The John-Henry Westen Show - April 16, 2021


A new anti-Christian state church has been forced upon us： Pro-family author


Episode Stats

Length

33 minutes

Words per Minute

169.27165

Word Count

5,711

Sentence Count

369

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

Austin Ruse is the head of the Center for Human Rights at the UN, lobbying for life and family. He s been a great Catholic activist for many, many years, and a dear friend. We re going to learn from him about all this, covering his new book, "Under Siege."


Transcript

00:00:00.360 Anti-Catholic forces have taken over every single elite institution in America.
00:00:07.920 Wouldn't you like to know their devious plans?
00:00:10.680 And wouldn't you like to have a call to arms on how to get out of this incredible mess?
00:00:17.580 Well, we have with us today on the John Henry Weston Show, Austin Ruse,
00:00:21.560 known to many of you as the head of the Center for Human Rights at the UN,
00:00:26.580 lobbying for life and family.
00:00:27.700 He's been a great Catholic activist for many, many years and a dear friend.
00:00:31.440 We're going to learn from him about all this, covering his new book, Under Siege.
00:00:37.020 You're going to want to stay tuned.
00:00:37.960 Austin Ruse, welcome to the program.
00:00:58.520 I'm very happy to be with you.
00:01:00.600 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:01:02.500 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:01:07.000 Amen.
00:01:08.880 Now, Austin Ruse, I know, as I said in the intro, is known to many of you as the head of the Center for the Family and Human Rights at the UN,
00:01:17.360 lobbying for life and family.
00:01:18.480 But he's been a close friend for years, and he's one of those guys who has really swum through the trenches of the horrific state of the world.
00:01:27.820 And that's why I wanted to talk about his book, Under Siege.
00:01:31.580 Just an incredible thing.
00:01:33.500 But I want to give you a snapshot first of Austin's faith, an incredible man of faith.
00:01:39.160 Austin, tell us a little bit about yourself and your faith life.
00:01:42.000 Oh, gosh, you know, I am a convert, converted in 1989.
00:01:50.280 I dedicate the book, actually, to, as I say in the book, three men I read into the church.
00:01:57.260 They include Thomas Merton, William F. Buckley, and Anthony Burgess.
00:02:01.740 Not many people know that Anthony Burgess, who wrote Clockwork Orange, was church-haunted all of his life.
00:02:09.100 He was a non-practicing Catholic, but he was church-haunted.
00:02:14.880 And pretty much all of his books were about some aspect of Catholic theology.
00:02:20.900 Clockwork Orange, for instance, is about free will.
00:02:23.440 And it was through Clockwork Orange that I learned about free will for the first time.
00:02:29.300 So I'm a practicing Catholic, you might say, devout Catholic.
00:02:33.980 Try to go to Mass every day, say the Rosary every day, you know, mental prayer, aspirations, you know,
00:02:41.820 all the good stuff that help us live continuously in the presence of our Lord.
00:02:47.920 And, you know, I like to point out, and we can get into this more because it's an important part of the book,
00:02:53.720 in the Hail Mary, we say, pray for us now at the moment of our death.
00:03:01.240 And those are the two moments that we have to care most about.
00:03:04.220 We can't get all jammed up about the past, and we can't be all worried about the future.
00:03:08.460 We have to worry about this present moment, and are we going to do the right thing?
00:03:12.680 Are we discerning the right spirits?
00:03:14.380 What are we going to do?
00:03:15.380 And then pray for the moment of our death, so that we will be welcomed into the beatific vision.
00:03:23.360 So that's kind of what I try to do throughout the day.
00:03:26.540 Okay.
00:03:27.000 Well, you've laid out, I mean, speaking of not being worried about the future,
00:03:31.140 you have laid out some of the darkest reality that we're living in.
00:03:34.700 You have uncovered the shield for many people who might be living under a rock somewhere.
00:03:41.400 You pull back the curtain on the horrific realities.
