Why Won't Bishops Say Muslims Need Christ?

[00:00:00] Foreign. [00:00:10] Welcome to Crisis Point. I'm Eric Sammons, your host, editor in chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, you know what I want you to do? I want you to hit that subscribe button. I want you to smash the like button. Let the almighty algorithm know that you are listening and watching. And that way they will let other people know that you're listening and watching. We've had a lot new Subscript subscribers in the last couple weeks, hundreds of them. I really appreciate everybody who hit subscribe. I really do. And I appreciate if you continue to do it. Oh, also, before I forget, we're actually doing a mini fundraising campaign right now at Crisis Magazine. Just go to crisis magazine.com you'll get a little pop up that tells you about it and you can, and we'd appreciate if you donate. [00:00:52] All our content that we offer is free, but it's not free to produce. We do have to pay our bills, which includes paying our great writers over at Crisis magazine. [00:01:02] Okay, so what I want to talk about today is Islam. And I want to talk about in the context of a number of things. I, it was like I was going through the news. I usually, when I'm going to do one of these podcasts I like, can I go through the news, kind of see what's going on? And I noticed a little bit of a thread of multiple stories that involved Islam, involve Muslims, including, you know, today's election day, including the, I think it's the Senate race in Michigan with a, with a Muslim candidate there on the Democratic side and a completely weak and pathetic Republican on the other side. And I'll talk about that a little bit. This is not a voting podcast. If you want to go vote, go vote. If you don't, I don't care. I want to talk no more about the Catholic Churches, the way Catholic leaders are approaching Muslims, as far as it comes to how they treat their religion, how they treat them, as far as potential converts. Why do they not want to convert them? It seems like to me. And this is a follow up. So this is a follow up to last week's podcast about Bishop Barron and about him calling out Cardinal Vesco and that, in fact, I'll lead with that. I'm going to end up telling a number of different stories about Islam here, including one that involves me, bishops, how they deal with Islam. I got some inside information about a book I wrote a number of years ago, the usccb. I had to go through USCCB to get it approved. And there was some hiccups when it came to Their attitude towards Islam versus my attitude towards Islam. [00:02:33] Okay, so going back to Colonel Vesco, as we, as I noted last week on the podcast, Bishop Barron, he, he called him out because Vesco said things basically like we're not there to convert. [00:02:47] And what Vesco said was we are the church of this people. Not proselytizing church, not a church that is there to convert. And he's talking about Algeria, which is predominantly Muslim. [00:03:01] And so he was, he doubled down on it later because they asked him about it when, when Bishop called him out, like controversy around it. [00:03:09] And Vesco said that the believers of the three monotheisms, I assume he means Judaism, Christianity, Islam, quote, have better things to do than to seek to convert one another. [00:03:21] So he's just doubling down. He's doubling down. He also, he quoted, of course, all the typical things. He quoted the Assisi meanings. He quoted the Abu Dhabi Declaration, which is just scandal that cries to heaven to be completely destroyed and forgotten. [00:03:38] And so. But in his context, there is, for example, in Algeria, you can get up to five years in prison for inciting or seducing a Muslim to convert or materials meant to shake the faith of a Muslim. [00:03:53] So I think we need, I recognize this, my last week's podcast, that the reality that somebody like a Cardinal Vesco lives under is very different than a reality somebody like Bishop Baron or most of us who are listening to this live under. [00:04:07] It's not the same. It is definitely much more difficult to live as a Catholic among Muslims in Algeria. No question about that. The problem though is, is that there's understandable prudence. I get that. Like I said, I don't expect Cardinal Vesco to evangelize, share his faith the same as somebody like a Bishop Baron. I understand there's going to be differences. There is an understandable prudence because of the persecution laws, because the way things are. [00:04:39] But that's not what Vesco's saying. He's basically making this, what he thinks the whole universal church should be living out this idea that we should not be reaching out and trying to convert anybody. That's essentially what he is saying. [00:04:53] So he's making his own prudential decisions in his Muslim dominated country, which I would even disagree on some level with those. [00:05:03] But he's trying to make it now like it's a universal law. Like Catholics don't evangelize. The reality is Catholics are called to evangelize no matter where they are. Even in a Muslim dominated country. There's so many examples of past saints, past missionaries who have gone to Islam dominated countries and have evangelized and had been killed for it. Often the Franciscan proto martyrs, the first martyrs of Franciscan order, they basically went, I think it was Monaco, I can't remember exactly