strongly and fighting against immigration reform, and they didn't do that against abortion and homosexuality, stuff like that. But the issues are actually different because abortion is 100% of time, an intrinsic moral evil. It can never be defended. [00:08:42] Whether or not a country accepts or rejects immigrants, however, is a prudential judgment. We're going to get to the Catechism here in a minute about this, but the point is that the laity is empowered by the Church to make these decisions, to vote for leaders who will make these decisions. It's not the bishop's role to say, we need this many immigrants or that many immigrants. It's the bishop's role to say abortion is always evil. Any law that does not protect the unborn is immoral. Things like that. That is the role to say that, because they're teaching what the church teaches. But when we're talking about immigration, it's not their role to say, okay, we need this many immigrants. We need to have open borders wherever. That's prudential decisions that the laity are charged by Vatican ii. I mean, come on, aren't we all Vatican II Catholics here? [00:09:30] By Vatican II empowers us, the laity, to speak on these matters. [00:09:36] So there's some great hypocrisy here among many of the bishops. I'm not saying all of them. When I say the bishops. I've said this before. I'll say it again for newcomers, when I talk about the bishops, my honest opinion is that you have about 5 to 10% that are really bad, like progressive, not really even Catholic, evil, things like that. You have maybe 5% or less, unfortunately, who are really good. [00:10:03] And then you have the vast majority of them who are not bad, but they're not really that great, and they let the bad ones kind of run the show. And so when I say the bishops, I'm saying basically not only the bad bishops, but the ones who are letting the bad bishops kind of run the show. [00:10:18] So, anyway, so we have this hypocrisy, and it does then raise the question, why are the bishops so strong about the abortion? I'm sorry, the immigration issue, but so weak on other more important, intrinsically evil issues like abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, things like that. Why is it that just, it doesn't make sense. You would think they'd be over the top about abortion and kind of under the radar about immigration. Instead, they're over the top about immigration, under the radar about abortion. Why is it. And I think a lot of people have answered that question, or at least suspected, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Catholic bishops, USCCB get hundreds of millions of dollars over the years from the federal government to help immigrants. [00:11:12] And so the question becomes, is it because they're receiving all this money for immigration, helping immigrants that they're. That they are particularly incensed when the federal government starts to say, hey, we're not going to. [00:11:29] We're going to cut down on immigration, which probably means they're going to cut down on their. Have to cut down services. And this came to a head in the past few days. First, it was like, interesting because Elon Musk jumped in on X and he said, under real Donald Trump, the US Government will stop bribing religious organizations to facilitate illegal migration. And he was, quote, tweeting a tweet that was, quote, tweeting a tweet that was about how much the Catholic bishops in America receive in funding to help migration, help migrants. [00:12:02] So Elon brought it to a fore that this is beyond just a Catholic issue now, but actually, people outside the church were looking at and saying, hey, listen, maybe we shouldn't be sending all this money to the Catholic bishops for migration help when perhaps it's undermining the new federal government's views that we're going to lock down on immigration. [00:12:23] And then after Elon came out with that, this was probably the thing that really set it off. J.D. vance, the vice president, J.D. vance, who is a Catholic, a practicing Catholic, he was on one of the morning shows, I think it was cbs. And he said, I'm going to quote it here. I didn't put it. I don't have it up on the screen. So I'll just read it. I think that the USCCB needs to actually look in the mirror a little bit and recognize that when they receive over $100 million to help resettle illegal immigrants, are they worried about humanitarian concerns, or are they actually worried about their bottom line? [00:13:00] We're going to enforce immigration law. We're going to protect the American people. So shots fired by Catholic. JD Vance, is USCCB more worried about humanitarian concerns, or are they actually worried about the bottom line? That is the money they receive. This is a legitimate question because what we don't hear is the bishops focusing on the crimes committed by these immigrants. When people are raped or killed, sex trafficked, trafficked, all these things. We rarely hear anything from the bishops about that because they're worried that if they talk about that, it would be, it would move people to go against all immigrants. It's kind of like the whole thing. When a Muslim does something evil, we can't say anything against Muslims because it will cause bigotry against Muslims. Whatever. It's the same kind of line. If we say something too much harshly against these crimes being committed by immigrants, it will make everybody anti immigrant, whatever. I don't know exactly why, but I mean, the point is like you don't hear the bishops and they're lackeys of people like the Father James Martins and people like