Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1185 ｜ Catholics Get a New Pope This Week. Here’s Why It Matters ｜ Guest： Michael Knowles

00:00:00.720 How will the Catholic Church pick the next pope?

00:00:04.740 Whom will it be?

00:00:06.260 Also, is Pope Francis in purgatory?

00:00:09.340 We are talking about all of this and more with one of my favorite Catholics, Michael

00:00:14.320 Knowles, the host of the Michael Knowles Show on the Daily Wire on today's episode of Relatable.

00:00:20.260 This is not a Catholic-Protestant debate.

00:00:23.020 I've had plenty of those.

00:00:24.200 You can go back and watch those.

00:00:25.820 This is really just getting informed and educated about a really big moment in Catholic Church

00:00:31.840 history right now, whether you are a Catholic or whether you are a Protestant like me.

00:00:36.760 I know you're going to learn a lot and really enjoy this.

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00:01:06.820 Michael, thanks so much for taking the time to come on, one of my favorite Catholics.

00:01:12.160 And I brought you here to explain some Catholic goings-on. 0.71

00:01:17.320 Can you explain to us what the conclave is and what is going on with the Pope, how all

00:01:23.720 of this is done?

00:01:25.380 Yes.

00:01:25.880 I mean, just to get the obvious question on everyone's mind out of the way up front, I

00:01:29.880 am eligible to be Pope.

00:01:31.920 True.

00:01:32.500 Any baptized Catholic male is eligible.

00:01:35.340 I haven't gotten any calls from Rome yet, but I think I would look very nice in the red

00:01:40.300 slippers and the mitre.

00:01:41.880 So anyway, we'll see how that goes.

00:01:43.100 I just found this out.

00:01:43.740 In the meantime-

00:01:44.740 I had no idea.

00:01:45.440 My assistant told me that any Catholic male is eligible.

00:01:49.700 That's crazy.

00:01:50.240 Yeah.

00:01:50.720 Didn't know.

00:01:51.240 It is.

00:01:51.980 Now, it's been some centuries since anyone other than a cardinal was named, and cardinals

00:01:57.660 are a special kind of bishop who are kind of advisors to the Pope, and they have special

00:02:04.700 clothing and all the rest.

00:02:05.700 But, you know, the Pope is the Bishop of Rome.

00:02:09.120 So he has this special role in the Church as the Vicar of Christ.

00:02:12.540 He's also the Bishop of Rome.

00:02:14.180 And, you know, all of these bishops are the successors to the Apostles, and then there

00:02:19.980 are the cardinals, and then there are the cardinal electors.

00:02:22.440 Those are the cardinals who are under the age of 80, who are eligible to vote in the 0.95

00:02:26.140 conclave.

00:02:26.680 So, Pope dies.

00:02:28.680 There's a period of mourning of about 15 days or so, and then there's a conclave.

00:02:32.780 The cardinal electors fly in from all around the world, and they go, they have a mass for

00:02:38.380 the election of the Pope, and then they go into the Sistine Chapel.

00:02:41.360 And that's when we stop hearing anything, because they sweep the Sistine Chapel for bugs.

00:02:47.220 They have military-grade signal scramblers that go on.

00:02:51.880 I mean, this is really serious business.

00:02:53.720 And it's serious business because the Catholic Church is the central institution in the West.

00:03:01.740 It doesn't matter if you're Calvinist, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, which is what a lot of people

00:03:08.240 are these days anyway.

00:03:09.760 The Catholic Church is this institution that has existed from antiquity, made it all the 0.82

00:03:14.960 way up through the present.

00:03:16.240 It's the only one that can claim that.

00:03:18.220 And so there's a lot, you know, that really hinges on it, even if you're not Catholic.

00:03:22.720 And the cardinal electors know that.

00:03:25.740 So there are a handful of candidates who have risen to the top of being considered papabili.

00:03:31.300 You know, they're popable candidates.

00:03:33.440 And some are considered more conservative.

00:03:35.500 Some are considered more liberal.

00:03:37.500 It might be a guy that no one's ever even really heard of.

00:03:41.120 But as of right now, the candidates who are really being talked about on the more liberal

00:03:45.940 side of things are Cardinal Taglay.

