Episode Transcript
[00:00:17] Both the Vatican and our surrounding culture are attacking faithful Catholics. How should the church militant respond? That's what we're going to talk about today on crisis point. Hello, I'm Eric Sammons, your host editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, smash that like button like Pope Francis wants to smash the TLM.
[00:00:36] Subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. We really do appreciate that. Lets other people puts us in the algorithm so that Catholics, or even non Catholics who are just scrolling through YouTube or wherever, find out about us. So we do, we do like it when you do that. Also, you can subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com, put in your email address, and, and we will send you our articles once a day, two articles a day, typically right into your inbox around 09:00 a.m. eastern time, every day except Sundays.
[00:01:06] Okay, so I actually, today is gonna be a little bit different, and I wanna talk about a few different topics that are in the news often. I will focus on one thing and one thing only, but there's a number of big things in the news lately and things I've been thinking about, so I kinda wanna go over a number of them. The first one is obviously probably the biggest story right now in the catholic world, which is the schism trial of Archbishop Vigano. Now, just a couple weeks ago, I did a whole podcast on Archbishop Vigano. I call it the rise and fall of Vigano. You can find it on, you know, YouTube or whatever and listen to it. And so I recommend you do that to kind of get my full view of kind of the history of Archbishop Vigano, where he comes from, what he's done in the past, and what he's doing now. And I give my thoughts on that. But I want to talk a little bit more specifically that, but that was, that came out before this trial that the Vatican called him. The DDF called him in for a trial for accusation of him being in schism.
[00:02:06] And so I haven't actually talked about the trial itself. Now, there's two things I do think we should remember when we talk about this, about vegan O and what's going on with him. The first one is a criticism of something Archbishop Vigano does or says now does not mean you did not support him in the past. Now, some people didn't support him in the past. Some people who wanted to cover up corruption in the church wanted to protect Pope Francis at all costs. They've never supported him, but a lot of Catholics supported him very strongly. When he first came off the accusations against Pope Francis and others, higher ups kind at covering up the sins of McCarrick, but don't necessarily support everything he's doing now. So that's the first thing to know is a criticism of him now is not criticism. Everything he's done. I've heard people say that, like you want to silence, you know, somebody trying to uncover corruption in the church. That's not it at all. The second thing is that, and this is very important, the Vatican clearly exercises very selective judge justice. And I put justice in square in scare quotes because it's not really just if justice, if it's selective.
[00:03:22] I mean, we have Father Rupnik, who is still a priest in good standing. His art is still being promoted. I mean, just a couple days ago, a Vatican spokesperson was saying, basically, I don't think we should take down the art. That's wrong. And clearly he just doesn't get it.
[00:03:39] So, and also, like the german bishops are advocating for heresy, terrible things. Nothing ever happens to them. I mean, even people who are in good graces with the Vatican, somebody like a Father James Martin, nothing happens to him even though he contradicts catholic teaching all the time. So there's no question that there's selective justice going on by the Vatican. And that really does undercut any legitimate justice they might want to exercise. Because when you only will pick certain people, your political opponents, so to speak, your ideological opponents, and you will only judge them and you will ignore all those who are doing far worse things in all, in a lot of cases because they're your ideological allies, well, then there's nothing we can, the obvious conclusion then is that, that this is not really justice, that you're really just in an ideological fight. You're not really caring about the catholic truth or anything like that. So I do think we have to recognize that first and foremost.
[00:04:47] That being said, though, I've made it very clear since this came out about him being on trial for schisms, things like that, that I do not support vegan O particularly how he has.
[00:05:02] And it's not, they don't reject everything he's done. Again, that's important to remember. It's that I've, I reject his rejection of what he calls the Bergoglio church.
[00:05:13] So, like, here's, I'll pull up a couple quotes here. In, when he announced that he was going on trial, he said no catholic worthy of the name can be in communion with this Bergoglio, bergoglian church because it acts in clear discontinuity and rupture with all the popes of history and with the Church of Christ. So he's clearly saying that the church led by Francis Bergoglio, whatever you want to call him, is not in keeping. It's not the Catholic Church.
[00:05:45] Now, the ramifications that are missed, does he mean then every single bishop, every single priest, every single Catholic that celebrates or attends a mass in which Francis's name is, is included in the canon, in the eucharistic prayer, that those people are not in communion with the true Catholic Church? That is the logical conclusion of what he's saying.