what country it was. And they would go into mosques proclaiming the gospel, proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord. They get kicked out, they get arrested, they go back again, they go back again and again until finally they were killed. [00:05:43] And you know, St. Francis of Assisi said, he said, oh, in the future we're going to have a meeting in Assisi about peace, where we all get together and pray together. And so really those proto martyrs, I don't like them. [00:05:55] No, that's not what he said. That's not what he said. He said they are the example of true Franciscans. That's what St. Francis said about those proto martyrs, men who went to a Muslim dominated country, proclaimed the gospel until they were killed. [00:06:08] That was St. Francis's idea of an ideal Franciscan. [00:06:12] And so this, you know, the Assisi being the place where we, we basically promote religious indifference is such a scandal and it's such a mark against what, what they're doing. And it's making St. Francis roll over in his grave. [00:06:27] And so like really the, the, it's not just a matter of prudence, it's a matter of, he's trying to change the way the Catholics live. And I want to contrast him here, Cardinal Vesco, with another, with another cardinal, one who is also based in Africa, and that is Cardinal Seurat, Cardinal Robert Seurat. Most of our audience probably knows who he is. An interview he did back in April has kind of come back up and made viral on social media recently. [00:06:57] And in it he basically, he's promoting his new book, I think it's called 2050 and it's talking about kind of the future of the West. [00:07:05] And he was asked about Western anxiety over Islam, Islamization and immigration, what the church's role towards Islam should be. [00:07:13] And he basically said, he did say, I mean, okay, he did say, we, we, of course we must respect Islam. And this is something that most of the cardinals say. I don't actually think we need to respect Islam. Myself, I would disagree with that. Islam is a false religion created by a false prophet that teaches false things. [00:07:33] And so, and really if you know the history of Islam, of how Muhammad started Islam, it's hard to have respect for it now. We have, we can't have respect for Muslims, people who, who are, are Muslim, because as images of God as, you know, they might be fine people in Many ways, things like that. And we always would uphold their human dignity as in the image and likeness of God. But we don't have to respect Islam. But then Cardinal sir does say that Islam can question and wake up Christians. [00:08:02] Like, he basically says that, you know, Muslims, they pray five times a day and we're only asked to go to mass once a week, but do we even do that? [00:08:12] He also said that Muslims are, can be like a spur, a goad to really help Christians understand and live their faith better. [00:08:22] And he said, you know, that, that if we don't do anything, Muslims will grow massively and we will decline. Christians will decline. The majority rules. If there are more Muslims, you will follow Muslims laws, Muslim customs. He's basically saying that's the reality. Christians need to wake up and recognize that if you do nothing, if you just play, you know, patty cakes and footsies with Muslims, then they will take over. They will take over. [00:08:48] And he says Islam is a danger. It's a danger. If Christians don't start caring about our faith. Islam will take over the West. [00:08:55] He's absolutely, he's absolutely right. [00:08:58] That and the. I want to make sure I'm clear about what Cardinal Sarah is saying. [00:09:03] He's not saying that Islam is the ultimate problem in the world. What he's saying is, is that the real problem is Christian lukewarmness. Christian lukewarmness. That we are just kind of going through the motions while so many Muslims are serious about their faith. And so what that means is they're going to take over. And that makes just sense. I mean, the organizations that, that has people more invested in it, more promoting it, more, you know, missionary in its attitude, it's going to have a bigger impact than, than the, the, the ones who are lukewarm, which Christians are. [00:09:38] And basically he's not saying that we fear Islam in the sense that, oh my gosh, we're just quaking our boots. But we out pray them, we out believe them, we out evangelize them. That's what we need to do. Which is contrast to what Colonel Vesco is saying. Colonel Seurat is saying we need to out evangelize, we need to outlive out believe the Muslims. Where Cardinal Vesco says we just need to hold hands, we have better things to do than to try to convert them. [00:10:05] So we either wake up or we're replaced. That's what Cardinal Seurat is saying. [00:10:09] And so they're coming to some of the same facts on the ground about what Islam's like, but they're Coming to opposite conclusions. Vesco basically just says, let's have coexistence together. Sirah says, no, they will take over. If we just try for coexistence, they will take over. [00:10:25] And so I think it's very. This is something, though, that we need to recognize why Cardinal Vesco is so wrong and why Cardinal Seurat is correct. If we are not serious about our faith, living out, praying, believing, practicing it, and evangelizing for it, Islam will take over because they're doing all those