00:03:49.780 He would be the first Asian pope.

00:03:52.460 He went viral for singing Imagine by John Lennon at karaoke.

00:03:56.440 Oh, no.

00:03:56.660 He would definitely be on the more liberal side of things.

00:03:58.660 Then there's Cardinal Parolin.

00:04:00.140 He's the Vatican Secretary of State.

00:04:01.840 He's been considered a favorite for a long time.

00:04:03.960 Also more liberal, probably would continue some of the Francis initiatives and pontificate.

00:04:11.420 Then you've got the candidate that a lot of people are talking about.

00:04:14.140 He's the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

00:04:15.980 That would be Cardinal Pier Battista Pizzaballa.

00:04:19.060 I think people really like him because he has a name that's fun to pronounce.

00:04:23.440 Though when you become pope, you take a regnal name.

00:04:26.020 So if he chose the regnal name John, he would, of course, go from being Pizzaballa to becoming

00:04:29.840 Papa John.

00:04:30.500 Then even a little bit more to the right, you've got the cardinal in Hungary, Cardinal

00:04:35.720 Urdu.

00:04:36.760 He is considered a little more conservative.

00:04:39.380 A lot of the more conservative Catholics really like Cardinal Sarah out of Africa.

00:04:45.360 He would be the first African pope, which the liberals would probably get a kick out of

00:04:48.220 until they realize he's more right-wing than almost anyone on earth.

00:04:51.660 But he's a little bit older, so he's probably less likely.

00:04:54.380 Cardinal Burke in the United States would be an amazing choice.

00:04:58.300 Also, maybe a little too old, maybe a little too conservative.

00:05:02.780 That remains to be seen.

00:05:04.600 So those are the candidates right now.

00:05:07.080 But again, I wouldn't necessarily bet on anyone.

00:05:10.080 There's an old saying, which is the guy who goes into the conclave of pope walks out a

00:05:14.600 cardinal.

00:05:15.040 The conclaves have a habit of surprising people.

00:05:17.880 Okay, so what exactly?

00:05:20.420 You mentioned age, and you mentioned that some of the candidates, like Cardinal Burke, might

00:05:24.320 be considered too conservative.

00:05:25.860 So what exactly are they looking for?

00:05:29.380 Like, what is the standard that they say, okay, if you meet this, then you will be the

00:05:35.040 next pope?

00:05:36.280 Well, you have to remember that the issues top of mind for the cardinals don't map exactly

00:05:41.580 onto the issues that are top of mind for American citizens thinking about politics, because we're

00:05:47.460 talking about liberal and conservative cardinals.

00:05:50.280 But if you take, let's say, the immigration issue aside, and you just look at every other

00:05:55.820 political or political adjacent issue, every single cardinal, including the most liberal

00:06:01.540 cardinals, is far to the right of just about any American politician, including the most right

00:06:07.500 wing Republican.

00:06:08.100 So it's not like there's any debate over abortion, for instance.

00:06:11.880 You know, plenty of Republicans, even conservative Republicans, are kind of in the middle on

00:06:15.780 abortion.

00:06:16.580 Even the most liberal cardinal in the Catholic Church is extremely pro-life, and there's no

00:06:22.980 debate whatsoever.

00:06:24.100 So the issues that are going to play a bigger role, I think, are evangelization.

00:06:28.460 I was just talking to my friend, Bishop Robert Barron, who many people know, a bishop not only

00:06:33.600 in Minnesota, but also the bishop of YouTube.

00:06:35.120 He, you know, he said evangelization seems to be really top of mind for people.

00:06:40.220 The liturgy is a big issue.

00:06:42.480 What kind of mass we have.

00:06:43.980 I'm an attendee of the traditional Latin mass, which was the mass that we had substantially

00:06:49.420 in the same form from the year 600 until just after the Second Vatican Council.

00:06:53.720 Then there was the new mass of Pope Paul VI.

00:06:56.820 That's the one that's a little looser and has a lot of variety in it.

00:07:02.980 Sometimes it's not celebrated in a reverent way.

00:07:05.600 A lot of people think the difference between the old Latin mass and the new mass is just

00:07:08.940 the language.

