Timothy Flanders was in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He converted to the Catholic Church under Pope Francis, and he's very glad he did. In this episode of the John Henry Weston Show with none other than Timothy Flanders, host of the popular One Peter Five podcast, Tim talks about why he left Eastern Orthodoxy.
00:13:51.780And then there's the tradition, which explains what that cultus is all about.
00:13:56.720All of the morals and the doctrines and everything, even all the way going into lesser matters like dance routines and cuisine.
00:14:06.520These things are brings us to the third element of culture, which is elders.
00:14:11.160The elders, their job is to explain the tradition to the next generation.
00:14:16.960And then the fourth element is piety, which is the hinge upon which the next generation receive that culture.
00:14:22.900So my book is a is a framework to understand the history of Christian culture.
00:14:30.980What I call it, I call it a spiritual history of culture.
00:14:34.440And it's it's meant to provide this framework to show how important the liturgy is, because this is obviously one of the flashpoints of our Roman Catholic crisis now with the liturgy.
00:14:48.420And we can get into that. But also, it is going back to your first comment about people leaving the faith.
00:15:00.460It's it's a it's my own explanation as to why I'm not Protestant and whatnot.
00:15:05.340Eastern Orthodox. It's 500 pages of explaining why that is.
00:15:08.640But it's giving Roman Catholics their history, their identity, solid foundation to stand on so that they don't have to they they don't have to fear what we're dealing with now, because they can look at our forefathers and their zeal and what they dealt with, which in some ways was worse, some ways better.
00:15:27.280But they we can learn from the example of our forefathers and all these different examples.
00:15:32.240So that that's the gist and the purpose of my book.
00:15:35.360Let's look for a second at some of the pre-Christian liturgies, as you might describe them.
00:15:41.980We're seeing a resurgence of some of that with with Pachamama and kind of weird elements creeping actually into the mass.
00:15:49.540But nonetheless, they were there at that time.
00:15:53.540Explain, if you can, if you if you looked at that historically, what some of those were and how they related to the culture of the day.
00:15:59.100What we have today is what I assert in my book is that what we have is actually not a culture at all.
00:16:07.840It's it is completely inverted as to what a culture even is, because even in these Roman ancient pagan Roman or Greek Roman,
00:16:18.200even the Muslims or, you know, in Hinduism and all these different traditional cultures, they all have these four elements that I just mentioned.
00:16:26.060But since the advent of liberalism, we have an entirely new situation where it's really because even even the Protestants,
00:16:34.760even the Protestants had those four elements in their own civilizations.
00:16:38.940But with liberalism, with the American Revolution, the French Revolution, all these different liberal revolutions,
00:16:45.440what we have is first, the cultist is removed from public society.
00:16:50.800And what is valued is a revolt against tradition and elders without piety.
00:16:57.580So it's a completely, completely, complete repudiation of the very essence of what a basic culture is.
00:17:04.320So even in the pre-Christian societies, when our forefathers came to the worship of the mother goddess that they encountered in various societies,
00:17:15.520Pachamama included, they were they what they did was they baptized that society because that society was pagan and it was corrupted by demons.
00:17:24.260But it still had these four elements of culture.
00:17:27.300And so what our forefathers did was they baptized that culture, which cleansed it of all its demonic content.
00:17:32.760In particular, they would destroy they what they would do is, for example, they would destroy a demonic altar.
00:17:38.760They would destroy that. But then they'd build a church on top.
00:17:41.360So they wouldn't actually destroy the fact that this is a holy site.
00:17:44.660This whole hill right here, you know, like a lady of Guadalupe, for example, they have there's a holy hill that that culture reveres.
00:17:53.380But there's a pagan idol on it. So we're going to destroy the pagan idol.
00:17:56.620We're going to keep the fact that that's a sacred hill, but we're going to put the blessed sacrament on it.
00:18:00.800And that's going to be the throne, the new throne of God in this society.
00:18:05.100And we're going to cleanse that goddess worship because that is just a corruption of demons.
00:18:11.640And we're going to bring that to the veneration of our lady.
00:18:16.800So we're going to transform that from this pagan worship to venerating our lady, which is the proper veneration of the matron, the mother of God.
00:18:28.480But these new things are not even not they're not trying to restore even a even a pagan version of that.
00:18:34.720But Dietrich von Hildebrand, he observes that what we have now is not even it's not even as good as paganism.
00:18:42.280It's a lot worse than paganism, because even the pagans had a sense of wonder.
00:18:47.220They had a sense of veneration to the divine.
00:18:50.780And what we have now is is just anti-culture.
