EXCLUSIVE： Bishop Joseph Strickland - America's Bishop ｜ Part 1
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
156.8888
Summary
In this episode of The John Henry Weston Show, Bishop Joseph Strickland talks about his life as Bishop of the Diocese of Tyler, Texas, and why he was chosen by Pope Francis to replace Bishop John Paul VI.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
The way I would describe what's happened in, you know, the Pope Francis years,
00:00:04.900
rather than looking up, looking the vertical, it's all horizontal.
00:00:10.440
And it's not certainly all horizontal, but that's what's emphasized.
00:00:14.800
Everything's about looking to each other and having conversations
00:00:17.860
and frankly, talking about things that are answered questions.
00:00:23.140
My friends, it gives me great pleasure to introduce you to this next guest
00:00:38.440
We were very, very blessed to be in Tyler, Texas with Bishop Strickland.
00:00:42.460
We were there for the final vows of Mother Miriam, which I know you've already seen.
00:00:46.640
And if you haven't, go check out the show with Mother Miriam.
00:00:49.960
And we were down there for her making her final vows,
00:00:54.360
Now, Bishop Strickland, he's like an enigma to people.
00:00:57.800
How can this one bishop seem to get it when almost none of the bishops on the entire planet get it?
00:01:05.040
With a few notable exceptions, Bishop Schneider, etc.
00:01:13.820
I was stunned to learn this from a close friend of his.
00:01:19.540
This is from Rich Conin, who was gracious enough to work with us as we were going down to Tyler.
00:01:24.980
This is his explanation right before you get the bishop's own of why Bishop Strickland gets it,
00:01:35.000
If you go to our cathedral at 7 a.m. on Friday, you'll find the bishop saying Mass.
00:01:41.800
But if you go at 5.15 a.m. that same morning, you'll find the good bishop on his knees before the Blessed Sacrament.
00:01:48.420
He's there for at least 90 minutes, and all are welcome to join him in the adoration of our Lord.
00:01:54.440
If you go to the chancery at noon, you'll find the bishop celebrating Mass there at its small chapel.
00:01:59.900
And again, before his Mass, you'll find him in adoration for at least an hour.
00:02:05.340
If you want to know who is Bishop Strickland, says Rich Conin, then you have to pursue our Lord,
00:02:10.300
because the good bishop is simply always in prayer.
00:02:15.340
That really answered my question about how can Bishop Strickland get it.
00:02:19.860
But I want you to hear for yourself, from the man himself.
00:02:25.120
Stay tuned for this episode of The John Henry Weston Show.
00:02:27.160
Hey, my friends, now is the time to stand up and fight.
00:02:32.460
We are just about to have the Synod on Synodality,
00:02:35.880
and everything that you've seen indicates that it's going to be an absolute disaster.
00:02:41.820
We have Fr. James Martin as a personal appointee of the Pope speaking at it.
00:02:50.640
These picks of the Pope to engage in this synod are indicative of where we're going.
00:02:59.860
And at these times of great crisis, the church, especially those called in the laity to work for the glory of Christ and his church,
00:03:13.420
Back in 2014, LifeSite launched something called Rome Life Forum.
00:03:16.980
It was a gathering at that point of some 75 life and family leaders from all around the world to strategize as to what we could do.
00:03:25.800
And when we gathered, the majority of people were most concerned about what?
00:03:30.140
About Pope Francis, about what was going on in Rome.
00:03:40.460
Now, a decade on, we are confronted with some of the most severe challenges the church has ever faced.
00:03:47.800
And so, our tradition at LifeSite is to continue with Rome Life Forum,
00:03:51.240
which has continued every year until we had to take a break over COVID because we weren't permitted.
00:04:02.800
October 31st and November 1st, the very end of the synod on synodality.
00:04:09.060
And we'll be there to strategize with his eminence, with his excellency,
00:04:14.560
and with many life and family leaders from around the world.