that. They're not decrying the crimes being committed by these people here illegally. Horrific crimes in many cases. So JD Vance is calling them out. The USCCB made a statement in response. I'll put that up on the screen here. [00:14:21] USCCB issued the following statement on its long term partnership with the federal government to serve refugees. [00:14:27] Faithful to the teaching of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church has a long history of serving refugees. In 1980, the bishops of the United States began partnering with the federal government to carry out this service when Congress created the US Refugee Admissions Program. [00:14:42] Every person resettled through this program is vetted and approved for the program by the federal government while outside the United States in our agreements with the government, USCCB receives funds to do this work. However, these funds are not sufficient to cover the entire cost of these programs. Nonetheless, this remains a work of mercy and ministry of the Church. [00:15:02] One of the key points they're making here is, listen, we're not making money from this. The USCCB is saying we're not getting rich on it. The bishops aren't living high off the hog. We're not like building new churches with this money. We receive the money and then we use it simply for this service of helping migrants that they claim are properly vetted by the United States before they, even by the government, even before they enter the United States. Now, J.D. vance actually called in question the whole vetting process, but that's not the bishop's fault if the vetting is bad. Like, let's, let's be, let's be fair. If the government tells the bishops, listen, these guys are vetted, help them out. They can't say, you know, it's not Their fault. If they're not properly vetted, that's the government's fault. But anyway, back to the point is, is that they're spent. I think I saw the numbers could be wrong in this, but, like, they spent. I mean, they were given, like $129 million last year, and they spent like over 130 million. They're actually losing money on this. Here's the thing. I believe them on this point. I don't think that the money being spent, being given to them by the federal government, the hundreds of millions of dollars is being spent to enrich the church, enrich the bishops, enrich the parishes, the diocese, whatever. I don't think that I've looked at the numbers in the past. I admit I haven't looked at them in the last week or two, but I've looked at them in the past. If you look at the numbers, it does seem clear that the money they're receiving from the federal government is going toward the migrant services. [00:16:34] That being said, I think a lot of debate on this issue I've seen on social media misses a more important point. You'll see people say either the bishops are, you know, they're just. They're getting all this money and they're just getting rich by all this money, federal government money. Or they say. Or the other side says, hey, they're not getting any money for this. I mean, they're doing it just for migrant services. They're not getting any money off the side for themselves. [00:17:04] Here's the reality. If your organization is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars for these services, what that means is you've created an entire bureaucracy in order to facilitate those programs, which means you've hired a bunch of people, you've rented out offices, you've, you know, spent money on infrastructure, all that stuff. You have an entire infrastructure. And by the way, this program, when they say, let me pull this up, USCC, I think they said the year there since 1980. So for 45 years now, you have this entire infrastructure run by the bishops for this service, and it's dependent upon receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the government over the years. [00:17:54] What I think people are not recognizing is the moral hazard involved here. [00:18:00] This is something that you hear in economics a lot, and I think people don't understand it. The idea of incentives, the idea that certain actions incentivize certain programs, certain structures, certain actions, they incentivize people to do certain things. [00:18:17] And often it allows them to take risks they wouldn't take otherwise. For example, they would do things they wouldn't do otherwise, or they wouldn't do things because of the fact that it could cause these other consequences. Okay, what do I mean by that in this case? [00:18:36] The bishops have this entire structure in place now with I don't know how many employees, but it's got to be hundreds, if not thousands of employees and a whole apparatus for helping migrants around the country, and they receive over $100 million a year for it. [00:18:53] What happens if the federal government says, okay, we're cutting that off. You no longer receive any money? Well, now all of a sudden, the bishops are responsible for all these jobs under them, all this apparatus, and it all gets shut down, which means people lose jobs, employees of the bishops lose jobs. And somebody who actually has run a company before with employees, a normal person does not like laying people off. I worked for an Internet company years ago, and we were. We had hired lots of people, we were growing, we lost some of our funding, and we had to lay off a bunch of people. It was without question, the worst day of my professional life, when I think it was like 30 people. I had to come in, I, you know, bring them in and lay them off, because we just didn't have the money to support