Vatican III Incoming?

[00:00:00] Foreign the Vatican has announced the next phase of the Cidality process, or whatever it's called, an ecclesial assembly scheduled for October of 2028. What is this assembly and will this in effect be the next ecumenical council, a Vatican 3, so to speak? That's what we're going to talk about today on the podcast along Eric Samuels, your host, editor, chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage you to smash that like button, subscribe to the channel, let other people know about what we're doing here. Also, you can subscribe to the Crisis newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com put in your email address and we'll send you an email once a day with our opinion pieces of the day. We promise not to spam you. We might every once in a while send you another email, but like for advertising, a book or something. But in general, it will just be once a day. You can also follow us on social media Risismag. Also remind people this is one of our live podcasts. And so if you're joining us live, feel free to enter your comments into the chat and I will try to address some of them. Put them up on the screen at the end of the program. [00:01:21] Last announcement I want to make. Is that okay? So I do speaking engagement sometimes, but not very often because honestly, most diocese and most parishes won't invite me. [00:01:32] I accept that. I mean, it's kind of ironic because literally the diocese I work used to work for won't invite me into their diocese to speak because of some of the things I've said in the past that are controversial. And that's fine. I'm honestly not a big fan of traveling and so I don't want to be on the speaker circuit. But. But I do speak sometimes. [00:01:52] A couple months ago I was scheduled to speak at a conference at an event, I should say. It wasn't a conference. And I bought a bunch of my books to bring with me so I could sell them there. However, I got sick, I could not go. All this is to say that I now have an inventory of some of my books here at the house and I want to get rid of them. [00:02:12] So at my website, ericsammons.com that's ericsammons.com, that's just my name. I have basically every book I've written on sale if it's available. Some of them are sold out, but they're on sale. A deep discount. Plus, and there's more, as they say. I just create a coupon code podcast Just the word podcast. If you put that in, you get 10% off. So if you're listening to this podcast, you know about it, otherwise you don't. So you get another 10% off, the deep discount. Plus, and there's more. [00:02:45] If you pay with bitcoin, you get another 10% off. I know a lot of people don't use bitcoin, but if you do, it's a way to get another 10% off. At my website, I have a way you can just check out and pay with bitcoin right on the website. So again, ericsams.com my books are a deep discount because I want to get them off my shelves because I bought some from the publisher and now I didn't. My speaking engagement fell through and I just don't like them sitting around there. I don't expect to get a lot of speaking engagements in the future. [00:03:13] You know, I get them every once in a while, but not enough. I got them sitting here, so I'm gonna get rid of them. So on sale, 10% off if you put in the coupon code podcast. Okay, so let's. That's enough of my sales pitch. Hopefully I will see some sales from that. And more importantly, my bookshelf will be cleared of my own books. [00:03:33] Let's get into the main topic I want to talk about today. I have a number of things I want to talk about today, but this one is about this ecclesial assembly being planned. So the Vatican announced there was a letter from Pope Francis on March, dated March 11, which you will note. On March 11, Pope Francis was in the hospital. He was on a ventilator. He was in bad shape at that point. He's still in bad shape. We'll talk about that in a minute. And yet he somehow released this letter. And I'm going to talk about what that means in a minute. But basically what it's talking about is, okay, what's going on with the synod on senateality? Unfortunately, my friends, it's still going on. The Vatican has not dropped the whole synodality farce. And so it's still going. And so a letter written by Cardinal Greche, I believe he pronounced his name G, R, E, C, H. [00:04:26] He wrote a letter to accompany it to talk about the implementation phase of the synod. In other words, what are we going to do now with the synod? And so in this letter, which, honestly, it was like just such a classic case of Vaticanese, the language in it was just so. I mean, it's difficult, it's painful to read these things, but the most important part of it was it gave a schedule for what's going to happen. So let me put that up on the screen here. [00:04:56] Hide that for a second. And what we see is the announcement of the accompaniment and evaluation process is this month, March 2025. And then what you see is just various stages in this process of implementing the synod on synodality. And it's mostly just bureaucratic nonsense. It's mostly just telling diocese, oh, please, do this, do that, have these meetings, more meetings, more meetings. And after you've had all the meetings, have a few more meetings. Because meetings are what make the church go round. I mean, after our Lord said, go out and have meetings throughout the world, that's what he said. After the resurrection. I'm pretty sure something like that. [00:05:39] At least you would think that. And then. But