The John-Henry Westen Show - December 23, 2022


Celebrating Traditional Christmas with Germany's Princess Gloria — PART 2


Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

142.22023

Word count

3,477

Sentence count

224

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.200 Hello again from Regensburg in Germany.
00:00:02.720 This is Jim Hale behind the camera and John Henry Weston coming to you to give you a beautiful
00:00:07.820 traditional Christmas.
00:00:09.280 As you might have seen yesterday, if you didn't go check it out, we did a beautiful video
00:00:13.540 about the Christmas market which you see behind us here.
00:00:17.760 Today we're going to focus on tradition in Germany.
00:00:20.700 There's so many traditions including the tradition of the Latin Mass and faithful Catholicism
00:00:26.360 here in this nation, even though we might have the reputation from the bishops now for
00:00:30.380 the last couple of years in Germany being very unfaithful to the teachings of the Church.
00:00:35.060 We're going to talk with Princess Gloria about tradition in Germany.
00:00:38.980 Stay tuned.
00:00:43.980 So if you don't mind, let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.
00:00:49.700 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:00:53.300 Amen.
00:00:54.300 It is so good to be with you here.
00:00:55.900 God bless you.
00:00:56.900 Good to see you.
00:00:57.900 Very good to see you.
00:00:59.280 So we are in Germany on sort of a special mission because we have seen, in fact, the whole wide
00:01:05.060 world has seen these past couple of years with the German synodal path.
00:01:11.860 And even the Vatican, which has already gone very left, even they have said to Germany, watch
00:01:18.040 out what you're doing.
00:01:19.760 So the whole world has now this reputation, Germany, the reputation of Germany, the whole
00:01:26.520 world is very, all seems to be there, only on the left, only on the left.
00:01:31.200 And so we've come here to really the heart of tradition in Germany to speak with you about
00:01:40.360 what you've seen in terms of the faithful reacting.
00:01:44.040 Are the faithful trying to defend tradition here in Germany?
00:01:47.580 I think that the real faithful, speaking the people who go to church on Sunday, they don't
00:01:55.860 really care so much what happens in church politics.
00:02:00.480 Because these are regular people who go about their own lives, they have their own problems,
00:02:08.220 and they go to the sacraments.
00:02:11.140 Only a fraction of these people will be interested in church politics.
00:02:17.800 So you can say people that are interested in church politics are already on a track where
00:02:24.180 you could say in a danger zone.
00:02:26.860 Now, me personally, I happen to be involved in church politics because I have a lot of priest
00:02:35.220 friends.
00:02:36.620 And of course, for the priest, they basically don't talk about anything else than the destruction
00:02:43.400 of the church.
00:02:46.220 And so for them, it's a huge issue.
00:02:49.680 And you basically, I see my role always as calming them down and trying to destruct them.
00:02:58.160 But this is very difficult because for somebody that has given their lives and dedicated their
00:03:04.780 whole studies and life and work life to the church, of course, it's a disaster when they
00:03:10.860 see it is crumbling right before their eyes.
00:03:13.480 Now, when you say crumbling, they basically are pursuing the, you know, they want to make
00:03:22.200 it more acceptable for LGBT and to have transgender in the schools and accept it and so on.
00:03:28.660 And abortion, well, we're going to just be gentle about it and so on.
00:03:32.800 So these aren't things that people would normally discuss as destruction.
00:03:37.160 But obviously, in terms of the faith, yes.
00:03:39.380 But what do you feel people are seeing on the issues as well in terms of faithful and
00:03:45.140 also the priests?
00:03:46.400 Are they looking at this and seeing a destruction as well?
00:03:48.940 Or are they seeing just we're trying to get more progressive?
00:03:52.500 Well, of course, it is both because the ones that are on the left, they want a different
00:03:58.340 church.
00:03:59.780 And why they want a different church is obvious because, of course, the world politics, the
00:04:05.420 world leaders at the moment are all atheistic.
00:04:08.740 If you look at China, it's an atheist country. 0.60
00:04:11.120 If you look at the U.S. or Canada, it's an atheist country. 0.66
00:04:14.680 So all these political leaders are basically pushing an agenda that is anti-Christian.