00:04:23.340
Bishop Strickland, welcome to the John Henry Weston Show.
00:04:27.240
We always begin with the sign of the cross, if you wouldn't mind leading us.
00:04:29.740
And the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
00:04:34.600
And it's a great privilege for me to be here with you and to support you
00:04:40.260
and to do whatever we can to help you in this beautiful diocese.
00:04:49.720
You are a farm boy from Texas, and here you are a bishop.
00:05:02.180
I grew up, as you allude to, on 100 acres outside of a little town, Atlanta, Texas,
00:05:08.420
here in the Diocese of Tyler, which was at that point the Diocese of Dallas.
00:05:13.240
Grew up in the Diocese of Dallas, went to the seminary,
00:05:17.240
a diocesan seminary in Irving, a suburb of Dallas,
00:05:21.640
associated with the University of Dallas, a great Catholic school.
00:05:26.340
I was there for eight years in the seminary, ordained for the Diocese of Dallas.
00:05:31.560
And my first assignment was to Immaculate Conception Church here in Tyler,
00:05:37.340
the only Catholic church in the county at that time.
00:05:42.500
A year and a half later, it becomes the Diocese of Tyler.
00:05:46.360
So I became one of the founding priests of the Diocese of Tyler.
00:05:58.140
And then we, you know, gradually added seminarians and all.
00:06:05.120
Honestly, I think what happened with the Diocese being created,
00:06:10.200
then it just created a situation where I worked closely with my three predecessors.
00:06:16.780
Bishop Herzig, the first bishop, didn't live very long, sadly, but I worked with him.
00:06:25.200
So I was already getting pulled into not just, I always envisioned, just working in parishes.
00:06:30.820
Because I really didn't know the bishop in Dallas very well as a seminarian.
00:06:35.200
And so I never even dreamt of being a bishop, you know, didn't, you know, not wanted, didn't want.
00:06:41.620
I mean, I just wasn't in my world in the seminary and in early priesthood.
00:06:46.780
But then I remember going to Mount Pleasant, and this was my second assignment.
00:06:55.520
I was pastor in Mount Pleasant for three years,
00:06:59.060
then went to study canon law at the request of the bishops,
00:07:03.380
and then came back and was made rector of the cathedral where I had been assistant.
00:07:08.960
I've told people I lived in that rectory longer than any other place in my life because I was rector for 16 years.
00:07:17.220
It's very often that men become bishops that work closely with bishops and work in the chancery.
00:07:25.440
And with, like I said, all three bishops, especially Bishop Carmody as rector of the cathedral.
00:07:34.080
I was the judicial vicar of the diocese, worked in the tribunal for 15 years.
00:07:39.420
So all of that puts you in the chancery world and, as much as anything, makes you known to the bishop
00:07:47.440
and sort of makes you more of a close associate than a lot of the priests are
00:07:52.060
that may be a great priest out in a parish, but they just aren't in the chancery so much.
00:07:58.600
And then I was chosen by the consulters to be the administrator between Bishop Edmund Carmody and Bishop Alvaro Corrada.
00:08:09.860
That was the year 2000. I was administrator of the diocese.
00:08:13.800
So I think that that really propelled me more toward, you know, one day being a bishop
00:08:21.460
because being an administrator, I was administrator for about a year.
00:08:26.160
And, you know, you're administering the diocese.
00:08:30.740
You don't have the authority of a bishop, but you have limited authority to basically make sure things continue.
00:08:38.140
Even had the delegation to celebrate confirmation for the sake of the faithful.
00:08:43.660
And so I had celebrated a lot of confirmations before I ever became a bishop.
00:08:48.560
And part of my whole routine was to say, you know, it was sort of a teaching moment that I'm not a bishop,
00:08:56.800
But I had the special delegation of being administrator.
00:09:00.160
And that, you know, just, so that was my routine of celebrating confirmation.
00:09:05.140
And then I had to shift a bit when I actually became the bishop.