the most curious thing is at the end, it says, October 2028, celebration of the ecclesial assembly in the Vatican. Now, this just raised some eyebrows. What is the ecclesial assembly assembly? What could it be? [00:05:59] And so somebody asked Cardinal Gresh, what is it? And he has this answer I'm gonna put on the screen. Don't worry, I'm not gonna read all this. If you're watching this right now, you see, this is just a lot of gobbledygook. Again, Vaticanese. [00:06:14] And like, the interviewers at Vatican News is asking him, like, what is this? What are the characteristics? Like, how is it different from a senate? [00:06:22] And he writes, the goal of the ecclesial assembly, which is the final event of the process, is no other than that indicated by the final document for the third stage, namely, to make concrete the prospect of the exchange of gifts among the churches and in the whole church. Okay, already at the first sentence, he has lost 99% of normal people. [00:06:44] I am just sticking with it. I'm part of the 1%, just. Just because it's my job to try to understand this. I mean, what does this even mean? First of all, he mentions that it was no other than that indicated in the final document. There was no final document that said there'll be an ecclesial assembly. [00:07:02] That was not agreed to, but they have to act like it was. And so if during the stages of the third phase, the third phase is what we're in now, it will be possible to realize that the various levels of the groupings of churches, the exchange of gifts through the confrontation and sharing of the processes initiated in the local churches, the ecclesial assembly will be the occasion to gather at the level the whole church, the Fruits that have matured. In other words, what we're going to do, we're going to have a big meeting to talk about and celebrate all the meetings we've been having over the past decade. That's essentially what it's doing. [00:07:39] But what's interesting about, he says the final paragraph here, this is why the assembly is ecclesial, which is tantamount to emphasizing its different nature and function from the synodal assembly we have already celebrated, which is and remains an assembly of bishops. [00:07:57] The fruit of the assembly was the final document which participates, as we have already said, in the ordinary magisterium, the successor of Peter. In light of that document, it is required of the whole church, of every church and every bishop, as a principle of unity of his church, to live the third phase which will have its landing ecclesial assembly. This assembly should be the visible manifestation of that truth which that opened the preparatory document. The Church of God is convoked and synod to witness the fruits of the church's synodal journey are. [00:08:27] I mean, it's unbelievable how self referential this is. [00:08:32] We're going to have a synod. The synod is going to say how great the synod is. The synod is going to say how important the synod is. Then we're going to have meetings talking about how good the synod is. Then we're going to have a final celebration assembly which is going to talk about the fruits of how great this synod was. [00:08:46] The whole thing is self referential, every single aspect of it is. But what's interesting is it appears that the ecclesial assembly will not just be for bishops, but for all Catholics, laity, priests, bishops. Now there were laity and priests already invited to the previous synod. So it's not clear how different this is going to be and it's not clear what this even means. I mean, after this answer, you read this, you could read this 15 times and you still do not know what the ecclesial assembly is. And that's on purpose because they're still trying to figure out what it's going to be. [00:09:21] But ultimately what this is, this reminds me very much of the Protestant world particularly, you know, you would see the Methodists do this and that's where I grew up, as the Episcopals do this, sometimes the Presbyterians do this. But basically they have these meetings. This isn't like the non denominationals. They don't do this because they just kind of islands of themselves. [00:09:42] But they have these meetings where they get everybody together and everybody kind of gets a vote, gets a voice. [00:09:47] Here's the thing that is not how the Catholic Church operates by divine mandate. That's not how the Catholic Church operates. The Catholic Church operates with the Pope and the bishops united with him as the head, as the leaders of the Church, the ones who determine. [00:10:05] They don't determine doctrine. They define what doctrine is. They define if something is heretical or not heretical. They set rules, canon law, things of that nature. [00:10:16] Priests and laypeople have no real authority in that aspect of the Church. I'm not saying priests and lay people aren't important, that we aren't part of the Church. Here. I'm going to start singing We Are Church or something like that. We are part of the Church. However, our role is not governance. My role is not governance. A priest's role is governance of his parish, but only as a representative of the local bishop. It's the bishop's role of governance and of course, the Pope's as well, who is just a bishop, the bishop of Rome. [00:10:52] So what is ecclesial assembly? It reminds me of Protestant, like assemblies, where everybody gets together and let's talk about what we believe. I mean, in the Methodist world, they have these convocations, I think they're called. It's been