Ep 1185 ｜ Catholics Get a New Pope This Week. Here’s Why It Matters ｜ Guest： Michael Knowles
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Summary
How will the Catholic Church pick the next Pope? Who will it be? Also, is Pope Francis in purgatory? We are talking about all of this and more with one of my favorite Catholics, Michael Knowles, host of the Daily Wire on today s episode of Relatable.
Transcript
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How will the Catholic Church pick the next pope?
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We are talking about all of this and more with one of my favorite Catholics, Michael
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Knowles, the host of the Michael Knowles Show on the Daily Wire on today's episode of Relatable.
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This is really just getting informed and educated about a really big moment in Catholic Church
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history right now, whether you are a Catholic or whether you are a Protestant like me.
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I know you're going to learn a lot and really enjoy this.
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Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to come on, one of my favorite Catholics.
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And I brought you here to explain some Catholic goings-on.
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Can you explain to us what the conclave is and what is going on with the Pope, how all
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I mean, just to get the obvious question on everyone's mind out of the way up front, I
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I haven't gotten any calls from Rome yet, but I think I would look very nice in the red
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My assistant told me that any Catholic male is eligible.
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Now, it's been some centuries since anyone other than a cardinal was named, and cardinals
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are a special kind of bishop who are kind of advisors to the Pope, and they have special
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So he has this special role in the Church as the Vicar of Christ.
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And, you know, all of these bishops are the successors to the Apostles, and then there
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are the cardinals, and then there are the cardinal electors.
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Those are the cardinals who are under the age of 80, who are eligible to vote in the
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There's a period of mourning of about 15 days or so, and then there's a conclave.
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The cardinal electors fly in from all around the world, and they go, they have a mass for
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the election of the Pope, and then they go into the Sistine Chapel.
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And that's when we stop hearing anything, because they sweep the Sistine Chapel for bugs.
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They have military-grade signal scramblers that go on.
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And it's serious business because the Catholic Church is the central institution in the West.
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It doesn't matter if you're Calvinist, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, which is what a lot of people
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The Catholic Church is this institution that has existed from antiquity, made it all the
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And so there's a lot, you know, that really hinges on it, even if you're not Catholic.
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So there are a handful of candidates who have risen to the top of being considered papabili.
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It might be a guy that no one's ever even really heard of.
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But as of right now, the candidates who are really being talked about on the more liberal
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He went viral for singing Imagine by John Lennon at karaoke.
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He would definitely be on the more liberal side of things.
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He's been considered a favorite for a long time.
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Also more liberal, probably would continue some of the Francis initiatives and pontificate.
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Then you've got the candidate that a lot of people are talking about.
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That would be Cardinal Pier Battista Pizzaballa.
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I think people really like him because he has a name that's fun to pronounce.
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Though when you become pope, you take a regnal name.
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So if he chose the regnal name John, he would, of course, go from being Pizzaballa to becoming
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Then even a little bit more to the right, you've got the cardinal in Hungary, Cardinal
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A lot of the more conservative Catholics really like Cardinal Sarah out of Africa.
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He would be the first African pope, which the liberals would probably get a kick out of
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until they realize he's more right-wing than almost anyone on earth.
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But he's a little bit older, so he's probably less likely.
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Cardinal Burke in the United States would be an amazing choice.
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Also, maybe a little too old, maybe a little too conservative.
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But again, I wouldn't necessarily bet on anyone.
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There's an old saying, which is the guy who goes into the conclave of pope walks out a
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The conclaves have a habit of surprising people.
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You mentioned age, and you mentioned that some of the candidates, like Cardinal Burke, might
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Like, what is the standard that they say, okay, if you meet this, then you will be the
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Well, you have to remember that the issues top of mind for the cardinals don't map exactly
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onto the issues that are top of mind for American citizens thinking about politics, because we're
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talking about liberal and conservative cardinals.
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But if you take, let's say, the immigration issue aside, and you just look at every other
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political or political adjacent issue, every single cardinal, including the most liberal
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cardinals, is far to the right of just about any American politician, including the most right
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So it's not like there's any debate over abortion, for instance.
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You know, plenty of Republicans, even conservative Republicans, are kind of in the middle on
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Even the most liberal cardinal in the Catholic Church is extremely pro-life, and there's no
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So the issues that are going to play a bigger role, I think, are evangelization.
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I was just talking to my friend, Bishop Robert Barron, who many people know, a bishop not only
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He, you know, he said evangelization seems to be really top of mind for people.
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I'm an attendee of the traditional Latin mass, which was the mass that we had substantially
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in the same form from the year 600 until just after the Second Vatican Council.
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That's the one that's a little looser and has a lot of variety in it.
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Sometimes it's not celebrated in a reverent way.
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A lot of people think the difference between the old Latin mass and the new mass is just
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In fact, the new mass normatively should be celebrated in Latin.
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And the differences are just often the orientation of the priest.
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Is the priest facing the altar with the whole congregation?
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That gives you some kind of a sense of worship.
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Or is the priest facing you like a ham actor in a dying vaudeville show?
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The number of prayers, the participation of the laity.
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So this seems like we're getting really into the weeds here and we're all just arguing over
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But I think the liturgy is going to be really, really important because there's an old Catholic
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The way that you worship is going to affect the way that you believe.
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You know, if I, there was a study that came out a few years ago showed that only about
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30% of American Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
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That's one of the distinguishing features of sacramental theology.
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So if you've got most American Catholics not believing in that, man, something's gone really
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Well, might it be because, you know, if I receive the Eucharist kneeling on the tongue
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in a really solemn mass, that's just going to affect the way that I think about it.
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If I receive the Eucharist walking by, you know, in my hands, maybe it falls on the ground
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given to me by a lady wearing Birkenstocks or something, that's going to affect the way
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So I think that's going to be a really important issue.