00:04:20.680 And I guess that the reason why the mainstream church is on that particular track is because
00:04:30.100 they hope to survive.
00:04:31.300 They think that if they play by their rules and by their cards, that they will be allowed
00:04:37.620 to coexist.
00:04:40.040 Of course, history has proven wrong because in the Russian Revolution, the church was
00:04:45.240 wiped out.
00:04:46.320 In Nazi Germany, the church was wiped out.
00:04:48.720 And also in Nazi Germany, the church tried to get into business with Hitler and find a
00:04:56.120 way to cooperate so that they could still exist.
00:04:59.740 But, you know, the political leadership uses you.
00:05:05.040 And when they don't need you anymore, you get just as persecuted as everybody else.
00:05:09.860 So I would say this is the wrong strategy.
00:05:12.780 But obviously, they have chosen that path.
00:05:17.460 Do you think it's more out of political expediency on the part of the bishops?
00:05:22.220 Or do you think there are a good number of them who actually believe the sort of woke agenda,
00:05:27.400 if you want to call it that?
00:05:29.100 I asked the same question once of some cardinals that I know regarding Pope Francis.
00:05:33.940 And they seem to think, no, he actually believes that, you know, the church should move on the
00:05:40.580 LGBT issues.
00:05:41.320 Do you think that's true of some of the bishops here?
00:05:44.160 Or are they just trying to get political, you know, points?
00:05:47.760 Well, again, I always like to look into history to judge the contemporary times.
00:05:55.020 And I think if you look at Nazi Germany, everybody believed Hitler.
00:06:01.140 Everybody believed that this is the right way for Germany to go. 0.85
00:06:06.360 Today, 80 years later, nobody believed.
00:06:10.120 And nobody was a Nazi.
00:06:12.960 And nobody was a collaborator.
00:06:15.940 So I think the psychology of human beings is if they choose to take the easiest path,
00:06:23.040 they will pretend to believe until they believe.
00:06:28.420 Because it's the easiest way.
00:06:31.160 You cannot actually, to go against the system is a very tough way because you can lose your job,
00:06:41.700 you have not a career, you lose your friends because everybody says,
00:06:47.780 you are not with us anymore, you became so strange.
00:06:50.640 And because, of course, these issues never were brought up.
00:06:54.180 But now that we are coming into a crisis, you have to show your cards and the cards are on the table.
00:07:00.080 And so, in my opinion, this terrible time has the great advantage that you see the people's real face
00:07:08.360 because now they are letting down their hair and we can see what people are really all about.
00:07:14.120 During the pontificate of Pope Benedict, everybody wanted to be a conservative, everybody wanted to join in the old right,
00:07:24.040 everybody was for the clergy clothes, the nice and fancy clergy clothes.
00:07:29.860 And as soon as they realized that the new pontificate doesn't like it, they threw it all out the window
00:07:36.160 and they started to persecute the people who like to go to the old right masses.
00:07:41.120 So, you can see people change so dramatically and so quickly that I would say 90% of the people are pure opportunistic.
00:07:51.020 But psychologically, if you take on a different view so that you don't break down,
00:08:00.940 it's better if you start to believe, even though you didn't believe or you have no belief,
00:08:07.180 but now you believe in this new agenda.
00:08:12.500 Now, German Catholics have had to sort of fight for their faith, those who retained the faith, for a long time now.
00:08:20.280 Lutheranism was very powerful in Germany and a lot of Catholics were persecuted at the time.
00:08:24.800 Do you see that kind of willingness to suffer under this kind of, it's almost like a new religion coming, you know? 0.98
00:08:33.800 Do you see that still in some of the faithful?
00:08:37.140 Well, the real faithful, they will surely suffer until, it will be for them the great challenge.
00:08:46.600 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.
00:08:58.600 But as of for now, I can see that the real faithful are against that new religion.
00:09:04.880 What is the new religion?
00:09:06.580 You can observe that every new government that is sworn in, the first thing they say, we believe in climate change.
00:09:14.500 That is the new religion. 0.98
00:09:16.060 Macron and whoever, the first thing they say immediately to the world, we take climate change as our number one priority.