[00:06:11] If you understand what, what schism means, if you understand what communion means, all that stuff, that is exactly what he's saying.
[00:06:18] And then he also said, when he wrote, after he said he's not going to go to the trial, he then wrote, let me pull this one up too.
[00:06:30] Here we go. I therefore wish to make it clear that I did not go to the Vatican yesterday, June 20, and I have no intention of going to the holy office on June 28. Those are the dates that the DDF gave him. You show up on the 20th of trial or you submit something to us by the 28th. And I have not delivered any statement or document in my defense of decastery, whose authority I do not recognize, nor do I recognize the authority of its prefect. That's Cardinal Fernandez. Nor do I recognize the authority of the one who appointed him, which is Francis.
[00:07:06] This statement in and of itself, that he does not recognize the authority. Decastery, he does not recognize the authority of its prefect. He does not recognize the authority, want to appoint him. That in and of itself is a schismatic statement. Now this freaks people out so much, they're like, how can you say that? You know, how can you say that vegan o is in schism? He's not in schism.
[00:07:28] He's literally saying it himself. This is what schism means.
[00:07:33] Now you could argue, somebody could argue, okay, it's francis who's in schism with vegan o in the true church. Okay, fine, you can argue that. I don't agree with that, but I'm just saying that that's still a schism, whether you're whoever you blame for it or say is the origin of it, stating you do not recognize the authority. Because notice, he doesn't say, I disagree with what Fernandez does. I disagree with Pope Francis when he did this, this or that.
[00:08:02] He's simply saying I don't recognize their authority.
[00:08:06] Let me tell you something. Neither does any Protestant in the world neither does any eastern orthodox in the world.
[00:08:13] The thing that keeps you in communion with the church is you recognize the authority of the pope. Now, he has stated very clearly vegan, though that is, that he does not think Jorge Borgolio is the pope because of a defect of consent.
[00:08:26] I won't go into all the details of why he thinks that, but the point is, is that he rejects that Francis is the true pope. Therefore he is in schism with Pope Francis. So it's kind of an open and shut case. And again, like I said, you could argue. You could say, well, you know, it's Francis who's in schism, or whatever you want to say, fine, but it's still a schism. A schism is simply when somebody who is a member of a community decides he no longer recognizes the authority of that community over him, that means he is in schism with that. And the fact is, is that Vigano has been in the catholic church his whole life, worked very high levels, diplomat, all that. And now he's saying he's no longer part of that visible apparatus now. And people who say, well, they don't teach the true faith in Vatican stuff like that, I'm not going to argue with you that they definitely have. There's been a lot of errors and problems have come out of the Vatican.
[00:09:27] Here's the problem, though, is the Catholic Church is a visible union. It's a visible church. We're not Protestants where, okay, the local baptist church isn't teaching what I want to, so I'm going to go to another baptist church or go to presbyterian church, wherever, because that's where they teach the true Christianity. It's a visible church with visible members. And the fact remains, and this is indisputable, that the church vegan o was part of the church that vegan was part of for his whole life, that same institution, he is now rejecting the authority of it. Therefore he is in schism. Like I said, it's clear and open case here of him being in schism. Now, here's the thing. People who are set evacantists for whatever reason, I know there's different types of seti vacantis, different schools. There are those who don't think there's been a. Since 1958. There's those who think that Benedict was invalidly, invalidly resigned, some who think that Francis was invalidly elected. So there's a lot of different things, different types of people who said the contest. So ultimately is just somebody who says that there is not a current occupant of the chair of St. Peter. That's the definition of it. Now, when that started and why that is. Again, there's debates within that. If you're saying to the contest, I totally get why you support Artricia Vigano, it's a consistent position for you.
[00:11:07] Like I said, I'm not really arguing with you. What I am saying, though, is those who believe that Francis is the actual pope, even if you think that maybe one day, a later pope will kind of nullify his works or whatever the case may be, even if you think he's doing a terrible job, he's the worst pope in history. But if you believe that Francis is the pope, you cannot but believe that Vigano is and schism.
[00:11:37] You might also agree with everything Vigano said otherwise, like, for example, his. His attacks on globalism against the COVID regime. You know, for Trump, whatever he has said in the past, you might agree 100% with all that, but you can't just. You can't, like, defend Vigano on this if you think Francis is the pope. I mean, that's just. It just makes no sense, because ultimately, as Catholics, we do have to accept the authority of pope. We're called papist people for a reason. So, like I said, if you don't think Francis pope, fine.