00:03:44.680 In fact, you might say that, and you do say, that every elite institution in America
00:03:51.380 has been basically taken over by anti-Catholics.
00:03:54.200 Explain, if you would.
00:03:55.300 In the book, I quote T.S. Eliot a couple of times.
00:04:00.880 I am Lazarus, come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all.
00:04:05.300 And that's kind of what I have done in my work and in my journalism these last 24 years.
00:04:11.920 I have stared into the abyss and then tried to tell the story to a wider audience.
00:04:21.720 You know, it's like what Judith Reisman did, you know, who just passed.
00:04:25.520 I call him tomorrow at crisis about Judith.
00:04:28.780 So what I have tried to do in the book, first of all, is to show people it's far darker than
00:04:35.560 anybody really knows.
00:04:37.020 And the reason that I know this is because I spend my time looking at it.
00:04:41.280 Most people, for instance, have never heard of a company called MindGeek.
00:04:46.140 The MindGeek family of websites get more traffic than Facebook, and it is the hardest core pornography
00:04:53.420 in the world.
00:04:54.100 And these are the guys that invented streaming of hardcore pornography for free, modeling
00:04:59.600 themselves on YouTube early on.
00:05:01.620 And they've gotten fabulously wealthy in the process.
00:05:05.500 And naturally, they're in Canada and Montreal.
00:05:08.340 Yes.
00:05:09.240 Yes, they are.
00:05:11.000 So that, you know, they're taking it in the chops lately.
00:05:13.980 And I think that that's really encouraging.
00:05:16.540 As Roy in Blade Runner said, I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
00:05:23.220 And, you know, Kathy and I joke about how we wish we didn't know all the things that we
00:05:28.120 know, because Kathy, you know, from her earliest days in this movement was a porn fighter, you
00:05:34.080 know, and she worked with Scott Hahn's father-in-law.
00:05:38.780 So, you know, we have seen things people wouldn't believe.
00:05:42.900 And the other side gets by by preventing us from seeing.
00:05:46.780 They don't want us to see.
00:05:49.180 And people like us don't want to see.
00:05:52.500 So we're kind of a little bit in a bind.
00:05:54.720 But in the book, I mean, I don't go into gross detail in the book, but I go through a broad
00:05:59.640 range of issues that show how dark the world is that we're really living in.
00:06:04.280 And I also make an assertion that I don't know that anybody has made.
00:06:08.900 And, you know, the assertion is usually made that all these things are a new religion.
00:06:14.580 And I think that that's exactly correct.
00:06:16.180 They are.
00:06:17.040 But I go further and say all of these things have become an established religion in the
00:06:22.580 United States and perhaps even in Canada.
00:06:25.060 In the United States, in the First Amendment, there's a prohibition against the federal government
00:06:29.200 establishing a religion.
00:06:31.340 But the federal government has.
00:06:33.460 And I start with the school prayer decisions in 1962, putting aside what that the prayer
00:06:39.200 is so mild, you know, that that was that was struck down by the Supreme Court.
00:06:44.620 It was written by a committee of Catholic, Protestant, Jew.
00:06:47.980 And practically any believer can say this prayer.
00:06:52.180 So put aside the subject of the prayer and look at what the Supreme Court did.
00:06:57.200 Up until that moment, there was a healthy debate in the United States about who are we as a people?
00:07:03.480 Are we a Christian people or are we a secular people?
00:07:06.760 Do we have basically a Christian country or a secular country?
00:07:10.620 And this was a this was a vigorous debate from before our founding until 1962.
00:07:15.760 But in the school prayer decision, the Supreme Court said for the very first time that the
00:07:21.420 the object and purpose of the government has to be secular.
00:07:25.640 And what that means is they began moving religious believers out of the public square and began
00:07:32.820 to institute their ideology through other court cases.
00:07:36.640 The contraception decisions that followed in 1964 and 65, the obscenity decision, which opened
00:07:43.520 the door to pornography, of course, Roe v Wade in 1973, followed by the sodomy decisions
00:07:51.440 that made sodomy a constitutionally protected human right or civil right, and then Obergefell.
