The John-Henry Westen Show


Bishop Joseph Strickland Must Resist Pope Francis If Told To Step Down ｜ Dr. Peter Kwasniewski


Summary

In this episode of The John Henry Weston Show, Dr. Peter Krasniewski joins us to talk about Bishop John Strickland's ouster from the Diocese of St. Louis, Missouri, and why the Pope should not have the power to remove him.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 If we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one that we preached originally, let us be accursed.
00:00:07.680 Let us be anathema.
00:00:09.340 Don't follow us.
00:00:11.280 I mean, I think that there's almost no verse in Scripture that more beautifully highlights the fact that the Pope and the bishops are subordinate to the truth and not superior to it.
00:00:24.480 They're not in control of it. They can't mold it however they wish so that they can agree with the globalist, humanist, transhumanist or transgender or whatever agenda.
00:00:35.320 They can't do that. They have no authority to do that.
00:00:44.380 Hey, everyone. Remember when, just a few weeks ago now, we heard the news that the Pope was going after Bishop Strickland?
00:00:52.100 There was a Vatican visitation, even worse, that one of the most controversial left-leaning bishops in America, Bishop Gacanus, was the one or one of the two the Pope sent to investigate or to do a visitation on Bishop Strickland.
00:01:09.900 We've seen these visitations lead to cancellation of orders and of things like this, orders being shut down, traditional orders being shut down.
00:01:18.560 And here it was for Bishop Strickland. I think it gave a lot of people a scare. Oh, no. What if we lose Bishop Strickland?
00:01:27.620 It's not so easy, though, you know.
00:01:31.180 A bishop can't just be kicked out.
00:01:34.260 But how is that going to play out? And what are the rules?
00:01:37.940 Well, there's no one better to talk to on that than Dr. Peter Kozneski.
00:01:41.540 He's a traditional Catholic writer right now.
00:01:46.660 He's written many, many books on the history of the Church and of the papacy and so on.
00:01:52.340 But he really has clarity of thought on this.
00:01:57.300 I've been reading some of his articles over at Catholic Family News.
00:02:01.840 Incredible.
00:02:03.140 So stay tuned. This is going to be very interesting, this episode of The John Henry Weston Show.
00:02:07.300 Hey, friends. This July, we at LifeSite are celebrating 25 years of service to life, faith, family and freedom with a gala in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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00:03:45.340 I look forward to seeing you there.
00:03:47.120 God bless you.
00:03:47.660 Dr. Peter Krasniewski, welcome to the program.
00:03:53.420 Thank you, John Henry.
00:03:54.300 Thank you for inviting me.
00:03:55.940 Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:03:58.640 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:04:03.140 Amen.
00:04:03.400 So, Peter, very complex questions here.
00:04:09.040 You know, with that seeming like the Pope was going to go after Bishop Strickland, and there was a mini heart attack for a lot of people.
00:04:19.240 But that got a lot of us thinking.
00:04:21.060 Catholics in Puerto Rico, I'm sure, thought of that a long time ago when their bishop was removed.
00:04:28.380 Speaking, of course, of Bishop Daniel Torres.
00:04:32.420 He's the one who allowed for conscientious objection publicly for the vaccines, for the COVID vaccines.
00:04:39.560 And he was summarily dismissed from his diocese by Pope Francis at only 57 years old.
00:04:48.200 So, you know, with that and other such happenings around the world, obviously when we heard of the visitation on Bishop Strickland, it was, you know, a big gulp.
00:04:58.660 But it did then raise this question.
00:05:04.320 What do we do?
00:05:05.640 What do we do in this situation?
00:05:09.460 Is the bishop just supposed to leave?
00:05:12.260 And that's why I thought you're the perfect person to go to.
00:05:14.880 You're the one who I thought of right away.
00:05:18.660 And it was after hearing Bishop Strickland, excuse me, Bishop Schneider.
00:05:21.980 When Bishop Schneider was talking about what bishops and priests should do in light of traditionis custodis and the more severe restrictions of the Latin mass, he's actually saying it's improper to follow those directions.
00:05:39.060 It's right to disobey them because they're unjust.
00:05:43.280 Yes.
00:05:43.480 So if you can unpack some of this for us, that would be fantastic.
00:05:46.340 Well, so the most important principle to begin with, and this is a principle of natural law, really, it's something that belongs to the structure of reality as God created it, is that all authority exists for a certain purpose.
00:06:01.740 It doesn't exist as a free-floating, in-the-void, arbitrary imposition that can coerce people to do whatever it wants them to do.
00:06:08.900 No, authority's purpose is to promote and foster the common good of the society over which the authority is placed.
00:06:15.360 Now, that common good is also something definite.
00:06:18.660 For example, in a country, it might be the peace of the country, good laws, good morality.
00:06:24.360 You know, these are the things that the governor or the ruler is supposed to see to.
00:06:28.720 And if the ruler acts against the good of the people in an extreme way, they can actually either refuse assent to what he's doing or they can even rise up against him.
00:06:38.540 Now, in the Catholic Church, we don't rise up against popes and bishops.
00:06:41.700 That's something that we can't do.
00:06:43.480 We don't take out pitchforks and run after them, although probably in the Middle Ages people would have done something like that.
00:06:48.620 They probably did.
00:06:50.640 But it's still true that just as with any authority, the Pope is placed by Christ in the Church to serve a given function, and that is to promote the common good of the Church.
00:07:01.360 He does that in a couple of ways.
00:07:03.040 He does that by teaching the true faith, by teaching the deposit of faith revealed by Christ through the apostles, by promoting good morals and good discipline, by appointing worthy bishops, or at least bishops that he thinks are worthy.
00:07:18.160 He might be mistaken.