00:09:27.600 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.
00:09:40.760 And that the Holy Trinity of today is climate change.
00:09:43.740 One of the areas where there's a particular persecution against more traditional Catholics is around the Latin Mass.
00:09:53.100 That's, you know, being restricted more and more and more, depending on where you are.
00:09:58.880 You had a beautiful, beautiful Mass for your family, a Requiem Mass, just absolutely gorgeous.
00:10:05.100 Tell us two things.
00:10:07.820 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?
00:10:15.720 Okay, a Requiem Mass is a Mass where you think and pray for the deceased souls of your friends and mostly family members.
00:10:26.180 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.
00:10:35.200 But again, also the deceased souls need our prayer because all the souls in purgatory can only be saved if we pray for them.
00:10:44.860 And that's one of the great disasters of the world is that nobody thinks of the deceased souls anymore.
00:10:50.680 If you look at the cemeteries, the cemeteries are not as frequented as they used to be, but the deceased souls are not gone.
00:10:59.200 They are here, but they need our prayer and we need to stay in touch with them.
00:11:03.040 The best way to stay in touch with the deceased souls is by prayer because, remember, we live forever.
00:11:09.860 The only people who die are the ones who don't believe because they will die.
00:11:14.760 Or exist somewhere very terrible, which we call hell.
00:11:21.200 But everybody else who searches and loves God will be saved.
00:11:25.300 That's why we celebrate Christmas.
00:11:28.940 And so I believe in the tradition of our family and also my family was that in every Catholic family,
00:11:38.260 once a year you go to the cemetery and once a year in all saints and all souls,
00:11:43.200 we have the masses for our deceased souls.
00:11:46.760 We do it again also later in the year because we like to celebrate a requiem
00:11:54.000 because almost every year somebody in the family dies.
00:11:57.820 So we remember them.
00:11:59.020 With a requiem and then we go down to the crypt and we bring the flowers to the coffin.
00:12:12.360 And so this is a very good tradition because also all the family members get to come together
00:12:18.820 on that very day.
00:12:20.400 And it's a good reason to get together and pray together, but also be happy together
00:12:24.560 because Catholics are happy people because we know that we are saved.
00:12:31.200 What are the...
00:12:33.400 Wait one moment, Maria is coming. 0.94
00:12:36.080 Maria, und können wir bitte die Kerze anmachen? 0.99
00:12:38.780 Ja.
00:12:39.440 Oh.
00:12:39.720 Ja, danke, Maria.
00:12:42.280 Das ist super.
00:12:43.320 Danke.
00:12:43.840 So ein schweres Tablett.
00:12:45.780 Es bleibt dir auch nicht erspart.
00:12:48.380 Danke, Maria.
00:12:49.760 Danke schön.
00:12:50.860 Sie bringen einen Tag.
00:12:51.740 Danke schön.
00:12:53.340 So one of the things that really is a question,
00:12:57.540 when do you think the faithful, in a larger part, those that are really faithful,
00:13:03.020 but when do you think they will react?
00:13:05.520 When do you think they will say, oops, we have to now do something?
00:13:09.720 So you mentioned most of them are just going about their daily lives,
00:13:13.180 going to Mass, doing their thing.
00:13:14.840 They're not paying attention to Church politics.
00:13:17.180 But as the Church politics starts to encroach on their daily lives,
00:13:21.480 as the, you know, Latin Mass is curtailed or perhaps even ended,
00:13:26.620 as perhaps they refuse to allow communion kneeling or on the tongue,
00:13:31.920 or perhaps they say all Catholic schools now must have an LGBT lesson or whatever.
00:13:38.740 When do you think it will come to, the people will say, enough?
00:13:43.240 Well, first of all, you have to say the Church is not a democracy.
00:13:46.940 So the Church is ruled by a very strict hierarchy, which has a lot of good.
00:13:52.440 But in our case today, it has a disadvantage.
00:13:57.120 So we can say that what comes from Rome, we have to basically obey.
00:14:03.080 And the clergy has to obey, because if you find a priest that will do otherwise,
00:14:10.900 he can be sacked immediately and there's nothing he can do about it.