00:09:11.000
So as I tell people, I'm about 100 miles from that 100-acre farm that I grew up on.
00:09:20.880
And it was, it's not like, you know, we lived off the farm.
00:09:25.640
I mean, we grew vegetables and had horses and cows and dogs and cats, you know, just typical country life.
00:09:32.960
But my father actually worked for Motorola Communications most of the time as I was a kid.
00:09:43.060
That he would, and interestingly, as I've thought about it, his sales territory was pretty much the Diocese of Tyler.
00:09:50.960
He used to go to Lufkin and the Nacogdoches and Tyler.
00:09:54.280
As kids, we would come to Tyler for the big city vacation.
00:09:58.480
You know, we'd come, my father was still working.
00:10:01.840
Our families, seven kids total, five still living, and six of us grew up together.
00:10:09.740
And we had sort of an older three and a younger three.
00:10:14.600
The older ones said, we ain't going to have, like, vacation anywhere.
00:10:17.640
But we had a couple of days staying in a hotel here in Tyler.
00:10:21.560
And people always ask me, you know, what's it like being a bishop where, you know,
00:10:25.700
I was the kid priest and then I was the rector of the cathedral.
00:10:32.100
And I think it really helped to have been the administrator because I already, you know,
00:10:38.700
by the grace of God, I didn't get stupid and I didn't, you know, say, oh, I'm a big dog.
00:10:44.340
And I just served and tried to cooperate with the men and tried to help them deal with things
00:10:49.600
that they needed to deal with, even though we didn't have a bishop.
00:10:53.600
And I think most of the priests appreciated, you know, my kind of low-key approach and just
00:10:59.900
trying to help and not lauded over them or anything, which, you know, to me would have
00:11:06.780
You know, it kind of goes to your head to think even temporarily you're administering the
00:11:12.420
So I had a good rapport with the priests and I have to say I was very humbled all the
00:11:19.220
And I've really felt a deep call in prayer and just as a bishop to really care for the
00:11:27.580
priests, to be there for them, to try to help support them.
00:11:31.760
And in recent years, there are many priests from really around the world.
00:11:36.520
I mean, not hugely around the world, but some men in other countries and a lot of men here
00:11:41.440
just reaching out to me for support, just to answer questions or whatever.
00:11:46.980
And I've been glad to do that because I've really felt a call to support priests and encourage
00:11:53.920
them to be the men of prayer that I think all ordained ministers are called to be, deacons,
00:12:00.940
priests, and bishops, and especially the priests and the bishops.
00:12:04.180
With all that's going on in the world and the church today, it's actually critical for
00:12:10.260
us to devote time to prayer and retreat as our Lord did in the Gospels.
00:12:14.540
Now, there are perhaps few better ways to do so than to take a pilgrimage and follow
00:12:19.100
in the very footsteps of Jesus Christ himself on a journey through the Holy Land.
00:12:24.300
LifeSite News is proudly sponsored by the Franciscan Foundation of the Holy Land, which is now
00:12:30.200
offering a rare opportunity to elevate your faith.
00:12:33.880
Join Father Peter F. Vasco, a Franciscan priest and native to the region for nearly 40 years
00:12:39.880
as he guides you through the heart of the Holy Land on a 10-day tour through Israel.
00:12:45.540
Watch the Bible come to life as you visit sacred holy sites, walk the ancient streets of Jerusalem,
00:12:51.600
visit the Nativity Church built over the grotto of Jesus' birth, pray in the upper room at
00:12:57.300
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and much, much more.
00:13:00.560
For information on this outstanding opportunity, visit the Franciscan Foundation for the Holy Land
00:13:05.880
at www.ffhl.org, that's www.ffhl.org, or call 855-500-3345, that's 855-500-3345.
00:13:24.920
You entered the Church at a very interesting time.
00:13:29.760
November 2012 is right on the cusp of a kind of a revolution in the Church.