00:07:19.220 Every human being can be mistaken.
00:07:20.340 But what a pope wouldn't have the authority to do, even though he has the supreme authority in the Church, would be to thwart Catholic doctrine, to undermine Catholic morality, to appoint wicked men as bishops, such as in nepotism or simony when popes in the Renaissance were appointing their 14-year-old nephews as cardinals and so forth.
00:07:41.540 When they do this kind of thing, they are actually acting ultra-vires, to use the technical term, outside their powers, outside their authority, contrary to the nature of what their authority was given for.
00:07:54.680 And so that raises the really interesting question, the ecclesiological question of, is it possible for a pope to act so much contrary to the common good and to justice in a given situation that his act is invalid?
00:08:10.240 That it has no force, that it has no force, that it's not like a law that's imperfect or a command that is imperfect, but it's not a command at all.
00:08:22.100 It's not a law at all.
00:08:24.160 Is that possible?
00:08:25.340 And the answer of the Church, the tradition of the Church, is yes, that is possible.
00:08:28.920 St. Thomas says an unjust law is no law at all.
00:08:31.460 It doesn't have the rationale of a law.
00:08:33.340 And so I would argue, many would argue, that if a pope removed a bishop arbitrarily for no good cause, there was no canonical process, there was no reason given, and no reason could be discovered, and in fact, there was evidence that the reason he removed such a person is because he was conservative or traditional or teaching the faith or upholding good discipline and morals and so forth.
00:08:58.300 Then that act would be null and void, then that would be an act that should be ignored.
00:09:03.460 The bishop in question should assume that he is still bishop, because he is still bishop.
00:09:09.100 The pope can only remove somebody for just cause.
00:09:13.140 He can't arbitrarily remove people.
00:09:15.800 The church is, the papacy is not a tyranny.
00:09:19.060 It's a monarchy.
00:09:20.460 And we have to remember that.
00:09:22.800 Boy, though, what a mess.
00:09:25.240 Yeah, I guess it's a mess anyway.
00:09:27.260 But the situation of Daniel Torres, for instance, in Puerto Rico, you know, the new bishop came in, and it's all whatever.
00:09:39.160 How does this work in practice?
00:09:41.580 Because it's, what a nightmare.
00:09:47.480 What if the legitimate bishop, and might as well use the example that everybody's thinking of.
00:09:55.940 Bishop Strickland has been, in America, a hero for American Catholics, for Catholics around the world, actually.
00:10:03.240 One of the only outspoken bishops in the country.
00:10:06.100 Even though there are a good number of bishops who are faithful and who every once in a while will make their voices heard.
00:10:14.140 No one is doing that like Bishop Strickland.
00:10:16.240 And yes, he is ruffling feathers.
00:10:21.040 He feels in conscience he should be.
00:10:23.420 And I think a lot of the faithful would agree with him.
00:10:26.840 So, let's say it's for that reason, for his being outspoken, for his going to L.A. to do the procession of reparation, his being outspoken on life, on family.
00:10:44.360 His taking up of Father James Martin for his heresy.
00:10:51.240 All those things.
00:10:52.860 It's for that that Bishop Strickland has gone after, and he's just told, that's enough, you're gone.
00:10:59.080 We're just, like with Bishop Torres, we're going to replace you with someone else.
00:11:02.840 So, this plays out.
00:11:05.340 How do you see that playing out?
00:11:08.220 If it's unjust.
00:11:09.340 Let's make the hypothesis that it is unjust.
00:11:12.240 Yes.
00:11:12.740 Well, so, if you don't mind, I want to address, though, a point that you made, because I think it's important for the sake of the argument.
00:11:19.020 That is, why is it legitimate for Bishop Strickland or for Bishop Schneider, the auxiliary bishop of Astana in Kazakhstan, to speak about issues all over the world, to address issues outside of his diocese, to be teaching the Catholic faith to a very large audience, you might say a global audience.
00:11:39.620 Is that legitimate?
00:11:40.440 There are some people out there who want to say, no, every bishop should just restrict himself to his own diocese and only concern himself with local affairs.
00:11:49.280 I want to point out, and you know, I'm not the biggest fan of Vatican II who's ever lived, right?
00:11:55.720 But I just want to point out that's completely contrary to what Vatican II says.
00:11:58.920 In Lumen Gentium, Lumen Gentium says that, it says, this is in paragraph 20, just as the office granted individually to Peter, the first among the apostles, is permanent and is to be transmitted to his successor.
00:12:13.920 And then it goes on to say in number 23, each of them, as a member of the Episcopal College and legitimate successor of the apostles, is obliged by Christ's institution and command to be solicitous for the whole church.
00:12:34.660 For it is the duty of all bishops to promote and to safeguard the unity of faith and the discipline common to the whole church.
00:12:43.580 I mean, it's as if they're trying to underline this, right?
00:12:46.580 That even though the bishop's proper territory over which he has immediate jurisdiction is his own diocese, right?
00:12:53.040 He can't go out ordaining priests all over the place.
00:12:55.960 He has to stay within his own diocese.
00:12:57.460 But he's still concerned with and should be promoting actively the good discipline and the faith of the entire church in whatever ways are suitable for him.
00:13:06.800 And I would think, you know, an example of that would be Bishop Fulton Sheen, right?
00:13:10.340 With the way he preached over the television airwaves, you know, to millions of people.
00:13:16.280 And although I'm sure he ruffled some modernist feathers back then, most people were happy to have Bishop Sheen on primetime television, you know, preaching the gospel, right?
00:13:25.620 Like, this is what Bishop Schneider is doing.
00:13:28.100 This is what Bishop Strickland is doing, using methods like YouTube or Twitter or whatever it might be.