things. [00:10:45] And so we need to take that very seriously. [00:10:48] Now, another news story that kind of all fits into this because it's this attitude that the bishops have where they seem to be very fearful of Islamic, or at the very least, they just don't want to do anything to offend Muslims. And that is the Italian bishops and their Quran fact sheet. Now, there was some debate about this because some people were saying that the Catholic, like sheets were saying that that the Quran was the revealed word of God. Others were saying that it was just simply saying this is what Muslims believe. [00:11:16] Okay, I'm not gonna. I did not. I don't know Italian. I didn't get all into the debates to figure out exactly which one it says. [00:11:24] But it, it basically, though, is another case of a. It's a joint Catholic Muslim text. It's agreed to by both. And so it's like, why are we doing this? Why are we doing this where we have to have this, where Catholics are involved in explaining what Muslims believe? [00:11:43] Why, why do. Why do the Italian bishops think that that's something that's necessary, even if it is technically Muslim belief? [00:11:51] Why are. Why is Catholic religion class? Because that's what the. [00:11:55] To be clear, that's what the context was. It was a Catholic religion class. It's basically teaching what Islam believes. Why are they doing that? I mean, I do think there should be. In fact, I'm going to get into this in a minute. I wrote a whole book about this. I do think it's important for Catholic students, like in high school to understand what other religions believe, but from a Catholic perspective, not promoting it or saying like, basically it's equivalent almost it's just another religion among many, but instead being very clear where it's wrong. [00:12:24] And this gets to me, my story. I've told this, I think once before on the podcast, but I want to get a little more detail today. [00:12:29] So a while back, I was tasked with writing a high school religion textbook, and it was called, and it was on ecumenism and religious dialogue. Here's the book right here. [00:12:40] And this is over a decade ago now, just to be. To kind of lay the table out here to understand what the context of this. The USCCB, about 20 years ago, came up with basically a program for high school education in which they had what was required and what were electives. So required would be like a course on Sacred Scripture, a course on church history, course on Catholic morality, introduction, Catholicism. Those are required courses. And then there would be electives that high schools could choose from. So, for example, Catholic social teaching, ecumenism. Those were some of the electives. [00:13:13] And up at the time when I was asked to write this book, nobody had yet, no Catholic publisher had yet written a textbook on the. On the ecumenism, the ecumenism elective. I was, we were the first ones to do it. [00:13:28] Now, if you want to have these books used in Catholic high schools, you need to get them approved by the usccb. I mean, I know people might not immediately be like, oh, that, that, that, that's awful, whatever. But really it is good in a lot of ways because there's so many bad textbooks that were going off as Catholic for many years. USCCB was trying to address a real need and so basically said, okay, here is a textbook. You know, we're going to approve textbooks that are, that are in Catholic high schools. [00:13:56] And so basically, the ecumenism textbook, it was the first time we. I wrote it, and in one way you could like, it's almost like a world religious textbook for Catholic high schools. What it does is the first number of chapters is all about Catholicism, why Catholicism is true. [00:14:12] Then it goes kind of outward from there from the religions most like Catholicism, most to the ones least like Catholicism. So Eastern Orthodoxy is the next chapter. After the first few chapters, there's a chapter on Eastern Orthodoxy, a chapter on Protestantism. Then we go into non Christian ones like Judaism, then Islam and other religions. And so it basically, the point was, my task was to write a book for Catholic high school students to understand these different religions that are not Catholic, but from a Catholic perspective. So I'm not there to promote these religions. I'm there to promote Catholicism and explain what these religions, what teachings of theirs were true and what teachings of theirs were not true. [00:14:53] And so we submitted this to the usccb, but because it was the first time an accused ecumenism textbook was ever submitted to them, they actually did something odd. They didn't just go to the textbook committee that, that does all this, know all the other textbooks they did there. But they also then sent a Copy over to the, like the Ecumenism Office Interreligious Dialogue Office in the USCCB and got their notes as well and had them have to approve it as well, which is a little bit odd. [00:15:21] But I rem. I still remember this day. Getting that, getting the notes, getting the document. I have it up here. Let me find it here real quick. [00:15:32] It is. How many pages is this document? [00:15:35] Let me find it here. [00:15:39] It's 18 pages. So again, an 18 page document that explains all its. All the remarks from the Ecumenism Office. [00:15:47] Let me find the exact title of it. It was the. [00:15:55] I