00:07:56.760 And all of these things are now imposed on the rest of the country through the Department
00:08:02.500 of Justice, through the court system, through the Department of Education, on down to the little
00:08:07.180 elementary school a couple of miles from where I'm sitting, where they teach kids that
00:08:11.860 sex is assigned at birth.
00:08:13.820 That is an article of faith.
00:08:15.560 This is a new faith.
00:08:16.880 And so that's one of the unique arguments that I make in the book.
00:08:19.720 I call it the rise of the new state church.
00:08:22.220 It's absolutely the case.
00:08:23.880 And what's really fascinating is I think that, as you described, Michael, Brian, a mutual friend
00:08:29.780 of ours, a very wise man has said of the work that we do, it's sort of swimming daily
00:08:35.540 through the muck that nobody wants to swim through and trying to shine a light on it.
00:08:41.740 That, though, has prepared pro-lifers, pro-family people, especially those in the trenches like
00:08:46.660 yourself, to recognize an evil that most people don't think possible.
00:08:53.880 Who would knowingly foist upon little children drugs that are going to harm them for the rest
00:09:03.180 of their lives because of their parents' predilection to have a girl of a particular sex or a particular
00:09:10.420 sexual ideology?
00:09:12.380 And yet this is going on today.
00:09:15.040 You know, we're always looking for a tipping point where people will wake up and we never
00:09:19.520 seem to get there.
00:09:20.280 And transgenderism is certainly one of them.
00:09:24.880 In some ways, I think that Asa Hutchison, the governor of Arkansas, did us a favor by
00:09:31.400 vetoing that bill, which would have banned puberty blockers, chemical castration for children,
00:09:37.040 because he really put this on a larger scale and introduced it to more people than knew about
00:09:43.660 it before.
00:09:44.240 You know, just a few years ago, there were one or two, quote, gender clinics in the United
00:09:48.780 States, and now there's over 60.
00:09:50.740 This has exploded.
00:09:53.220 And, you know, I go on social media, as you know, Twitter primarily, and debate these issues
00:09:59.420 with the other side.
00:10:00.700 And they absolutely believe that such a thing is real and true and good.
00:10:05.820 And that they say, oh, puberty blockers are reversible.
00:10:11.300 But, you know, once you begin to block your puberty, you're not going to get that stuff
00:10:17.180 back that was blocked when that flood of hormones was needed to increase your height, your bone
00:10:23.700 density, so on and so forth.
00:10:25.040 So it is massive child abuse that's going on in this country and around the world.
00:10:31.700 And I talk a lot about that.
00:10:33.500 And a measure of the fact that they don't truly believe all this stuff is the fact that
00:10:38.860 they have to impose it upon us.
00:10:40.900 As you know, in New York City, you can be fined upwards of $250,000 for persistently misgendering
00:10:47.380 a customer.
00:10:48.860 Now, if they truly believed, they might try to persuade, but they don't truly believe.
00:10:53.520 And so they seek to impose.
00:10:56.680 So, you know, as we swim through the muck of this conversation, I want to give your viewers
00:11:03.460 a little glimpse of the fact that there's great good news, too.
00:11:07.760 And that is, in sum, that God sent the likes of you and me at this desperate time to fight
00:11:15.540 this fight.
00:11:16.240 And how lame are we?
00:11:18.300 As lame as the apostles were, you know, who weren't the A-team.
00:11:23.020 So, yeah, people don't know how dark it really is.
00:11:26.600 They don't know the danger that's really all around them.
00:11:30.980 And sadly, a lot of them don't know this remarkable epic that we're living through.
00:11:36.160 And that, as I say in the book, there are halos hanging from the lowest branches of the
00:11:40.560 trees.
00:11:41.040 All you need to do is reach up and grab one.
00:11:45.080 So anyway, I want your, at this early stage in the conversation, I want your viewers to
00:11:50.300 understand that I've got great theological hope.
00:11:55.760 That's truly fascinating.