00:13:33.960
A lot in the pro-life movement would describe it as a time before that, when there might
00:13:39.460
have been a lot of bishops, maybe even priests, and maybe even bishops, or sometimes a lot
00:13:43.940
of bishops, who didn't agree with what you were doing in the pro-life movement, without
00:13:47.240
thinking, oh, they're too rigid, and, you know, or they're daring to confront the law
00:13:52.480
with rescuing, or with even suggesting, you know, going up front of clinics and suggesting
00:13:58.320
to women, please come, we have something else, a better way for you.
00:14:01.220
And so you weren't supported, but you were massively supported by John Paul II.
00:14:06.760
You always felt the Pope had your back as a pro-life activist.
00:14:10.440
And you felt the same with Benedict, because you knew while John Paul II was rah-rah with
00:14:14.980
you, Benedict was writing the documents that supported everything you did.
00:14:19.540
That changed right after 2013, where that feeling was gone.
00:14:25.200
You've been in that milieu, the new milieu, almost your whole life as a bishop.
00:14:33.920
You grew up in a time under JP II and Benedict, and the Church was one way.
00:14:51.300
Really, honestly, it's easy for me to get emotional about it, because it is just so profoundly
00:15:02.380
And in that context, I think that the best way I can describe where we are, and, you know,
00:15:10.340
I went in the seminary in 1977, and really, as I look back on the years of St. John Paul
00:15:19.900
the Great, that's what I like to call him, that was, it was sort of rebuilding, making
00:15:26.140
the Church, again, robust in its beauty, in its clear theology, and in, and I guess the
00:15:38.480
John Paul II and then Benedict were really pulling us to the vertical again, to look to
00:15:47.280
I mean, here we are celebrating the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you know, look to
00:15:53.140
That's why in architecture, churches are built to just drive the eyes up.
00:15:57.700
I mean, the great technologies and everything of today, I mean, a lot of it's used in the
00:16:06.760
And, you know, in the ancient church, architecture got people's attention.
00:16:12.320
And it said, look up, look to the heavens and the beautiful ceilings and domes, and just
00:16:18.680
the whole sweep of the architecture was to look up.
00:16:22.120
And I think John Paul, like you said, Benedict and John Paul, in different ways, were saying,
00:16:29.280
look to God, look to the heavens, look to your higher self.
00:16:33.640
And I think the way I would describe what's happened in, you know, the Pope Francis years,
00:16:39.660
and it's certainly not all Pope Francis, but it's a whole milieu, as you say, of rather than
00:16:47.900
looking up, looking the vertical, it's all horizontal.
00:16:52.760
And it's not certainly all horizontal, but that's what's emphasized.
00:16:57.160
Look to each other, be in community, have conversations.
00:17:01.860
But instead of saying, well, the answers are up there, let's look up there.
00:17:06.580
Instead, it's, well, let's just all have conversations.
00:17:13.780
And honestly, I think that's what has put me where I am, and where I've kind of grown
00:17:21.040
to be as a bishop of, in November, it'll be 11 years, of more or less in conflict with
00:17:29.700
that new worldview, in a sense, of the church, that everything's about looking to each other
00:17:35.520
and having conversations, and frankly, talking about things that are answered questions.
00:17:41.980
We don't need to have a discussion, in my opinion, about things where we have the answer.
00:17:47.320
I mean, going, and if anything, and I hope and pray that, you know, after I'm gone, they'll
00:17:56.340
say Bishop Strickland stood for the sanctity of life and the sanctity of the unborn.
00:18:03.240
To me, that's the preeminent linchpin of all of it.