a long time since I've been Methodist, but if I remember correctly, they're called convocations, where basically every few years everybody gets together and they just discuss and debate what they actually believe. This appears, what they're almost doing with this ecclesial assembly. And so my question is, is this kind of their idea of a Vatican III without calling an ecumenical council? Do they hope that this ecclesial assembly will have the type of authority or at least the type of impact that an ecumenical council would have now? I mean, that's the fear. My guess is. Okay, first of all, I have two guesses, two predictions I should say about this. The first one is I actually question if this thing will happen. The reason I say that is because Pope Francis will not live much longer. I think that's pretty clear. [00:11:51] And if that's the case, we get a new Pope, let's say, within the next year. [00:11:56] There's a good chance that new pope is just going to say, I'm not doing this. I'm kind of scrapping this whole thing. Now they might say we'll go through the motions. Maybe they'll kind of, for the first year or two, they'll say, yeah, but then eventually it'll just be memory hold, and we just won't even remember it. We won't even talk about it. Anymore, and there will be no ecclesial assembly in 2028. Now, if the next Pope does decide, let's go forth with this, let's go ahead and do this, I think it's going to be like the synod sessions, where there'll be a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, because that's essentially what the synod was. I'm not saying it didn't do damage. I'm not saying the synods did not do real damage in the sense of the prestige of the church, the confusion it causes, the faithful and things like that. What I mean, though, is that ultimately it did not change anything in the church, and it can't really. But it didn't change church doctrine. We didn't get women deacons from it. We didn't get, you know, all the things that everybody feared we would get from it. And I think that's exactly what happened here. They'll have a big meeting. It will cause damage, spiritual damage, and it will be something that we should not be happy about. But ultimately, it's just going to be a case of. It'll allow a bunch of people like me to talk about it online. And really, though, it's not going to make decisive changes in church doctrine. But this is kind of how the modernists work, let's be honest, is they can't actually change church doctrine because our Lord protects that, but they can cause a lot of damage. They can undermine it. They can make it so it's less clear, so it's more confusing, so people just reject it. They can do, you know, all the things that they do, they've done for 50 years now, plus, to undermine what the church teaches, to make it so that it appears that the church uses one thing when it really teaches something else. I mean, this is the perfect example of outside the church. There's no salvation. That dogma of the church. Most Catholics do not believe that teaching, and it's never heard from. From the pulpit. And in fact, things we hear from the pulpit and from other places often undermine that teaching. So I do think, like I said, it can be. It could be a disaster, in other words, but it's not going to actually change church teaching yet again, just like the synod. So my hope and my prayer is that the next Pope will just, like I said, memory hole it, just move it aside and say, okay, we're not going to be involved in this. So I think that's, you know, that's the major possibility. [00:14:26] So is Vatican 3 being planned? I would say yes and no. Yes. I Do think they want this ecclesial assembly to be a big deal and maybe be as influential as Vatican ii, But ultimately they're not calling an ecumenical council. An ecumenical council only has bishops. You can have non bishops as advisors and as observers, but only bishops vote in an actual ecumenical council that's established. You can't change that. Not even the Pope can change that. So like I said, my hope is the next Pope will just memory hold this and get rid of it. Okay, let's talk about some other stuff going on in the church and in the world. Though. Speaking of the Pope, Pope Francis and his health, the question really is arising right now, what do we do with an incapacitated Pope for Americans? You can't help but compare this to the Joe Biden administration situation. Now, I do not think Pope Francis mentally is where Joe Biden was during his presidency. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that. [00:15:30] However, the fact remains that clearly the Pope's health is very poor. News just came out. I think it was today, maybe it was yesterday, that at one point it looked like the Pope was going to pass away. [00:15:45] And they kind of were debating among his caregivers, do we do everything we can to save him or do we allow him to, you know, pass away? And his personal nurse said we need to do everything we can. That's what the Pope would want. Now, whether or not the Pope really would want that or not, we don't know. We just know his personal nurse, who probably didn't know him very well, said that's what he wanted. [00:16:05] And so an aside I want to bring up, and I just mentioned this on X today, we should be clear, but I want to make sure we're clear about something. People are not morally obligated to do every medical treatment possible at the end of life. This is something that's very confusing for people. What are Catholics? What is moral? What is not moral