00:11:56.840 In fact, that's sort of my principal reason for wanting to speak with you.
00:12:01.180 You had an awesome interview with Claire Chrétien from LifeSite News.
00:12:04.520 And I was so jealous.
00:12:06.160 I used a little clip of it for one of my shows because I thought, wow, we need that line.
00:12:11.500 It's so encouraging.
00:12:12.360 And that was your line about, that you have in the book, about this really being a sort
00:12:18.600 of no greater time to be a Catholic.
00:12:20.540 Catholic and this concept, which I just love, of the halos being on the lowest branches today.
00:12:29.320 Go into that a little bit more, if you would just explain that for us, because it's such
00:12:32.060 a beautiful concept.
00:12:34.340 And it's one that is, it's so encouraging, but it gives us a hope of not only sustaining
00:12:41.180 ourselves during, but also thriving in this time.
00:12:43.720 I say that there's never been a finer time to be a faithful Catholic, not in spite of all
00:12:48.420 the troubles all around us, but precisely because of them, that we are here right now in one
00:12:54.480 of the great desperate fights of all time.
00:12:56.780 And there are so many problems all around us.
00:13:00.100 To make the world a better place to follow, you know, the will of God, you don't have to
00:13:05.680 do very much.
00:13:08.020 You know, write a check to your favorite pro-life news site.
00:13:12.920 You know, go down to the local school board and shake the hand of the lone school board
00:13:20.120 member who has his head on right.
00:13:22.800 You know, do some research for a local group that needs help.
00:13:27.300 And all of these are just reaching up for these low halos hanging from the trees.
00:13:32.560 There's not a lot you need to do to make the world a better place these days because we
00:13:37.920 are awash in problems.
00:13:40.160 We live in a target-rich environment for doing good.
00:13:42.520 You hardly have to do anything to make the world a better place.
00:13:47.020 And that's what I mean.
00:13:48.800 That's what I mean by halos hanging from the lowest branches of the trees.
00:13:52.540 You know, when I was a kid, I worked in fast food and the boss said, if you have time to
00:13:57.360 lean, you have time to clean.
00:13:58.900 You know, grab a broom.
00:14:00.620 You could, you know, it's like my wife and her friends went down to the school board for
00:14:05.240 a year, every two weeks, and gave two-minute speeches about the transgender policy.
00:14:09.520 You know, stuff like that.
00:14:12.540 You know, and people are worried about they're going to lose their jobs and things like that.
00:14:15.140 And that's why there are so many things that they can do so de voce that don't need to be
00:14:21.020 known.
00:14:21.500 Writing checks, for instance.
00:14:23.000 Making phone calls.
00:14:24.880 There's something for everybody to do.
00:14:28.340 You know, in the pro-life movement, it's funny.
00:14:30.120 The pro-life movement always takes it on the chops because they say, oh, the pro-life movement
00:14:34.920 is so political.
00:14:35.980 And we, you know, we don't have a Supreme Court and the U.S. Senate and blah, blah, blah.
00:14:40.800 The pro-life movement is broad and deep and vast.
00:14:43.460 It's not one thing.
00:14:44.640 It's not just the political pro-life movement.
00:14:46.980 It's people standing on street corners.
00:14:48.300 It's people praying in front of abortion clinics.
00:14:50.260 It's groups challenging the leases of Planned Parenthood offices.
00:14:54.120 It's prayer circles.
00:14:55.560 It's many things.
00:14:56.380 And so is the pro-family movement.
00:14:57.960 And so is all of this stuff.
00:15:00.100 There's so much that people, I mean, I like to say, Lila Rose sat around her dorm room
00:15:05.400 and thought up making phony phone calls to Planned Parenthood.
00:15:08.860 And look what happened with Lila Rose.
00:15:11.520 You know, the movement against the darkness around us can be changed by sitting with people
00:15:19.180 across the breakfast table and coming up with cool ideas.
00:15:22.760 One of the things you said, both in the book and just now, you said, lame us.