can't find it here. So. Okay, okay. Anyway, it's the Ecumenism off an Interreligious Dialogue Office at the usccp. Okay, so the part that I want to mention and some of these comments were like, okay, whatever, but they really did not like my whole section on Islam. And I want to kind of bring that up here. Here it is. Let me find it again. I just scrolled away. Now I lost it. [00:16:17] Oh, there we go. [00:16:20] Okay, so the part about Islam, it basically starts by saying, boy, why can I not find it here? [00:16:28] I just get. It's chapter eight. Let me find it. [00:16:31] This is riveting podcast. I know right now, isn't it? Oh, there we go. Okay, so the major remarks. I want to read to you what it wrote, what they wrote about, about my chapter on Islam and other religions. It said. Overall, the tone is negative. It seems to highlight many negatives about Islam, I. E. Its conquest and hostility towards Christians, without offering similar highlights of real positives of Islam, especially practice. When positives aren't mentioned, they're presented in a neutral manner, eg, the five Pillars form the basis of Muslim spirituality and that's it. More precisely, compare the strong language of the first paragraph under the subtitle the Crusades on page 259 would say the very unanimated language in the opening paragraphs under Islamic belief and practices. [00:17:19] This kind of style seems to establish a tone of we versus them and again, seems to present the Muslims in a negative light by highlighting their flaws, sins, while passing over with less strident, colorful language their virtues, eg, the five Pillars. This latter perhaps does damage to dialogue by seemingly always pitting our best against their worst. An uneven, though perhaps unintentional way of keeping Islam in an inferior position. [00:17:44] While there are serious flaws with Islam, the book, a book on ecumenism and religious dialogue, it seems best to put the other religions in a more positive light. Okay, I want to remind people what the Purpose of this textbook is it's to teach Catholic students about other religions. And so yes, it will put non Catholic religions in an inferior light. I don't see any problem with that. If you read the textbook, you would know what I originally wrote. Some of this got cut out for the actual textbook. You'll, you'll see it's not like flamethrowing. I'm not flame throwing at all. I basically am just, I'm outlining what Islam's like. I'm just saying what it's like. [00:18:22] Now the, the, the, the duty, the responsibility, USCCB is simply to note if the text is in conformity with Catholic doctrine. [00:18:33] And so questions of tone really aren't relevant. [00:18:37] Whether or not I put them in Islam in an inferior light that does not in any way reflect on Catholic. Whether or not I'm in conformity with Catholic doctrine. This is a prudential decision. And also they're talking about how this might, excuse me, harm dialogue. These kids aren't involved in dialogue. They need to know the truth about what Islam's like and what Catholicism's like. [00:19:00] But what, what, what really is happening is what I wrote makes them uncomfortable at their, at their cocktail meetings with, with Muslims at their inter religious dialogue meetings. I mean, basically the verdict is this text will need substantial revisions to come into conformity with Catholic teaching. But like everything I just read to you before, the major remarks had nothing to do with Catholic teaching. They had nothing to do with Catholic teaching. This is especially true in regard to our relationship with the Jewish and Muslim communities. Yeah, I didn't like what I said about Jewish Jews either. We cannot approve the text is currently written. [00:19:34] But it's like, how can you not prove it when your, your criticisms were not that? Okay, what you are saying is contrary to Catholic teaching. If you did that, I would be, yeah, we shouldn't publish that. [00:19:47] It's saying we don't like your tone. We don't like the way you present Islam. [00:19:52] I mean, at one point it says, we must be very careful here. This smacks of proselytism, which would really offend the Muslims. That's a literal, exact quote from this document from the accb. [00:20:02] It smacks of proselytism, which would really offend the Muslims. [00:20:06] I mean, what are we even doing here, people? The is the point of a Catholic high school textbook not to offend Muslims. That's what we have to worry about. I want to say something very clear. If for example, Islam had a textbook that they did in their high schools that about Catholicism, I wouldn't expect them to worry about offending us. In fact, I expect they wouldn't care and they shouldn't care, frankly. [00:20:33] But we, however we clutch our pearls, worried that we might offend some Muslim who might get his hands on a textbook in a Catholic school. [00:20:44] And also, it's like I, I mentioned, like, although I, I have also, I have, I have a little section in there about violence in Christianity and Islam and comparing and contrasting them. [00:20:56] And they said the USCCB says although, although violence was an integral part of Muhammad's life. [00:21:01] I wrote that. I wrote, although violence was. They said Muslims would be offended and consider the treatment of their prophet as an insult. Okay, fine. [00:21:10] I mean, we're not allowed to write about