them. Worst day of my professional life, by far. It was horrific. [00:19:48] And I think that's what normal people would. How they'd react. And I don't think the bishops, and I think the bishops are normal people. I don't think they want to fire all these people, but they would have to. So I think what happens is, even if the money is being used 100% ethically, let's assume every single person that the bishops conference helps is a legal immigrant. Let's assume that. [00:20:15] I don't think it's true, but let's assume that what that means is that even if that's true, I should say, then they still are incentivized not to criticize the federal government when it comes because of the fact that they could lose this money for their apparatus. They could no longer do what they believe is the Church's duty to do, which is to help these various migrants. They lose the ability to offer the service, to run this program. And I think they just naturally are disinclined to do that because they think of it as a good thing. They know they'd have to fire people, all this stuff. [00:20:55] So even if the bishops use this money perfectly, it still is a moral hazard, which is why I think the Church should never take government money, because you're then beholden to the government, when you do that, it simply can't be helped. [00:21:10] It's not a attack on the bishops to say this. It's simply a reality for all of us. When you take money from somebody, you're beholden to them on some level. [00:21:19] And when they're taking money from the people, the laity, they're beholden us to serve us, and that's a good thing. [00:21:26] But when they take money from the federal government, then they're beholden to serve the federal government, and that's not a good thing, because they need to have an independence to preach the gospel in season and out, which means they need to be able to speak up loudly against the federal government promoting abortion or transgenderism or whatever. [00:21:43] And so, really, I think ultimately what we see here is that I think that's the reason why the bishops are relatively silent on most issues, but they're very loud about this one, because in this case, they would lose the funding. I don't think that's for greed reasons. I just think simply they don't want the whole apparatus, which they believe is a good work, to fall apart, which it would without the federal money. [00:22:09] One more thing I want to say as an aside to what I was just saying about assuming everybody they help is legal immigrant, I just know that's not true. We all know that's not true. In fact, I worked for a diocese for a while for five years, and I saw Catholic Charities and other, you know, Catholic organizations. They were not, like, vetting every single person they helped immigrant. They helped, like, are you legal or not? They never would ask the question. It would be unheard of for them to ask the question, are you here legally or not? They would never, ever, ever report anybody who was here illegally. If they happen to find out, they would never report them. [00:22:50] And they would do everything they could to protect illegal immigrants. And I don't think they'd be checking, like, is this person a criminal? Or anything like that. I think they just simply would assume in every case we need to protect them, we need to keep them from the legal authorities. I just know this happens. I mean, I've seen it happen, and I know it happens throughout the country, throughout all these different Catholic organizations. And that's a scandal. That's a real scandal because you're basically breaking the law, a legitimate law. Which takes us to my next point about all this. [00:23:23] You hear the bishops, they talk about, when they talk about immigration, they might give lip service to some controls over immigration. However, by their actions and by their words, they essentially, they Never talk about by what they say and what they don't say. They never talk about the sex trafficking, they never talk about the crimes and things like that. They always say things like, well, Jesus was a refugee. We have to love the refugees. [00:23:53] But of course, that's just a cover for the fact that now they're saying, okay, that means it's okay to allow anybody and everybody into this country. They're essentially arguing for open borders. They will never say those words, but. But that's exactly what they're arguing for, is open borders. And so the problem is that's not what the Catholic Church teaches about immigration. [00:24:16] The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2241, says, the more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they're able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and means of livelihood which he cannot find his country of origin. Public authority should see to it that natural right is respected, that places a guide, a guest under the protection of those who receive him. Okay, that's the first part of 2224. It's basically saying, yes, it is true, it is. [00:24:42] More prosperous nations should welcome foreigners into their country to the extent that they are able. [00:24:50] That is a principle of Catholic moral teaching. It's very true. [00:24:56] The important thing here is, though, of course, what's that? Class A? To the extent they are able, who determines? Here's the important question. Who determines the extent they're able? Again, according to Vatican II and what the Church has been teaching for a long time, the laity determined that, which means the political people in the political realm determine that. The