00:15:30.680 And there's a real beauty.
00:15:32.920 There's a real touching beauty in that because it's an ability to recognize our weakness, our
00:15:39.780 lowliness, and yet do great things for Christ.
00:15:42.980 One of the lines, you know, that we have from the scriptures is I can, I basically acknowledging
00:15:49.140 this kind of weakness, but nevertheless saying I can do all things through Christ who gives
00:15:54.540 me strength.
00:15:55.940 Get a little bit into that, if you would.
00:15:58.020 That whole concept of the lame us.
00:16:00.420 The other side mocks us because we're so lame.
00:16:03.660 You know, it's like none of us work at Google.
00:16:05.580 None of us went to Harvard.
00:16:07.420 You know, we're just meat and potatoes kind of people, regular pew sitters.
00:16:12.340 And we make a lot of mistakes and maybe we don't say things exactly perfectly.
00:16:17.960 And so what?
00:16:19.180 You know, you don't have to say things perfectly.
00:16:22.060 You just have to try.
00:16:23.400 You know, my little joke, and I want your viewers to know that this is a joke.
00:16:27.200 He chose us because he wanted all the credit.
00:16:32.880 And all the credit goes to him.
00:16:34.780 You know, we are the weak, blunt instruments of his will.
00:16:40.360 And I'm just like the apostles.
00:16:42.100 You know, these guys, you know, look at them.
00:16:45.920 They weren't, you know, they weren't the elite of their day.
00:16:50.200 Tax collector, fisherman, tapped on the shoulder, come and do this thing.
00:16:54.920 Okay.
00:16:55.760 You know, a small group of very determined people can change the outcome of big events.
00:17:00.280 We've seen this at the UN.
00:17:01.400 Again, you know, it's like the other side has tried for 24 years to make abortion a universally
00:17:07.400 recognized human right.
00:17:08.980 And a small group of very determined Christians has always stopped them, no matter what.
00:17:14.420 They have tried for 24 years to redefine the family.
00:17:17.340 And a small group of determined Christians have stopped them.
00:17:20.900 You know, people from your organization and other Canadians, people from Europe, people
00:17:25.680 from the United States who don't know anything.
00:17:28.580 You know, we sit in those rooms and these are high-powered diplomats who laugh at us,
00:17:34.100 who mock us, and we beat them every time.
00:17:37.300 They have tried to put sexual orientation and gender identity as a new category of non-discrimination
00:17:42.140 in international law, and they can't even get started on that.
00:17:46.160 And they've been trying for 15 years.
00:17:49.020 They mock us, they hate us, they lose to us.
00:17:52.340 A small group of determined Christians can change the outcome of huge events.
00:17:57.720 Today, in fact, we sort of need that message more than ever before, because when we look
00:18:03.380 at the landscape today, like we've never, ever seen in the past, there is a power structure
00:18:12.120 that's unreal that reaches not only into our, you know, personal lives through maybe our
00:18:18.020 banking, it literally reaches to us at every moment of the day, everywhere you are.
00:18:24.640 It can listen to you, watch you.
00:18:26.840 It seems to know almost your thoughts.
00:18:30.220 There's an invasion of privacy, a collusion between big tech, big government.
00:18:35.320 What in the world do you make of the current situation of the world today?
00:18:39.300 This is one of the reasons that these are among the most desperate times that the church
00:18:43.380 has ever experienced, because we are up against all the power centers of the world.
00:18:48.920 I wrote a column now five years ago for Crisis, the title of which was The Corporations Are
00:18:54.400 the Enemy.
00:18:55.340 And man, is that now true in spades?
00:18:59.460 Corporations are the enemy, and they are coming after us.
00:19:01.800 I tell the story in the book of a man that I knew who had a top job at Time Warner many
00:19:05.960 years ago in the magazine division.
00:19:07.740 He was a top editor.
00:19:08.920 And one day, some stonk-nosed kid from Human Resources came in with a rainbow sticker and
00:19:14.860 said, can I put this on your door?