00:13:33.800 And they look outrageous, I think, not because of what they're saying, but because of how few are those who are saying these things that they're saying, right?
00:13:42.060 But if you just sort of rewound the clock by 50 or 100 years, what they're saying often would be perfectly obvious.
00:13:49.860 Like, well, yeah, of course, that's what the Baltimore Catechism says, you know?
00:13:52.840 So we're not talking about outlandish opinions as if these bishops are saying things from Mars.
00:13:59.000 I mean, they're saying just what's in the Catechism, the traditional Catechism, you know?
00:14:03.500 But to get on to your question, yes, of course, it would be a terrible mess in a situation where, let's say, Bishop Daniel Fernandez Torres said, and in fact, he made this statement.
00:14:13.820 He made a very bold public statement.
00:14:15.060 I have done nothing wrong.
00:14:16.820 They've never told me I've done anything wrong.
00:14:18.620 And in fact, they offered me another position if I would just resign my diocese, which shows that I haven't done anything wrong.
00:14:24.640 Because if you're guilty of some wrongdoing, they're not going to say, OK, here's another plum position over here that we'll give you.
00:14:30.220 I mean, basically, they were trying to bribe him to leave his diocese because the other bishops didn't like him.
00:14:34.600 And it wasn't just about vaccinations.
00:14:35.920 It was about he didn't want to send his seminaries to the common seminary.
00:14:39.360 He didn't he didn't want to suppress the traditional Latin mass.
00:14:43.560 You know, there were a number of things, but none of them could could be called false, let alone delicts or any kind of serious fault.
00:14:50.760 And so if he had if he had said, you know, with all due respect, your Holy Father, I admire you.
00:15:01.540 I pray for you.
00:15:02.820 I want to be in communion with you.
00:15:04.860 But although you appointed me bishop, actually, I think it was Benedict XVI appointed him bishop.
00:15:08.820 But anyway, although the pope appointed me a bishop, I was I when I was consecrated a bishop, it was Jesus Christ himself who established me as a bishop.
00:15:19.740 And that's also the teaching of Lumen Gentium.
00:15:22.140 It wasn't the pope who made me a bishop.
00:15:24.660 It was Jesus Christ who made me a bishop at the pope's appointment.
00:15:28.240 Right.
00:15:28.920 And now and once you're a bishop, you're a bishop forever, just like you are a priest forever.
00:15:33.280 And if there's no if there's no grounds for removing a bishop justly, then he remains the bishop of the place that the pope, if the pope is not the source of his episcopacy, then the pope doesn't have complete arbitrary authority over whether he gets to serve his flock as a bishop or not.
00:15:53.160 That's from Christ is not from the pope.
00:15:55.260 The pope basically says, you go to this diocese, I'm appointing you to this diocese, but it's Christ who's establishing you in your authority over this diocese.
00:16:04.060 Right.
00:16:04.320 This is very important to grasp.
00:16:07.340 Now, I'm not saying it's an easy issue because these two spheres, they sort of collide in a way.
00:16:13.380 The pope has immediate supreme universal jurisdiction in the church, which is which means in practice he can do whatever it is within his ambit of authority to do.
00:16:22.900 And nobody can stop him and nobody's is over him.
00:16:27.080 But again, it means within the ambit of his of his authority, within the sphere of his authority.
00:16:33.220 So I think what would happen on the ground is if Bishop Torres had said that I with all due respect, I'm staying here.
00:16:39.640 I'm the bishop and you can't remove me arbitrarily.
00:16:42.500 Then maybe the pope would assign another bishop and then there would be, so to speak, two bishops in this area.
00:16:48.300 But there would only be one true bishop because there's already a bishop there who's there as a bishop with that.
00:16:54.300 And he's still there.
00:16:54.980 He's going to be there as long as he as he lives, unless he's removed for just cause or dies, you know.
00:17:01.200 And the new bishop will be a usurper or an imposter.
00:17:05.140 Would this be messy?
00:17:06.560 Absolutely.
00:17:07.360 Has church history seen these kinds of messes before?
00:17:10.280 Absolutely.
00:17:10.680 If you read about the history of the Church of Constantinople, for example, it's crazy how many times patriarchs were deposed and reinstated and they went back and forth and they were conflicting patriarchs.
00:17:23.700 We don't want that situation.
00:17:25.200 We don't want that situation.
00:17:26.760 But we will, I would argue, we should be willing to tolerate such a messy situation rather than compromise on this point.
00:17:37.060 And that the bishops are not the vicars of the pope, right?
00:17:41.180 Yeah.
00:17:42.640 Yeah, that's so stunning.
00:17:43.760 You know, it's funny.
00:17:46.380 In a way, you feel that.
00:17:48.880 You feel like, oh, of course, the vicar is the, excuse me, the bishop is the vicar of the pope.
00:17:55.840 That doesn't make sense.
00:17:56.780 Actually, no.
00:17:57.300 The authority to govern comes from Christ.
00:18:01.080 It's funny that that would even, you know, but it is a thing.
00:18:05.880 It is a thing, I think, with most Catholics, or a lot, that do think that way.
00:18:11.080 Because, you know, we were always taught the pope is the supreme pontiff.
00:18:14.460 And, you know, I guess it does help when you have a dictatorial pope like we do now.
00:18:20.640 It certainly seems that way.
00:18:22.100 I think what happens is that as long as a pope is exercising his monarchy in, let's say, a reasonable way, a way that doesn't give cause for scandal or for alarm or for, yeah.
00:18:38.580 Then I think most people are just content to assume that he is completely in charge of everything.
00:18:43.740 And he doesn't do anything to make you question your understanding, but maybe that you have a false understanding of these things.