bishops do not have the authority to say, okay, America can receive 100,000 immigrants this year, but not 100,001 or anything like that. Or they can receive a million immigrants, but not a million and one. Whatever. The bishop has no authority to say that. That is for the laity. That is for the political system to determine. So if the duly elected president, United States, says, we got to cut down how much immigration we have, that's a democratic process. That's the people speaking. And the bishops can't say, you can't do that, because the Church is saying he can do that. The Church is explicitly stating that the government can determine, okay, we're not able to accept any more immigrants. It goes on, though. The calculus goes on, says political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible, may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants, duties towards their country of Adoption. Okay, this sentence is one of the worst, poorly written in the entire catechism because it. You read it, you're like, wait a minute, what did you say? I'll break it down so we understand. First of all, it's saying political authorities. Again, it's saying it's political authorities who have the right to determine this, not bishops. [00:26:31] For the sake of the common good for which they're responsible, they make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions. In other words, they can limit immigration. [00:26:42] Subject to various juridical conditions being legal, they can make the law such that they limit who can immigrate into the country and how many can immigrate, when they can immigrate from where they can immigrate, all that stuff. And they do that why? For the sake of the common good. In other words, what it's saying is you can't simply look at just the plight of an individual immigrant and say, okay, his life would be better in America than it would be in Mexico or Colombia. [00:27:17] You can't. That's not the entire equation. That's the entire equation typically preached by the progressive bishops and priests who are basically open borders, is look at the plight of this individual. He's better off in America than in Mexico. [00:27:32] Politicians, though, they have to look at the common good. That's what the Catechism just said, meaning the political authorities have to look at the good of all. And so therefore, if immigration, massive immigration, immigration of criminals, not having having a poorest border, all this stuff, leads to a decrease in the common good, I. E. People being assaulted and killed and sex trafficked and the economy going down, whatever the case may be, whatever it is, then politicians, political authorities have a right to restrict immigration. This is clearly in the catechism. It's clearly what the Church teaches, but it's not what you're going to hear from bishops. They're just going to talk about the sob story of some individual and it might be true, that person would be better off. And it is unfortunate if we can't take them in, but the reality is we can't take them in. Not right now. [00:28:24] We just simply can't. We have to limit because it's just. It's gotten overwhelming how much, how many people have immigrated to this country. So we do have to limit immigration. So. So ultimately the bishops are wrong and they're compromised on this issue. They're wrong because they're actually teaching something that goes against what the Church itself teaches. And they're compromised because of the moral hazard of receiving so much money, receiving so much money for their migration help efforts. They're compromised. So they're both wrong and they're compromised. And honestly, we just shouldn't listen to them. I know there are going to be some people who say, wait a minute, Catholics have to listen to their bishops. They're our spiritual fathers. You're right. They are our spiritual fathers and we are supposed to listen to them in the spiritual realm. [00:29:15] But this is not in the spiritual realm. I mean, everything is in one sense, but basically this is in the political realm. And the church herself has said over and over again that the laity are the ones who decide how things operate in these prudential decisions in the political realm. [00:29:34] Okay, I think I've covered that enough for, for today. But just note the bishops are wrong and they're compromised on immigration. [00:29:44] A couple more quick stories I'm going to just break down. There's a big news about the deep seq R1. The, that's the AI program coming out of China, the large language model that came out of China. And it was a huge deal. It was like basically released as a surprise to the world. I think it was on Sunday or Monday morning or something like that. And it caused a huge crash in the, in the stock market and tech stocks, particularly tech stocks that are companies that are related to AI, so like OpenAI and other places. And it really, you know, was a big fear. A lot of fear has been introduced by this. The idea is with Deepseek, first of all, personally, I think there's probably a lot of misinformation about this. I'm not willing to say exactly what Deep Seek is doing right or wrong or different right now because I think there's, I think there's a good chance some things are being hidden or being lied about by the Chinese. And so I don't necessarily believe all the reports I hear about it, but what's being claimed at least is that this deep seq R1, what it does is it's way more advanced than the AI we're currently using, the large language models we're currently using. And it's far, far cheaper. It doesn't need