00:19:17.100 And my friend said, no.
00:19:18.880 A guy like that can't say no anymore.
00:19:22.100 I did a series of stories for Breitbart now many years ago about employees at JPMorgan Chase,
00:19:29.840 the fourth largest financial institution in the world.
00:19:33.520 And they did a global survey of all employees.
00:19:37.720 And among the questions was, are you LGBT or an ally?
00:19:41.840 Those were the choices.
00:19:43.200 So what is a believing, practicing Catholic or other Christians supposed to do with a question
00:19:47.540 like that?
00:19:48.180 Because if you don't answer it, you can be tagged for education.
00:19:52.440 You might miss a promotion.
00:19:54.820 You could get fired down the road.
00:19:57.220 So, yeah, I don't think that we have faced this quite like this ever.
00:20:05.300 But again, I come right by the fact that we are also living in a time of great saints and
00:20:11.340 spiritual giants.
00:20:12.480 We are also living in a time of true robustness of Orthodox faith.
00:20:18.780 You know, when you look at Father Groeschel's guys bursting at the seams and Sisters of Life
00:20:24.380 Bursting at the Seams Institute, Christ the King, we went to Mass there in St. Louis over
00:20:27.960 Easter, and it was, you know, it was busting out with people.
00:20:32.840 So all over the Orthodox world, you can look at publishing, you know, look at Tan Books and
00:20:37.720 St. Benedict and Ignatius and Sophie Institute Press, my publisher of Under Siege, Crisis
00:20:44.680 Publications.
00:20:45.840 I mean, we are living in a time of genuine robustness.
00:20:49.560 You know what, even our debate with those people at Pathios and Commentary or Commonweal
00:20:58.620 and where Peter is, in an odd sort of a way, that's even a sign of health because it is
00:21:07.220 a truly vital, engaging debate because the stakes are so high.
00:21:13.840 So yeah, some numbers are down, some numbers are down.
00:21:18.900 You know, when Melinda Selmas and Damon Linker formally left the church a few years ago, I
00:21:25.100 wrote a column praising them for what they did.
00:21:28.020 I called it the honest apostasy of Melinda Selmas and Damon Linker.
00:21:32.060 And if we are shedding people who do not truly believe in the truths of the faith, it's better
00:21:38.320 that they went someplace else rather than staying and stirring up trouble and wasting our time
00:21:43.480 in debating about the truths of the faith, which we know are the truths of the faith.
00:21:47.140 So I make the case in the book that we are living through one of the most important epics
00:21:51.120 that the church has ever known.
00:21:52.640 Well, look at it this way.
00:21:53.380 Let me make one more point on that.
00:21:55.180 The early church debated about Christ, who is Christ, what is Christ.
00:21:59.420 A little later on, the church debated this great question of what is the church.
00:22:02.780 And we have been privileged to be on this planet during the third great debate, which is what
00:22:08.440 is the human person.
00:22:09.580 And we are privileged and blessed to be a part of that conversation.
00:22:13.260 And I don't want people to miss this opportunity through fear.
00:22:19.240 You know, I write a fair amount in the book about Rod Dreher and how he scares people, I
00:22:24.300 think, half to death.
00:22:26.560 I write about people who miss this time through distraction.
00:22:31.380 You know, golf.
00:22:32.780 You know, video games, television, whatever.
00:22:35.740 March Madness.
00:22:37.100 And then there are people who miss it through nostalgia of dreaming of, you know, castles
00:22:40.760 in the sky and previous days.
00:22:43.180 And the moment is, pray for us now.
00:22:45.300 The moment is now.
00:22:46.580 This is what has been given to us.
00:22:48.280 And I implore people not to miss it.
00:22:51.280 One of the greatest challenges that we're experiencing in the world today, and I would think greater
00:22:57.180 than any time before in the whole of the church or perhaps the whole of the world,
00:23:02.160 is the challenge coming from authority figures in the church, directly confronting what seems to normal, faithful, lame Catholics, if you will, as just the truths of the faith.