Islam if we think it might be insulting to Muslims. [00:21:17] Why even bother even trying to be Catholic at this point? I mean, think about, again, think about what it was like, what Catholics were like for, for centuries. We didn't concern ourselves and be like, oh no, we might offend a Muslim if we say something that's not exactly 100 positive about their prophet. [00:21:36] And you know, ultimately I, I push back. I just want to be clear. I pushed back and we did. We were able to keep a lot of it in there, but not all of it. I pushed back because I was just like, this is not, in fact, let me just put up kind of my, one of my main things I wrote about this, I said, I believe there is a fundamental disagreement as to the purpose and audience of this high school textbook. This is what I'm writing to the USCCB about, you know, through the publisher about this, as directed by the publisher. I wrote this text for two purposes. One, to explain the teachings of the major non Catholic Christian and non Christian religious traditions to high school students, and two, to show how these traditions differ from Catholicism while noting the truth of Catholicism. [00:22:23] Reading this report, it appears that USCCB sees the text primarily as another document produced by an ecumenical or interreligious committee with an intended audience of scholars who read such documents. [00:22:34] For a high school textbook, it is important to clearly state the truth of Catholicism, noting where other traditions share that truth, but also being clear where they differ, are in error. [00:22:44] Many times in this report, the USCCB appears to be concerned with the reaction of non Catholic scholars. But the text needs to remain clear and even simple at times in order to be effective in reaching Catholic high school students. [00:22:58] I mean, I want to say the book. I do. I am. [00:23:00] It is ironic. I know that I have a book called Ecumenism Interreligious Dialogue when later I Wrote a book called Deadly Indifference where I'm kind of railing on the ecumenical and religious dialogue movements. I did have some development of, of my thoughts. I do still think the book is a good one. I don't think they were able to cut out enough, but it's not as strong as I wrote it, as I originally wrote it. But you see, this is all kind of part of the same, the same problem in the church that our Catholic leaders, the bishops, cardinals, so many of them, with very few, with a few exceptions, they, they want to kowtow to Islam and they just aren't willing to stand up to it. Now again, I'm not saying that I think Cardinal Vesco needs to stand on the street corner and preach the gospel in the middle of Algeria. Although he would go to heaven if he did do that and was martyred. So maybe he should do it. I mean he can do other methods. He's not required to do is what I'm saying. It'd be great if he did. He can do other methods, but he shouldn't when he's outside of Algeria. Whatever. He shouldn't be saying, oh, we shouldn't ever try to convert Catholics. I mean Muslims, just keep your mouth shut, just don't even talk about it. If you're not, if you're not willing to just acknowledge what the church has always taught, which is we have a duty to try to convert non Catholics. [00:24:16] And so like the whole issue then we have with Islam is it's coming to, to a head in so many places, obviously in Western Europe with all the immigration. But here in America too we have the, the mayor of New York. And right now we had this Abdul El Said who is running for Senate in Michigan. Today is the election day. It does look like he's going to win. That's what the polls say. I don't know. He's running against Mike Rogers which had. Not only is his campaign boring, but his name is boring. Mike Rogers and, and like, and he's, and Mike Rogers is, is a just a nothing burger. I mean he just came out a couple days ago. He actually got Catholic vote to rescind their support endorsement of him. That's how bad he is. I mean Catholic votes pretty. I mean they're not. I like Catholic vote. I don't want to make this like I'm against Catholic vote, but I would just put this way, they endorse a number of candidates. I don't think Catholics should endorse, maybe vote for, but not endorse just because they, they say they're pro life and that's enough. I don't think you should do that. But they actually rescinded it with Mike Rogers because Mike Rogers basically came out and admitted he's pro choice just a couple days before election. Who's he gonna, what votes are he, is he going to get for doing that? [00:25:28] But this is about Mike Rogers. His, his opponent is Abdul Al Sadi Saeed. And what he's made news for recently is that he's trying to compare, compare the church's canon law with Islam Sharia law. [00:25:43] He's on the Jesse Water Show. He said, do you know what canon law is, Jesse? Canon law is a name for Christian law. Nobody's trying to push Sharia law on anyone else. Just like I hope nobody's trying to push Cannon law on anyone else. [00:25:55] And yeah, I, I, first of all, how many things in this are not true? A lot of them. Nobody's trying to push Sharia law on anyone else. I just want to make it clear that, you know, that within Islam it's moral to lie to non Muslims about things like this. [00:26:09] So you have to take that with a huge grain of salt. We know Sharia laws, it gets pushed on people. [00:26:15] And