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Pope Francis, this was a really strange part of his pontificate.
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At this period where a lot of the churches are emptying out, there's been a lot of growth
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among the traditional Latin mass, especially among young people, especially among people
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The median age in a lot of these Latin mass parishes is about eight years old because
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And Pope Francis severely restricted the Latin mass for whatever reason.
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Bringing in some wayward bishops, especially the bishops in Germany who have gotten a little
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bit lib and a little bit weird, that's going to be a big issue.
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Unifying the church after Francis's pontificate, which most everyone agrees was pretty divisive.
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And so, and also the fact that we've understood that Francis's health was very bad for a long
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So I don't think this is going to be a conclave that goes on for days and weeks and months
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I think this is probably going to be sorted out quickly.
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But who exactly gets it, that remains to be seen.
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You had a tweet pretty soon after he died where you remarked that we really can't judge a pope,
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or I would say really any Catholic or any Christian, according to the left-right political spectrum
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in the United States, that he kind of transcended that.
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And yet I have heard you say, and a lot of people say, he was more liberal or this guy
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And so would you assess him as a more liberal pope, restricting the Latin mass, maybe some
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Or do you think that he did his very best to try to do his job apolitically?
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Well, since we're bringing up old Latin phrases here, I'm glad you're asking me this question
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now and not two weeks ago, because there's a good old Latin expression,
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You know, of the dead, we say nothing but good as we're mourning.
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Now we have to start to assess the pontificate.
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I mean, you can't just call Pope Francis a liberal or a leftist, because on the one hand,
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the media report that he's saying all of these things about LGBT and opening up the liturgy
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to LGBT people, and in some cases was issuing papal documents, opening up the prospect of blessings
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But then on the other hand, Pope Francis said that gay marriage is a machination of the
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father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God.
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When asked about gay marriage, quote unquote, Pope Francis said, God can't bless sin.
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One of the most famous lines from his pontificate, according to reports, was this phrase,
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And I don't want to scandalize your viewers, but to give an English translation of that,
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it's, um, yeah, there's already too much faggotry.
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I, you know, anyway, it's very difficult to pin him down, but I would say by historical
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perspectives, which for a lot of people who don't pay close attention to the Catholic
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church, the oldest Pope they can name is Pope John Paul II, you know, from 25 years ago.
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And by historical standards, Francis was a liberal Pope and there were, there was a lot
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One of the cardinals I mentioned, Cardinal Burke, along with a number of other cardinals
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actually raised formal dubia, formal questions about whether or not certain things the Pope
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You know, I think there's a reason we've only had one Jesuit Pope in 2000 years.
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Um, and, and I, I think that even many of the considered moderate to even more liberal
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cardinals, I, I think they've had enough of that.
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They've had enough of the confusion and the division.
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And I, I think there is going to be a real call for a more unifying Pope to, to, uh, to
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I mean, I, I think that I have an interest in who the next Pope is and I want my fellow
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Catholics or not fellow Catholics, my Catholic friends to be led by a Pope that is in most
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And I know we don't agree on Sola Scriptura, but Catholics do believe that scripture does
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And I would think that they would believe that the Pope should be in alignment with scripture.
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Because if Catholics look to the Pope as an authority and he's not offering clarity, but
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he's offering confusion on very serious moral issues like the LGBTQ issue, I just imagine
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Would you say that he was trying to be seeker sensitive in some of those?
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Like, that's probably what we would say in the evangelical world.
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I don't like seeker sensitive churches that are trying to appeal exclusively or primarily
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Like, would you say that was maybe his motivation in trying to restrict the traditional Latin
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mass and doing some of the other things he did?
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I'll say the nicest thing I can, you know, in sincerity and truth about it.
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But Pope Francis's defenders and Pope Francis himself, I suppose, emphasized a pastoral
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approach, which, you know, a good pastoral approach should not contradict a good doctrinal
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And so, and there's, obviously, there's a very important role for pastors and prudential
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And I think this is a big generational shift that you're seeing among Catholics.
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And actually, I think among Protestants and maybe even among Eastern Orthodox, which is
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in the 1960s, the age of Aquarius, everyone was interested in innovation and changing everything
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The late Pope Benedict XVI actually pointed out in an essay that he wrote after he resigned
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He said, you know, the Catholic Church, too, found herself brought about by that spirit
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He said the Catholic Church in some ways helped to cause the spirit of the age with some of
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I talked to boomer Catholics, and I talked to older Catholics, and they're much more interested
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in loosey-goosey, let's change some teaching, you know, let's change practices.
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When I talk to young Catholics, they want the truth.
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They want smells and bells, not as idols in themselves, but they feel, I think, robbed
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of the great tradition that made so many saints and that also built our civilization, you know,
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that built the great cathedrals, that invented the universities, that created the culture that
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I grew up, before I apostatized at age 13, I grew up with a kind of loosey-goosey, feel-good,
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maybe let's call it seeker-sensitive kind of liturgy.
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And when I first discovered the traditional Latin Mass, I felt, as many young Catholics
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do, as even the New York Times, I think, is reporting right now, many young Catholics
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One of the benefits of an institution that has existed for 2,000 years is they've really
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dealt with a lot of the questions, pretty much all of them.
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So you can find the profound intellectual engagement of, say, a St. Thomas Aquinas.
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You can find the beautiful artistic engagement of all of the great painters and sculptors and
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architects of the Catholic tradition, the great musical tradition, the great scientific tradition.
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I mean, even, you know, so much of modern science comes from the Catholic Church, including
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You know, the Big Bang Theory comes from a Catholic priest, Fr.
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So you've got this wonderful tradition that has been kind of ignored for a while.