00:14:14.220 So in that case, I think the way to change the Church and to change the path of the Church
00:14:19.660 is possible if we, the faithful, pray more.
00:14:24.300 Because if I look back at the last 30 years, I can say we took things for granted.
00:14:29.460 We were not looking after our priests enough.
00:14:34.360 I remember that many priests were lonely because everybody went their own way
00:14:39.680 and nobody took care of them.
00:14:41.540 A priest also needs a social frame and a social connection.
00:14:50.020 He needs to be listening to the young people of good Catholic family,
00:14:54.260 because if they're alone, they are also watching Internet.
00:14:57.240 And they are also, how do you say, under the influence of the mainstream,
00:15:07.560 because they're people of the world.
00:15:08.880 They live and go out and go shopping and eat.
00:15:12.540 And they don't live like recluse.
00:15:14.720 They are part of our life.
00:15:16.100 And therefore, all the modern life diseases, maladies, they also get.
00:15:23.980 They lose their faith.
00:15:26.760 They lose, why am I a priest?
00:15:30.280 When you think about the whole abuse crisis,
00:15:33.900 the abuse crisis was also a crisis of lack of faith.
00:15:37.820 But also, it was also a sign they were alone,
00:15:42.460 because if they were with others and on constant watch,
00:15:46.740 they wouldn't be able to go about things like this.
00:15:50.640 So it was also us lay people that have not taken care of our priests enough.
00:15:57.740 And I think the way that it will change in the church is not by us saying we have enough,
00:16:04.660 it's by us praying more.
00:16:06.480 And through that, we will get faithful young men who will see the priesthood as something,
00:16:14.060 as a top-notch position to achieve in the world.
00:16:18.120 There is nothing more aristocratic than becoming a priest.
00:16:21.940 The priest has, through all history and time, always been the upper class of the world,
00:16:28.200 in the ancient Egyptian societies and also in the Jewish societies and also in the Buddhist societies.
00:16:38.120 The upper class were the priest class.
00:16:41.920 And it has to be attractive again to be a priest.
00:16:45.820 And that can only be changed if we decide to get married again, to have children,
00:16:51.680 and to educate our children in a Christian, in a Catholic way.
00:16:57.080 Then we will also have the seminaries filled with better people.
00:17:02.960 I mean, there are very good young priests.
00:17:05.600 I know a lot of them.
00:17:07.040 And they don't care what the mainstream is.
00:17:10.080 They go along and they study theology because they have to study,
00:17:14.880 but privately they study the classical theology.
00:17:18.580 And so you get a formation and that will grow stronger the more we pray for it.
00:17:23.340 And I think the revival of the church will come through the laity that will pray and form the formation.
00:17:37.020 That is not impossible.
00:17:38.900 It's already happening in various places in the world.
00:17:43.340 And, of course, the church hierarchy is very slow.
00:17:46.860 And they are also trying to please the politics.
00:17:50.200 But eventually they will see that the ones who don't like the liturgy are all between 75 and 90.
00:18:00.620 And that is that these people are dying.
00:18:02.940 And the young people think, why did we leave our tradition behind?
00:18:10.340 Tradition is something good.
00:18:12.600 Why is tradition all of a sudden out of fashion?
00:18:17.420 Who are the great persecutors of tradition?
00:18:21.640 And if you dig deeper, you find that this is a very superficial and very worldly agenda behind that.
00:18:31.760 It is an agenda that sees the church as a, how do you say, a stopper to bring wrong and lies into the world.
00:18:46.500 And the devil always tries to destroy the church.
00:18:50.000 He will always say he will not succeed.
00:18:52.680 And even though we are in a crisis right now, we can feel already and see.
00:18:57.920 Today you saw the young priests at the requiem.
00:19:01.420 They are there.
00:19:02.700 And they are happy to be priests.
00:19:05.400 And that's going to be the renewal.
00:19:08.100 One final question on tradition.
00:19:10.280 And that is, what has attracted you to tradition?
00:19:13.980 Why do you stick to it?
00:19:15.920 I mean, you're, you know, someone who is already in the aristocracy.
00:19:21.480 You have no need for any kind of, you know, other kind of appreciation or anything like that.
00:19:28.260 And yet it causes you a problem.