when it comes to end of life care? [00:16:30] And because the Pope was doing this, some people might think that that means all Catholics should do that. The Pope did not say that. Nobody's saying that. But I do know that that's what happens. People see the Pope do something, think, oh, that's what Catholics have to do. That's not the case here when somebody's near the end of their life, like Pope Francis is. And by end of life, I don't mean he could die. He could live for another couple years potentially. But it's clear his body is breaking down. I saw this happen with my dad. I Saw this happen with my mom. [00:16:59] Most people have been around, people who have passed away, older people, when they take a little bit of time, they know when the end is at least coming, that there's not going to be a full recovery anymore in that situation, first of all, you can never stop feeding or giving or allowing or giving water to somebody who is in that situation, because that's killing them. Because everybody dies if they don't get food and water after a certain amount of time. The healthiest person on Earth, if they don't eat and they don't drink, they will die before too long. [00:17:34] And so you can't do that because that's ordinary means of keeping the person alive. We all have to do that. However, it's not necessary to engage in medical treatments that might extend the person's life. That is not what we believe about the dignity of human life. And at the end of life, it's not euthanasia. Obviously, you're not actively killing somebody. But if, for example, the doctor comes to you, let's say somebody you know, they're at a situation near the end, they're older, their body's starting to shut down. The doctors say, yes, this is probably, you know, eventually they're not going to get all the way better, and they probably will continue to decline. It might be months, it might be even years. [00:18:13] And they say, but we could do this medical treatment that could potentially extend the life. You're not required morally to do that treatment. I think that's something we should all know, and I just want to make clear that. [00:18:23] But let's talk about, though, what's the status, though, of a Pope who's incapacitated like this, who's got at least serious physical problems, potentially mental issues associated with it, but we don't have any indication of that right now. [00:18:40] Pope John Paul II was in a similar situation near the end of his life. I think, personally, just out of prudence, that I don't believe, by the way, Pope should retire or resign. I just don't think it's a good idea. They're a spiritual father. Fathers don't resign. I don't think Pope should resign. I'm not saying they're not allowed to resign or that somehow against Canon law or anything like the Church's law, no popes can resign. And it can be a valid resignation, like Pope Benedict's was. [00:19:08] But what I am saying, though, is that I don't think they should, because, like, for example, when my dad. My dad had Alzheimer's for the last 11 years of his life, he was still my father. [00:19:19] I still treated him like my father, as I should. And so. And I took care of him and all those things. He never stopped being my father, even at the end, when it was. He didn't always recognize me. And I think the Pope should give that example and continue to be the father. However, that being said, my concern is that forces at the Vatican can take advantage of that situation. They can release documents in his name, like I think they did with his March 11 letter. They can basically do the auto pin situation, like Biden was doing, where basically they're running the show, but they're doing it in the Pope's name. And so it does bring up legitimate questions. What is the authority of these documents? We don't know if the Pope really is behind them or not. He may be. I mean, honestly, with the Synod stuff, he probably is, but we don't know that because we don't know his condition. We don't really know how cognizant he is of what he's. I'm sure he's on certain drugs. I don't know if they impact his mental capabilities. We just don't know. I mean, when they rolled him out on Sunday for his public appearance, he did not look good. I mean, he looked like he was not really with it completely. And I'm saying this, and I'm not trying to be harsh about Pope Francis. I think we should be praying for him, praying for him to be prepared to meet his maker, be prepared to have a holy death, and we should pray for the next Pope. But we have to address these realities. So I think. I think, honestly, what the Church should, the Vatican should do in these situations is basically kind of chill out and not do anything significant, not really seeing major documents or anything like that, especially not in the Pope's name. [00:21:03] The Church can run without a Pope for a while. I mean, we had interregnums. Those are the times between two popes when one pope dies before the next pope is elected. They've lasted years in the past. The Church still survived. Obviously, we need a Pope long term, but we don't need a Pope every single day of the Church's life. We've had many times where we haven't had Pope for months or even years. So if, for example, Francis lived, let's say, six more months, it's not going to be a big deal if simply nothing comes out of the Vatican of significance for six months. In fact, my opinion is it'd be nice to have a little breather and I say that, you know, not just about Pope Francis, but Benedict and John Paul ii, who were