00:07:09.720 That is not true.

00:07:10.820 In fact, the new mass normatively should be celebrated in Latin.

00:07:14.740 And the differences are just often the orientation of the priest.

00:07:19.080 Is the priest facing the altar with the whole congregation?

00:07:21.060 That gives you some kind of a sense of worship.

00:07:23.960 Or is the priest facing you like a ham actor in a dying vaudeville show?

00:07:27.380 That gives you another sense of worship.

00:07:29.300 The number of prayers, the participation of the laity.

00:07:34.020 So this seems like we're getting really into the weeds here and we're all just arguing over

00:07:37.740 smells and bells.

00:07:38.760 But I think the liturgy is going to be really, really important because there's an old Catholic 0.99

00:07:43.460 expression, lex arandi, lex credendi.

00:07:46.060 The way that you worship is going to affect the way that you believe.

00:07:51.460 You know, if I, there was a study that came out a few years ago showed that only about

00:07:55.660 30% of American Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

00:08:01.660 Now, that's a pretty big deal.

00:08:04.340 That's one of the distinguishing features of sacramental theology.

00:08:07.560 It's really at the heart of Catholic worship.

00:08:10.060 So if you've got most American Catholics not believing in that, man, something's gone really

00:08:14.660 wrong, right?

00:08:15.380 However, how did we get there?

00:08:17.700 Well, might it be because, you know, if I receive the Eucharist kneeling on the tongue

00:08:23.320 in a really solemn mass, that's just going to affect the way that I think about it.

00:08:29.260 If I receive the Eucharist walking by, you know, in my hands, maybe it falls on the ground

00:08:34.360 given to me by a lady wearing Birkenstocks or something, that's going to affect the way 1.00

00:08:38.800 that I believe about the Holy Communion.

00:08:41.200 So I think that's going to be a really important issue.

00:08:44.160 Pope Francis, this was a really strange part of his pontificate.

00:08:49.240 At this period where a lot of the churches are emptying out, there's been a lot of growth

00:08:54.800 among the traditional Latin mass, especially among young people, especially among people

00:08:59.440 who have lots of babies. 0.70

00:09:00.820 The median age in a lot of these Latin mass parishes is about eight years old because

00:09:04.520 of all the kids they're having.

00:09:05.460 And Pope Francis severely restricted the Latin mass for whatever reason.

00:09:10.740 I think that's going to be a big issue here.

00:09:13.920 Bringing in some wayward bishops, especially the bishops in Germany who have gotten a little

00:09:17.780 bit lib and a little bit weird, that's going to be a big issue.

00:09:21.100 Unifying the church after Francis's pontificate, which most everyone agrees was pretty divisive.

00:09:26.560 I think that's going to be a big issue.

00:09:28.700 And so, and also the fact that we've understood that Francis's health was very bad for a long

00:09:34.920 time now.

00:09:35.520 So I don't think this is going to be a conclave that goes on for days and weeks and months

00:09:40.140 and years.

00:09:40.820 I think this is probably going to be sorted out quickly.

00:09:43.600 But who exactly gets it, that remains to be seen.

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00:10:58.280 You had a tweet pretty soon after he died where you remarked that we really can't judge a pope,

00:11:10.640 or I would say really any Catholic or any Christian, according to the left-right political spectrum

00:11:18.560 in the United States, that he kind of transcended that.

00:11:22.100 And yet I have heard you say, and a lot of people say, he was more liberal or this guy

00:11:26.380 is more conservative.

00:11:28.400 And so would you assess him as a more liberal pope, restricting the Latin mass, maybe some

00:11:34.160 of the other comments that he made?

00:11:35.680 Or do you think that he did his very best to try to do his job apolitically?

00:11:43.060 Well, since we're bringing up old Latin phrases here, I'm glad you're asking me this question

00:11:47.040 now and not two weeks ago, because there's a good old Latin expression,

00:11:50.940 de mortuis nil nisi bonum.

00:11:53.580 You know, of the dead, we say nothing but good as we're mourning.

00:11:56.540 Well, the period of mourning is over.

00:11:57.740 Now we have to start to assess the pontificate.