so he basically is trying to act like Sharia law and canon law are basically equivalent and they're simply not true. It's simply not true. I mean, canon. And he said this multiple times, Canon law, the purpose of canon law is to order the church's light, internal life. It does not, you know, for the sacraments, for clergy, for diocese. It is not a law for the civil state, it is not a law for the civil state. It's for the internal governance of the Catholic Church. What happens if a bishop does this improperly? What happens if a pastor does this? What happens if a, you know, somebody baptized wants to get married to a non baptized person? You know, all those different things that the church has thought about for centuries. The church is an institution, it needs a law. And that's what canon law is. That's not what Sharia law is. Sharia law goes beyond the Muslim community. Sharia law is a civil law as well. [00:27:06] Sharia law is intended to be a civil law. It reaches family law, criminal punishment, the state. [00:27:12] It is essentially the, the overriding overall law in a Muslim majority country. Sharia law is the law. [00:27:20] And so the idea that they're kind of similar, it's really not true. [00:27:27] And so like, I think this is, this is, we're seeing this though, because of all of the massive immigration that we've allowed in the past into this country. And of course, in Western Europe, you see the rise of Islam because again, as Carlos Ra said, they are serious about their faith and we are not. And so because of that, they will start to take over. [00:27:46] Now, I will say one thing. I want to be clear about something. [00:27:49] I feel like in politics, American politics, you always have to be one extreme or the other. And you, you, you will not at all see anything positive about the other guys. [00:28:02] I think what I've seen is you have like the neocons, the conservative neocons who are very much against Islam. They're the ones who are the loudest in preaching against Islam, the dangers of Islam, but they're also in bed with Israel. 100 with Israel, and they think Israel can do no wrong. [00:28:19] And what's grown on the conservative side on the other way is you have like the America first people, the Nick Fuentes people, like that, Tucker Carlson, who are very much aware of the problems of Israel and they will criticize Israel. But like, I've noticed, like Tucker, he's like, cozying up the Muslims, like, oh, they're actually not that bad. They're fine. They're not going to do anything bad. [00:28:41] And to me, I'm like, you're all crazy. [00:28:44] You're all crazy. Islam is a real threat, but frankly, so is the influence of Israel. [00:28:51] They're both a problem. [00:28:53] As a Catholic and as an American, I don't want either Israel or Islam influencing how we run things because I think both end up being problematic. So I'm not going to get on the side of the neocons and be like, okay, Islam is the biggest, is the only real, biggest problem in the world, and Israel is great and does nothing wrong. And I'm not going to get on the side of the America first completely, completely either, where they're like, hey, you know, Israel is the greatest evil in the world. But Islam, they're not so bad. They're like a common friend. They're the friend against a common enemy. No, they're both, they're both bad. They're both bad. Both Israel, its influence, and Islam, especially from a Catholic perspective. We want them both to convert. We want every Muslim to convert. We want every Jew to convert. It's not like we're selective in who we want to convert. [00:29:41] We want them all. [00:29:43] Again, like I said, you know, the lady said, are we that desperate? And I said this story last week about, are we that desperate to convert people? Yes, we are. We want to convert everybody. And so I just Think that we have to recognize that, yes, this, this problem of Islam is a real problem and we shouldn't act like it's not a problem. Now I'm not even telling you people out there, by the way, go out and vote for Mike Rogers. That guy's a loser. That guy's a complete loser. [00:30:07] But I will say Abdul Al Sadid, you know, he's a big problem as well. And probably the bigger problem. I will admit that. I will admit that. [00:30:15] But honestly, I'm tired of voting for Republicans who, who don't even give lip service anymore. At least for years they gave lip service to like the pro life movement. They're not even giving that anymore. They never did anything for the pro life movement. They just give lip service to it. [00:30:28] And so what we need to do is we need to really, I think we just need to look at everything from a Catholic lens. Call me simplistic, call me easy, you know, simple, whatever, I don't care. I just think we look at everything through a Catholic lens. So we look at Islam, we look at Judaism, we look at all non Catholic religions through a Catholic lens. And that lens is we want them to convert. [00:30:48] And I know that there's some issues with how the church has said this in recent years. [00:30:53] Like at Vatican ii, Nostra Aetate says the church regards with esteem also the Muslims, they adore the one God. [00:31:03] I have a problem with that. I'll admit it. I think there are ways you could whiteboard that and interpret that, that it's not that, that it's not heretical. I do, I do think that. But it can be