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And Pope Benedict, I think, was really, really good on this, as he was on most issues.
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However, when we're assessing something in modernity, we should see it through the light
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of tradition, going all the way back to the apostolic age, to our Lord's sojourn on
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earth, and to Holy Scripture, which is inerrant.
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And I think some of the reformers, so-called, they've tried to do it the other way.
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Anything that Catholics did for, you know, 1950 years, if it contradicts the spirit of this
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But there's a great line that's alternately attributed to a Protestant or a Catholic,
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Dean Inge or Fulton Sheen, which is, if you wed the spirit of the age, you will find
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And when you say reformers, you're talking about Catholic reformers.
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You're not talking about Calvin and Protestant.
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I'm talking about the recent people who, you know, some of whom, you know, would consider
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themselves reformers who are in this conclave right now.
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Are we going to get more of the Francis pontificate, or are we going to get something a little different?
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Now, I noticed that you didn't mention one candidate whose name just keeps coming up over
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and over again when it comes to the papacy, and that is Donald John Trump.
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Now, Michael, I have a lot of Catholics in my audience, and I had a very mixed reaction.
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I know you have, but I talked about it on Instagram.
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I was both surprised at the level of offense that some Catholics had, and even some of my
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Protestant followers had on behalf of their Catholic friends.
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But I was also surprised at how many shared what I think is your sentiment that, no, this
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And no, this doesn't make me question or regret my vote at all.
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There were a ton of Catholics in my DM saying, no, this did not bother me.
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So tell me, as a Catholic, what is your take on this AI-generated image?
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So I want to establish the principle, at least, a little via media between these two reactions.
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We should not reduce religious things to jokes.
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In fact, when Catholics go into confession and we examine our conscience, a lot of examinations
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of conscience will include, did you joke about religious things?
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Did you reduce the religious and the sacred to something vulgar and profane?
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You know, that is an extrapolation from taking the Lord's name in vain.
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However, I think we have to examine Trump's joke here.
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Because first of all, just about every conservative Catholic I know has made this exact joke in
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I have heard from Catholic friends for years, and they say, well, you know, the next Pope,
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You know, we could make the Vatican great again or something.
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It's not a joke meant to, you know, mock the Episcopacy or anything like that.
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And I don't think that that's what Trump was doing.
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I wouldn't have because I'm a Catholic and I take it seriously.
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He is the most pro-Catholic president I think we've ever had in a country that has not always
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And then I have to think, OK, let me look at the levels of offense I should feel.
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Because Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, she said, as a Catholic, I'm terribly offended,
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Kathy Hochul, governor of a state that permits murdering babies up until the moment of birth.
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And Kathy Hochul, who celebrates that, Kathy Hochul, who makes a mockery of marriage, ratifies
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a purported redefinition of marriage, marriage, which is the symbol of Christ's love for his
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I look at the predecessor to Trump, who calls himself a Catholic, Joe Biden, who supports
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slaughtering millions of babies a year, who makes a mockery of marriage, who denies sex
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as a gift from God and an aspect of our nature given to us by God.
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And furthermore, Joe Biden, a president who was vice president of an administration that
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sued nuns for being Catholic, Joe Biden, whose FBI spied on Catholics and likened us to domestic
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terrorists, Joe Biden, who imprisoned pro-lifers, many if not most of whom were Catholic, for praying
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I'm much more offended by that president than I am by President Trump, who was making a
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lighthearted joke with no ill intent whatsoever, and a joke that many other people have made.
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I think that there are plenty of Catholics who are sincerely offended by it, and fair
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enough, but I think the public hand-wringing over it is almost entirely disingenuous.
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Yeah, we've got Anna Navarro, too, you know, devout Catholic.
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Here's what she had to say on The View, saw one.
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Him tweeting out an AI-created image and the White House official account of him posing
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as the pope is disrespectful, it is frankly disgusting, and it is outraged.
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Mr. President, it's his holiness, the pope, not his oiliness, the dope.
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The View needs to hire much better comedy writers than all that.
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No, this is what you get when you substitute politics for your religion, because I don't
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I don't know how often she goes to the Holy Mass.
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But I have noticed disproportionately that the people who are making a big deal about this
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publicly, they don't take the faith all that seriously.
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And the people who say, ah, you know, I wouldn't have made the joke, but, you know, look, it's
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not the biggest deal in the whole wide world, and Trump has been really good, and it was
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right for Catholics to vote for him, in part, just on the basic point that a Catholic really
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cannot, I mean, this is according to bishops, cannot in good conscience vote for pro-abortion
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I hope that Anna Navarro takes this as an opportunity to really take her faith seriously
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What a wonderful turn of events this would be from Trump's AI-generated meme.
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But when Joe Biden was making a mockery of the religion he professed to hold, I don't
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And she's been a big advocate for abortion as well.
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I remember it was back in, I think, 2022, she was advocating on abortion because she said
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that her family has a lot of special needs kids and she has a relative.
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Who is 57, who has very rudimentary motor skills because of his special needs.
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She used her own flesh and blood as an example for why we need to be able to kill babies inside
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the womb, which I have a question about this, and I just don't know this as a Protestant.
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So if someone were advocating for abortion like that, as you said, the way that Kathy Hochul
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does, the way that Anna Navarro does, I would say, I would look at the fruit of what that
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person is saying and say that person is either not a Christian at all.
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They don't have saving faith because that would produce the kind of wisdom and holiness
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that comes from being saved by grace through faith.
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Or I would say maybe they're a very baby believer.
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Maybe they have been justified and they truly believe, but they simply have not been sanctified.
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But I would be very skeptical of whether that person is a Christian at all.
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As a Catholic, when you look at someone like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or Kathy Hochul, can
00:28:35.840
you say that person is probably not a Catholic?