[00:12:10] There's other podcasts, other writings that we've covered here talking about why we're not Sadie Vaucantus.
[00:12:18] But if you are not a Sadie vantage, if you think Francis is actually the pope, then you simply have to recognize what vigano is doing is horribly wrong. Taking down people down a path that's. That's very wrong, because he's basically saying under his own authority that he rejects the authority of the church. He's made himself the final authority. And yes, that is protestantism. I'm sorry, this is exactly what Luther did. Here's the thing about Luther, people, I guarantee somebody is going to be freaking out online. Eric Salmon said that vegan owes Luther. Okay, whatever. Go ahead.
[00:12:56] So.
[00:12:57] Okay, so let me interrupt for a second. Somebody put up a question. So would he be in schism with his papacy and not with a future one or past ones? Okay. Schism is always the current authority of the. Of the body you're in. I can't be in schism with Pope Gregory III because he's long dead. I'm either in schism with Pope Francis or I'm not as a member of church. So you can disagree with Pope Francis or Gregory III about something they did, but you could be a heretic even. But that's not schism. Schism is where you break communion. You say, I don't recognize his authority. Pope Gregory III, I don't know. I just picked third. I don't even know what, which one Pope Gregory III was.
[00:13:43] He does not have a direct authority over me because he's not my pope. So I can't be in schism with him, if that makes sense. Okay, back to the Luther comparison. If you look at the history of Luther, he starts off with some very legitimate criticisms of the Catholic Church at his time. Anybody who's, who's studied the history of the reformation knows that the Catholic Church in the early 16th century was in terrible shape. And the good Catholics would tell you that. So Francis started off, I'm sorry, Luther started off with some legitimate criticisms, the church and some illegitimate ones. But ultimately, if you see the progression, he gets more and more anti the authority of the Catholic Church.
[00:14:30] He rejects. Eventually he totally rejects the authority of the pope of his time and the church.
[00:14:36] I don't see how that's that different from Vigano, even if Vigano is right about a lot of his criticism of the church. And by the way, I do think he is, I've agreed with a lot of his criticisms of the church.
[00:14:46] But once he goes that, he goes that step of saying, I reject the authority of these men, that that is schism, pure and simple. And so the problem, I think somebody doesn't think I. Oh, good. I said somebody would say this. I don't think you are making a good faith argument here. I think this is myopically parroting rhetoric because you don't agree there's no comparison. Luther, well, you know, okay, I just feel like, I'm not saying he is like Luther. Luther was wrong about a lot of stuff. I'm saying though, when somebody is a Catholic and then at some point they say, I don't recognize the authority of the visible head of the catholic church, they have gone into schism. That's just a textbook definition. It's not my opinion of it. It's just the facts. Vigano himself has said this. Now, like I said, if you're study vacantas, that's one thing. That's a different conversation. But if you believe Francis is pope, you have to do that. You have to believe that vigano is wrong in this step. And I think the problem though is what happens is a lot of people, we get very much a party. Catholicism, where are you, team Vigano? Are you Team francis? That is a horrible outlook. I saw people online asking like, oh, are you team vegan or Team francis? No, we're not team vegan or Team francis. We're team catholic.
[00:16:04] Like I said, vigano is most likely in many ways, I don't know every opinion he holds or every opinion Francis holds, but on the whole, I'd be willing to bet Vigano holds a much more orthodox understanding of Catholicism in a lot of ways than Francis does. I think that seems to be obvious. That doesn't make you. We're not trying to be part of Team vegan, though. That's a cult of personality now all of a sudden where you're just saying, okay, I'm going to be on this person's team because he's my leader. It's like team trump or Team Biden. Team vegan, o team for Francis? No, we're team Catholic, which that means is we're militantly, very much part of the Catholic Church, in communion with the Catholic Church. And we will have to work at times to make it better. And that's what the saints have done for through the centuries, is they have called religious leaders or leaders to account. They have criticized them when necessary. I mean, it's kind of like, you know, what we talk about is, I never really loved this term, but it's, it's apply, it does is applicable. Recognize and resist. You recognize that Francis is the pope. And part of that is you recognize he does have authority. He does have authority, but you resist what he is when he is outside the line, so to speak, when he's saying things that are, that are contrary to the catholic faith or something like that. So you recognize and resist. And that's what we're doing here. And in fact, we see this.
