The John-Henry Westen Show - March 26, 2019


Episode 2: Did Pope Francis promote cohabitation before marriage? Here's the evidence


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

131.58197

Word count

763

Sentence count

39

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Did Pope Francis promote cohabitation before marriage? In 2016, a video of a couple going hand-in-hand to meet the Pope went viral in the mainstream media. Did he actually say it? And if so, what did he mean by it?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to the John Henry Weston Show.
00:00:06.080 This will be a weekly show to run every Tuesday,
00:00:08.920 in which I will offer commentary on the most important news developments in the Church and culture.
00:00:13.600 We are beginning with a series laying out the hard evidence for our concerns with Pope Francis.
00:00:19.000 The show is available on the John Henry Weston Show YouTube channel and on my LifeSite blog.
00:00:24.720 We've created a special email list for the show,
00:00:27.260 so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode.
00:00:31.020 Please sign up now by clicking the link below,
00:00:33.640 and you can also subscribe to the YouTube channel,
00:00:35.920 and you'll be notified by YouTube when there's any new content.
00:00:39.260 May God bless you.
00:00:48.780 Did Pope Francis promote cohabitation before marriage?
00:00:52.700 Hi, I'm John Henry Weston, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSite News.
00:00:58.200 At LifeSite, we don't take lightly criticizing the Pope,
00:01:01.220 nor do we do so out of any kind of animosity toward him.
00:01:05.680 A holy bishop and good friend, Bishop Athanasius Schneider,
00:01:09.180 he teaches that, and I quote,
00:01:10.480 the true friends of the Pope are those cardinals, bishops, laymen,
00:01:15.020 who express their public concern about these very important issues
00:01:18.420 about the state of confusion in the Church, end quote.
00:01:22.820 Bishop Schneider said that those who perform adulation of the Pope
00:01:26.900 and deny the evidence that ambiguity in the Pope's teachings is causing confusion
00:01:31.460 are not helping the Pope, nor themselves, when they will face their final judgment.
00:01:37.360 So let's start with a short prayer.
00:01:38.880 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
00:01:44.360 Out of love and concern for his creatures, God has taught us that marriage is a necessary
00:01:50.120 prerequisite for sexual relations.
00:01:52.080 The Catechism at number 2353 teaches, and I quote,
00:01:56.080 However, on June 16, 2016, Pope Francis said something to the priests of Rome
00:02:25.080 which went viral in the mainstream media.
00:02:27.880 He seemed to promote cohabitation.
00:02:31.160 And I know that sounds impossible, but here's the video of him saying it.
00:02:35.340 He actually didn't even only say it once.
00:02:55.420 On February 25th, 2017, he made similar remarks speaking to the Roman rhoda.
00:03:01.960 And one of his closest advisors, his most frequent interviewer, Jesuit priest Antonio Spadaro,
00:03:08.040 tweeted out this photo of a couple going hand-in-hand to meet the Pope.
00:03:12.800 The caption on the photo, as you can see, contains the words of the Pope,
00:03:16.740 the welcoming of those young people who prefer to live together without getting married.
00:03:22.860 Beyond the Church's teaching, social science has demonstrated the harm of cohabitation.
00:03:28.920 Writing at LifeSite, Dr. Patrick Schneider cited numerous studies to show cohabitation is,
00:03:34.300 as he said, quote,
00:03:35.700 The rate of divorce among those who cohabit prior to marriage is nearly double that of couples who marry without prior cohabitation.
00:03:48.280 Men in cohabiting relationships are four times more likely to be unfaithful than husbands.
00:03:54.000 The rate of sexually transmitted diseases among cohabiting couples is six times higher than among married women. 0.87
00:04:01.080 And children suffer the most.
00:04:04.160 The poverty rate among children of cohabiting couples is five-fold greater than the rate among children in married couple households.
00:04:12.680 Compared to children of married biological parents,
00:04:16.080 children aged 12 to 17 with cohabiting parents are six times more likely to exhibit emotional and behavioral problems.
00:04:23.340 Adolescents from cohabiting households are 122% more likely to be expelled from school and 90% more likely to have a low GPA.
00:04:35.500 For the faith and for our children, we must charitably but firmly call out Pope Francis on these confusing and erroneous teachings,
00:04:43.980 which distort the faith and harm the faithful.
00:04:47.080 Pope St. John Paul II described the harm of cohabitation in his exhortation, Familiaris Consortio.
00:04:54.760 Cohabitation, he says, presents the Church with arduous pastoral problems,
00:04:59.580 and he described the serious consequences as, quote,
00:05:03.420 the loss of the religious sense of marriage, seen in the light of the covenant of God with his people,
00:05:09.160 deprivation of the grace of the sacrament, grave scandal, end quote.
00:05:13.680 He also listed social consequences, and I quote again,
00:05:17.520 the destruction of the concept of the family, the weakening of the sense of fidelity,
00:05:21.860 also towards society, possible psychological damage to children, and strengthening of selfishness, end quote.
00:05:29.400 Our motto at LifeSite is caritas in veritate, the truth in love.
00:05:34.600 And so it's out of love for the Pope that we want to call him to enunciate the truth
00:05:39.060 and correct the errors he has taught, which have harmed the faithful.
00:05:43.980 For LifeSite News, I'm John Henry Beston, and may God bless you.