00:28:38.700
Or do you still consider them a Catholic because they've gone through all of the official steps,
00:28:43.680
even if they deny very fundamental parts of what it means to be a Catholic?
00:28:47.560
Like, so if a person is baptized, he or she is a Catholic.
00:28:53.280
There was an ancient heresy early in the church, and I always forget, is it Donatism, Docetism?
00:29:00.120
But it was a heresy that was debated at councils, which is, is the baptism efficacious by virtue
00:29:09.440
of the holiness of the priest who baptizes, or does the holiness of the priest not really
00:29:15.000
So, you know, the way that this was resolved many centuries ago, millennia ago, was that,
00:29:22.100
no, you could have a dirty, rotten priest, but the efficacy of the sacrament comes from
00:29:28.080
It's not about the personal feelings of the person being baptized.
00:29:32.420
It's not about the behavior of the priest who does the baptism.
00:29:37.980
And so if you have a sacramental theology, as Catholics do, then you say, no, no, okay,
00:29:42.320
the baptism is efficacious, God does what he does, and he doesn't need you to be perfect
00:29:49.780
However, we sin, we continue to sin even after we're baptized.
00:29:54.820
And as St. John tells us, some sins, all sin is really, really bad.
00:30:00.920
And so this is what creates the distinction between venial sin and mortal sin.
00:30:04.180
Venial sin, which weakens sanctifying grace, and mortal sin, which severs it.
00:30:07.960
And so whenever you sin, you should confess your sins, and Catholics get this from the
00:30:13.540
Christ giving to Peter and the apostles the power to forgive sins, to loosen, to bind,
00:30:18.240
whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained.
00:30:21.500
So the priest has a real authority here to say, okay, e go te absolvo, I absolve you of your
00:30:28.860
You're seriously penitent, and you're going to go do some penance, but God forgives you of
00:30:35.280
Or the priest can say, you're not really penitent.
00:30:39.680
And so the priest would withhold the absolution from you, and then could withhold the blessed
00:30:44.200
sacrament from you, which Catholics believe confer real races because it's the real presence
00:30:50.900
At an extreme, the priest could excommunicate you, or bishop could excommunicate you, not
00:30:58.740
Because St. Paul says, if you eat the body unworthily, if you eat the Holy Communion without
00:31:05.160
discerning the body, you are eating your own damnation.
00:31:07.880
So it would not be the priest punishing Anna Navarro just to get back at her or something.
00:31:13.880
And so in that instance, a Catholic priest should seriously consider withholding the sacraments
00:31:20.700
so that someone who is in a state of mortal sin does not create even more problems for
00:31:29.340
You know, Nancy Pelosi has been denied communion on occasion.
00:31:33.200
A wonderful bishop, Bishop Cordileone, talk about nomen est omen.
00:31:41.940
He made this point pretty clearly within the last few years that, you know, we really need
00:31:47.360
to take seriously our responsibility as pastors not to create scandal by allowing people to
00:31:54.120
just, you know, say and do these things and, you know, seriously harm people as in the case
00:32:00.140
We have a role as pastors to bring our flock back.
00:32:08.720
But if she were merely a pagan, you could say, well, she's ignorant.
00:32:16.380
But in this case, she has received the sacrament.
00:32:23.920
You know, St. Augustine in Sermon 116 or 118 says something like, somewhere around there,
00:32:30.440
don't quote me on the exact sermon, but somewhere, I think it's 118 or 116, says,
00:32:34.440
God made you without your participation, but he won't save you without your participation.
00:32:39.580
In other words, you can turn away from God if you really want to.
00:32:43.900
Some versions of Protestantism don't buy that, but that's what Catholics believe.
00:32:48.300
And so it's painful to see a Catholic who has been given all of these graces, you know,
00:32:54.540
this opportunity for eternal life with our Lord, who just gives it away for what?
00:32:58.160
To go shill for Democrats and to try to score a point against Donald Trump?
00:33:03.060
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00:34:25.660
You know, we don't really have a comparison when it comes to talking about like, you know,
00:34:32.280
Catholics might call it blasphemy or certainly sacrilegious that Trump did something like this.
00:34:37.660
You're not saying that, but some Catholics are. We don't, as Protestants, have anything that's
00:34:42.680
similar. I saw that Babylon Bee said that Trump is dressing up like, if he dresses up like Bible
00:34:48.080
man, that we're going to have a really big problem. And Bible man has been pretty influential
00:34:52.800
on the, on the Protestant faith. But I said, if he dresses up, you probably don't even know what
00:34:59.220
this is, Michael, but if he dresses up as Salty, the song book, then we're done. Salty was,
00:35:06.300
first he was like a character, a man, kind of like in a Barney suit, but it was, you know,
00:35:11.260
it was a Psalter. Oh, and this, and then he turned into a cartoon, which is what I remember. And also
00:35:16.940
how I memorized a lot of scripture and a lot of Bible stories. And so if Donald Trump dresses up
00:35:25.760
Is he then formally excommunicated? Is he from, from Calvinism? Is he, he's out?
00:35:30.340
Well, I, well, if he were a Calvinist to begin with, then yeah, I would probably have to come
00:35:36.860
up with some kind of mechanism for him to be excluded. I think he might be, I don't know what
00:35:43.780
he is. He might be Episcopalian. Y'all may be able to win him over. I'm not sure. The evangelicals
00:35:49.820
In my mind, for some reason, he was raised Presbyterian or something like that. But, but this
00:35:54.360
is also, I think, why a little grace should be offered to President Trump here. Does any,
00:36:00.300
does anyone seriously believe he posted that in malice or because he hates the Catholic
00:36:04.420
church or that he was mocking the Catholic church? I don't, I don't think that at all.