00:23:19.720 And yet, these confrontations are coming from Rome, from the mouth of the Pope in all these weird interviews.
00:23:25.840 It's coming from the likes of very celebrated priests like Father James Martin, who, in addition to being at America Magazine and so, you know, in the publishing world so strong,
00:23:38.340 but also appointed to the World Meeting of Families, a Vatican-organized conference to speak there, appointed as a papal advisor in the Pontifical Commission on Social Communications.
00:23:52.340 What in the world are we to make of this?
00:23:55.580 That being one of the things that's probably most confusing for Catholics who want to be faithful or people looking to the inside of the church to think about coming in and wondering what's going on.
00:24:05.440 Well, without a doubt, we're living through a time of great confusion, and it's not helped by people like Father James Martin.
00:24:10.860 There's no question about that.
00:24:13.160 You know, I hesitate to say anything about Pope Francis because I don't think it's my role.
00:24:18.060 You know, I spent the early part of his pontificate, you know, explaining, you know, that's not what he really meant.
00:24:26.280 You know, this is what he really meant.
00:24:28.440 And that is a challenge to this day, to explain what he really means.
00:24:35.080 And, you know, there are people who work very hard to explain what he really means and to show how it fits in tradition and things like that.
00:24:42.220 And it points out the fact that there is a need to help him communicate what he's really trying to say.
00:24:50.140 The church has not changed its position on abortion.
00:24:52.420 The church has not changed its teaching on marriage.
00:24:55.220 The church has not changed its teaching on contraception.
00:24:58.160 I mean, I write about this in the book.
00:25:01.320 When John Kerry, there's good news on the bishop front, too.
00:25:04.960 When John Kerry ran for president of the United States, I asked George Weigel how many bishops would speak up about his dissents from Catholic teaching.
00:25:13.220 And he said 35, and he was right on the money.
00:25:16.440 And then Obama goes to Notre Dame to get an award.
00:25:20.860 And how many bishops complained about that?
00:25:23.240 80.
00:25:24.180 OK, we'd like it to be more, but it was 80.
00:25:26.580 And then came the debate about Obamacare.
00:25:29.160 How many bishops spoke up about the fact that abortion was in Obamacare?
00:25:33.440 200 did.
00:25:35.460 Some of them threatened to go to jail.
00:25:39.680 I kind of wish some of them had.
00:25:41.680 Not because I have anything against the bishops, but it would be such a teaching moment if a bishop went to jail over Obamacare.
00:25:47.980 Or even the sisters of, you know, the little sisters of the poor went to jail.
00:25:51.680 I actually said that in a talk that I gave in Omaha a few years ago and said that I wish that some of the little sisters of the poor would have ended up going to jail.
00:26:02.260 And don't you know, after the talk, up come a bunch of little sisters of the poor that I didn't know were there.
00:26:07.560 And they said that if they went to jail, they would reform the penal system.
00:26:12.560 And it was really quite remarkable because then they brought up this little old man who was a doctor whose miracle was what was attributed to their founder for her canonization.
00:26:27.200 A living, breathing miracle standing right before me.
00:26:30.620 This is just a few years ago.
00:26:32.060 We live in a remarkable time for the faith.
00:26:34.560 We live in the time of John Paul II, of St. John Amola, of St. Josemaria Escriva.
00:26:44.380 You know, these three children that I wrote about in my book, Little Suffering Souls, three children who died young, suffered greatly, died young, brought many people to the faith.
00:26:52.900 People have to remember we live in a time of great saints and spiritual giants.
00:26:57.140 I think unlike any time in history, the bishops may not do exactly what we want.
00:27:02.440 This does not absolve us from doing our work.
00:27:04.980 It doesn't stop you.
00:27:07.040 And also people need to know they don't need the bishop's permission to do the work that was charged to them to do at baptism and confirmation.
00:27:14.920 You know, some people say, well, I'm going to wait and hear what the bishop has to say.
00:27:17.360 And I say, you know what?
00:27:18.480 No, don't wait.