easily, easily. In fact, probably the majority of the people who interpret that, interpret it heretically. [00:31:21] And so, like, because they don't worship the same God as us, they worship an invented God. Yes, they do worship a one God. So they're right about the fact that there's only one God. [00:31:29] But their one God is not the triune God of Christianity or even the God, you know, who is also the God of ancient Judaism. [00:31:38] And so this is, you know, I do have an issue with that. But even that being said, the church has also made clear, like Indominus Jesus, which is the CDF document from 2000, that followers of other religions are in a, quote, gravely deficient situation compared to those in the church. And the church must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord and to announcing the necessity of conversion. Jesus Christ. I want to read that again. This is the Dominus Asus written by Cardinal Ratzinger, when he's had a congregation doctrine of faith in 2000, it says the church, quote, must be primarily committed to proclaiming to all people the truth definitively revealed by the Lord and to announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ in quote. So first note to all people, no exceptions. It doesn't matter what you are, if you are not Catholic, and heck, even for Catholic, we should claim to you too. All people need to hear about Jesus Christ, the revealed truth about Catholicism. And also there is a. The proc. Announcing the necessity of conversion. So what Cardinal Vesco is saying and so many bishops are basically practicing is in direct contradiction to this. [00:32:54] And so like, we, you know, we can have a certain amount of respect for people who practice another religion in that they are creating the image and likeness of God. They might be good, they might be moral people in many ways, but that doesn't mean we have to respect their religions. We want to call them out of their religions into the fullness of the truth. We need to, basically, we need to pray for missionary. We need to pray that the Lord would raise up missionaries who would proclaim the gospel even in countries like Algeria and throughout the world. [00:33:28] And so like today, I just, I. [00:33:32] The problem of Islam is. Is multifaceted. It's multifaceted. On the one hand, you have the fact that so many people in the church are basically not doing any acting like they're our friends and they're not our friends. On the other hand, you also have Muslims gaining more and more power in Western Europe in this country. I mean, the mayor of London and the mayor of New York are both Islam Muslim. I mean, think about even 20 years ago, 10 years ago, even if you'd said that, that would have been just radical, that'd been crazy, but it's true. [00:34:02] And they have a completely different way of looking at the world. It's not the Western way, which is based on Christendom, based on Christianity. And so we really do need to resist it and we need to fight against it in so many ways. And we need to always insist that we need to convert people to Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church, period, end of story, no matter what. And that we're not. We don't. If it's. If what we say sometimes is insulting or offensive to his Islam, so be it, so be it. We, we can't help it. We, we can't but proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. [00:34:33] Okay, let me pull up some of the comments here. I will say my assistant who pulls up these comments, she's no longer with us. She took another job and I, I, I wish her well, but that means I have to, I, I have to do this myself. So hopefully I'll get most of them. Okay, so we have Camille, I think it is, says, why won't bishops say Muslims need Christ? And he follows it up with this. Because they are bureaucrats pretending to be shepherds. [00:34:57] Yeah, that's true. Another Dave says they're literally afraid of them. [00:35:02] Yeah, I think, I think in some cases they are and get. Okay. I don't want to act like I am some type of, you know, I would be scared. I would be scared too is what I'm trying to say. You don't see me volunteering to go over to Saudi Arabia, Algeria to convert Islam. But at the same time there's a reason we have priestly celibacy. There's a lot of reasons. One though is that they would, we'd hope they wouldn't have the earthly attachments so they could have more courage. So a cardinal living in a Muslim dominated country, I hope he would have courage and he wouldn't have as much fear as somebody like I would have. [00:35:38] And that's what they're called to, it's one of the reasons why they are, I mean that's why they're celibate is they don't have this. [00:35:46] They don't have this. [00:35:48] The ties to this world that we might have. [00:35:52] Okay. Binky says the Great Commission has, has not been abrogated. Absolutely, Absolutely. [00:36:00] Okay. The good fight. Tony says yes, indifferentism is an offense to all the saints, martyrs who gave their lives to preach the gospel. Amen. It really is. If you really, if you read the history of the saints and the martyrs, you will see indifferentism that exists. A true offense to them. I mean, it really is an offense to them. [00:36:22] Biggie says Jesus is appearing in visions to Muslims, converting them. Apparently he and that cardinal do not agree. Yes, it's a good way to put it. And I've