00:36:08.060
President Trump, one of the iconic photos from that first term, he goes over to St. John's
00:36:12.220
church, right? And he holds up that Bible while the libs are trying to burn it down.
00:36:16.700
Trump goes and visits the national shrine of St. John Paul II. That, that's an amazing thing.
00:36:24.020
How many presidents have ever done that? I think he was actually criticized by a liberal
00:36:27.640
prelate for that, a Catholic prelate, unfortunately. But this guy, you know, he's, he's having a
00:36:34.520
sort of a lighthearted moment here. So is it, would you say, if you were a Catholic and you
00:36:42.440
really took this seriously, would you say, I'm not going to do this because that's sacrilegious?
00:36:45.920
Yeah, you probably would. But I do think we also have to, you know, judge the man a little
00:36:51.540
bit on what he's intending to do. We were talking earlier about the distinction, which Catholics
00:36:55.360
take quite seriously between venial sin and mortal sin. For something to be a mortal sin,
00:36:59.680
you have to do it with full knowledge. It's got to be grave matter. You've got to fully consent to
00:37:04.500
it. Uh, I don't think anyone is accusing Trump of that. Okay. And if we can have the most pro
00:37:09.800
Catholic president with arguably the first ever practicing Catholic vice president in J.D. Vance,
00:37:15.440
uh, I'm good guys. Uh, we're cool. You know, I don't have feds spying on me in my parish anymore
00:37:21.960
and, uh, nuns getting sued and elderly Catholic women thrown in the slammer.
00:37:28.160
I think we're okay with a few memes. Hmm. Okay. Here's a question.
00:37:32.660
Sorry to spring this on you, but I truly am curious. Do Catholics believe that the Pope is
00:37:37.260
in purgatory right now? Well, I don't know. We don't know. I don't, you know, I don't make
00:37:42.580
these judgments. It's above my pay grade. There was a little bit of confusion, though, even among
00:37:47.520
Catholics, which is, they said, uh, uh, should, should we ask Pope Francis to pray for us in the
00:37:54.280
way that we ask for the intercession of the saints and the way, you know, which comes from the book
00:37:57.920
of Revelation where the saints are holding the buckets of their prayers, the incense, and it's the
00:38:02.200
prayers of the saints for us. And, uh, so do we say, please pray for us, Saint Francis? Well, he hasn't
00:38:08.320
been canonized. He might be in heaven, but, but even the idea of purgatory, which is really,
00:38:13.640
uh, it's not like a place. It's not like, you know, Detroit. It's a, it's a period of expurgation
00:38:18.580
where Christ, uh, finishes purging you of your sins because nothing imperfect can enter into heaven.
00:38:25.840
I don't know. Was Francis totally perfect, you know, when he shuffled off this mortal coil? I don't
00:38:30.780
know. It's not, that's not really for me to decide. So traditionally speaking, the, the mass,
00:38:36.100
the funeral mass is a, is a prayer for the, the repose of the soul of the dead. It's, it's not
00:38:43.440
as the pagans have it, which is a eulogy where we just sing songs of praises to the dead, you know,
00:38:48.500
like Greek heroes or something like that. We say, look, we're going to, we're going to pray for the
00:38:52.280
dead. Um, and, and we're going to pray to God that, you know, things work out just like someone
00:38:56.920
asks, uh, his coworker to pray for his wife when she's in the hospital. We're going to, we're going to
00:39:01.080
pray for them. I think that's the better attitude to have here. I'm certainly not saying Pope Francis
00:39:05.300
is in hell. I'm not going to presume that Pope Francis is in heaven, but I think we, you know,
00:39:10.340
it's good. It's good to pray for the dead. Some, obviously, uh, plenty of Protestants don't like
00:39:14.260
the idea of praying for the dead, uh, which is scriptural. It comes from Maccabees, but a lot
00:39:18.580
of Protestants don't believe in the book of Maccabees. There are other examples of it, but it's,
00:39:23.160
I totally understand if you are in principle against praying, uh, for the dead. I kind of see how you
00:39:28.760
got there. Uh, but if you do accept Maccabees, if you do accept, uh, the distinction between
00:39:35.240
being ill and mortal sin, if you do accept that nothing imperfect can enter into heaven,
00:39:38.820
if you do trust in God and you pray for God and you accept the notion of intercessory prayer,
00:39:43.440
which virtually all of us engages into some degree or another, then I think the position of humility
00:39:48.580
is probably a better idea. And to bring it all the way back to nuts and bolts, people, Catholic
00:39:54.480
politics. I think we need to wait a little bit longer before we start canonizing people's saints
00:40:00.380
used to take decades or centuries before the church formally canonize someone, a saint
00:40:06.420
after Vatican two, all of a sudden they started doing it really, really quickly. And they,
00:40:11.540
they removed some of the waiting periods. They removed the devil's advocate, which was a position
00:40:15.500
to argue against the cause for canonization, just to make sure that we got everything right.
00:40:19.540
And I think that this was in part done to canonize in a way the second Vatican council and maybe even
00:40:26.760
the reforms that followed it. But I, I just, I don't think that's a great idea. I think that
00:40:32.580
makes the church seem a little bit more political or partisan or something like that. Uh, all of that
00:40:38.000
is a really long answer to say a saint is just someone in heaven, you know, it comes from the word
00:40:42.520
sanctus just means holy. Uh, so it could well be the case that I really don't even doubt that someone
00:40:48.740
like a Pope John the 23rd or Pope Paul the sixth, uh, are in heaven or will be in heaven after
00:40:54.300
the expurgation. Uh, I don't really, I don't really doubt that Francis will be necessarily, but
00:40:59.720
when, when we canonize someone formally, we are saying something, not just about that person,
00:41:06.120
but, you know, we're saying something really to the whole church and, uh, let's cool it on
00:41:12.000
canonizing Francis, uh, before we, before we see how this conclave moves.