00:12:00.300 We're picking the next pope.

00:12:01.540 Yeah.

00:12:01.720 And it was a tough pontificate.

00:12:05.100 There's just no way, no two ways about it.

00:12:07.260 I mean, you can't just call Pope Francis a liberal or a leftist, because on the one hand,

00:12:13.880 the media report that he's saying all of these things about LGBT and opening up the liturgy

00:12:20.780 to LGBT people, and in some cases was issuing papal documents, opening up the prospect of blessings

00:12:27.420 for LGBT unions, maybe, but not marriage.

00:12:30.680 But then on the other hand, Pope Francis said that gay marriage is a machination of the

00:12:35.620 father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God.

00:12:39.400 When asked about gay marriage, quote unquote, Pope Francis said, God can't bless sin.

00:12:44.560 One of the most famous lines from his pontificate, according to reports, was this phrase,

00:12:50.780 ce ja tropa frotia gine.

00:12:53.440 And I don't want to scandalize your viewers, but to give an English translation of that, 0.99

00:12:57.100 it's, um, yeah, there's already too much faggotry. 1.00

00:13:01.040 You can say it. 0.99

00:13:01.660 Yeah, okay.

00:13:02.100 So I, you can bleep it.

00:13:03.160 I, you know, anyway, it's very difficult to pin him down, but I would say by historical

00:13:08.280 perspectives, which for a lot of people who don't pay close attention to the Catholic

00:13:12.460 church, the oldest Pope they can name is Pope John Paul II, you know, from 25 years ago.

00:13:18.400 But the popes go way back, millennia back.

00:13:22.260 And by historical standards, Francis was a liberal Pope and there were, there was a lot

00:13:27.700 of confusion during his pontificate.

00:13:29.720 One of the cardinals I mentioned, Cardinal Burke, along with a number of other cardinals

00:13:32.620 actually raised formal dubia, formal questions about whether or not certain things the Pope

00:13:37.860 was saying might even be heretical.

00:13:40.560 Those dubia were not really answered.

00:13:42.560 So it's, it was rough.

00:13:44.320 You know, I think there's a reason we've only had one Jesuit Pope in 2000 years.

00:13:47.540 Um, and, and I, I think that even many of the considered moderate to even more liberal

00:13:53.300 cardinals, I, I think they've had enough of that.

00:13:56.680 They've had enough of the confusion and the division.

00:13:58.820 And I, I think there is going to be a real call for a more unifying Pope to, to, uh, to

00:14:06.900 serve in the next pontificate.

00:14:08.440 Yeah, I'm interested as a reformed Protestant.

00:14:10.800 I mean, I, I think that I have an interest in who the next Pope is and I want my fellow

00:14:16.640 Catholics or not fellow Catholics, my Catholic friends to be led by a Pope that is in most

00:14:23.800 alignment with scripture.

00:14:24.920 And I know we don't agree on Sola Scriptura, but Catholics do believe that scripture does

00:14:29.780 have authority.

00:14:30.800 And I would think that they would believe that the Pope should be in alignment with scripture.

00:14:34.620 So that's what I want.

00:14:35.580 I don't want this kind of equivocating.

00:14:38.240 What does he really believe?

00:14:39.700 What should Catholics really believe? 1.00

00:14:41.680 Because if Catholics look to the Pope as an authority and he's not offering clarity, but

00:14:46.740 he's offering confusion on very serious moral issues like the LGBTQ issue, I just imagine

00:14:53.180 that that's going to cause more division.

00:14:55.860 Would you say that he was trying to be seeker sensitive in some of those?

00:14:58.960 Like, that's probably what we would say in the evangelical world.

00:15:01.940 I don't like seeker sensitive churches that are trying to appeal exclusively or primarily 0.98

00:15:08.620 to the non-believer.

00:15:10.060 Like, would you say that was maybe his motivation in trying to restrict the traditional Latin

00:15:14.760 mass and doing some of the other things he did?

00:15:18.080 That's a really nice way to put it.

00:15:19.800 So, and I will put it that way.

00:15:21.340 I'll say the nicest thing I can, you know, in sincerity and truth about it.

