Celebrating Traditional Christmas with Germany's Princess Gloria — PART 2
Summary
In this episode, we speak with Princess Gloria about Tradition in Germany. She talks about the challenges faced by faithful Catholics and how they are trying to defend their faith in a world that is increasingly secular and progressive. She also talks about why the church is on a path that many Catholics see as one of the most anti-Christian in the world.
Transcript
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This is Jim Hale behind the camera and John Henry Weston coming to you to give you a beautiful
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As you might have seen yesterday, if you didn't go check it out, we did a beautiful video
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about the Christmas market which you see behind us here.
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Today we're going to focus on tradition in Germany.
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There's so many traditions including the tradition of the Latin Mass and faithful Catholicism
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here in this nation, even though we might have the reputation from the bishops now for
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the last couple of years in Germany being very unfaithful to the teachings of the Church.
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We're going to talk with Princess Gloria about tradition in Germany.
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So if you don't mind, let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
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So we are in Germany on sort of a special mission because we have seen, in fact, the whole wide
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world has seen these past couple of years with the German synodal path.
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And even the Vatican, which has already gone very left, even they have said to Germany, watch
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So the whole world has now this reputation, Germany, the reputation of Germany, the whole
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world is very, all seems to be there, only on the left, only on the left.
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And so we've come here to really the heart of tradition in Germany to speak with you about
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what you've seen in terms of the faithful reacting.
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Are the faithful trying to defend tradition here in Germany?
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I think that the real faithful, speaking the people who go to church on Sunday, they don't
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really care so much what happens in church politics.
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Because these are regular people who go about their own lives, they have their own problems,
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Only a fraction of these people will be interested in church politics.
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So you can say people that are interested in church politics are already on a track where
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Now, me personally, I happen to be involved in church politics because I have a lot of priest
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And of course, for the priest, they basically don't talk about anything else than the destruction
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And you basically, I see my role always as calming them down and trying to destruct them.
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But this is very difficult because for somebody that has given their lives and dedicated their
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whole studies and life and work life to the church, of course, it's a disaster when they
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Now, when you say crumbling, they basically are pursuing the, you know, they want to make
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it more acceptable for LGBT and to have transgender in the schools and accept it and so on.
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And abortion, well, we're going to just be gentle about it and so on.
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So these aren't things that people would normally discuss as destruction.
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But what do you feel people are seeing on the issues as well in terms of faithful and
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Are they looking at this and seeing a destruction as well?
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Or are they seeing just we're trying to get more progressive?
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Well, of course, it is both because the ones that are on the left, they want a different
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And why they want a different church is obvious because, of course, the world politics, the
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If you look at the U.S. or Canada, it's an atheist country.
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So all these political leaders are basically pushing an agenda that is anti-Christian.
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And I guess that the reason why the mainstream church is on that particular track is because
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They think that if they play by their rules and by their cards, that they will be allowed
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Of course, history has proven wrong because in the Russian Revolution, the church was
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And also in Nazi Germany, the church tried to get into business with Hitler and find a
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way to cooperate so that they could still exist.
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But, you know, the political leadership uses you.
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And when they don't need you anymore, you get just as persecuted as everybody else.
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Do you think it's more out of political expediency on the part of the bishops?
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Or do you think there are a good number of them who actually believe the sort of woke agenda,
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I asked the same question once of some cardinals that I know regarding Pope Francis.
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And they seem to think, no, he actually believes that, you know, the church should move on the
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Do you think that's true of some of the bishops here?
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Or are they just trying to get political, you know, points?
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Well, again, I always like to look into history to judge the contemporary times.
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And I think if you look at Nazi Germany, everybody believed Hitler.
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Everybody believed that this is the right way for Germany to go.
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So I think the psychology of human beings is if they choose to take the easiest path,
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they will pretend to believe until they believe.
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You cannot actually, to go against the system is a very tough way because you can lose your job,
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you have not a career, you lose your friends because everybody says,
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you are not with us anymore, you became so strange.
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And because, of course, these issues never were brought up.
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But now that we are coming into a crisis, you have to show your cards and the cards are on the table.
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And so, in my opinion, this terrible time has the great advantage that you see the people's real face
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because now they are letting down their hair and we can see what people are really all about.