[00:17:31] What's interesting is that I'm not the only person who considered a trad. And I don't care if you call me a trad, a semi trad, whatever that thinks this. The Society of St. Pius X came out with a statement. This is interesting because Vigano, in his original statement said he's basically in the line of Lefebvre, Archbishop Lefebvre, the founder of the Society of St. Pius X, who was excommunicated by Pope John Paul II for consecrating for bishops without permission back in 1988.
[00:18:01] And Vigano is saying, basically, I'm in the line of Lefebvre, just like Lefebvre. I'm like the new Lefebvre. Basically. He said that explicitly. Well, the society came out with a statement and they basically said, no, you are not. I think I have this. I can put this up. Yes, I do.
[00:18:19] And he says, you know, okay, here's what they say. Let me read this. Following this summons, Vigano published a communique available online to respond to these accusations. He defends himself in various ways, invoking the doctrinal wanderings of the current pontificate, rejecting neo modernist errors and asserting his case compares to that of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, also summoned in his time to the palace of the former Holy Office. Again, this is the society of St. Pius X statement. There is, however, one point which significantly differentiates him from the founder of the Society of St. Pius X. Archbishop Vigano makes a clear declaration of seti viscantism in his text. In other words, according to him, Pope Francis is not pope. They didn't have a paragraph explaining why that is. Why. Why does Vigano think that? Because a defect of consent. And then he starts. And then they finish by saying, Archbishop Lefebvre and the society he founded have not ventured down that perilous road.
[00:19:14] They have not ventured down that perilous or of set evacontism. So here is society. St. Pius X. Clearly, they have not had a problem with not always following the directions of Rome. We'll just say that. But they've always recognized that the pope does have authority, and they've recognized the person who is the visible head of the church, John Paul II, Benedict 16th. Now, Francis is that visible head. And so the PI society, the SSPX, they're not going down the same path as Vigano. They're not on the same ten. Same team.
[00:19:47] And then also just. This just happened, like, right before I went online. Here is archbishop, I'm sorry, BIshop Athanasius Schneider, also a very strong critic of Pope Francis. He stated he basically rejects the thesis of Vigano, that Francis is not the pope. And he basically said. And he also mentions that he's told Vigano himself, you need to be more respectful. Stop being disrespectful to Francis. But he says, ultimately says his theory of why the Pope Francis is not the pope has no basis, has no validity. And then he does say, though, this is something Schneider says. He says he does not think vegan o should be excommunicated simply because of the divisions in the church today. He does not think that would help any. And, you know, that's a prudential decision on whether or not you would declare his excommunication. Obviously, somebody in schism automatically excommunicates himself if they are, but it has to be declared canonically. So I do want to say that when I say that Archbishop Vigano is clearly in schism, that is just a statement of his own analysis of his own statements. It's not a canonical ruling. I'm just a dude with a webcam. I can't make a canonical ruling. So I want to make that clear. He is still, as of right now, a bishop in good standing in the catholic church.
[00:21:06] But this is what this process, this trial would do is it would basically say, yes, you are in schism, we are going to declare, and because that you're going to be excommunicated. You basically are, are automatically excommunicated. Bishop Snyder thinks they shouldn't do that. And I respect Bishop Snyder a lot. And, you know, I prudentially, I think that makes sense, that there's no reason you could have just left him alone and that probably would have been the best way to go.
[00:21:33] And so I think that I'm going to wrap up this part about vegan and go on to the next topic. But I think, honestly, I saw a lot of tough talk in the last week on Twitter antX or whatever, and other social media outlets from Catholic saying, oh, you know, you're a wimp, you're a wuss, you're whatever. If you don't support vegan o because you can't handle being tough about this or whatever, I don't. It's kind of a stupid argument because vegan is right, then, yes, we need to stand up and support him. But if he's wrong, then we don't. And he's wrong in this instance. And so there's nothing courageous about supporting somebody in their heir. I guarantee everybody who followed Luther thought they were being courageous going against the big, bad catholic church. There's nothing courageous in doing something wrong in going outside of the catholic church. And that's just, and so, like, I don't think that is something.