all. Like, that's why Nvidia, the company that develops these chips for AI, why it crashed, because it doesn't need as many. [00:31:04] So idea is this could overtake what we're using now. A couple things I just wanted to mention about it first is we have a big deal. Everybody's going crazy about the idea that we're using TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese. And so we're basically giving information by ourselves over to the Chinese. Well, what do you think DeepSeek R1 is doing? It's taking all your information for the Chinese and it's able to bring it all together. So I mean it's the same idea. If you don't like the idea of TikTok, you can't really like the idea of this. Now there is an exception. I already found out that there is an AI company called Venice AI that they don't store your personal information when they're, when you do searches, things like that. They, they just keep it on your browser. They don't like keep it on their, on their central servers. And so, and they've integrated already deep seq R1 and so you could use it and your information, at least they claim doesn't go back to the Chinese, which I think is interesting. [00:32:01] But I also think there's a lot of fear about these large language models that I think is not really. [00:32:09] It's over the top. I mean, if you understand how large language models work, which I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I do have some basic understanding of them. What we see is with these large language models is that they're not really smart, they're not really thinking or anything like that. All it's doing is it's, it's got massive amounts of information that's processed and then when answers a question, it's basically just throwing up a word at a time. And based upon what it's seen in all this information it's got over the Internet for, you know, over decades now. And it's basically throwing out the next word it thinks it makes the most sense until it gives an answer that sounds very much like a human. I mean, I'm spooked when I sometimes when I ask questions AI and it gives answers, I'm like, wow, that is really good. I mean, okay, here's an example of something I did recently. [00:33:00] You might know my mom passed away a few months ago. Well just recently we're still cleaning up her house and all that stuff. I took a plant home from her house just because something remember by. Well, I don't know how to take care of plants houseplants that well. So I took a picture of it and I posted it In I think ChatGPT and I said how often do you need to water this plant instantaneously gives an answer that was telling me what kind of plan it was how often to water how much to water it, you know, what to look for if it's not, you know, if it's not wired too much or not enough. And I was just like, wow, this is amazing. But I don't think it's like some computer is actually thinking. It's simply regurgitating in a way that sounds like a human. So I do think like the whole AI thing, it's, it's a term used for so many different things and there's a lot of fear behind it and there are real problems, potential problems in the future from AI. Don't get me wrong. I just think these large language models, overall, they're just basically like super good search engines. I mean, that's really what they end up being. And so if we didn't think Google by search engine was some evil thing, I mean, it's got some problems too, then these things are no different. I mean, really, that's what they are, is search engines. So, you know, I, I just, I think people should chill out a little bit about this. I do worry about some aspects of AI and I do worry about the Chinese, like basically being able to harvest all our information that we're giving to them. But large language models themselves are not something to, to fear is probably the best way to put it. Okay, the last thing I want to bring up is before we get to the live chat and some questions and answers, there is our white pill of the week, which we have, and I put a pro life Trump. I put a question mark, and maybe that's not fair, but this is our white pill. Okay, Trump in his first term, when he ran for president the first time, 2016, he, he spoke very pro life in a very pro life way. But a lot of people, including myself, didn't really believe him because he had not been pro life historically. [00:34:56] And then when he governed, he honestly wasn't that different, like I said, from other Republican pro life presidents like George Bush, the two Bushes and Reagan. That means he wasn't bad, but he wasn't great either. It wasn't pushing the envelope. It was clearly an issue he didn't care that much about. Now, of course, Dobbs, you know, came about, Roe was overturned, but that's more, it's not like he used abortion as a litmus test when he was picking his Supreme Court justices instead. They just, you know, because they, they aligned with him on a lot of things. They all, they. And they also were willing to overturn Roe, which is great. I don't want to not give him credit for that, but at the same time, I don't want to act like he was some pro life hero his first term. Well, then when he ran for President here in 2024, you know, last year, he was awful on the abortion issue during the campaign, let's be honest, he was awful. He talked about IVF mandates. He, he was like, like railing on state initiatives that would, that would be pro life. And he was, I mean, it just was. He was not good. I mean, we just have to admit he was not good. [00:36:00] Yet in one week, oh, how things have changed. He pardoned the pro life