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During the pontificate of Pope Benedict, everybody wanted to be a conservative, everybody wanted to join in the old right,
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everybody was for the clergy clothes, the nice and fancy clergy clothes.
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And as soon as they realized that the new pontificate doesn't like it, they threw it all out the window
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and they started to persecute the people who like to go to the old right masses.
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So, you can see people change so dramatically and so quickly that I would say 90% of the people are pure opportunistic.
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But psychologically, if you take on a different view so that you don't break down,
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it's better if you start to believe, even though you didn't believe or you have no belief,
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Now, German Catholics have had to sort of fight for their faith, those who retained the faith, for a long time now.
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Lutheranism was very powerful in Germany and a lot of Catholics were persecuted at the time.
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Do you see that kind of willingness to suffer under this kind of, it's almost like a new religion coming, you know?
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Well, the real faithful, they will surely suffer until, it will be for them the great challenge.
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And I hope that God will give us the strength and I hope that we will not have to be proven to go this very tough path.
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But as of for now, I can see that the real faithful are against that new religion.
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You can observe that every new government that is sworn in, the first thing they say, we believe in climate change.
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Macron and whoever, the first thing they say immediately to the world, we take climate change as our number one priority.
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And with such a strong air that you can say, okay, that used to be what, when people said, the Holy Trinity is everything for us.
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And that the Holy Trinity of today is climate change.
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One of the areas where there's a particular persecution against more traditional Catholics is around the Latin Mass.
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That's, you know, being restricted more and more and more, depending on where you are.
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You had a beautiful, beautiful Mass for your family, a Requiem Mass, just absolutely gorgeous.
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If you can tell us first a little bit about that Mass, why a Requiem Mass, what is a Requiem Mass and what does it represent for your family?
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Okay, a Requiem Mass is a Mass where you think and pray for the deceased souls of your friends and mostly family members.
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And it's so important to remember the deceased because the deceased can help us a lot with their prayer because they're closer to God, needless to say.
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But again, also the deceased souls need our prayer because all the souls in purgatory can only be saved if we pray for them.
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And that's one of the great disasters of the world is that nobody thinks of the deceased souls anymore.
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If you look at the cemeteries, the cemeteries are not as frequented as they used to be, but the deceased souls are not gone.
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They are here, but they need our prayer and we need to stay in touch with them.
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The best way to stay in touch with the deceased souls is by prayer because, remember, we live forever.
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The only people who die are the ones who don't believe because they will die.
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Or exist somewhere very terrible, which we call hell.
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But everybody else who searches and loves God will be saved.
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And so I believe in the tradition of our family and also my family was that in every Catholic family,
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once a year you go to the cemetery and once a year in all saints and all souls,
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We do it again also later in the year because we like to celebrate a requiem
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because almost every year somebody in the family dies.
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With a requiem and then we go down to the crypt and we bring the flowers to the coffin.
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And so this is a very good tradition because also all the family members get to come together
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And it's a good reason to get together and pray together, but also be happy together
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because Catholics are happy people because we know that we are saved.
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Maria, und können wir bitte die Kerze anmachen?
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So one of the things that really is a question,
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when do you think the faithful, in a larger part, those that are really faithful,
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When do you think they will say, oops, we have to now do something?
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So you mentioned most of them are just going about their daily lives,
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They're not paying attention to Church politics.
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But as the Church politics starts to encroach on their daily lives,
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as the, you know, Latin Mass is curtailed or perhaps even ended,
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as perhaps they refuse to allow communion kneeling or on the tongue,
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or perhaps they say all Catholic schools now must have an LGBT lesson or whatever.
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When do you think it will come to, the people will say, enough?
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Well, first of all, you have to say the Church is not a democracy.
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So the Church is ruled by a very strict hierarchy, which has a lot of good.
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So we can say that what comes from Rome, we have to basically obey.
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And the clergy has to obey, because if you find a priest that will do otherwise,
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he can be sacked immediately and there's nothing he can do about it.
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So in that case, I think the way to change the Church and to change the path of the Church
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Because if I look back at the last 30 years, I can say we took things for granted.