00:41:16.000
Yeah. Uh, Protestants don't, at least, I don't think any Protestant believes in purgatory. As you
00:41:23.160
said, we don't hold the Maccabees as authoritative and inerrant. Yes, maybe so. I, I don't know
00:41:28.120
everything about Anglican theology. Most Protestants that I know don't believe in purgatory. How, how we
00:41:34.320
would say it is we would look to, for example, a couple of passages. One, when Jesus talks to the
00:41:40.680
thief on the cross that today you will be with me in paradise. We also look at, uh, Philippians
00:41:46.400
one, to live as Christ, to die as gain. Paul says, I desire to die so I can be with Christ. And so
00:41:53.180
we do believe that it's immediate and it's not because we think that we in our flesh are perfect,
00:41:58.160
but because Jesus is perfect sacrifice has made us fully perfect. And that when God looks at us,
00:42:04.720
he looks at the blank slate that has been wiped clean by Jesus's sacrifice, that Jesus, who stands
00:42:11.980
in our stead against the accuser, has said that we are completely innocent. And we believe that
00:42:18.560
that is enough, that is sufficient at the point of death for us to enter heaven, not because we're
00:42:23.740
perfect, but because Christ is perfect. And so that's how we do it.
00:42:27.740
This is something that people should not misunderstand about purgatory. I think some people think it's like
00:42:31.540
a third option, you know, you go to hell or you go to heaven, or there's this like third middle
00:42:35.980
option. But that's not really what Catholics believe. Uh, you know, the, one of the gospel
00:42:41.620
bases for, for purgatory would be the debtor who, the debtor will not get out until he pays the very
00:42:47.100
last farthing. Um, but of course no one in hell can get out. Uh, you know, uh, as, as we see also in
00:42:53.440
a parable of our Lord, you know, the, the, uh, when you're locked in hell, you're locked in hell.
00:42:58.040
That's it. You've made a choice and that's eternal. And the, the blessed in heaven are,
00:43:01.980
are there eternally too. So that the fires of purgatory are not a, uh, it's, it's not a
00:43:07.600
torturous or punishing fire exactly like is in hell. It's a, it's a cleansing fire, you know,
00:43:14.460
our, our, uh, the cleansing fire of our Lord. So again, I totally understand that a lot of
00:43:19.240
Protestants don't believe in purgatory, but if, if you do believe in purgatory and if you like
00:43:25.100
Catholics or, or more, uh, kind of liturgical Protestants like, uh, or Anglicans or something,
00:43:29.820
or East Orthodox believe in some kind of purgatory, then your attitude toward the death of a Pope
00:43:35.840
really, I don't think should be just like sounding the trumpets and, you know, firing off the guns
00:43:41.480
and saying, woohoo, he's in heaven. Pray for us, Pope Francis. It really has to be an attitude of
00:43:46.440
humility. And, and by the way, to, to Francis's defense, when Francis became Pope,
00:43:51.580
he, he walked out on the balcony. He said, please pray for me. So this was an attitude of,
00:43:57.380
of humility. And you saw this throughout his papacy. He, he did not live in the papal palace.
00:44:03.420
He lived in these apartments, you know, which was supposed to be a sign of humility. He didn't
00:44:07.480
want to take the nice big fancy cars. He took these little Fiats. And, uh, I think some of this
00:44:13.040
might've seemed a little bit performative, you know, um, he, he wore more simple vestments and, uh,
00:44:19.560
uh, the criticism of that is there's a kind of performative humility, which is really just a
00:44:24.740
species of pride. You know, when someone says, oh, Hey, Johnny, you did a good job. And you say,
00:44:28.880
oh no, I didn't do a good job. Oh no, I'm not that handsome. Go on. You know, that, that, that would
00:44:33.520
be a performative humility, which is really just a kind of pride. And so getting all the way back to
00:44:38.180
what the next Pope is going to look like, literally look like, I think it's important to compare
00:44:43.460
Benedict and Francis. Benedict wore the regalia. He wore the red slippers. You know, they, they
00:44:49.240
sometimes described him as Pope Prada and Francis as Pope Pravda, the communist newspaper in Russia
00:44:55.400
and, uh, a little harsh, but, but when, when a priest or a Pope wears all of the regalia and,
00:45:04.680
you know, follows traditions and behaves in a, in the ordinary way, that's not so much a statement
00:45:11.300
of pride as it is humility, that it's not really about me. It's not about my personality. I am
00:45:17.120
serving in this position for the good of the faithful. I probably, I think there's a Protestant
00:45:21.940
analogy here, which is preaching. You know, to me, good preaching is focused on, first of all,
00:45:31.560
the scripture is read and ideally even chanted. Uh, and then the preaching is focused and it leaves
00:45:38.060
you edified. Now, in a lot of modern preaching, Catholic and Protestant, you get, maybe you get
00:45:43.400
the scripture reading, you know, it's, you often not chanted. And then it's, you know, Pastor Bob is
00:45:48.560
just telling you about his personal life and trying to make it really hip and cool. And that has a
00:45:53.960
performative humility to it, but really the point of the chanting and the circumscribing the, the
00:45:59.420
sermons and all the rest of it is to take the personality out of it because man, it ain't really
00:46:04.400
about you. You know, I don't go to church on Sunday. I actually love my pastor, but I don't just go to
00:46:09.760
church on Sunday because I really like this pastor over some other pastor. I am there for God. I'm
00:46:15.480
going there because God wants us to worship him and I owe him my worship and I love and should love
00:46:20.560
even more to worship him. Uh, and so I, I think that's what you're going to see in some of the debates
00:46:25.200
over the next Pope is will the next Pope have the humility to wear the fancy clothes and do the old
00:46:32.460
traditions and have some enchantment and smells and bells. Uh, even if he personally doesn't want
00:46:38.340
that, it's a real kind of a flipping on its head of the understanding of pride and humility.