00:18:53.760How do you see this figuring into the liturgy debate inside the Catholic Church?
00:19:01.140Because surely there is still there are still elements of culture.
00:19:08.020And while the the the outside culture is is definitely loving to bash all tradition.
00:19:14.980There are some elements of that in the church as well, particularly since Second Vatican Council.
00:19:21.420The liturgy has always developed the Roman liturgy and other liturgies as well.
00:19:27.120There's always been a development over time.
00:19:29.480But even the Second Vatican Council stipulated that the the liturgy called for the reform called for should be an organic development, which is a metaphor which illustrates this cultural development.
00:19:41.760And in particular, we can note that what makes a an organic development is that it does not break this cultural transmission between the generations.
00:19:53.480So there is a small change that happens that the father passes down to the son and the son takes it up and passes it on to his son.
00:20:06.600It's something that just organically and freely develops.
00:20:09.620So the proper way to do this, an example is when Pius XII introduced his his new psalter, what he did was he gave and he presented an option.
00:20:21.080He said, this is an optional psalter, but it never caught on.
00:20:25.020What's a psalter just so that people know.
00:20:26.440So this is a new version of the psalter that was translated directly from the Hebrew.
00:20:31.020This was promulgated as an option by Pius XII and it never caught on.
00:20:35.820So it was optional, but nobody really was interested in it.
00:20:38.780And a psalter for people who don't know, it's just it's basically it's a prayer.
00:20:43.980So it would be your priest is required to pray all the psalms in their divine office.
00:20:49.080So Pius XII said you could pray this version of the psalms instead of the older version of the Latin psalms.
00:20:54.760So what we have in the imposition of the Novus Ordo is that Cardinal Rassiger said this is a breach in the history of the liturgy because instead of creating, for example, an option where this could organically develop like in the cathedral, we're going to have this new liturgy and anyone can freely go to that liturgy.
00:21:23.560Some some will have some, you know, help in their faith and they'll start attending this new liturgy.
00:21:28.480But others, they won't like that and they'll keep to the old ways.
00:21:32.400And that this is organic development in a culture.
00:21:36.160But what we had was everything was swept away and something new was imposed on the faithful.
00:21:42.760Not only that, but the monuments of our forefathers were literally destroyed with hammers.
00:21:49.180Rosaries were ripped out of little old ladies hands.
00:21:51.860It was it was it was it was a moment where a generation isolated itself from all the prior generations and they built churches that were ugly because they were not being inspired by what came before.
00:22:07.460In an organic development passing down this this this cultural transmission.
00:22:11.500This was this entire thing was a movement of anti-culture because it was a breaking with the tradition before.
00:22:18.820And like I said, again, it was it would be one thing if if if the Holy See were to promulgate an optional reformed liturgy.
00:22:27.900And that and that could work for some some cases that wouldn't that would not destroy this cultural transmission.
00:22:36.920That's why one can say there is a certain wisdom to Pope Benedict in some more on pontificum attempting to recreate a an organic cultural transmission with with his solution.
00:22:50.640And we can debate whether or not that was the proper way to do it.
00:22:53.460But it seems that that was what he was trying to get at.
00:22:56.180So those are some of the aspects of that.
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00:23:43.560Tim was not using hyperbole when he was talking about destroying the altars and whatnot.
00:23:52.680For those of you who might be younger, if you go and look at what happened after the reform of the liturgy, so-called reform of the liturgy, and basically the ridding of the traditional Latin mass.
00:24:05.760This is in the 60s still, maybe a little bit later into the 70s, but they were literally destroying all these beautiful historical, even I would say if we had the historical preservation societies, none of that would have happened.
00:24:20.840But because they were marble altars, and they were literally being wrecked with sledgehammers, because it was hard to reform what was there in stone, literally in stone.
00:24:33.460And statues were smashed and thrown into sea.
00:24:37.080I mean, quite literally, this is what happened, which is why sometimes you can find old treasures of ancient statues at the bottom of lakes and so on.
00:24:48.820But because this went on, it was a forceful rejection of the past, of tradition.
00:24:57.000And so your point is very well made, that actual break rather than some kind of organic growth.
00:25:05.380But so many people actually don't know that history.
00:25:08.840This is the situation that we're in now is that we're debating these things.
00:25:11.540But and we think about debating Archbishop Lefebvre and what he did was what he did was right or not, the various actions of the faithful.
00:25:21.340And we don't really know a lot of what was really going on in the 70s and 80s until we read about these horror stories that I mean, we talk about liturgical abuses today, which are bad.
00:25:35.200But back then they were quite horrendous.