00:18:52.000 But Pope Francis is so extreme in his actions and in his teachings.
00:18:57.800 You know, his teachings on LGBTQ, his teachings on marriage and family, his teachings on civil authority, his teaching on sacraments and liturgy.
00:19:07.360 I mean, there are so many alarm bells ringing, right?
00:19:11.640 You almost become deaf with the alarm bells that are ringing, that you start to look at these issues more closely and you realize, oh, wait a minute.
00:19:19.800 So the papacy actually has limits.
00:19:22.200 I mean, it's kind of obvious once you say it, right?
00:19:24.100 Because it's a created authority and the only authority that's absolutely God.
00:19:27.620 And, of course, any created authority can be resisted if he abuses his authority.
00:19:31.600 And this is something you can find in the whole canonical and theological tradition.
00:19:35.340 You know, Torquemada says this, Cajetan says this, Bellarmine says this, Suarez says this, Aquinas says this.
00:19:40.320 They all say that any time an authority, even in the church, abuses his office, he can be fraternally corrected and even resisted and disobeyed, right?
00:19:50.880 I document these things.
00:19:52.240 I'll give you some links that you can add for readers who want to read more, right?
00:19:56.120 These things were part of our tradition, but they tended to be forgotten in the wake of Vatican I and the whole ultramontanist spirit that kind of swept through the church.
00:20:07.700 Wait, wait. What does ultramontanist mean?
00:20:11.840 Yeah. So around the time of, let's put it this way, after the French Revolution, the church was on the run in Europe.
00:20:19.540 Anti-clericalism, Freemasonry, rising socialism, eventually communism, all of these ideologies were forcibly acting against the church, trying to suppress the church,
00:20:30.320 trying to destroy Catholic schools, trying to obliterate the clergy.
00:20:35.700 And in the face of that kind of pressure against Catholicism, Catholics had a very natural instinct to rally around the Pope.
00:20:43.260 The Pope is our head. He's our father. He's our universal leader.
00:20:46.600 He's our general, in a sense, the general of the Catholic army.
00:20:49.060 And we have to rally around him. And if we have a strong Pope, then he can help lead us through this modern battle against all of these ideologies.
00:20:58.300 That's legitimate. That happened. And people needed the Pope to be that way for them.
00:21:03.160 But the problem is that they're developed also the spirit of the Pope almost as the great leader, almost like a cult of personality, right?
00:21:10.440 Or that it's the faith is the Pope. The faith is all about the Pope. Well, it's not.
00:21:17.320 I mean, that's an exaggeration. That's a caricature of it.
00:21:19.860 That's a caricature that Protestants play upon quite a bit because they would love to be able to say,
00:21:25.660 oh, you Catholics don't follow scripture. You just follow whatever the Pope says.
00:21:28.900 Well, we know that that's false. But this spirit ultramontanism that is looking over the mountains to the Pope for all of your,
00:21:35.440 for everything, all the time, kind of suggests this error, right?
00:21:40.600 That our faith is wrapped up in the person of the Pope and in what he's teaching right now,
00:21:44.720 as opposed to something that's been handed down by all of the Popes and all of the bishops,
00:21:50.160 you know, from the beginning until now, right?
00:21:54.320 Exactly.
00:21:54.900 I just want to touch on one point.
00:21:56.200 One of the fascinating... Oh, go ahead, please.
00:21:58.820 No, just that you talked earlier about the bishops, that they're not vicars of the Pope.
00:22:04.900 And I just wanted to underline that point, if I may, just for a moment,
00:22:08.580 because I think it's so crucial, and it goes along with this ultramontanism theme.
00:22:13.360 So Lumen Gentium, it's a short passage from number 27 of Lumen Gentium, says this,
00:22:18.060 The pastoral office, or the habitual and daily care of their sheep, is entrusted to the bishops completely.
00:22:27.860 Nor are they to be regarded as vicars of the Roman pontiffs, for they exercise an authority that is proper to them,
00:22:35.600 and are quite correctly called prelates, that is, heads of the people whom they govern.
00:22:40.980 Their power, therefore, is not destroyed by the supreme and universal power of the Pope,
00:22:47.280 but on the contrary, it is affirmed, strengthened, and vindicated by it,
00:22:51.700 since the Holy Spirit unfailingly preserves the form of government established by Christ the Lord in his Church.
00:22:57.860 So that passage is very powerful, because what it tells you instantly is that the Church is not like a multinational corporation,
00:23:07.240 in which the bishops are like branch managers, and the Pope is the CEO, right?
00:23:13.400 Because in a corporation, if the Pope or the CEO, he could just call up a bishop, like Bishop Daniel Fernandez Torres,
00:23:19.700 and say, you know what, Bishop, it's been good having you on the team, but you're fired, fired without cause,
00:23:25.600 because I'm the CEO, right, of Vatican Inc., and we're going to just put another manager in there.
00:23:31.480 No, it's not like that.
00:23:32.620 The managers, not the managers, the prelates of this mystical body, this mystical corporation,
00:23:39.840 are put in place by Christ and are permanently in place, unless they actually do something to forfeit being in place, right?
00:23:49.620 So they're like the people who have tenure, like professors with tenure that you can never get rid of, right?
00:23:55.580 And just as a sign of how serious that was taken, Pius XII, do you mind if I just tell this quick historical story about Pius XII?
00:24:06.060 Pius XII, after, now, there was almost nobody who was more fiercely anti-Nazi than Pius XII, right?
00:24:14.040 As Eugenio Pacelli, although he was, I mean, he was famously engaged in diplomacy with the Third Reich,
00:24:21.300 he quickly realized that he was dealing with a liar and a psychopath,
00:24:24.500 and that's why he wrote the text of one of the most passionate encyclicals ever.