00:46:46.520
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Okay. We only have a few minutes left and I just saw this headline come through. So I don't know if
00:48:04.460
you have talked about it yet. You probably have already seen it, but I want to get your thoughts
00:48:08.580
on it. So this is according to Newsweek, the Catholic Church to excommunicate priests for
00:48:13.480
following new U.S. state law. Have you seen this story? I've not. You're reading it. I've heard
00:48:20.000
rumblings about this, but give me the full story. Let me read you a little bit more. The Catholic
00:48:24.400
Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington state. Any priest who complies with
00:48:28.780
a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated.
00:48:36.340
So it eliminates the longstanding confidentiality of the confessional, forcing Catholic leaders and
00:48:41.800
lawmakers into a highly charged standoff over religious liberty and child protection. The
00:48:48.560
Archdiocese of Seattle and several bishops argue that the law not only contravenes church doctrine,
00:48:53.720
but crosses constitutional lines while supporters maintain it is a crucial step to protect
00:48:58.240
minors from abuse. Sorry for springing this on you, but do you have initial thoughts on that?
00:49:03.220
Oh, I certainly do, because this has been floated for a long time. The first thing for everyone to
00:49:07.600
know, especially as you read from a liberal media outlet, and you're going to see a lot of these
00:49:11.740
headlines from even more liberal media outlets, this has almost nothing to do with child abuse or
00:49:17.480
protecting children. Virtually nothing to do with it at all. This has everything to do with weakening
00:49:23.680
the church because, well, first of all, because not to rehash the 25-year-old child abuse scandal right
00:49:31.260
now, but, you know, rates of child abuse in public schools are twice the rate of child abuse within
00:49:39.020
the Catholic church. The rates of within the Catholic church are on par with basically every
00:49:42.160
other religious tradition. In fact, some are a little bit higher. So it's a targeted attack on the
00:49:48.240
church, specifically on the seal of the confessional, which is inviolable. It has always
00:49:54.380
been inviolable. It is essential that it remain inviolable, because for those of us who believe
00:50:00.420
in sacramental theology, when Christ says to the apostles, you have the power to forgive sins,
00:50:07.680
whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained, is giving his apostles and
00:50:12.780
their successors a specific authority to forgive sins and to retain sins. And so we take that very
00:50:21.040
seriously. We go in. We can make perfect acts of contrition in our minds, but we go because this is
00:50:26.000
an incarnational faith. Our Lord is incarnate. He picks real people in a real time, in a real place,
00:50:30.920
makes a real church that goes out and evangelizes real nations all around the world. And we confess our
00:50:36.040
sins, and our priests can either withhold forgiveness or can absolve us of our sins. The moment that you
00:50:44.440
violate the seal of confessional in any way, you are telling the faithful, I am no longer having a
00:50:51.780
conversation privately with God, with a priest acting in persona Christi. This is out for all the
00:50:59.040
world to see. You will end confessions, which Catholics believe, and even traditionally-minded
00:51:04.040
Protestants believe, is an essential sacrament in the life of our faith. So they point here,
00:51:11.480
they say, well, you know, you have to report just this sin, this most egregious sin, that we're going
00:51:15.940
to let a bunch of public school teachers get away with for decades. They're doing that because it's
00:51:20.480
so sensationalist. It obviously tugs on the heartstrings. Practically speaking, it would have no
00:51:26.340
effect whatsoever. You know, the kind of person who's going to confession to confess this kind of
00:51:32.420
sin is probably, I don't know, not going to be deterred because of this little law. And furthermore,
00:51:41.220
all it will do is discourage confessions and, you know, the practicing of the Catholic faith. It
00:51:47.500
certainly is unconstitutional. At a period where liberal politicians are abusing children left and
00:51:53.520
right, notably through the gender ideology, when they're not slaughtering them through abortion,
00:51:56.540
it reads as completely disingenuous from the liberal politicians. And I think it's not going
00:52:03.840
to stand. It will not hold up. But furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, just in the nature of
00:52:10.260
confession itself, the priest can withhold absolution. So it's not, so really, you know,
00:52:15.920
what we're seeing here is just yet another example of the state doing its best to attack
00:52:21.340
religious people, and specifically the Catholic Church, which liberal politicians have been going
00:52:25.620
after since at least the French Revolution. And they're going to keep trying it again,
00:52:29.340
because something tells me they're not serving God. I think they're serving one of the other guys.
00:52:34.820
Okay, this is interesting. I didn't realize, I guess I just didn't realize that the seal of the
00:52:41.260
confession is absolute. I think how most Protestants would see it is that there are spheres of authority
00:52:47.040
that God has given us, the family sphere, the church sphere, and the civil sphere. And there
00:52:53.060
are some things that fall under the jurisdiction of civil authorities. And one of those things would be
00:52:59.100
abuse. There are things that we handle within the church. There are things that we handle within the
00:53:03.160
family. Obviously, sometimes those cross over. And of course, we believe in religious liberty. We
00:53:09.060
don't want the state interfering in our affairs. But when it comes to the protection of a vulnerable
00:53:15.260
person, like a child, then yes, we would say that a pastor or a teacher at our church does have the
00:53:23.880
obligation to go to authorities and say, this is happening, because we would want to protect that
00:53:30.260
child. I see what you're saying, that this would discourage confession, and that could be
00:53:34.500
counterproductive in a lot of ways. But it's hard for me to see the justification.