00:25:38.640So we have this movement of the of the generation rejecting and rebelling against what came before.
00:25:47.760I mean, if there's anyone to blame here.
00:25:50.720I think most of all, the bishops will have to answer at Judgment Day because they're the elders.
00:25:58.080Their job in this in a cultural transmission is to watch over that transmission of the culture.
00:26:03.240But they had a generation of young clerics.
00:26:07.300Unfortunately, many priests were involved in this, but also lay people who were rebelling against their forefathers and destroying what came before.
00:26:14.220And the bishops just let it happen to a large degree, unfortunately.
00:26:17.680Part of this is because there was the fad was that patriarchy and fatherhood, spiritual fatherhood, should not include discipline.
00:26:30.780We shouldn't discipline these clerics.
00:27:45.100You're in a very strange, strange situation, particularly publicly, because you maybe think you don't want to condemn your brother bishops or whatever.
00:28:20.400But in the absence of that, we have fathers like yourself who are standing up and doing what we can, doing what we can to defend the faith for the sake of our children.
00:28:48.120We just had a stunning thing happen not too long ago.
00:28:52.900A bishop whom we appreciate so much at LifeSite, Bishop Strickland, he does a show at LifeSite once a week.
00:29:00.460And we're in partnership with Virgin Most Powerful Radio, Terry Barber and his crew.
00:29:04.460And he hosts that beautiful show with Bishop Strickland.
00:29:07.120But Bishop Strickland did something amazing.
00:29:10.620He called out the Pope for going against the deposit of the faith.
00:29:15.240At the same time, he put out a tweet condemning as schismatic the SSPX.
00:29:20.260And then within, I think, an hour or two, he corrected himself, noting that Bishop Schneider, his take on it, and retracting his take on the SSPX, saying they're not in schism.
00:29:36.420To me, that was stunning because it was something you never see or hardly ever see.
00:29:43.680It was a simplicity and humility that was truly touching, to me, truly remarkable.
00:29:49.600The fathers in the role of bishops were, for the most part, fishermen.
00:29:59.160Simple men who didn't pretend to take on errors of some kind of something else that they weren't.
00:30:21.180Yeah, like you said, there are many bishops, I think, out there who are Orthodox, who believe, you know, they were raised under John Paul II and Benedict.
00:30:30.380And they believe everything that the Catechism, at least the older version of the New Catechism.
00:30:35.840He just showed us that he has even more than courage and Orthodoxy.
00:31:00.180But I feel like you can trust Bishop Strickland.
00:31:03.960I mean, even if, I mean, even if you, even if you are, happen to be like a critic of the SSPX or something like that, and you disagree or whatever, you have to admit that it took a great act of humility to say, oh, I was wrong.
00:31:26.620We were so thankful that we had a father figure, a shepherd who could shepherd us in Bishop Strickland.
00:31:33.080But now he just showed us an even greater example, a Christ-like example of emptying himself and not caring about his reputation, but the truth, the truth above all else.
00:31:45.120And St. Thomas says that humility is conformity with the truth.
00:31:48.340And he cares more about the truth than his own self.
00:31:55.440And you just had him also do something else, a great favor to the whole wide world, in that we have very few prelates who are totally embracing the way of Christ and his truth, despite everything around us.
00:32:07.820And he points himself to Bishop Schneider, who is named Athanasius, not by his own choosing, for very good reason.
00:32:15.680There's no more apropos thing than that.
00:32:18.340He gets, in religion, you know, his born birth name or given name at birth or baptism was not Athanasius.
00:32:28.220And it is stunning that that's his name.
00:32:31.920And here he is, almost literally one of the only bishops in the world, and pointed to by the sort of Athanasius of America, Bishop Strickland, as a moral authority.
00:32:50.660So this is the Russian Catholic icon of the Theotokos of Fatima.
00:32:57.160The Theotokos is the term most commonly used in Eastern Catholicism, means the birth giver of God.
00:33:03.760And the title of the icon is In The Unity, Through the Mother of God, Unity.
00:33:09.220And it is actually written by a Russian Orthodox Christian in collaboration with Father Burgos, who is a Russian Rite Catholic priest in St. Petersburg, Russia.
00:33:24.860And they are working to build a shrine to Our Lady of Fatima in St. Petersburg, Russia.
00:33:32.000And so this is one of the projects that we are promoting.
00:33:36.800We've been working to get this icon available for purchase in the West.
00:33:42.820And so we will have that available very soon.
00:33:45.200So you can go to 1peter5.com, subscribe to our mailing list to get the news on that.