prisoners, which was so huge. I want to tell people something about this. Okay? I know I'm going a little long, but this is important. I used to get arrested in front of abortion clinics many years ago, before the Face Act. In fact, it was because of the Face Act, 1995, that I stopped. I willingly admit I was not willing to accept a federal offense and at least a year in jail for blocking an abortion clinic door. I admit that freely. Maybe I should have. I still sometimes wonder if I should have just done it anyway. But the fact is, most of us who did these things back then, we stop with face. [00:36:45] So I do know this area pretty well as far as what, what you do and things like that. And what I thought was interesting is the fact that he pardoned these pro life prisoners. These pro life prisoners who are heroes, in my mind, let me be clear about that. They are heroes. They did break the law. They did, you know, in many cases, block abortion clinic doors, prevent, try to prevent women from getting abortions, which I think is heroic. But ultimately it does violate the FACE Act. They were peaceful, don't get me wrong, they were not violent in any way, shape or form. But that doesn't mean they just stood there kind of outside an abortion clinic and praying and got arrested and, you know, thrown into jail. These are people who are hardcore and they, like I said, they're heroes of mine. [00:37:28] And so the fact, my point of this was, my point, my point of this is the fact that Trump pardoned them is amazing because it's not like these are just people who were just standing outside. They actually went into the clinics. They did. They were very much trying to prevent these abortions from happening. And so God bless them, and God bless Donald Trump for pardoning them. So I think that's awesome. Also, he recorded a message for the March for Life. JD Vance spoke at the March for Life. [00:37:55] They There's a movement now to defund Planned Parenthood that is gaining traction because they Feel like Trump is going to support this. I don't think he's come out and support yet. He supported the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. I think he just did that the other day. [00:38:13] And so the point is, is that, like, I feel like Trump is like the opposite of past GOP presidents. They, the old ones would speak pro life during the campaign, and then they govern not really that pro life when they were president. [00:38:27] Trump spoke not very pro life during the campaign, but now he's governing very pro life as president. And so I think this is a white pill because I really think that there's now momentum behind the pro life movement again because of Donald Trump and J.D. vance being in office. And I think this is something that we should take advantage of. I also think as pro lifers, we need to be more pragmatic. [00:38:48] We need to collect wins. What I mean by that is we can't just always be obsessed with the idea of, okay, let's get a federal law to make all abortion illegal. Obviously, that's the end goal. But that's a ways away in our country. We need to collect wins. And one win, of course, was the pardoning of the pro life prisoners. I think the next biggest win should be the defunding Planned Parenthood. The federal government should not be giving a dime to Planned Parenthood. So I feel like this is something the pro life movement should really push the most right now. Focus on that. Don't focus on anything else. Just focus on defund Planned Parenthood, make that a big win, then we move on to something else. This is what good political coalitions do, is they focus and they rack up wins. And that's what pro lifers need to do. I think we get too idealistic, and I'm the first one to admit that I do this. I can do this as well. Let's not be so idealistic and try to only think about the end goal, but let's get some wins on the way to that goal. But anyway, this is a white pill. I think it's. I think it's great. So, finally, do we have some? We do. Oh, we have a lot of them. Some comments in the live chat that I want to bring up and talk about and address. So here we go. [00:40:00] Zeus's petals. Oh, yeah. I did find out what this meant, by the way. A friend of mine at the parish told me what Zeus's petals means. So I know. In this case, did the USCCB echo the wishes of Pope Francis? Of course, we can't know for sure. It's Clear. Pope Francis is very much pro immigration. He is definitely. I mean, his, his language is very similar to the language the usccb. I do think the USCCB is probably, I'll put this way, I think they feel confident that they're not going to be contradicted by the Pope. [00:40:32] Oh, Drew says the beard looks good. Thank you. I, you know, I shaved it a few months ago. I've been letting it grow out. It takes a long time for me and I'm happy that it finally is, you know, growing out and you can actually see it now. So that's a good thing. Thanks, Drew. FEMALE Casey, Royals fan from Nebraska says someone needs to tell the bishops about Lake and Riley. Oh, yes. And how her death might have been preventable if her murder had not been let in all willy nilly. That's what I, that's what's the frustration. Right, right. Is that all of a sudden it's like they talk about, they want to focus on a story of an immigrant who, you know, her life would be better here, but they don't want to talk about people like Lake and Riley who were murdered by immigrants here, illegal immigrants here. So I think that's something that I'd love to hear bishops talk about more, is the victims of illegal immigrants. [00:41:21] Joe