[00:22:28] As Catholics, we cling to the truth. As church militant, what we do is we cling to the truth. And that's why when Pope Francis says something that's contrary to true truth, we resist it. But it's also why when somebody like Archbishop Vigano says something contrary to truth, we resist that as well. And so it's not a matter of, okay, it's courageous that I'm on this team or I'm on that team. We simply follow the truth. That's what we need to do. And so, like I've said this before, but there's multiple ways to respond to today's crisis in the church. The big three biggest I see are, I mean, aside from putting your head in the sand, is you go to city of a contest route and you basically just say, okay, Francis isn't a valid pope. And so I'm just going to go my own way. I'm going to gonna just do my thing, you know, I'm not saying you're not like you probably will continue to believe everything the church teaches. Okay, that's one route. I don't think that's the right one. Another route is that you go the pope's planning route. Everything Francis says does is right. I'm never going to criticize anybody who dires to criticize it. They're, they're schismatic, they're, they're problems, stuff like that. That's not right. I think that's intellectually just, just crazy, or. But, and both of those, by the way, are hyper papalist views. Both the set of a contest and the pope's planning are hyper papalist views because they believe the pope cannot ever really do anything imprudent or it'll say, oh, no, I don't really believe that. But in practice, that's what they're saying. That's what they're doing. And so both sides are doing it. So I really do think that what, like, like I said, is called the recognize and resist is the best way. But remember, there's two parts of that.
[00:24:05] It's not just resisting, it's also recognizing.
[00:24:09] And I think that's where I mean, because even, like, you know, the society of St. Pius X, which is in a canonically irregular relationship with the church, I think everybody knows that that's what they're doing. They've never said, if you go in one of their chapels, there's a picture of Pope Francis there. They're praying for Pope Francis. Actually, I don't know if there's a picture of Pope Francis in there. I've actually never been in one. But I know for a fact that they're praying for Pope Francis in the canon of the mass, which means they're in communion with him. So I think that that is what we need to do. I think it's the best way forward here. And I think Vigano has gone off that path. And so I'm not planning on following him. And I urge other Catholics not to follow him because I really do think there's a very good chance within five years, he's going to be so far gone. I pray that doesn't happen, by the way. I pray that he comes back, you know, in complete communion continues to criticize Francis as much as he wants, but, you know, recognizes the authority of the papal office. And so I really think that he needs to. I fear for the path he's going, and I fear for people who follow him down that path, to be honest. And I have friends, people I respect, who are, seem to be following him. I just don't think that's, that's, oh, somebody just said, I've been to SSPX. They do have pictures of Pope Francis. There we go. I kind of thought they did. I thought somebody told me that, but I was like, I better not speak for it since I haven't actually been to one of their chapels before.
[00:25:30] Okay, so the next topic I want to talk about, like I said, I'm going to talk about a few things, is the, of course, the rumored ban on the traditional latin mass. So about a week ago, right before the vegan news broke, they published something that basically said that they're hearing from their sources at the Vatican that a document's being created that will have, be the quote unquote final solution against the traditional mass, meaning it will abolish the traditional mass in all cases in the church. Obviously, SSPX wouldn't apply because they don't really follow those directives, but like any diocesan parish, ecclesia day communities, whatever, it would be gone. You can't do it. And of course, this caused a lot of consternation. A lot of people got very upset about this. I understand why. Then, of course, the rumors just started to grow and flower else, and people say, oh, it's going to be on July 16, it's going to do this, it's going to do that. That was never part of the original rumors, to be clear. Now, here's the thing. I personally actually don't think this is going to happen. And if you notice, rote is even walking it back a little bit and just saying that, hey, we never set a date. We never said that a definite is going to happen. We're just saying these things are written up and that the pope could sign this and make it happen. Here's the thing to note. In the Vatican, lots of things are written up, a lot of plans are made, a lot of documents are created that never see the light of day. So the fact that something like this is written up is probably true. Something to shut down the traditional mass. And here's the other thing. Pope Francis himself made it clear, introducing custodus, that his end goal is exactly that, to shut down the traditional mass completely. So it wouldn't be a shock that it shouldn't be a shock to anybody if he actually just goes ahead and does it like in Wilm fell swoop next month or something like that. So I'm not saying that like, oh, it can't happen. What I'm saying though, is I think it's unlikely. I don't, from what I hear, it's not something that is really being discussed as a major possibility. The pope just met with the Institute of Christ the king leader founder and said, keep doing the work you're doing.
[00:27:36] It would just be just unlikely in the extreme that he would like, for example, shut down all the Klazida communities and just say, okay, you guys know this, ordo, that's it.