00:15:25.080 But Pope Francis's defenders and Pope Francis himself, I suppose, emphasized a pastoral

00:15:33.840 approach, which, you know, a good pastoral approach should not contradict a good doctrinal

00:15:40.040 approach as well.

00:15:41.440 But that's the way he put it.

00:15:43.180 And so, and there's, obviously, there's a very important role for pastors and prudential

00:15:46.800 judgment and all the rest of it.

00:15:49.080 But we don't want our doctrine to get fuzzy.

00:15:52.180 We don't want our liturgy to be fuzzy.

00:15:54.280 We want the truth.

00:15:56.200 And I think this is a big generational shift that you're seeing among Catholics.

00:16:00.100 And actually, I think among Protestants and maybe even among Eastern Orthodox, which is

00:16:06.120 in the 1960s, the age of Aquarius, everyone was interested in innovation and changing everything

00:16:16.340 and keeping up with the spirit of the times.

00:16:18.540 The late Pope Benedict XVI actually pointed out in an essay that he wrote after he resigned

00:16:24.120 the papacy, which was unusual in itself.

00:16:26.140 He said, you know, the Catholic Church, too, found herself brought about by that spirit

00:16:31.920 of the age after the 1960s.

00:16:33.860 He said the Catholic Church in some ways helped to cause the spirit of the age with some of

00:16:37.960 the innovations that took place.

00:16:40.060 I talked to boomer Catholics, and I talked to older Catholics, and they're much more interested

00:16:48.340 in loosey-goosey, let's change some teaching, you know, let's change practices.

00:16:53.520 When I talk to young Catholics, they want the truth.

00:16:58.780 They want orthodoxy.

00:17:00.300 They want re-enchantment.

00:17:02.180 They want tradition.

00:17:03.680 They want smells and bells, not as idols in themselves, but they feel, I think, robbed

00:17:09.400 of the great tradition that made so many saints and that also built our civilization, you know,

00:17:16.300 that built the great cathedrals, that invented the universities, that created the culture that

00:17:21.600 we feel we're losing, you know.

00:17:23.980 And so I did not grow up with the Latin Mass.

00:17:27.360 I grew up, before I apostatized at age 13, I grew up with a kind of loosey-goosey, feel-good,

00:17:35.280 maybe let's call it seeker-sensitive kind of liturgy.

00:17:38.300 And when I first discovered the traditional Latin Mass, I felt, as many young Catholics

00:17:43.140 do, as even the New York Times, I think, is reporting right now, many young Catholics

00:17:47.420 feel, that I'd been robbed of something.

00:17:51.120 Something had been kept from me, you know.

00:17:54.540 One of the benefits of an institution that has existed for 2,000 years is they've really

00:18:00.880 dealt with a lot of the questions, pretty much all of them.

00:18:04.080 So you can find the profound intellectual engagement of, say, a St. Thomas Aquinas.

00:18:09.880 You can find the beautiful artistic engagement of all of the great painters and sculptors and

00:18:14.860 architects of the Catholic tradition, the great musical tradition, the great scientific tradition.

00:18:19.420 I mean, even, you know, so much of modern science comes from the Catholic Church, including

00:18:23.860 in recent years.

00:18:24.760 You know, the Big Bang Theory comes from a Catholic priest, Fr.

00:18:28.760 Georges Lemaitre.

00:18:29.840 The modern genetics comes from Mendel.

00:18:32.980 Copernicus himself might have been a priest.

00:18:34.440 He was at least a canon.

00:18:35.320 So you've got this wonderful tradition that has been kind of ignored for a while.

00:18:41.140 And Pope Benedict, I think, was really, really good on this, as he was on most issues.

00:18:46.620 He said, it's not that we don't change.

00:18:49.900 It's not that we don't develop.

00:18:51.100 We're, you know, human beings.

00:18:52.400 We grow and we change and we develop.

00:18:53.960 That's how our nature goes.

00:18:56.460 However, when we're assessing something in modernity, we should see it through the light

00:19:03.660 of tradition, going all the way back to the apostolic age, to our Lord's sojourn on

00:19:07.420 earth, and to Holy Scripture, which is inerrant.

