The John-Henry Westen Show - October 29, 2021


BREAKING： Pro-abortion Joe Biden says Pope Francis told him to 'keep receiving Communion'


Summary

Pro-abortion Catholic politicians should be allowed to receive Holy Communion, says Pope Francis. Did he really say that to Joe Biden? Is he a good Catholic? Did he say it to him in a private meeting with the Pope? What does Cardinal John Cardinal Burke have to say about this?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is John Henry Weston for LifeSite News, bringing you breaking news out of the Vatican,
00:00:04.480 where Pope Francis just met with U.S. President Joe Biden, and Biden has come out publicly after
00:00:10.860 being asked by a reporter saying that the Pope told him that he is a good Catholic and he should
00:00:15.740 keep receiving Holy Communion. Now, as controversial as that is, of course, the question becomes,
00:00:20.040 did that really be said? But the Catholic News Agency, as did LifeSite News, went to Matteo
00:00:26.300 Bruni, who is the press secretary at the Vatican, and he refused to deny it. In fact, all he said
00:00:31.820 was, if that happened, it was in a private conversation, we're going to stick with our
00:00:36.380 public press release. So that's the situation. Here's the clip. Watch Biden say it for himself.
00:00:42.400 Take a look.
00:00:56.300 That is absolutely unreal. What's going on here is the fact that the Pope has been so,
00:01:10.320 not only laissez-faire, seemingly hinting on that side of the question, makes this so believable.
00:01:15.840 And in fact, it seems the Vatican doesn't even want to deny it. So at LifeSite News right now,
00:01:22.060 we have a petition really begging the Pope, even demanding that he clarify this situation because
00:01:28.960 it is horrendous for the Church. We've known for years that leftist bishops, the politicians in
00:01:35.760 mitres, have been pushing this agenda for a long time that pro-abortion politicians should receive
00:01:40.220 Holy Communion. But this is an absolute nightmare. In fact, what it does is it changes the Church right
00:01:45.860 from the ground up. Remember, it's right from the Scriptures that we learn what is Holy Communion.
00:01:50.680 It is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ himself. And Pope, not Pope, actually,
00:01:56.420 but Saint Paul said right from the beginning of the Church, anyone who eats or drinks unworthily
00:02:02.640 is guilty of the body of the Lord. And that's why Cardinal Burke has always called this issue
00:02:07.940 a matter of being concerned for the soul of those pro-abortion Catholic politicians themselves.
00:02:13.660 The point of all religious leadership is to bring them back to the faith, out of concern for their
00:02:20.320 own souls. So it's not just a matter of, you know, these are big political figures. No, no, no.
00:02:25.880 These are also Catholics. So Joe Biden is a Catholic, and therefore his bishop is concerned, or his
00:02:30.340 pastor should be concerned, about his eternal salvation. It doesn't matter who they are. It
00:02:35.120 doesn't matter if they're the President of the United States or someone just anywhere doing anything.
00:02:41.480 The pastor must be concerned for your soul. It makes it worse when you're a public figure,
00:02:46.040 because then your public reception of Holy Communion, when everybody knows you support
00:02:51.600 the killing of children in the womb, makes it a scandal for the faithful. So these are horrific
00:02:58.400 things. But by providence, Cardinal Burke, who we all know had coronavirus and then was so afflicted
00:03:05.960 with its after effects, who has just been recovering, he was for the first time actually late last night
00:03:12.640 able to issue a statement on this very issue right before the Pope met with Joe Biden, probably
00:03:20.260 knowing by an inspiration of the Holy Spirit that something like this was going to come out. So he
00:03:25.060 actually made some revelations that were really key. I'm going to go through those really quickly
00:03:29.360 because I want you to just hear what Cardinal Burke had to say, if you can bear with me. So he tells
00:03:34.620 a couple of stories that are really key to understanding what goes on and what has gone on in the
00:03:40.660 church. First of all, he describes that this debate started among the U.S. bishops in 2004. In 2004,
00:03:47.280 it was very interesting because the Pope had actually arranged that the Pope at the time, John
00:03:54.020 Paul II, had arranged for an intervention into the U.S. bishops debating the question of communion
00:04:00.600 for pro-abortion politicians in 2004. He had Cardinal Ratzinger, who of course, who later became Pope
00:04:05.420 Benedict, send a letter to the U.S. bishops called Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion. And in that
00:04:11.300 letter, Cardinal Ratzinger said that pro-abortion politicians who obstinately refuse to change,
00:04:16.240 who've been warned about their pro-abortion positions, must be denied Holy Communion. Go look up that letter
00:04:24.040 in 2004. You can look it up on LifeSite, Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion in 2004. So, and by the way,
00:04:30.760 as an aside, Pope Benedict revealed to Cardinal Burke, or while he was Joseph Ratzinger, revealed to
00:04:40.400 Cardinal Burke at the time that, you know, he had sent the letter. Cardinal Burke hadn't seen it, even
00:04:45.260 though he was on the committee dealing with it. And that's because the Pope had sent it to one
00:04:49.180 Cardinal McCarrick. Oh yes, the same one, who was the head of that committee and the leftist,
00:04:55.100 and of course didn't want that to go forward. So Cardinal McCarrick hid this letter from then
00:05:03.340 Cardinal Ratzinger from the rest of the bishops on the committee. Absolutely scandalous, but nothing
00:05:07.960 scandalous can surprise us now from former Cardinal McCarrick. Nonetheless, that's what happened. So