[00:27:48] And I just think, and because I think cardinals and bishops and priests would know what a disaster that would be, I could see maybe some further restrictions are created. What they've been doing, to be clear, after tradition's custodis and the rescript by was that late that came out that one Christmas, what they seem to be doing now is their policy is they're picking off diocese one by one. Diocese that had an indult and were stupid enough to ask for permission to continue. The adult, they are being told, nope, you can't continue it. This has happened at multiple dioceses. I'm hearing it's happening. It's going to happen at other diocese soon. And so I think this has been their, and it's actually a smart, from their perspective way of doing it. You cause less if you, you cause a lot less division, a lot less media attention. If you just simply say, okay, this diocese now, you can't celebrate TLM. This diocese now you can't, rather than saying everybody can't, and that seems to be the method that they are following, is let's just pick off diocese one by one. And so I really, like I said, I don't think, I personally think this is going to happen. I also think, and I'll just say this, I think it was irresponsible for to publish this now. I'm not saying they didn't get this as an accurate, as somebody, a good source in the back and telling them this. I'm not saying they're lying or anything like that. Of course not. I'm saying that simply though they are, it's irresponsible to publish this. The reason is, is it's caused so much stress and anxiety in so many people that hasn't helped anybody. There's nothing that really was, nobody was really helped by this being released when it's so clearly not a done deal. If you knew, for, if some media outlet knows this is happening on this date and we've seen it, it's signed off by the pope, I totally get reporting it ahead of time, but that's not what happened. I know people who have really been, excuse me, upset very much with what is about this rumor ban, because they're taking it as like, it's definitely going to happen. And I just feel like that that was, we shouldn't do that because anxiety is not from the Lord. It is from the devil. The word, we can't worry. I talked about this a little bit on podcast last week with Cameron about, like, what we would do. I think, honestly, what, what we all should be doing. But I particularly am talking to fathers because, you know, catholic fathers who go to TLM, they're the ones responsible for, you know, where you go, what parish you go to, what mass you go to. And I know a lot of fellow fathers, along with me, who, when they think about it, it's like, well, what am I gonna do? And I think, honestly, what catholic fathers and people who are in the situation, the people who are making decisions about where what they're going to do is simply don't assume what the situation is going to be because you don't know. It won't be exactly like you think. So when you try to make all these plans of exactly what you would do if it happens, you don't actually know what's going to happen. For example, maybe they'll shut it down at your parish, but they won't shut it down at the fraternity, you know, an hour away or something like that. You just don't know what's gonna happen. Maybe your bishop will say, no, I'm not going to implement this. There's, there's different factors involved. So I think just trying to figure out exactly we can do is the wrong thing to do. And I'll repeat my advice I gave last week, which is, I really think if you, if you're out of Tilma Parish, you probably have a great pastor. And if you have a great pastor, you really should look to him as your spiritual father who kind of leads you in the way you should go. Because as Catholics, we are under authority. I mean, that's why I was just talking about before. And sometimes that authority, when it does things out of, out of bounds, we don't follow it. And we have talked to Doctor Kwas Neski many times on this podcast about what true obedience is, hoping to have him on again here soon, by the way, what true obedience is. So I'm not saying, you know, we have blind obedience to authorities, but your pastor, who's been a good pastor, and you trust him, there's no reason not to really follow his lead. If something does happen in your parish, that would be my recommendation.
[00:31:52] So I would just say, be not afraid. Don't be anxious.
[00:31:58] Pray for discernment. Pray, obviously, for the people who will be making these decisions, that they would repent of their sins and not want to shut down the TLM. But don't let it be a constant source of anxiety in your life. It just, it just isn't worth it. It will lead you to sin, to be honest. Okay, so the last thing I want to, I want to cover here today, so I've covered a couple topics here, so last week, and I want. Let me pull this up. I hope, I hope it's here.
[00:32:24] Oh, shoot. Did it not show up? Did I, do I not have it? Oh, I was going to show you a video of last weekend.
[00:32:35] I do not have it here. I apologize, everybody. I was going to show a video. Probably wasn't the biggest deal in the world, if it to show it or not. And that was of.