00:24:29.140 It's called Mit Brennender Zorga.
00:24:30.860 It was written by Pacelli, but it was published by his boss at the time.
00:24:34.980 I shouldn't use the word boss, but the Pope Pius XI.
00:24:39.140 So you can't accuse Pius XII if you really know your history of being sympathetic to Hitler or the Nazis,
00:24:45.880 although some people have ignorantly said that.
00:24:47.680 But anyway, after World War II, a bunch of people in the French government,
00:24:51.400 people who had been fighting for the free French and who had been fighting against the Vichy regime,
00:24:57.460 they asked, they wanted the Pope to remove not only the papal nuncio, who had been sympathetic to Vichy,
00:25:03.940 but also 30 bishops and several other prelates who had all been basically in cahoots with the National Socialists in France, right?
00:25:12.880 They wanted the Pope to remove all of them from office, okay?
00:25:17.660 Well, how did the Pope reply?
00:25:19.240 Did he say, oh, I understand.
00:25:20.780 It's just terrible.
00:25:21.800 Yes, I'll remove them all.
00:25:23.200 No, what he said was this.
00:25:24.320 He sent a message of his displeasure with the attitude of the French government,
00:25:29.980 which he regards as offensive, discourteous, and injurious.
00:25:33.760 He will change the nuncio, but he will not do it without pain or protest.
00:25:38.880 As for purging the episcopacy, he declared,
00:25:41.700 there can be no question of changing the bishops.
00:25:44.800 That has never been done.
00:25:46.560 That will not be done.
00:25:48.180 That would be an injustice without precedent, inadmissible, okay?
00:25:53.560 These are pretty strong words, Pius XII.
00:25:56.920 And what they show is that for him, it was unthinkable to remove bishops,
00:26:02.060 even if they had been in cahoots with the National Socialist government.
00:26:04.720 You know that here on LifeSite, we love to tell amazing stories.
00:26:11.640 There are a few so heroic and amazing as the story we're about to tell you that's coming soon.
00:26:18.100 You got to watch this.
00:26:21.720 When I was in seminary, I was reading a book by Henry Nowen.
00:26:25.540 He talked about a nuclear man, you know,
00:26:28.000 and people who grew up in the 1980s were kind of formed by that immediate and constant threat
00:26:34.260 of nuclear annihilation.
00:26:38.120 My generation has grown up, you know, under the specter of priestly sexual abuse.
00:26:44.180 What say you, Mr. Foreperson, is the defendant guilty or not guilty?
00:26:48.720 I think that for many of us, that has also been all-encompassing.
00:26:53.340 You know, I mean, I entered the seminary in January of 2004,
00:26:57.940 and it's basically been there for me from the beginning.
00:27:00.640 One priest's sacrifice for many priestly sins.
00:27:09.120 The story of Father John Hallowell.
00:27:13.420 Coming soon from LifeSite News.
00:27:15.880 This concept gets even stronger in your article in Catholic Family News.
00:27:24.600 You make mention of something that takes this whole notion to another level.
00:27:31.240 And that's when you talk about how the shepherd can't abandon his flock in the face of the wolves
00:27:41.460 when, for argument's sake, Pope Francis installs a wolf.
00:27:50.840 And it's life's sake, so we can be pretty frank here.
00:27:57.220 There are wolves being appointed as bishops.
00:28:00.760 One of those was Bishop McElroy.
00:28:05.300 That's plain for anyone who wants to see.
00:28:07.480 So in that case, or in such a case, can the sitting bishop morally leave his flock?
00:28:21.920 I know it's a hard question, but it does, that really struck me from your article.
00:28:27.320 I wondered, whoa, that's just, that's just really powerful.
00:28:30.840 Is the bishop able to leave when the new appointment, for no reason, but then with a new wolf coming in,
00:28:38.940 isn't he sort of commanded by a lord not to?
00:28:41.800 Yes, I agree.
00:28:43.080 I mean, I don't really think, it's a difficult question for two reasons.
00:28:48.440 It seems to us to be a difficult question.
00:28:50.060 A, because of our ultramontanist, or even better said, I think, hyper-papalist instincts or habits of thought
00:28:58.780 that make us, we don't even want to think about somebody disagreeing with the Pope on such a major level,
00:29:05.540 on such a major issue.
00:29:07.480 But I also think that we tend to almost downplay or underestimate the obligation that a bishop has
00:29:16.260 to his own flock and his own sheep, because we think of them as managers who can be moved around,
00:29:21.540 and this is connected with, you know, the point that Eric Simmons was talking about at the Coalition
00:29:25.280 for Council of Priests conference, that ever since it's become customary to move bishops around
00:29:30.260 and to advance them from a, so to speak, lesser diocese to a greater diocese, it's just like career climbing.
00:29:37.480 I mean, it's, you know, it's like going up through the ranks of the corporation from, you know,
00:29:40.860 lower management to higher management, right?
00:29:42.880 And that mentality has cracked into everybody's minds so that we don't think of the bishop
00:29:46.980 anymore as a father.
00:29:48.480 The way the medievals talk about the bishop is he was the bridegroom of the diocese, of
00:29:53.780 the church, the local church, just as Christ is the bridegroom of the whole church, and the
00:29:59.040 Pope, in a sense, is the bridegroom of, well, the Pope would be the bridegroom of the Church
00:30:02.740 of Rome, but then also symbolically of the whole church.
00:30:06.320 So, too, you know, Bishop Strickland is the husband of the Church of Tyler, and, you know,
00:30:12.500 Bishop Conley is the husband of the Church of Lincoln, and you could go on and on with
00:30:15.880 all these bishops.