00:19:09.440 It shouldn't go the other way around.

00:19:12.080 And I think some of the reformers, so-called, they've tried to do it the other way.

00:19:16.820 They say, you know, history began yesterday.

00:19:18.600 Anything that Catholics did for, you know, 1950 years, if it contradicts the spirit of this 0.98

00:19:24.580 age, forget about it.

00:19:26.320 But there's a great line that's alternately attributed to a Protestant or a Catholic,

00:19:30.200 Dean Inge or Fulton Sheen, which is, if you wed the spirit of the age, you will find

00:19:35.720 yourself a widow in the next.

00:19:37.100 Mm, that's good.

00:19:38.720 And when you say reformers, you're talking about Catholic reformers.

00:19:41.340 You're not talking about Calvin and Protestant.

00:19:43.000 Yes, yes.

00:19:43.660 I'm not talking about Luther.

00:19:44.800 I'm talking about the recent people who, you know, some of whom, you know, would consider

00:19:50.880 themselves reformers who are in this conclave right now.

00:19:53.300 And so that remains the question.

00:19:55.360 Are we going to get more of the Francis pontificate, or are we going to get something a little different?

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00:21:32.420 Now, I noticed that you didn't mention one candidate whose name just keeps coming up over

00:21:37.020 and over again when it comes to the papacy, and that is Donald John Trump.

00:21:42.240 I mean, he's the top contender, I think.

00:21:44.740 He's already tried on the outfit.

00:21:46.900 It looks good.

00:21:47.800 It compliments him well.

00:21:49.420 We'll put up this picture.

00:21:51.540 Beautifully done.

00:21:52.980 Now, Michael, I have a lot of Catholics in my audience, and I had a very mixed reaction.

00:21:57.860 I haven't talked about this on my show.

00:21:59.240 I know you have, but I talked about it on Instagram.

00:22:01.640 And I was kind of surprised.

00:22:03.920 I was both surprised at the level of offense that some Catholics had, and even some of my 0.99

00:22:09.080 Protestant followers had on behalf of their Catholic friends.

00:22:11.860 But I was also surprised at how many shared what I think is your sentiment that, no, this

00:22:17.940 is not offensive to me.

00:22:19.080 It's a funny joke.

00:22:20.540 And no, this doesn't make me question or regret my vote at all.

00:22:23.880 There were a ton of Catholics in my DM saying, no, this did not bother me.

00:22:28.840 So tell me, as a Catholic, what is your take on this AI-generated image?

00:22:33.820 So I want to establish the principle, at least, a little via media between these two reactions.

00:22:40.900 We should not reduce religious things to jokes.

00:22:44.260 In fact, when Catholics go into confession and we examine our conscience, a lot of examinations

00:22:49.780 of conscience will include, did you joke about religious things?

00:22:53.620 Did you reduce the religious and the sacred to something vulgar and profane?

00:22:57.960 You really don't want to do that.

00:22:59.780 You know, that is an extrapolation from taking the Lord's name in vain.

00:23:03.040 And you don't want to do that.

00:23:05.660 However, I think we have to examine Trump's joke here.

00:23:10.760 Because first of all, just about every conservative Catholic I know has made this exact joke in

00:23:17.100 some form or other.

00:23:18.080 I have heard from Catholic friends for years, and they say, well, you know, the next Pope,

00:23:22.900 maybe Donaldus Magnus wouldn't be a bad idea.

00:23:25.000 You know, we could make the Vatican great again or something.

00:23:26.740 And it's not a joke made in an irreverent way.

00:23:29.640 It's not a joke meant to, you know, mock the Episcopacy or anything like that.

00:23:33.980 And I don't think that that's what Trump was doing.

00:23:36.940 I don't see any malice in Trump's joke.

00:23:40.500 Was it a little inopportune or something?

00:23:45.140 Yeah, maybe.

00:23:45.760 Would I have made it?

00:23:46.500 I wouldn't have because I'm a Catholic and I take it seriously.

00:23:49.680 Trump's not a Catholic.

00:23:50.920 But he's married to a Catholic.

00:23:52.800 He is the most pro-Catholic president I think we've ever had in a country that has not always

00:23:58.780 been extraordinarily pro-Catholic.