00:05:14.040 Cardinal Burke, though, in writing this letter, which you can see at LifeSiteNews.com, please go there and
00:05:18.800 get the full, his full remarks from, we published this morning, from his latest intervention on this
00:05:24.480 subject. But he tells these two stories that are very interesting. I'm going to read the first one
00:05:27.840 now. He talks about in the spring of 2004, this is when they were at that bishop's meeting dealing
00:05:32.500 with a question. While I was in Washington, D.C. for pro-life activities, I met privately for 45 minutes
00:05:38.400 with one of the highest placed officials in the federal government. He says he was a non-Catholic
00:05:44.840 Christian who manifested great respect for the Catholic Church. So Cardinal Burke is meeting with a high-ranking
00:05:51.220 politician in Washington, and he's there, and this is a non-Catholic Christian politician. He says,
00:06:01.080 in the course of our conversation, he asked me whether, in view of the serious health difficulties of Pope St.
00:06:05.820 John Paul II, the election of a new pope could mean a change in the Church's teaching regarding
00:06:10.640 procured abortion. Cardinal Burke says, I expressed some surprise at his question, explaining that the
00:06:16.460 Church can never change its teaching on the intrinsic evil of procured abortion because it's
00:06:20.740 this precept of the natural law, the law written by God in every human heart. And then Cardinal Burke
00:06:27.120 recalls that this politician responded, saying that he asked the question because he had concluded that
00:06:33.080 the Church's teaching in the matter could not be that firm since he could name for me 80 or more
00:06:39.420 Catholics in the Senate and House of Representatives who regularly support pro-abortion legislation.
00:06:45.900 So Cardinal Burke explains then this scandal and how severe this is. He says this, he says,
00:06:53.020 the conversation in question was an eloquent testimonial to the grave scandal caused by
00:06:58.740 such Catholic politicians. They have in fact contributed in a significant way to the consolidation
00:07:04.620 of a culture of death in the United States in which procured abortion is simply a fact of daily life.
00:07:09.580 The Catholic Church's witness to the beauty and goodness of human life from its first moment of
00:07:14.800 existence and the truth of its inviolability has been grievously compromised to the point that
00:07:22.200 non-Catholics believe that the Church has changed or will change what is, in fact,
00:07:28.100 an unchangeable teaching, end quote. So these are horrific things which are coming out, which are
00:07:35.640 established from the beginning of the Church, right in the beginning where St. Paul wrote,
00:07:41.120 you know, those who eat and drink unworthily are guilty of the body of the Lord. Taught us right away
00:07:45.720 that this can't be done. Taught us right away, another part of St. Paul, you know, before you come,
00:07:52.300 you must examine yourself. And that's what we're all called to do. We're never allowed to receive
00:07:56.980 communion in a state of grievous sin before we go to confession, of course. And so this is the whole
00:08:03.000 point and has been the point forever. Cardinal Burke told another story, and he talked about
00:08:09.620 the question of the canon 915. He talked about when he was a bishop at La Crosse, he went public about
00:08:18.280 not willingness to deny John Kerry Holy Communion. And of course, this gave much consternation.
00:08:23.760 And when he became a bishop at St. Louis, in St. Louis, he talks about a bishop's meeting he was at.
00:08:30.940 And listen to this. He said, during a break at the meeting, this is a meeting of bishops,
00:08:38.600 I encountered on a stairwell one of the eminent members of the Conference of Bishops who shook
00:08:45.020 his finger at me, declaring, and I quote, you cannot do what you have been doing without approval
00:08:51.760 of the Conference of Bishops. And that's, you know, saying that he would deny Holy Communion.
00:08:57.020 And of course, that's utterly false, what that bishop told him, that he cannot do it. It's every
00:09:02.360 bishop is called to do that. In fact, it was Rome's desire that they do do that, as we already heard.
00:09:08.800 But he said,
00:09:11.140 And it's absolutely wonderful and absolutely true. This is why, you know, forever there has been
00:09:30.900 this teaching in the Church. It's absolutely founded on the truth, on Jesus Christ himself.
00:09:36.640 In fact, Cardinal Rince, who used to be the head of the Congregation for Worship and Discipline of
00:09:43.820 the Sacraments under Pope St. John Paul II, he was asked this question so many times, because he was
00:09:49.880 the head of the Vatican dicastery dealing with this question, that he made a joke about it. He said,
00:09:55.160 you don't have to come to me, a cardinal in the Vatican, to ask this question. Ask the seven-year-olds
00:09:59.640 who are going to receive Holy Communion for the first time. Ask them, tell them. There's a politician who
00:10:04.000 supports the killing of innocent babies, and they want to go and receive Jesus in Holy
00:10:07.980 Communion just like you. Should they do it? They will give you that answer. This is so plain. This
00:10:14.080 is so obvious. Any Catholic who believes the faith knows this. Therefore, we need to, we need to pray
00:10:22.180 for the conversion of Pope Francis. And I would encourage you to go over to lifepetitions.com,
00:10:28.940 the petition site for LifeSite News, and go and sign on that petition to get Pope Francis
00:10:35.600 to clarify. This is an urgent issue. The bishops of the United States are meeting again on this
00:10:40.480 question next month, only a few days from now. We need to get this clarified. We need to clarify
00:10:45.900 it right now. For LifeSite News, this is John Henry Weston. May God bless you.