00:30:17.000 And what does it say when the bishop then moves to another local church?
00:30:21.060 You know, this is the sort of like this, almost like ecclesiological polygamy or, you
00:30:24.620 know, or something like that.
00:30:25.800 I mean, it just doesn't make any sense, like divorce and remarriage, you know.
00:30:28.780 Now, granted, this is, it's not impossible to move a bishop.
00:30:32.360 I'm not suggesting that it's impossible, but it's weird against the backdrop of church
00:30:38.080 history, where that was never done before, and for very sound reasons, theoretical and
00:30:43.000 practical reasons.
00:30:44.180 But also, if he's the husband of the local church, that means he's the father of the
00:30:47.720 faithful.
00:30:48.180 They're like his children, right?
00:30:50.140 And isn't it beautiful to think, you know, in pre-modern times, the image of a father was
00:30:56.380 something that people thought of in a warm sort of way.
00:30:58.800 Now, everybody attacks patriarchy and fatherhood is dismissed or, you know, attacked or seen
00:31:05.740 as an arbitrary social construct.
00:31:08.060 But in reality, fatherhood, the fatherhood of God is the source of all authority.
00:31:12.120 And all fatherhood on heaven and earth is named after the fatherhood of God, right?
00:31:16.080 So the highest title of a bishop, in a way, would be father of his children and then shepherd
00:31:22.080 of his flock, to use another metaphor.
00:31:23.740 So, yes, I would say, absolutely, it's not difficult in itself to say that a bishop should
00:31:30.180 be prepared rather to die than not to continue to care for his children and his flock, especially
00:31:37.260 if he thought they were in danger of having sacraments removed from them or of having sound
00:31:42.020 teaching removed from them.
00:31:44.040 That, that for me, says it all.
00:31:46.580 The, all of the hassle, awkwardness, possible removal of buildings, who knows what.
00:31:55.540 It's all, it's all not only worth it, they're called to do it.
00:31:58.640 It makes so much sense.
00:32:00.340 But there's actually more in your essay there, which, which I thought was fascinating.
00:32:04.980 Um, you talk about also a quote from the scriptures, uh, St. Paul, um, and it was stunning because
00:32:18.740 you don't, you don't think of that somehow in, in reference to the Pope, but it applies
00:32:27.660 very well.
00:32:29.300 It goes, even if I or an angel from heaven were to come and preach another gospel, let
00:32:35.720 him be anathema.
00:32:38.020 Explain that please in reference to the Pope.
00:32:39.980 I thought it was so brilliant.
00:32:41.520 Yeah.
00:32:41.700 So, so St. Vincent of, of Lawrence, uh, who is the wonderful church father who first articulated
00:32:47.920 the idea that the deposit of faith can never essentially change, even if the way that we
00:32:54.000 understand it and formulate it can develop and improve over time or become fuller is
00:32:59.420 really a better way of saying it, but the, the essence of the faith, the substance of
00:33:02.640 it never changes.
00:33:03.900 Um, and, and, and St. Vincent of Lawrence is often misquoted by the Pope, just as if he's
00:33:08.940 like an evolutionist on doctrine that, you know, you can start with a fish and end with,
00:33:12.500 with a mammal or something, but, uh, that's certainly not, that's completely the contrary of
00:33:17.100 what St. Vincent of Lawrence says.
00:33:18.300 He says that the deposit of faith is so rock solid.
00:33:22.900 It's so definite and definitive that once it's been given by Christ, our Lord, to the
00:33:30.140 apostles, not even the apostles have the authority to change it.
00:33:34.800 And not even the angels who are above the apostles, the angels in heaven, they see God face to
00:33:39.400 face.
00:33:39.880 Not even the angels can change this.
00:33:41.960 If, I mean, it's a pair, it's a pair impossibile statement of Paul.
00:33:46.280 Even if an angel from heaven came down and said something other, you shouldn't follow
00:33:51.580 that angel.
00:33:52.240 You should follow the original deposit of faith.
00:33:55.000 But what I find even more striking is that Paul says, if we, i.e. the apostles, talking
00:34:00.860 about himself, Peter, Andrew, John, James, if we or an angel from heaven should preach
00:34:07.240 a gospel other than the one that we preached originally, let us be accursed.
00:34:12.340 Let us be anathema, right?
00:34:14.240 Don't follow us.
00:34:15.180 I mean, I think that there's almost no verse in scripture that more beautifully highlights
00:34:22.220 the fact that the Pope and the bishops are subordinate to the truth and not superior to
00:34:29.040 it.
00:34:29.220 They're not in control of it.
00:34:30.080 They can't mold it however they wish so that they can agree with the globalist, humanist,
00:34:37.220 transhumanist or transgender or whatever agenda.
00:34:40.000 They can't do that.
00:34:41.000 They have no authority to do that.
00:34:42.180 And that's, unfortunately, it does seem, in a lot of ways, that's where we're at.
00:34:48.580 The clarity, if you will, with which the Pope is now teaching, for lack of a better word,
00:34:58.640 because it is how it's received on LGBT, is just that.
00:35:03.200 And I mean, how can we change that teaching of the church that sodomy is wrong, that it's
00:35:09.980 one of the crimes that cries to heaven for vengeance?
00:35:12.820 It's something that harms the individual.
00:35:16.120 It harms all society.
00:35:18.600 And I mean, just the individual in his physical and psychological makeup, but it harms them for
00:35:23.560 all eternity as well.
00:35:24.400 But there's no change.
00:35:27.020 Of course, it can't be changed.
00:35:28.620 And this is where, I mean, one of the themes that I insist on over and over again in my
00:35:33.160 writing is God gave us two very powerful gifts.