00:27:20.260 You don't have to wait.
00:27:21.360 And you don't even have to tell him.
00:27:23.640 Just go do it.
00:27:24.400 The way that the church was set up was that there's one pope, a bunch of bishops, some more priests, and hundreds of millions of Catholics.
00:27:32.720 Very clearly, the way he set it up was that we would be facing the world and conquering it for Christ.
00:27:38.700 That's the way it's set up.
00:27:39.800 So that Rome sometimes sends an uncertain trumpet and the bishops don't always do exactly what we want and we wish them to do more.
00:27:48.860 I say, so what?
00:27:50.100 But let's go get the bad guys.
00:27:54.580 We can beat them.
00:27:55.360 I mean, and I know that that's your attitude.
00:27:57.040 That's the attitude of everybody that works for you.
00:27:59.220 So, you know, we're happy warriors.
00:28:01.720 Final question, Austin.
00:28:02.760 One thing that is perhaps very, very difficult for people is the lack of the sacraments.
00:28:10.340 Some of them still today around the world have had no masses in a year and a half.
00:28:15.200 We've been very blessed where we are, I know where you are, to have brought back the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for us.
00:28:22.180 But some of these people are without.
00:28:24.320 Sometimes lockdowns might come down again and masses, God forbid, will be, you know, we'd be deprived again.
00:28:32.640 What do you do in such times?
00:28:34.060 What did you do during the lockdown?
00:28:35.340 And how do you survive that?
00:28:38.220 We are blessed here that even when the lockdown happened, our parish priest, let it be known, that he would be saying his private mass at a certain time.
00:28:48.560 And if anybody happened to be there, they could receive communion.
00:28:51.740 And we did that for a couple of weeks until somebody complained and the bishop said no more.
00:28:57.240 I found myself going to a lot of funerals and baptisms and confirmations, actually quite by accident.
00:29:06.000 You know, there's a church that I go to to say prayers frequently.
00:29:10.180 And I showed up one day at an odd time and the candles were set up and everything was set up.
00:29:14.300 And I went, what's going on here?
00:29:15.620 And it was a funeral.
00:29:16.680 So I participated in the funeral mass.
00:29:18.800 I took to trolling the funeral homes to see when the masses were, you know, and, you know, we would go to church and we would read the mass together as a family.
00:29:32.640 Our fellow parishioners would come and read it together.
00:29:37.180 You know, we tried to do it on TV one time and we were kneeling there.
00:29:40.480 And my daughter Lucy said, this feels so weird kneeling in front of the TV.
00:29:43.700 And it did.
00:29:44.480 And so we stopped that.
00:29:45.400 But if it went on, I mean, I would, you know, you and I are fighters and I would have gone in for civil disobedience.
00:29:54.720 You know, I see these videos of Canadians, you know, these guys from Rebel TV.
00:29:59.740 Holy cow.
00:30:00.900 I love these guys, you know, doing battle and literally in the public square on these lockdowns.
00:30:08.360 You know, and I see that Polish pastor.
00:30:10.720 I wanted to send him money, you know, that viral video of him chasing him out of there.
00:30:15.480 You know, I'm conflicted because we love the police, but golly, not when they do stuff like that.
00:30:21.120 What if it got really bad here?
00:30:22.720 I don't know what I would do, but I think I would get angry and I would do something.
00:30:29.500 You know, we have an absolute right to receive the sacraments.
00:30:35.980 And so I don't think that the government can stop it.
00:30:39.660 And I think that Catholic men ought to be standing up around the world and truly fighting back.
00:30:46.580 Amen.
00:30:47.240 Amen.
00:30:48.380 Austin Ruse, thank you so very much for being with us in this episode of The John Henry Weston Show.
00:30:52.460 Thank you so much.
00:30:53.540 God bless you and yours.
00:30:54.840 Keep doing your good work.
00:30:56.480 Thank you, Austin.
00:30:57.220 God bless you.
00:30:58.480 And God bless all of you.
00:30:59.940 And we'll see you next time.
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