00:24:00.660 And then I have to think, OK, let me look at the levels of offense I should feel.

00:24:04.600 Because Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, she said, as a Catholic, I'm terribly offended,

00:24:09.620 Mr. President.

00:24:10.240 You need to take this down.

00:24:13.040 Kathy Hochul, governor of a state that permits murdering babies up until the moment of birth.

00:24:18.040 And Kathy Hochul, who celebrates that, Kathy Hochul, who makes a mockery of marriage, ratifies 1.00

00:24:23.440 a purported redefinition of marriage, marriage, which is the symbol of Christ's love for his

00:24:27.260 church.

00:24:27.960 I look at the predecessor to Trump, who calls himself a Catholic, Joe Biden, who supports 0.98

00:24:33.740 slaughtering millions of babies a year, who makes a mockery of marriage, who denies sex 0.91

00:24:38.640 as a gift from God and an aspect of our nature given to us by God.

00:24:42.080 And furthermore, Joe Biden, a president who was vice president of an administration that

00:24:48.720 sued nuns for being Catholic, Joe Biden, whose FBI spied on Catholics and likened us to domestic

00:24:56.000 terrorists, Joe Biden, who imprisoned pro-lifers, many if not most of whom were Catholic, for praying

00:25:02.400 and demonstrating at infanticidal mills.

00:25:05.540 I don't know.

00:25:06.320 I mean, call me crazy.

00:25:07.320 I'm much more offended by that president than I am by President Trump, who was making a

00:25:13.220 lighthearted joke with no ill intent whatsoever, and a joke that many other people have made.

00:25:18.860 I think that there are plenty of Catholics who are sincerely offended by it, and fair 1.00

00:25:24.280 enough, but I think the public hand-wringing over it is almost entirely disingenuous.

00:25:29.860 Yeah, we've got Anna Navarro, too, you know, devout Catholic.

00:25:33.600 She's very upset about this.

00:25:35.300 Here's what she had to say on The View, saw one.

00:25:37.320 Him tweeting out an AI-created image and the White House official account of him posing

00:25:43.280 as the pope is disrespectful, it is frankly disgusting, and it is outraged. 0.91

00:25:47.760 Mr. President, it's his holiness, the pope, not his oiliness, the dope. 0.92

00:25:55.760 What?

00:25:56.660 What?

00:25:57.340 Okay.

00:25:57.980 Your thoughts?

00:26:00.020 The View needs to hire much better comedy writers than all that.

00:26:03.880 No, this is what you get when you substitute politics for your religion, because I don't 0.79

00:26:12.440 know Anna Navarro's relationship to faith.

00:26:15.040 I don't know the state of her soul.

00:26:17.360 I don't know how often she goes to confession.

00:26:19.040 I don't know how often she goes to the Holy Mass.

00:26:20.720 But I have noticed disproportionately that the people who are making a big deal about this

00:26:26.640 publicly, they don't take the faith all that seriously.

00:26:32.080 And the people who say, ah, you know, I wouldn't have made the joke, but, you know, look, it's

00:26:36.360 not the biggest deal in the whole wide world, and Trump has been really good, and it was

00:26:41.040 right for Catholics to vote for him, in part, just on the basic point that a Catholic really

00:26:46.760 cannot, I mean, this is according to bishops, cannot in good conscience vote for pro-abortion

00:26:52.860 candidates in almost any circumstance.

00:26:55.100 So, you know, I don't know.

00:26:56.880 I hope that Anna Navarro takes this as an opportunity to really take her faith seriously

00:27:03.400 and live out her faith.

00:27:04.820 What a wonderful turn of events this would be from Trump's AI-generated meme.

00:27:10.040 But when Joe Biden was making a mockery of the religion he professed to hold, I don't

00:27:15.520 remember any harangues from Anna Navarro.

00:27:18.360 Do you?

00:27:19.460 Yeah, I don't.

00:27:21.040 And she's been a big advocate for abortion as well.

00:27:23.880 I remember it was back in, I think, 2022, she was advocating on abortion because she said

00:27:31.340 that her family has a lot of special needs kids and she has a relative.