00:33:50.380This is something that we promote, first of all, for the intentions of Fatima, for all of the intentions, as we know, about Our Lady of Fatima, consecrating Russia and against the heirs of Russia on the first Saturdays and everything like that.
00:34:03.500But really, it is a unique image for obvious reasons, because in a unique way, it incarnates the whole message of Fatima because it is the Russian icon of Fatima.
00:34:16.540And so this is something that we promote for the sake of Fatima, but also for the sake of our brethren in our Ukrainian Catholic brethren, as well as our Russian Catholic brethren at a time of this awful war.
00:34:32.860And so this is also an effort of peace, promoting peace against this awful conflict that our brethren are facing and promoting the gospel to unite non-Catholics, especially the Russian Orthodox, with the Holy See.
00:34:51.400I think that's a special thing for you as a convert from Orthodoxy.
00:34:56.160It must be a unique perspective you have, because the schism will one day come to an end, in whichever way the Lord has that planned.
00:35:08.100And it sounds to me like it will sort of come with the conversion of Russia, which Our Lady promised would happen as well, after the consecration of Russia.
00:35:20.920It's an interesting question for someone who was coming from Orthodoxy.
00:35:24.460I didn't actually even know about Fatima until later I became, after I became Catholic.
00:35:29.520But it's quite amazing because it really shows that in the same way that after the split in the kingdom of Israel between the northern and the southern kingdoms, we know that the southern kingdom obviously was faithful to God.
00:35:45.700But God still sent prophets to the northern kingdom because God still loved the northern kingdom.
00:35:51.520And what Fatima shows us is that God loves Russia, even at a time when Russia was descended into the greatest evil perhaps the world has ever known in terms of totalitarian evil spreading and persecuting the church.
00:36:05.720I read a Russian author whose name is Vladimir Solovyev.
00:36:10.260He was a Russian Orthodox turned Catholic.
00:36:15.580And he wrote a book called Russia and the Universal Church.
00:36:19.020And he was able to really, this is somebody who died in the early 1900s.
00:36:22.780But he helped to create the modern Russian Byzantine Rite Catholic Church of today through his influence.
00:36:33.780And so I've always had a great love for Russia.
00:37:08.440One is about fasting, recovering, doing penances and recovering traditional rules of fasting.
00:37:15.980And the other one is about Eucharistic reparation.
00:37:18.760And this is one of the aspects that we offer at One Peter Five that is offered to the traditional movement.
00:37:23.720And it's an aspect of the Fatima message that is not as emphasized.
00:37:28.420But it is actually something that it was a part of the Fatima message even before Our Lady showed up in 1916 with the Angel of Portugal.
00:37:37.780That taught the seers the reparation prayer.
00:37:41.740And that prayer is part of the prayer that was composed by His Excellency Bishop Schneider.
00:37:48.140That is the prayer that we pray as a part of our lay sedentary, which the one I'm talking about is,
00:37:54.860My God, I believe, I adore, I trust, and I love you.
00:37:57.580I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust, do not love you.
00:38:00.820And what we hope to offer to the faithful is a spiritual means to channel all of the zeal and the anger that we feel against all the injustices perpetrated by bad clerics,
00:38:15.080the Eucharistic abuses, where we can do something about that and we can offer reparation to Almighty God.
00:38:22.220And in these United States, we, our bishops, are trying to create a Eucharistic revival in the faith and the real presence.
00:38:31.400And we all want that as well as trads.
00:38:34.000But we do believe strongly that there should be more sackcloth and ashes in that process.
00:38:43.080We need to make reparation to Almighty God for all of the wickedness that has been perpetrated against the Eucharistic heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
00:38:53.860So that is, that's something that we'll be promoting a lot next month in June for the octave of Corpus Christi, the Sacred Heart and everything,
00:39:03.140which also allows us to make reparation for all of the evil that is promoted during June and even gets infected into various liturgies out there, even Catholic liturgies so-called.
00:39:16.280We hope that this is a positive thing that we, the faithful, we can, we can put our hearts into this and we can truly make reparation to Almighty God and ask pardon for sinners and ask the conversion of sinners and evil men that their hearts may,
00:39:32.540their hardened hearts may be softened by Our Lady of Fatima.
00:39:38.280St. Michael the Archangel to the three children before Our Lady appeared, taught them, a host elevated in the air by itself, and then went and knelt down,
00:39:49.520the angel went and knelt down with the three little children, taught them that prayer.
00:39:53.120My God, I believe, I adore, I trust, and I love thee.
00:39:56.160I pray thee for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust, and do not love thee.