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I remember that many priests were lonely because everybody went their own way
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A priest also needs a social frame and a social connection.
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He needs to be listening to the young people of good Catholic family,
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because if they're alone, they are also watching Internet.
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And they are also, how do you say, under the influence of the mainstream,
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And therefore, all the modern life diseases, maladies, they also get.
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the abuse crisis was also a crisis of lack of faith.
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because if they were with others and on constant watch,
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they wouldn't be able to go about things like this.
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So it was also us lay people that have not taken care of our priests enough.
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And I think the way that it will change in the church is not by us saying we have enough,
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And through that, we will get faithful young men who will see the priesthood as something,
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as a top-notch position to achieve in the world.
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There is nothing more aristocratic than becoming a priest.
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The priest has, through all history and time, always been the upper class of the world,
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in the ancient Egyptian societies and also in the Jewish societies and also in the Buddhist societies.
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And it has to be attractive again to be a priest.
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And that can only be changed if we decide to get married again, to have children,
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and to educate our children in a Christian, in a Catholic way.
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Then we will also have the seminaries filled with better people.
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They go along and they study theology because they have to study,
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but privately they study the classical theology.
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And so you get a formation and that will grow stronger the more we pray for it.
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And I think the revival of the church will come through the laity that will pray and form the formation.
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It's already happening in various places in the world.
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And, of course, the church hierarchy is very slow.
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And they are also trying to please the politics.
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But eventually they will see that the ones who don't like the liturgy are all between 75 and 90.
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And the young people think, why did we leave our tradition behind?
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Why is tradition all of a sudden out of fashion?
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And if you dig deeper, you find that this is a very superficial and very worldly agenda behind that.
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It is an agenda that sees the church as a, how do you say, a stopper to bring wrong and lies into the world.
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And the devil always tries to destroy the church.
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And even though we are in a crisis right now, we can feel already and see.
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Today you saw the young priests at the requiem.
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And that is, what has attracted you to tradition?
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I mean, you're, you know, someone who is already in the aristocracy.
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You have no need for any kind of, you know, other kind of appreciation or anything like that.
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It's not like it's easy for you to cling to tradition.
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I'm sure there's lots of people who would appreciate if you didn't.
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What makes you stick to it, even though there's a lot of pressure for you not to?
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I met a traditionalist priest about 20 years ago.
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And they were so much looking to find a place where they could serve the Lord and serve the people.
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I knew about Lefebvre because the Lefebvre people had bought a castle that belonged to my aunt, where they put a school.
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But I was too small or too young to really understand the problem.
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But when I dug into the problem and I realized that these people are really good, faithful priests and who took things really seriously,
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that they were persecuted by the hierarchy, I said, I'm going to help them.
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And by helping them and getting to know them closer, of course, I also learned more about the liturgy and the beauty of the liturgy.
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And that's why I really, I really didn't understand what was wrong with them.
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And that's why it's so, it was so fantastic when Pope Benedict gave them the possibility.
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And all of a sudden, it was flowering everywhere.
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The worshipping in the old right had such a success.
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And obviously, it had so much success that the left-wing church, who has an exodus of people,
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because the guitar playing and the hawk music singing and the gay parade in the church is obviously not attractive,
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because the gay parade you can have in the streets much better.
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And the guitar playing on a rock and roll stage is also much better.
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And so, of course, they were looking at the traditionalists and they were jealous.
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They have all the seminaries full and they don't have seminaries.
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And then, of course, in Germany, there are bishops who do not want a full seminary anyway.
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They want the church to die so that they can bring the lay people in.
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Okay. So, you all see Princess Gloria and tradition.
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But remember, Princess Gloria was called the punk princess.
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Well, Jim and I were here and we were asked to come because they were going to do some carol singing.
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And so, we went and we were expecting some very traditional Christmas carol singing.
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It certainly arrived, made alive, the massive crowd here in the Christmas market.
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This is Princess Gloria, and this is how she brings fun to the Christmas market.
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From here in Regensburg, Germany, this is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
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This is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
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This is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
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This is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
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That in dieser hochheiligen Nacht, der Vater im Himmel für Freude und Macht.
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All this is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Rec компьютers.