00:35:38.100 John Paul II called them wings, with which we can rise up to the contemplation of truth.
00:35:43.120 But I would also just call them gifts, namely reason and faith, right?
00:35:46.640 And we can see with our reason that certain acts are contrary to natural law.
00:35:51.940 Even the pagan philosophers like Plato and Aristotle saw that homosexuality was contrary to human
00:35:57.760 nature and to the natural law.
00:35:59.620 Plato is a complicated case, but even he, you can show, has ultimately a negative assessment
00:36:04.700 of homosexuality.
00:36:05.620 Aristotle unquestionably rejects it.
00:36:07.760 And these men lived without any benefit of divine revelation whatsoever.
00:36:11.760 We have reason, the gift of reason, and we have the gift of faith.
00:36:15.180 And the gift of faith gives us access to the teaching of Christ and the teaching of the
00:36:20.000 whole church over all the ages.
00:36:21.720 There's no question whatsoever about the uninterrupted, constant, universal, ordinary
00:36:27.240 magisterium on issues of sexual morality, the issues concerning the sixth and ninth
00:36:32.320 commandments.
00:36:33.060 There's no question about it.
00:36:35.180 It's not up for debate.
00:36:37.200 And if a Catholic thinks it's up for debate, that shows that they haven't even put two and
00:36:41.760 two together.
00:36:42.280 Or maybe as with Father Spadaro, they've put two and two together and gotten five, right?
00:36:47.160 And they need to figure out how to do math and how to do theology again, because you can't
00:36:51.700 get five out of two plus two.
00:36:54.000 So yeah, I mean, it's amazing.
00:36:56.060 But of course, modernity is characterized in general, even outside the church, by irrationality,
00:37:03.100 irrationalism, the exaltation of the ego, of the will, voluntarism, you know, it's I want
00:37:10.500 what I want, reality is what I want to make it.
00:37:12.580 That kind of thinking has been around in philosophy for centuries now, and it's permeated everybody's
00:37:17.480 minds.
00:37:17.980 So reason is having a terribly hard time right now.
00:37:20.900 And as for faith, how many people really take pains to learn their faith, right?
00:37:28.580 Those of us who do take pains to learn our faith, and we read good old catechisms, which
00:37:32.360 all agreed with each other, hundreds of catechisms going back hundreds of years, all agreed with
00:37:36.780 each other about everything of importance.
00:37:40.360 You know, when we do study those things, we can see very clearly what the church teaches,
00:37:43.960 what is the Catholic faith, and how Pope Francis is departing from it, and somebody like Victor
00:37:49.160 Manuel Fernandez, the new appointee for the Dicaster for the doctrine of the faith.
00:37:54.200 You know, that appointment in and of itself, if that isn't a supreme wake-up moment for all
00:38:01.420 of the conservatives or all of the moderates who are still sitting on the fence, I'm afraid
00:38:05.720 they're just going to die on the fence.
00:38:07.380 I mean, they're just going to, they're like, they're glued to it.
00:38:09.440 Because if you can't see that this man is, he's totally unsuitable for the office, he
00:38:16.000 has questionable morality, certainly ideas contrary to the doctrine of the faith, and
00:38:21.100 he's being put in charge of the doctrine of the faith.
00:38:23.780 I mean, this is like, this is, I'm sorry to say, but this is like Pope Francis rubbing
00:38:28.480 salt into the wounds that all of us have from the past 10 years.
00:38:34.060 So at this point, if the church is not in a state of the gravest ecclesial crisis,
00:38:39.440 that we've ever seen in history, and I'm willing to defend that, much worse than the
00:38:43.860 Aryan crisis in the fourth century.
00:38:45.860 If we're not there, then I don't know how we could possibly get there, because tell me
00:38:51.880 exactly how things could be worse than they are.
00:38:54.880 And by the way, the reason I make that point about the crisis or the emergency is simply
00:38:59.840 that certain steps are more defensible or more necessary when there is an emergency or when
00:39:08.500 there is a crisis than in times of peace.
00:39:11.340 That's also an accepted moral principle.
00:39:13.720 There are things we can do when a house is burning down that we can't do when the house
00:39:18.460 is not burning down, right?
00:39:20.100 Yeah.
00:39:21.260 Yeah.
00:39:22.020 It's certainly burning down right now.
00:39:23.860 So this, however hard, and logistically it sounds insane, and just the awkwardness of
00:39:32.740 it all would be horrible, and who knows what, it would create all sorts of things, but still
00:39:36.580 better than having the shepherd run away when a wolf's coming in.
00:39:42.520 Still better than abandoning your flock to be abused by false teaching and denial of sacraments.
00:39:55.720 Does this play out at the parish priest level as well, where you have a dictatorial bishop
00:40:04.060 and a pastor in a parish who is being removed again for doing good things?
00:40:12.520 Um, and then having a wolf come in, is it the same thing or is there a difference there?
00:40:19.540 You know, it's, it seems to me that it's, it's much more grave when you're talking about
00:40:24.240 the Pope unjustly removing a bishop than when you're talking about a bishop moving a priest
00:40:29.860 around, because the priests don't have their pastorships and their faculties by divine institution
00:40:36.660 from Christ.
00:40:37.320 Um, they are simply given them by the bishop.
00:40:40.500 Essentially, the way to think about the presbyterate of the diocese is that all of the priests are
00:40:45.020 an extension of the bishop, because he can't be everywhere at the same time.
00:40:49.000 Um, and that's certainly the way it developed in the ancient church.
00:40:51.480 In the beginning, in the very beginning, when there, when the flock was small, it was the
00:40:56.160 bishops who, who celebrated mass, who did the sacraments, right?