heard this, I've heard stories about this that Muslims are converting with because they're getting appearances of Jesus Christ himself. Maybe Jesus is like, okay, if you people aren't going to do it, I'm just going to do it myself. I mean, we should be the ones doing it. But you know, maybe that's what Jesus is saying right now. [00:36:44] Yes, I don't think he does agree with, with that. [00:36:48] Okay. [00:36:50] Likewise, Father Rippinger and other Catholic influencers are converting me. Young Muslims. I, I've not heard that, but I hope so. That would Be great. I praise that. That is true. [00:36:58] I, I really hope that's true. Okay, let me see what else we got. That. [00:37:03] It's tricky time to be the good fight. Tony says it's a tricky time to be Catholic. The laity have to push back without crossing boundaries of authority and prudence. I have my own experience, my own parish and diocese with great success. That's. I think it's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up, Tony. I think that's a good point. It's tricky. It is tricky because the reality is we could all slave people, could just, like, rail on bishops all day, could attack them, could see how awful they are. We could just be, we could just be nasty people all the time. But is that really helping things? Is that really helping things? I mean, I've talked about this here on the, on the podcast. I've talked about this Christ magazine that we're trying to take a little bit of different tackles. Yes, we do. I mean, like this, this podcast today, the episode is a lot about what bishops are doing wrong. It was more about, really about Islam and the threat of Islam. But, like, really, I also had, you know, a podcast last week talking about how great Bishop Barron was for what he was doing. And so I do think we have to have some prudence in how we go about trying to make things better. I think that's important. So that parish you went door to door for doesn't sound like one you'd want to invite someone to at the Boomerose, right? Representative. Well, I know he's talking about the story I told last week about, like, how we went door to door and we're trying to invite people to our parish. And yes, of course, we have. As ever, it was just a regular diocesan parish. We had people like boomers who were like, we don't really want new people, but it was, it was very good in a lot of ways. Lots of good people. The pastor was the one who had the idea to do the door to door campaign, and so he had a real zeal for souls. So I, I, it was a good thing overall. So, okay, let me see. Last one. Huskers in Royals, Gal St Clair of Assisi drove away a horde of invading Muslims by holding up the monsters. Yeah, I think, I'm not, I've heard that story in different ways, but basically, essentially, that's right. Muslims going to attack the convent, and she, with the, with the Blessed Sacrament, was able to repel them. I do think we have to have some faith. We have to have some faith that, yeah, guess what? If you, if we are faithful to Christ, yes, there will be times we'll be martyr, but there will also be many times where we will be protected and where souls will be saved. [00:39:02] It's not like, I mean, every. Most martyrs had some success in converting people before they were martyred. [00:39:08] And so it was totally worth it. I mean, trust in the Lord, people. Trust in the Lord. Your eminences, your excellencies. That God will take care of us. [00:39:18] Okay, I'm gonna leave it there. One last thing I want to say is I wanted to encourage people to. As I've been doing here at the end, I encourage people to purchase my book, pre order the Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence and let me try to find the. There it is. I'll put the COVID here. The Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence. [00:39:36] It's I. Okay, I got to tell a little story about this. You can get it at my website, ericsims.com I'll put a link in the show notes the Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence. I just want to tell a quick story before we end here. And that is. So the author copies came in and they were sent to me from the publisher and they were sent by post office and they were supposed to arrive yesterday. And they basically coming from New Hampshire and they got to Indianapolis like within a day. They're sent on Thursday, got to Indianapolis, got to Cincinnati, the Cincinnati warehouse, like the Cincinnati main hub in Cincinnati for the post office on Saturday. Then they just sit there, sit there. And all of a sudden yesterday evening it says, oh, now they're back in Indianapolis. So we went from New Hampshire to Cincinnati to Indianapolis, and now they're just singing since in Indianapolis. So I'm dying here. If any of you have ever written a book, you know, it's like having a baby. It's. It's such a huge day when you receive your books, when you give them for the first time. And I was supposed to get them yesterday and I'm still dying because I haven't gotten them yet and I know where they are. They're like lost in the mail or something. But hopefully I'll get them soon. But you will get your soon if you. Or if you pre order, you'll get in the next two weeks, I would imagine, the Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence. So check that out and I appreciate it. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you and remember the poor.