00:18:07.920
If the life of the most innocent, sacred child in the womb, the potential that a newborn
00:18:16.020
child or a newly conceived child has, it's the potential of God in the world, of all
00:18:25.480
We should treasure that beyond anything and foster that and just celebrate every time a
00:18:34.260
And we're so far from that in our culture, and sadly, even as you allude to, with too
00:18:43.340
We should be absolutely crystal clear that the greatest gift the world has is a newly conceived
00:18:52.280
And instead, it's all the negative is just heaped on that reality to the point where, I mean,
00:19:01.080
we have presidents and other world leaders that, I mean, too many people in Congress, too
00:19:07.100
many people in the church that are saying, oh, well, you need to have options.
00:19:10.860
I mean, I just saw another political candidate coming out that, you know, said, oh, well, you
00:19:17.500
know, he supports abortion from up until birth.
00:19:32.940
I'm glad to, I mean, there are a lot of things that I can make mistakes, or I don't know that
00:19:38.880
But the sanctity of the life of the unborn, there are no questions.
00:19:49.420
We have to always be compassionate toward the people that are deluded.
00:19:54.860
But sadly, too many, even leaders in the church these days, are deluded to think, you know,
00:20:03.020
something less than the sanctity of the life of every child conceived.
00:20:10.280
There's no, because, again, going back to this is God's gift, and whatever the, yeah,
00:20:17.040
there's tragic circumstances and unintended circumstances.
00:20:21.100
But when a child is conceived, it always has the potential of transforming the world.
00:20:29.900
They were conceived in a womb, just like you and I were, just like every human being.
00:20:35.000
I mean, they're trying to even mess with that now.
00:20:38.980
How do we come into the world, a man and woman come together, hopefully, in a loving relationship
00:20:45.920
of matrimony for life and open to those children?
00:20:51.720
But a lot of what the pushback I've gotten is that, and again, it's the vertical understanding
00:21:00.440
of that child in the womb is directly from God.
00:21:08.560
That is pro-creation, but it's God who gives life.
00:21:18.420
Yes, original sin, and we need to get them baptized, but, you know, they've not committed any personal sin
00:21:24.480
when they're conceived in the womb, and they have the potential of being the greatest saints
00:21:30.360
and transforming our world by keeping that vertical connection with God from their conception.
00:21:37.220
So, it's our mission to foster, as I know you and your wife have done the best you can,
00:21:43.500
to foster that connection to God because we're created in His image and likeness.
00:21:50.400
And that would be, I guess, that even, you know, certainly the church is affected deeply by it
00:21:57.040
and in some ways corrupted by a world that has turned its back on God.
00:22:03.140
And too many people in the church are sort of giving God a cold shoulder, even claiming to be Catholic,
00:22:15.980
I mean, so, I think that that image of looking too horizontal and just sort of staying in the world,
00:22:27.540
looking to each other and forgetting we came from God.
00:22:30.580
We need to keep looking to God and being lifted to our highest potential by God's grace.
00:22:40.600
To celebrate the momentous overturning of Roe v. Wade,
00:22:43.360
we at LifeSite have minted just under 10,000 of these brand new limited edition pro-life silver rounds.
00:22:49.060
Now, each round is stamped with the image of the Supreme Court of the United States,
00:22:53.940
featuring the date that the High Court delivered this historic victory.
00:22:56.840
And on the front of our pure silver rounds, LifeSite's logo surrounded by a brilliant sunburst
00:23:02.720
They, of course, commemorate our 25-year anniversary of LifeSite News.
00:23:11.260
These one-ounce silver rounds are available from our partners at stjosephspartners.com,
00:23:16.840
where you can fulfill all of your silver and gold needs in this perilous time.
00:23:21.460
One of the things that often people say with regard to the life issue is that, you know,
00:23:32.120
It's an issue coming up in politics right now, and we've been dealing with it for years already.
00:23:39.380
Every bit as important, maybe more important than abortion, than the right to life in the womb.
00:23:47.140
How come you pro-lifers don't care about people outside the womb, and so on and so forth.
00:23:53.140
How does abortion compare to immigration on that kind of, you know,
00:23:57.700
what are Catholics to discern about that relationship?