put. Who put things out so often so quickly. [00:21:46] I think it'd be okay if we took a little pause, to be honest, but it would kind of just be a sign that, okay, right now, I mean, it's not saying that we can't have certain things coming out of the Vatican that are necessary in order to run church, just like you would during an interregnum, but we don't need an active Pope at all times. And that's kind of what the Vatican seems to be doing, is let's continue to put. Keep on doing what we're doing, even though the Pope is clearly in very ill health right now. [00:22:18] I just think it sets a bad precedent and it leads to too many questions about the authority of documents that are coming out in his name right now, just like, you know, with, with Biden and the presidency. [00:22:29] Okay, let's talk about something else I wanted to kind of bring up, and that is Catholicism at Mar a Lago. Okay. [00:22:36] So if you were on social media, you might have seen this. If you weren't, you wouldn't have. And so you might not have heard of it. But an organization called Catholics for Catholics organize an event, a Catholic, basically prayer event at Mar a Lago, which is, of course, Trump's Florida home. And obviously he had to get approval from the Trump administration to do this. Trump was not there, but it was basically a time for speakers to come in to talk about the Catholic faith. It was a time for prayer. And so a number of people, speakers were invited, number of people were there. Taylor Marshall, for example, was one of the speakers. Nancy Charles, who's a sister of Joshua Charles and has a powerful testimony about her own life, was there and gave a talk. Bishop Strickland was there. And people freaked out online about this. I mean, absolutely flipped their lids about this. And a lot of it was images like this one. I'll pull this up for people to see. Right now, this is Bishop Strickland benediction with American flags at Mar a Lago. [00:23:41] So here is. They're having benediction at the house of Donald Trump. [00:23:46] I would think the Catholic instinct would be like, yes, this is great. We're praying for Donald Trump, for the President. We're praying for the administration. [00:23:55] We're bringing out the big guns. We're not just, you know, saying a few prayers in our head. We are bringing Jesus Christ himself to the president's personal home. This is a great thing, right? [00:24:07] Wrong. That's not what a lot of Catholics are thinking. A lot of Catholics, especially those who are, who have tds, Trump derangement syndrome, they, of course, had to oppose this. What I thought was interesting and ironic was that their criticism often was, it's a form of Americanism. Americanism is a. Is a kind of an ideology, a heresy, really, that, that Pope Leo XIII, I think it was back in the late 19th century, condemned. And really, though, one of the things about Americanism is this idea of a separation of church and state that, you know, that that's the American ideal of separation church and state. Well, that's not Catholicism. Catholicism has often been wedded to the state, has often been connected, intertwined with the state. I mean, just look at all the Catholic monarchs throughout history. Now, yes, there have been tensions between church and state, the investiture controversy being the biggest one in the Middle Ages. But even during that time, it wasn't like they were saying, okay, the church and the state should be separate from each other. That was unheard of in the Middle Ages, unheard of in Catholicism until recent years. [00:25:21] So the truth is, Americanism would be rejecting events like this, not accepting them, but rejecting them. It's very Catholic to be connected to, for the bishops, for the church to be connected to the state. Now, there's dangers in it. We see that throughout history. [00:25:41] There are dangers. And the fact is the church always must be a prophetic voice that speaks out. When a government, a state, goes against the rights of Catholics, it goes against the common good, against the moral law. So, for example, during the Biden administration, I would have had no problem if Catholics had organized a benediction, a prayer event at Joe Biden's home, as long as they were making it very clear that Joe Biden must repent about his teaching, his promotion of abortion, transgenderism, same sex marriage, things like that. And so as long as people like Bishop Strickland are willing to criticize Trump on things like ivf, which they are. Everyone I know who went to that event, I know also vocally criticized the Trump administration for their promotion of ivf. So no problem there. I mean, as long as we're willing to criticize when the state does something wrong, there's nothing wrong with also being connected to the state in a sense of praying for it and doing things to support it when it does stuff. Right. So I just thought it was a very interesting thing to see people freaking out about this. I'll show this image again because there's American flags in the background of benediction. What is wrong with that, if we're in Canada and there's Canadian flags, if we're in France, there's French flags. If they're in England, there's, you know, British flags, all this stuff, there's no problem. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with a certain level of nationalism, as long as it's in service of the church. We can be very patriotic. We can love our country. We should love our country. It's actually one of the virtues. The virtue of justice includes patriotism. You should be grateful for in justice, what your country has done for you. [00:27:28] So I'm very supportive of this. I'm very glad. John. Yep. And the guys over at Catholics for Catholics, I think it's wonderful that they did this, and I think it's great that they do this while always maintaining the teachings of the church. So when Trump administration does something against teaching church, they do speak out against it. And so I think that's good. [00:27:47] I want to bring up another topic here. I got a couple more topics I want to cover here. This one's completely different from everything I've talked about before, but I just had to bring it up. And that is the new Snow White movie. I will admit I'm taking probably too much joy in the bombing of the Snow White movie. So for those who aren't aware, Disney announced years ago that they were doing a live remake of Snow White because Hollywood has no new ideas. All they can do is remake old ideas and make them worse. That's what they do. Now, for those who know the story Snow White, why is she called Snow White? Because her. Her skin was as white as snow. [00:28:29] Now, I know in today's world, as soon as you start talking about skin color, people freak out and people get, you know, they're ready to yell racist. But the reality is the source material says her skin was white as snow. So it stands to reason that the actress you get for this part should have skin that at least is pretty darn light. [00:28:54] You should get an actress. Usually. I think she's also. I'm not sure if the story says this, but she's depicted with black hair. So I'm not saying you get somebody from Sweden with blonde hair or you get somebody from Sweden, you. You dye their hair black for the part, that's fine, too. But it should be somebody white as snow. And as I mentioned, I mentioned this on social media. If you had a Black Panther, a Black Panther movie, and I used to collect comics back in the day, I collected Black Panther. Love Black Panther. I would want, I would not like it if they had a white dude playing Black Panther. Because I'm like, wait a minute, that totally messes up the source material. He's black. Make him black. Likewise, Snow White needs to be white. However, they of course picked a non white actress. Now people are saying, yeah, technically she's white. She's dramatic, whatever, she has dark skin. That's the problem. So whether or not she's white or not white, technically speaking, when she checks off her what she is on her little box, she doesn't have light skin, skin as white as snow. And so she already, from the beginning, they are rejecting the source material. They're not respecting the source material. And this is exactly what Hollywood's been doing for years now. They, they are rejecting the source material when they are true to the source material. Like for example, the original Lord of the Rings movies by Peter Jackson. Yes, I know there were aspects that went off the source material, but generally Peter Jackson tried to keep the source material. He didn't with the Hobbit movies, those were awful. [00:30:17] But the Lord of the Rings movies he did. But Hollywood loves to reject the source material and try though to ride on the coattails. Now the fact is the actress who plays her, Rachel Zegler, I think her name is Snow White, is absolutely insufferable. I mean the, her interviews just destroyed any chances movie would do well. I mean, she was ridiculing the source material. And they made it. It's woke trash. From everything I've heard, all the reviews I've seen, it's woke trash. They, they underplay the role of the prince and they, they just, it's the whole, they, they make it another girl boss feminist movie. And it did so badly, it didn't even make $50 million in its opening weekend in America. It didn't even make 100 million worldwide. And for those who don't keep track of this stuff, that is a massive bomb. I mean, this movie cost at least 2 to 300 million to make. That's not even including the marketing costs which usually double the amount. So we're talking at least a half a billion dollars they spent on this. At least, I'm willing to bet a lot more because they usually hide how much they spend. And yet they only made, made less than 100 million their first weekend worldwide. Which means this whole movie is not even going to make 200 million, probably globally in its, in its entire run. I mean, it just, it's beautiful to see it couldn't happen to a better company. Than Disney, because Disney's woke trash. [00:31:44] So I just, I just bring this up because I think this is a cultural victory for us. We've had a few of them, and I do think the Trump victory in November helped make this accelerate this. People are less willing to accept the woke crap anymore. And I think this is great for Catholicism, frankly. I know it might not seem like it, this little thing like Snow White movie, but the more we get away from the woke culture and the more we are faithful to our traditions. I mean, here's the thing. [00:32:18] Our culture rejects all traditions, even traditions like the Snow White story that is anti Catholic at its core, because Catholicism is tradition. It very much is based upon tradition and it values tradition. And so anything that rejects tradition, like a good tradition, obviously there's bad traditions. But there's nothing wrong with the Snow White tradition, for example, anything that rejects that, Catholics should really be very suspicious of and should probably reject themselves. We should embrace cultural