00:40:59.700 And as the church grew and grew and grew during the early centuries, and especially after the
00:41:04.220 fourth century, when Christianity was legalized and it took off, you know, like wildfire, um,
00:41:09.100 the bishops basically were overwhelmed.
00:41:11.160 They couldn't possibly be everywhere.
00:41:12.480 We even see this nowadays with bishops doing confirmations, you know, in some big dioceses,
00:41:16.060 they need, they, they use auxiliary bishops because they couldn't possibly be, you know,
00:41:19.740 go and confirm everybody, even though that's proper to the bishop.
00:41:22.540 Um, and that's why, that's part of the reason why auxiliary bishops were, were, uh, created.
00:41:27.820 Um, but, uh, but the, the, the priests are just an extension of the bishop.
00:41:33.380 And so he really can move them around more like pawns on a chessboard.
00:41:37.120 I mean, I don't mean this, that's a little bit denigrating and I don't mean it to sound
00:41:39.900 that way, but they really are very much subject to where the bishop wants them to be.
00:41:44.020 That doesn't mean that they shouldn't fight back canonically or resist when they are unjustly
00:41:50.220 attacked or removed or disciplined.
00:41:53.340 Um, and that's part of the reason of the coalition for canceled priests exists.
00:41:56.640 There's a lot of that kind of injustice going on and it is injustice and it should be identified
00:42:01.060 publicly as injustice so that bishops can be at least ashamed into acting better, right?
00:42:07.620 Or, or, or undoing some of the damage that they've done.
00:42:10.660 But still, you couldn't ever say I'm a pastor by Christ's divine institution.
00:42:14.680 You can't say that.
00:42:15.580 Um, whereas the bishops are not, so to speak, just an extension of the Pope because the Pope
00:42:22.440 can't be everywhere in the world that that that's false because for that to be true, Christ
00:42:27.740 would have had to have appointed only one apostle, Peter.
00:42:30.740 And then there was one apostle, there was one bishop for a while.
00:42:33.860 And then the one bishop said, I'm too busy.
00:42:35.640 I can't go to every city in Asia minor.
00:42:37.560 So I'm going to appoint other people who represent me.
00:42:39.580 That would be the vicars of the Pope model that we just rejected.
00:42:43.540 And we saw Lumen Gentium rejected.
00:42:45.880 So from the beginning, Christ said, I want there to be many bishops, right?
00:42:49.200 That's by divine institution.
00:42:52.540 You know, it's amazing to think that there is a way forward.
00:42:58.560 It might be messy, but there's a way forward amidst all the confusion.
00:43:03.220 We just need to find those bishops who are willing to stand up.
00:43:07.160 I, we all got to really pray.
00:43:10.140 Bishop Strickland, obviously, is one that comes most to mind and which sort of spurred
00:43:13.700 this conversation.
00:43:15.920 Peter, I have to have you back on.
00:43:17.540 We've got to talk about your book, but thank you for doing this because it's so timely right
00:43:21.100 now that I think it really needed to be out there.
00:43:24.620 People need to understand it might be messy, but there's a way forward.
00:43:29.020 Let me add one final point about the messiness, right?
00:43:32.600 In church history, the fourth century is really, really valuable to study because, of course,
00:43:36.740 we all know in the fourth century, there's the Aryan crisis.
00:43:39.340 But what a lot of people don't realize is that the crisis spread so widely that in many
00:43:45.300 dioceses of the world, there were two, there were two men claiming to be bishop.
00:43:50.400 There was an Aryan bishop and a Catholic bishop.
00:43:52.520 And sometimes what happened is that there was a Catholic bishop and he was somehow, an
00:43:59.580 attempt was made to bump him out by appointing an Aryan bishop or a Catholic bishop died and
00:44:06.540 then an Aryan bishop was put in his place.
00:44:09.040 But perhaps a Catholic bishop like St. Athanasius came through to minister to the Orthodox faithful.
00:44:15.260 I mean, different scenarios in different places.
00:44:18.180 The point is, it was very messy, extraordinarily messy, right?
00:44:22.960 But somebody like St. Athanasius, he didn't ever say either, it's too messy, let's not
00:44:28.920 do this.
00:44:29.680 No, he just dealt with the mess.
00:44:31.840 I mean, he had to, you know, because this is what abandoned the flock.
00:44:35.480 Even if it's the flock outside your diocese, you don't abandon them.
00:44:38.120 In his case, he was kind of a roving bishop in a sense.
00:44:41.400 And he also didn't just say, well, you know, the Pope wants it to be this way.
00:44:45.300 Pope Liberius has excommunicated me, so I guess I'll just stop saying liturgy and stop
00:44:50.040 acting like a bishop.
00:44:50.760 No, even when he was excommunicated, he continued to act like a bishop and he continued to do
00:44:55.300 liturgy, right?
00:44:56.560 So God gave us St. Athanasius for a reason.
00:44:59.340 He wants him to be a permanent example for other crisis periods in church history.
00:45:03.340 I'm sure the faithful played a lot of the role too, because you got to support your true
00:45:10.720 bishop at a time when a lot of people will be saying, he's not the bishop, he's been kicked
00:45:17.820 out, stop already.
00:45:19.220 You're just being so radical.
00:45:21.260 It's, all it is, is being faithful.
00:45:24.400 Yes.
00:45:24.720 Beautiful.
00:45:27.180 Peter Kwasniewski, thank you so very much.
00:45:30.260 You're welcome, John Henry.
00:45:31.180 Thank you.
00:45:31.820 God bless you.
00:45:33.480 And God bless all of you.
00:45:35.880 And we'll see you next time.
00:45:36.700 Hi, everyone.
00:45:47.920 This is John Henry Weston.
00:45:49.040 We hope you enjoyed this program.
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