00:24:00.700
I believe we have to see that all of the evils, and there are tremendous evils.
00:24:06.520
I mean, human trafficking, the border issues, all the transgender, it's just overwhelming.
00:24:14.000
I think logically and according to the truth that God has revealed to us,
00:24:20.420
it traces back to a lack of respect for human life.
00:24:24.820
If the respect isn't there for the one who has no voice, who has no wealth, who has no power,
00:24:33.440
I mean, even a, you know, very innocent young child, at least they can scream.
00:24:43.600
They, I mean, we're probably familiar with the silent scream.
00:24:49.840
So, and that, you know, I know that many in the church and otherwise in the culture,
00:24:56.880
and, you know, the border issues are devastating, but to me it traces back to
00:25:01.840
decisions that are made and the ways people are treated.
00:25:05.620
I mean, so much of it is the drug trafficking that is tied to that,
00:25:13.780
And so it all ties together, as I see it, logically and spiritually, it all ties back to,
00:25:21.120
it's almost sadly a consequence, I believe, of, you know, being ready to, I mean,
00:25:28.100
we don't need to get too graphic about the reality of what abortion is,
00:25:32.200
but it's literally chopping up human bodies, ripping them apart.
00:25:36.540
And so, and it's interesting, when we see that happening, sadly, sometimes that sort of thing
00:25:43.520
or that kind of violence toward another child or innocent person happens in our world constantly,
00:25:50.540
at the border or in our broken cities or all kinds of ways.
00:25:54.240
And thankfully, people still respond in horror to an image like that.
00:25:59.800
But we've forgotten the horror of it happening in the womb.
00:26:04.320
And that lack of horror there sort of creeps out to,
00:26:09.120
oh, well, we're a little too complacent about some of the other issues.
00:26:13.940
But we can't start with fighting over border issues, in my opinion.
00:26:20.940
We have to start with a new culture that recognizes the sanctity of life.
00:26:26.100
If you recognize that, then super wealthy means super helpful to the people of God
00:26:33.060
instead of building bigger and bigger mansions and having just, you know, obscene things that
00:26:40.140
because you've got the money, you can, you know, have just things that no person could ever need
00:26:46.880
or should ever want if they have any sort of balanced understanding of what life is.
00:26:52.220
That's part of what drives the border is super wealthy people
00:26:56.120
that are taking advantage of people who have nothing, that are closer to being in the womb.
00:27:02.820
The same thing with, I mean, the border issues, but then you get to the euthanasia and older people.
00:27:10.380
I just read something about, you know, in California, the assisted suicide rate is just going through the roof.
00:27:16.060
Again, a lack of the value of life and a lack of understanding.
00:27:21.340
I mean, people are just saying, well, life's not so good.
00:27:25.940
So I'm opting out or we're opting you out for you.
00:27:32.080
And to me, we get sanity when we go back to life is from God.
00:27:43.380
And then, I mean, you as a successful man have to ask yourself, how much do you need?
00:27:52.760
Well, through a lot of hard work, but also through blessings from God.
00:27:56.460
How do we be brothers and sisters to each other instead of, you know, squandering wealth on, you know, unnecessary luxuries that forget that they're people that don't have a home, don't have clothing, don't have food.
00:28:17.100
I mean, it's very complicated and also very simple to me.
00:28:20.820
As you're speaking, I thought, wow, that whole concept makes for a beautiful rejoinder when anybody says you don't care about immigration.
00:28:28.040
Actually, no, I totally care about immigration.
00:28:30.140
If you don't care about the child in the womb, you don't care about immigration because it flows right to that and to every other issue we deal with.
00:28:37.720
That's the first border that people can't cross is the womb.
00:29:05.540
To see more like it, be sure to hit the subscribe button below to get all the latest content from LifeSite News.
00:29:11.080
Check the links in the description to read more and connect with us on social media so that you can stay up to date with all the latest life, family, faith and freedom news.