Burkenmeier says the Lepanto Institute and others have reported the bishops have received something like $4.2 billion during the Biden years. I don't know. I can't vouch for those numbers, but it is a large amount of money. I mean, even if it was like only 130 million or whatever, 129 million a year, that's a massive amount. It's a lot of money. Now, again, I personally do not think, and I don't think there's any proof, nobody's ever shown me proof that this money is going directly into the pockets of bishops or chanceries or anything like that. It's going for these programs. But again, like I said, the problem really is the moral hazard, the incentive structure. They don't want to speak out. [00:41:59] AugustTV123 does Catholic charities preach the gospel to those they help? If not, why not? Seems at least as important to feed the soul as the body. I would guess in most cases, they, they do not actually evangelize people. They help. They just want. They just help them. Whether or not they should do more than that. I think that's a debatable point. But sometimes I think they actually go contrary to the gospel. Here's story time. [00:42:22] Years ago, I helped Out. I actually managed. I ran a nonprofit that would help people with finances when they were trying to adopt children. [00:42:33] So if a couple want adopted children, a child, but they didn't have money for the expenses of adopting a child, especially adopting internationally, we would help them. We certainly help them. So we dealt with a lot of adoption agencies in different places. And I remember when a single woman wanted to adopt somebody, and we were like, no, we're not going to help them, because we didn't feel that was best for the child because we had limited funds. It's not like we, you know, we had money. We had other applicants. So we had multiple applicants. We turned her down because we just thought it was better to give money to help in adoption of an intact Catholic family. Well, Catholic Charities, basically of Baltimore, I think it was, came at us and they were upset because. And the person, Catholic charities at Baltimore actually said the baby would be better off with this woman who would focus completely on her child rather than having it. Something to the effect of, like, her attention is divided with her husband and her kid. I'm not making this up. This is really what Catholic charities employee said she thought it was better for a child and with a single mom because the mom could be focused completely on the child instead of being distracted, I guess, by her husband giving attention to her husband. [00:43:47] After that, we stopped using Catholic charities in the area. We started using, like, a Lutheran service because it was like, at least being much better about still Catholic families we help, but, like, the Lutheran service was much better about this. So, yeah, I'm not. I have zero confidence in Catholic Charities, actually, you know, doing good work all the time and Catholic work. Okay. Oh, I already had that one. Okay. Andromeda reinstated the Mexico City policy and in federal funding of abortion U. S. Thank you. I forgot about that. The Mexico City policy was in. Was enacted as well. Another pro life win by president Donald J. Trump. [00:44:22] Anthony says beard looking gruff. Mr. Sam. I didn't think the beard was that noticeably different this week, but see, people seem to think it is. I mean, I don't know. Okay. I mean, it's definitely getting grayer and grayer over the years. [00:44:35] Joe Burgermeier says, I think this country should adopt an immigration policy similar to what the Vatican has. Jail time and financial fines are how the Vatican would handle any violators. There is something to be said for that. Why can't we have a very similar immigration policy as the Vatican loyal to truth says USCCB Gets too much money from Caesar, the state disinfluences their position Exactly. I mean, that's the thing is, it's not a matter of they're taking the money in some unethical way for themselves. It's not like they're enriching themselves and not helping migrants with it. The problem is they're influenced by it. They can't help but be influenced. It's like they're human. They can't help it. [00:45:13] Finally, Anna Kate Howell says, I'm tired of hearing superstitious people say that AI is demonic or you're talking to a demon. Yeah, that's silly. That's silly to say that there are dangers to AI we cannot act like there are not dangers to AI but it's not that when you're interacting with a large language model, you're talking to a demon, because if you understand how they work, like I said, it's really kind of amazing how AI these large language models work because it's not as. It's not as brilliant as you think it is. They're really just regurgitating, but they're doing it in a way that they can grab from lots of different information so they can know, okay, what's the next word I need to say that makes sense. Until it does sound like a human talking, that's not a demonic thing. It just. It's just like a search engine. Ultimately, again, problems with AI dangers. AI, I should say. Yes, but it's not the. It's not like using a large language model is speaking to demons or anything like that. Okay, I'm going to wrap it up here. I appreciate everybody being on the live chat, particularly interacting. I think that's, that's, that's a great thing to do. Again, just the final word is we don't have to listen to Vicious when it comes to immigration because they're wrong about it and they're compromised on the issue. Okay, bye. Until next time. God love you, Sa.