00:19:30.440 It's not like it's easy for you to cling to tradition.
00:19:33.440 I'm sure there's lots of people who would appreciate if you didn't.
00:19:36.040 Yes.
00:19:36.240 And so, why?
00:19:38.980 What draws you to it?
00:19:39.860 What makes you stick to it, even though there's a lot of pressure for you not to?
00:19:42.860 Okay.
00:19:43.880 It's, again, the divine providence.
00:19:45.940 I met a traditionalist priest about 20 years ago.
00:19:51.480 And he told me that they were persecuted.
00:19:54.920 They had no church.
00:19:56.340 They couldn't say the mass.
00:19:57.900 And they were so much looking to find a place where they could serve the Lord and serve the people.
00:20:05.880 And I didn't know about this.
00:20:08.000 And so, I asked around my friends.
00:20:10.660 And they told me, yes, it's true.
00:20:12.760 The old right people are really persecuted.
00:20:16.980 And Lefebvre and all this.
00:20:18.960 I knew about Lefebvre because the Lefebvre people had bought a castle that belonged to my aunt, where they put a school.
00:20:30.120 So, I knew about them.
00:20:32.040 But I was too small or too young to really understand the problem.
00:20:36.580 But when I dug into the problem and I realized that these people are really good, faithful priests and who took things really seriously,
00:20:45.140 that they were persecuted by the hierarchy, I said, I'm going to help them.
00:20:51.720 And I, because of, I thought it's so unjust.
00:20:56.220 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.
00:21:04.080 And that's why I really, I really didn't understand what was wrong with them.
00:21:08.960 And that's why it's so, it was so fantastic when Pope Benedict gave them the possibility.
00:21:15.540 And all of a sudden, it was flowering everywhere.
00:21:18.860 The worshipping in the old right had such a success. 0.95
00:21:21.740 And obviously, it had so much success that the left-wing church, who has an exodus of people,
00:21:29.460 because the guitar playing and the hawk music singing and the gay parade in the church is obviously not attractive, 0.73
00:21:37.160 because the gay parade you can have in the streets much better.
00:21:40.440 And the guitar playing on a rock and roll stage is also much better. 0.89
00:21:45.320 The church can only imitate that.
00:21:47.420 So, it wasn't attractive.
00:21:49.760 So, the mainstream church had the exodus.
00:21:53.860 And so, of course, they were looking at the traditionalists and they were jealous.
00:21:57.320 Yes. It's jealousy.
00:21:59.780 They have all the seminaries full and they don't have seminaries.
00:22:05.480 And then, of course, in Germany, there are bishops who do not want a full seminary anyway.
00:22:10.720 They want the church to die so that they can bring the lay people in.
00:22:15.620 Unbelievable. That's beautiful. 0.85
00:22:18.080 Okay. So, you all see Princess Gloria and tradition.
00:22:21.400 But remember, Princess Gloria was called the punk princess. 1.00
00:22:25.620 And you might wonder why.
00:22:26.420 Well, Jim and I were here and we were asked to come because they were going to do some carol singing.
00:22:32.560 And so, we went and we were expecting some very traditional Christmas carol singing.
00:22:37.480 That's not what we got.
00:22:39.160 What we got was something totally alive.
00:22:42.300 It certainly arrived, made alive, the massive crowd here in the Christmas market.
00:22:48.740 Take a look at this.
00:22:49.480 This is Princess Gloria, and this is how she brings fun to the Christmas market.
00:22:56.120 From here in Regensburg, Germany, this is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
00:23:01.480 This is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
00:23:07.620 This is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
00:23:08.620 This is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Lightspe News.
00:23:09.760 That in dieser hochheiligen Nacht, der Vater im Himmel für Freude und Macht.
00:23:20.900 All this is John Henry Weston and Jim Hale for Rec компьютers.
00:23:24.900 Allez diesmalsego haberfié.
00:23:25.900 And he said, we're taking care of everything.
00:23:27.900 .
00:23:32.900 .
00:23:37.900 .
00:23:42.900 .
00:23:47.900 .
00:23:49.900 .
00:23:52.900 .
00:23:56.900 We'll be right back.