traditions like the Snow White story and stuff like that, because it just gives us an attitude of being pro tradition. And that's something that Catholics should foster in their culture, is a pro tradition outlook in life. So I'm very happy I had to bring it up because I was just rejoicing that it bombed so well, because I've been kind of following this for a little while. They've been talking about this for years now, and people kind of suspect it would bomb. And the fact that it really bombed is great. [00:33:17] Okay, lastly, my white pill of the week. Today is March 25th, the greatest day of the year. Why do I say that? Because today, March 25th is the day that Adam was created. March 25th is the day of Abraham's sacrifice. March 25th is the day of the crucifixion of Our Lord. And March 25th is the Day of the Annunciation. March 25th is also the day that Frodo destroyed the One Ring. All these things happened on March 25th. Obviously, we celebrate mostly the Annunciation. Tradition tells us that the crucifixion, the creation of Adam, Abraham's sacrifice, were on March 25 as well. [00:33:59] But ultimately the Annunciation we know was on March 25, nine months before Christmas. And so I think this is a white pill, because what it tells us is that no matter what's going on, no matter what the crisis is in our time, God is with us. That's what the Incarnation means. God is with us. God literally came down into our messed up world, full of sin, full of problems, and said, I'm going to come And I'm going to save you. So I know we're in the season of Lent. We will be celebrating the crucifixion very soon and Good Friday in a couple weeks. But today, let us rejoice that God became man, and he became man to save us. And also, we should be very thankful that Frodo threw the one ring into. Well, technically, Gollum fell into the pits of Mount Doom in Mordor as well. Okay, so let me get to the live chat here. Let me see if there's any questions or comments from that. I always appreciate this female KEC Royals fan from Nebraska. Vatican III should basically abolish everything that was changed in the church during Vatican ii. No more eucharistic ministers, no more communion hand, no more cram their cream cranmer table, standalone table, no altar girls, etc. I just have one word in response, Amen. Or I may have two words. Amen, sister. I mean, when we do eventually have a Vatican 3 and like, by the way, the only thing I would say is technically none of the things she listed happened in Vatican 2. I know there's the whole like, you know, spirit of act and two stuff like that, but let's, let's. I just want to be clear about that. All the things she mentioned, which I agree with 100%, we should not have eucharistic ministers, we should not have communion in the hand, we should not have the table, altars to cram their tables, we should not have altar girls. All that stuff. I'm 100% with you. None of that came from Vatican II, which should tell us something. [00:35:54] I do think we might need another Vatican III or another ecumenical council in order to make it very clear exactly what is. We should. Our practices should be. And it should abolish all those things that crept in after Vatican II. [00:36:12] Theodore Sieber says my input for Vatican 3, we need official pandemic, pandemic instructions in the girm. The. The. The kind of, the. The regulations for the. The. [00:36:25] The missile and for the liturgy. I would be afraid of what they would put in there. Let me be honest, Theodore. I talked about this. [00:36:33] Did I talk about this on the podcast? I can't remember. But, you know, the anniversary of the COVID pandemic, how the church reacted to it, you know, is just very, you know, sad. And so it would be nice if we had more specifics on what we do in that situation. But I don't know how you could. Because you could always say the situation is a little different than how it's written down because we don't know how the next pandemic will happen. Okay, one last comment here it looks like again from female Casey, Royals fan from Nebraska. By the way, I hope the Royals do well. Opening day is in two days. I kind of like the Royals. They're the underdog. They made to playoffs last year. I'm hoping they do well. They're in the American League, so I don't mind since I'm a Cincinnati Reds fan. But let's hope they do well. Okay, so does that mean I should be watching Return the King later today? Well, if you haven't gone to Mass already, you should go to Mass if you can. But yes, today's a great day to watch Return of the King. It's a great day if you don't have time to watch the whole thing. Fast forward to the end. That's actually not the end, but the part where Frodo and Sam and Gollum are at Mountain Dew. By the way, for those who have not read Lord of the Rings, sorry for the spoiler not giving you the spoiler alert, but if you haven't read it, you're not a good Catholic. [00:37:48] Okay, I think I'm going to end it there. I appreciate again everybody joining into the live chat. That's always, I always do appreciate that. [00:37:57] And just again, happy Annunciation. The Lord is with us. The Lord became man and he came here to save us. Celebrate that. Be thankful for that. And even though it's during Lent, I believe today you could have a little bit of a relaxation of your Lenten promises because today is a great feast day in which we say the Gloria at Mass and we and we really do celebrate the the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Okay, everybody, until next time, God love.