00:27:34.820 Who is 57, who has very rudimentary motor skills because of his special needs. 0.98

00:27:41.360 She used her own flesh and blood as an example for why we need to be able to kill babies inside 1.00

00:27:47.180 the womb, which I have a question about this, and I just don't know this as a Protestant.

00:27:52.600 So if someone were advocating for abortion like that, as you said, the way that Kathy Hochul

00:27:57.260 does, the way that Anna Navarro does, I would say, I would look at the fruit of what that

00:28:02.400 person is saying and say that person is either not a Christian at all.

00:28:06.480 They don't have saving faith because that would produce the kind of wisdom and holiness

00:28:11.680 that comes from being saved by grace through faith.

00:28:15.220 Or I would say maybe they're a very baby believer.

00:28:17.820 Maybe they have been justified and they truly believe, but they simply have not been sanctified.

00:28:23.080 But I would be very skeptical of whether that person is a Christian at all.

00:28:29.200 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?

00:28:58.660 I get some of these isms mixed up.

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

00:29:14.700 matter?

00:29:15.000 So, you know, the way that this was resolved many centuries ago, millennia ago, was that, 0.60

00:29:22.100 no, you could have a dirty, rotten priest, but the efficacy of the sacrament comes from

00:29:26.960 the Holy Spirit. 0.96

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.

00:29:35.340 It's really God who acts in the sacraments.

00:29:37.980 And so if you have a sacramental theology, as Catholics do, then you say, no, no, okay, 0.98

00:29:42.320 the baptism is efficacious, God does what he does, and he doesn't need you to be perfect

00:29:48.560 in order to do it.

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.

00:29:58.940 Some sins are mortal, though.

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 1.00

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

00:30:28.500 sins.

00:30:28.860 You're seriously penitent, and you're going to go do some penance, but God forgives you of

00:30:34.580 your sins right now.

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 0.98

00:30:47.640 of Christ.

00:30:49.140 The priest would withhold that from you.

00:30:50.900 At an extreme, the priest could excommunicate you, or bishop could excommunicate you, not

00:30:55.900 just to punish you, but for your own good.

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. 0.60

00:31:07.880 So it would not be the priest punishing Anna Navarro just to get back at her or something.

00:31:12.100 It would be for her own good.

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

00:31:25.400 him or herself.

00:31:27.460 There have been a few examples of this.

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.

00:31:40.520 The name means heart of a lion.

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

00:31:58.980 of abortion.

00:32:00.140 We have a role as pastors to bring our flock back.

00:32:04.060 So you wouldn't say she's not a Catholic.

00:32:07.260 In a way, it's worse. 1.00

00:32:08.720 But if she were merely a pagan, you could say, well, she's ignorant. 0.99

00:32:12.300 She doesn't know. 1.00

00:32:13.300 She's a baby Christian. 0.97

00:32:14.540 She's trying to learn.

00:32:15.420 She's doing her best.

00:32:16.380 But in this case, she has received the sacrament.

00:32:19.540 Catholics believe that is efficacious.

00:32:21.300 And she is turning away from God.

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?

00:33:01.200 Not worth it, buddy.

00:33:03.060 All the kingdoms of this world are not worth it, as our Lord proved in the wilderness.

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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 0.58

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

00:35:22.300 like this, I'm done. I'm done.

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 0.56

00:35:49.340 have tried.

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. 0.75

00:36:16.060 Yeah.

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 0.95

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 0.99

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.

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00:47:59.560 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 0.92

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, 0.65

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 1.00

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 0.82

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 0.66

00:57:17.180 pregnancy that will certainly kill her. Do you want that, Allie? Is that what you support? 0.98

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 1.00

00:57:32.480 of course, they don't really care about that situation. What they want is abortion on demand 0.96

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 0.79

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.

00:58:49.800 Yeah, same to you.

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00:59:46.540 We'll be right back.

00:59:51.640 Bye-bye.

01:00:06.380 Bye-bye.

01:00:11.380 Bye-bye.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - May 07, 2025

Ep 1185 ｜ Catholics Get a New Pope This Week. Here’s Why It Matters ｜ Guest： Michael Knowles

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