[00:32:45] I went, I participated in an event since in Cincinnati, they had their pride parade last weekend, and a number of catholic men, a number of catholic men who organized under the term catholic action, they decided to pray in reparation on the cathedral steps. Now, the thing to note here is that our pride parade in Cincinnati starts literally right next to our cathedral. And so basically what they said was, we're gonna get catholic men, we're gonna call them, to pray on the steps for multiple things. The main thing was reparation for the sins of the participants of pride and things like that. Beg for the reparation to the sacred heart. Beg. Beg his mercy. Uh, pray for the conversion of sinners. And also, to be honest, to be on the steps of the cathedral. This is out kind of take up space, as Taylor Marshall talks about take up space that, hey, this is our, our church. We're not going to let you come up because in previous years, people would just kind of walk the pride participant, walk up the steps, be next to cathedral, stuff like that. You don't know what's going to happen, and we know what's happened in other places. So we're like, no, we're going to protect the church. And not in some formal sense, but just, we're going to be there to be like, hey, this is our space. This is a catholic church, and we're going to pray for your souls. And so I made a little video of it, and it did. Lots of views on it of us doing this. But what got me thinking was I saw a well known Catholic talking last week about how we need to show compassion and love towards those who have gender, you know, confusion, and make sure we recognize their dignity.
[00:34:27] And I thought to myself, that's somebody who doesn't recognize the time we are in. This isn't 2008. This isn't 1998 or something like that, where we're talking all about how we need to recognize the dignity of people who have gender confusion or homosexual or something like that. Because the fact is, nobody in the catholic church denies that. There's not one person in the Catholic Church who thinks that a person who has same sex attraction doesn't have dignity as a child of God or that somebody who claims to be a woman, who claims to be a man doesn't have a certain dignity given to them by God.
[00:35:08] So that's when you say that what you're doing is you're basically weakening the church's strong position against these things and the need to fight against it. Because here's the thing. It's like they're fighting. The other side is fighting with nukes and we're fighting with sticks because we're just saying, oh, no, we can't say anything that might make them think that we don't appreciate their dignity.
[00:35:33] And what I find is, like, whereas I support, and all the men who at this were at this, praying at this, this pride parade would say, we support that. Yes, these people have dignity and they should be treated with compassion.
[00:35:47] All of us would support that. But what I've noticed is very few people, especially the well known catholic crowd, support doing things like what we did on Saturday. We had 100 men, but we should have had a thousand.
[00:36:01] And the fact, and God bless the men who organized it, like I said, catholic action is their name. They're kind of a new group here in the area, and they're hoping this catches on other places as well.
[00:36:12] But, like, so few people support what we did, they look at this as, like, distasteful that we really shouldn't be out there because, like, people will think we hate them. I guarantee people who came by probably thought we were the pride. People thought we were crazy. One lady yelled at us like, jesus isn't white.
[00:36:30] I mean, Jesus wasn't a grasshopper either. But, like, what's that got to do with anything but the fact is, when she saw us staying there, she assumed because that's just what her tribe tells her, what the media tells her. There were a bunch of white nationalists or like, you know, white supremacists or whatever.
[00:36:46] And of course that's not the case at all. And that's why some of the more respectable Catholics, they don't want to participate in this stuff because they're afraid it'll make them look unloving. It'll make them look as a hater or something like that. Here's thing. You will be called that and people will think you're unloving.
[00:37:04] But we're no longer in like 1998 where it's not really clear what their goals are, what the goals of the homosexual movement is and transgender movement is. They want a complete destruction of the Catholic Church. They want to take your kids. They want to groom your kids to be one of them.
[00:37:23] And if that's not worth fighting for, I actually. I just don't know what else you fight for.
[00:37:28] There's a lack of militancy. We were just talking about militancy, what it really is and isn't before, but there's a total lack of militancy and so much the establishment church and talk you, you know, last week I was talking about the Eucharistic Congress, which I hope does a lot of good work. I'm going to go to it. But you're not going to get any speaker there who's going to be militant? Who's going to be truly militant. Do you really think they would invite Bishop Schneider for Bishop Strickland? Let's use him since he's american.
[00:37:54] I mean, Bishop Strickland ain't getting invited to that.