00:53:39.800
It wouldn't just discourage, I mean, if it only discouraged confession among child abusers or
00:53:44.860
something, well, you know, I mean, one hopes that they get right with the law and get right with the
00:53:49.000
Lord as well. You know, we hope that for everyone. But they would be much less controversial. But this
00:53:53.900
would discourage confessions from everyone. Because at that point, you confess your sins. And then you're
00:54:00.580
just waiting for a subpoena to come down from Governor Democrat to embarrass you or humiliate you or do
00:54:06.140
anything of the like. You know, you make a good point that there are these different spheres,
00:54:10.560
and God appoints people for these different areas of authority. The civil authority, St. Paul tells us,
00:54:15.540
you know, does not bear the sword in vain. The civil authority is there for your own good.
00:54:18.680
Our Lord obviously gives us pastors and a church. However, the overlap, I think, is much more substantial
00:54:25.600
than we're letting on. If I go into confession and I say, I stole a candy bar, that is a matter for the
00:54:32.860
civil sphere. I've committed a crime. It's also a matter for my soul. And there's actually, it's not just that
00:54:39.480
there's some overlap. There's almost perfect overlap between all of these things. Because sin wounds the
00:54:45.580
community. Sin, it's, you know, it's kind of like Milton described in Paradise Lost. Sin, you know, enters into
00:54:53.100
the world. And then death is born out of that sin. And it just pervades everything. And Milton gets it from a good
00:54:59.180
source, which is scripture. So, you know, it's just kind of everywhere. Now, the priest could say
00:55:03.980
in a confessional, I stole a candy bar. The priest could ask, I suppose, well, did you return it? Did
00:55:10.020
you, what have you done? You know, what have you, how are you penitent now? What should make me
00:55:14.780
convinced that you're actually remorseful? It's not that he's bargaining exactly. It's not that he's
00:55:19.440
making God's forgiveness of sin contingent on some human action. But he is asking, are you really
00:55:24.800
penitent? So, you know, one could imagine in the same way, a priest asking, okay, you've committed
00:55:30.100
this horrible crime. What is the evidence that you're really penitent? You know, okay, you say
00:55:36.200
you're sorry, but can you show me a little bit more that you really believe it? You know, but this is
00:55:41.580
true, of course, of all sin. We're talking about the most egregious sin here, but it's true of all
00:55:45.160
sins. So if you, and this is what the liberals know, that's why they're going after it, because they
00:55:49.840
know if they can just make one little crack in the seal of the confessional, that they've destroyed
00:55:54.500
the whole thing. But then where would one draw the line? You know, if I go in there, I say,
00:56:00.680
I cut a guy off in traffic. Are you committing to the crime of speeding, for goodness sakes?
00:56:04.820
You know, I mean, there's really no end to it, because the civil laws derive from the moral law.
00:56:10.660
That's what a law is. It's an instantiation and positive law of something we understand from the
00:56:15.420
moral order. So when you violate, in our modern life, we try to pretend that there's morality in the
00:56:20.480
law, and you can't legislate morality, but that's total nonsense. So when you violate one,
00:56:24.320
generally speaking, you violate the other. Yeah. I mean, there's lying, there's cheating on your
00:56:30.280
wife, there are all kinds of things that are sins, that aren't illegal, that wouldn't be under the
00:56:36.280
jurisdiction of civil authorities. But I just think... Cheating on your wife used to be.
00:56:40.900
Yes, it did. And lying could be. And cheating on your wife probably still should be illegal. We
00:56:45.500
probably agree on that. I understand what you're saying, that they could be using this one thing
00:56:50.680
to try to infringe upon the authority of the church. And maybe that strategy is working for
00:56:56.920
me. It's just hard for me to see the justification for preventing justice for something like a child
00:57:03.800
abuser. It's kind of like when they say, well, look, we need to have abortion because, in principle,
00:57:10.460
a nine-year-old girl could be raped by her father and be forced to carry the baby in an ectopic
00:57:17.180
pregnancy that will certainly kill her. Do you want that, Allie? Is that what you support?
00:57:22.160
And you would say, well, no, of course nobody supports all of this. That's horrifying.
00:57:27.240
They say, right. So therefore, we have to have some kind of abortion enshrined in the law. But
00:57:32.480
of course, they don't really care about that situation. What they want is abortion on demand
00:57:36.020
all the time. They want to establish in principle that it is right to murder a child if there is
00:57:41.940
some good consequence in sight. And unfortunately, that logic has worked on a lot of people,
00:57:46.360
even though it's morally totally specious. I think they're doing the exact same thing here.
00:57:50.440
And to your point, though, they might have some success with it because, you know, the abortion
00:57:57.460
argument has worked and other instantiations of it have worked. But the priests cannot go along with
00:58:02.020
it. And if the priests are persecuted by the state, it wouldn't be the first time. In fact, getting all
00:58:06.960
the way back to what we were talking about, the reason that the pope wears the red slippers is not
00:58:11.320
just because they're fashionable, but it's because the pope is to walk in the footsteps of the martyrs,
00:58:16.600
you know, and the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the Church.
00:58:19.600
Thank you so much for your thoughts and for taking the time to explain all of this to us today,
00:58:24.540
Michael. I really appreciate it. Everyone should buy all of your books and subscribe to your show.
00:58:30.860
Is there anything else you want people to know?
00:58:32.660
No, nothing else. I just want you to know that it's good to see you because, you know,
00:58:37.940
we overlap. We run into each other at these events. But then I feel like we're always sort
00:58:42.040
of like pulled away and there's always some. And so anyway, yeah, marvelous is always to see you.
00:58:46.420
Me too. Thank you so much. And tell the family I said hello, please.
00:58:51.040
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