[00:37:59] They're unwilling to do what we need to do today, which is to really fight back. And by fight back, just to be clear, for the YouTube algorithm that wants to cancel me, I'm not saying with violence. I'm saying that was doing things like what we did last weekend where we stood right there next to the pride parade and we prayed loudly. We held up signs of Sacred Heart. We had a couple signs that said that June is not a month for sinful pride, but for the sacred Heart of Jesus. And we just stood in the face of evil. This is something I remember from the pro life days, my pro life when I was very involved full time in pro life work back in about 30 years ago, still true today, but less so. Nobody wanted to go to the abortion clinics. I'm very happy, by the way, that much more, many more pro lifers do that now. But back in the early nineties, nobody wanted to go to the abortion clinics. Why? Because they would look as if they were hateful. They would look unloving towards the mothers. But, yeah, we were there, standing there resisting evil, directly being militant, because we had to be. And sure enough, many babies were saved. I would say, in fact, it's the people who have gone to the abortion clinics over the years who kept the movement alive, whereas a lot of more respectable pro lifers are like, we're not going to do that because we need to make sure they know we love them and things like that. But they want to kill our babies.
[00:39:21] Do we really just have to? The only thing we care about is being loving to them. That's, you know, it's like they say, the church of nice.
[00:39:28] And so I really feel like this is the case with resisting pride, with resisting the LGBTQ movement, whatever you want to call it, is we need to be militant. Like. Like in a pro life world, you need to go right to where they are. You need to make them uncomfortable at their events in the sense that we're not going to just let you get away with this and not have some resistance in a prayerful way. Like, we just. At abortion clinics, all we did was we would pray and we would. You know, sometimes we would block the clinic doors before that became a felony. But those are things we would do. We need to do that well. And so if we're going to, we. We need to recognize, like I said, the moment we're in, we're not 20 years ago, where we're just trying to make sure people know that. That we love them and things like that. We need to show we love them by resisting the evil. We need to stand up 100% to it. Militancy isn't acting like a tough guy on twitter and being like, oh, you should, you know, reject the pope, whatever. Militancy is standing directly in the face of evil and having a christian response to it. And the christian response is just like our lord when he was arrested. He didn't go. He didn't run away. He didn't act like Mister tough guy, but he did stand in the face of evil. And that's what we need to do as well. So I really want to encourage people that when a pride parade rolls around, don't just let it go without saying anything. When. Okay, here's another good example. When pride takes over your public library, if you use your public library, go and tell them that you don't want this crap. There. Let make them uncomfortable. Yes, make the worker uncomfortable because you're awkwardly telling them very loudly. I mean, not obnoxiously, but like, loud enough for people to hear that, no, I do not want this at my library do things like that because we need to make it very clear. I do think the tide has started to turn a little bit. The enthusiasm for these pride things has decreased. I noticed very much so this year there were less people. This is anecdotal. The media will tell you there's a billion people there no matter what. But last year, for example, a lot more people walked next in front of us. And, like, the line on the street for the people kind of watching the parade last year, I remember you could not get up to the front. It was deep enough that it was like two or three deep. This year, I could have walked right up to the edge of it because there wasn't enough people standing there. Again, maybe it was just because it was hot this year, but I do think that there is. There's something to be said for. I think there's a lessening of enthusiasm for the pride events and an increase in the resistance to it. You see a lot of pushback now online as well. Like when they announced something about the Pride parade on the local news and they tweet it. A lot of people will now resist it when they talk about all the Texas Rangers don't have a pride night. A lot of people will argue against that. So I think that's good. I think that's what we need to do as church militant. We have to recognize the time we're in. We're not in a time. This isn't the 1950s, where the main thing we have to worry about is being loving. It's not like it's Uganda, where everybody agrees to homosexuality, evil. We need to explain what. How we pastorally deal with people who have same sex attraction. We're living in America in 2024. They are coming for your kids. You need to resist it. You need to be militantly against it. I think that's something that we need to recognize as Catholics. We need to stand up to what is happening and recognize the moment and not just focus only on, oh, we need to make sure. Recognize their dignity and that we love them, things like that. They're going to think we hate them no matter what, no matter how nice you are. That's. That's the irony here. The. The well known Catholic who's really nice about it and somebody like me or somebody who isn't nice about it. They think both of us hate them.
[00:43:09] So you might as well do what we need to do to resist whether or not they think you hate them or not. Okay, I think that's it for now. I'm going to, I'm going to wrap it up there. I just want. It's a tough time. As a Catholic, there's a lot going, a lot of confusion. Last scandal. I think what we need to do is focus on Jesus, focus on the tradition of the church, and remain faithful to the church, which includes being part of the visible church, being united to the visible church, and it includes fighting against the attacks from the outside, particularly attacks from the inside. If we do that, we really are the true church militant. Okay, that's it for now, everybody. Until next time. God, love.
Both the Vatican and our surrounding culture are attacking faithful Catholics: how should the Church Militant respond?
