EXCLUSIVE： FULL INTERVIEW With Archbishop Cordileone, Condemning Today's Anti-Catholic Bigotry
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Summary
Archbishop Salvatore Cordiglione was one of the most anti-abortion and anti-gay prelates in the history of the Catholic Church. He championed the right to life and opposed same-sex marriage and abortion.
Transcript
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They're celebrating this blatant anti-Catholic bigotry and anti-Christian because they're not only mocking nuns, they're blaspheming our Lord, they're blaspheming our Lady.
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This is a blatant attack on all true Christian believers. They're mocking and blaspheming what we hold sacred. And that's now celebrated in our culture.
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Hey, my friends, have I got something great for you. Now, you might say Archbishop Salvatore Cordiglione needs no introduction, but in fact, he does.
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Because you know what? I've been following the Archbishop since 2009, when he actually first became the Bishop of Oakland.
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He was then in charge of about 550,000 Catholics. And he, in his inauguration homily, was so very pro-life. It was amazing.
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He lamented that the home, the United States, to which his grandparents came from Sicily nearly 100 years before, had become less hospitable, especially to the unborn.
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In addition to his obvious, you know, push for the right to life, Bishop Cordiglione shared with Pope Benedict a love for music.
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He's a saxophone player, by the way, and also an appreciation for the traditional liturgy.
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You know that he presided over a solemn high mass in the extraordinary form for Thomas Aquinas College back in the day,
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and also offered a mass in the ordinary form, but in Latin, and facing the tabernacle.
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And so, just an amazing prelate we've been following at LifeSite for a very long time.
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He said in that inaugural homily, and I'll quote it for you, he said,
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It seems our nation has become a much less welcoming place, even sometimes downright inhospitable.
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Worse of all, our nation has become a land that shows itself all too often unwelcoming toward the most defenseless of our brothers and sisters,
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who are not even given a chance to be born, and so are eliminated from society even before they see the light of day.
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This inhospitality, he continued, this hostility, creates a tsunami of moral and physical violence,
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which leaves countless damaged and destroyed lives in its wake.
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Now, in 2012, he became the Archbishop of San Francisco.
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Now, you know, San Francisco is one of the most homosexual places on the planet.
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And yet, that didn't stop the Archbishop from speaking out against same-sex marriage,
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the truth of Christ on marriage and the family.
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He spoke at the March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. in that same year,
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and it was, he gave a widely circulated interview to USA Today at the time.
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And in that interview, he emphasized that marriage is ordered primarily toward the raising of children
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by their mother and father, the basic building block of civilized society.
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And, you know, for that kind of fidelity to Christ and the Church's truth on marriage and the family,
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Archbishop Corleone was condemned, not only by the local politicians, but even by,
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and get this, 80% of Catholic teachers protested his leadership.
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In fact, wealthy Catholics in San Francisco put an ad in the paper, a full-page ad,
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We at LifeSite did, you know, did support at the time.
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In 2018, he called, remember, this is when the USCCB was looking into sexual abuse of children by priests.
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And, one of the things that came up, one of the studies that came up,
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showed that there was a hundred percent correlation, not causal relation,
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but correlation between homosexuality and pre-sexual abuse in this one study.
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Now, most of the bishops didn't want anything to do with that.
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They were like, no, no, no, we're fighting sexual abuse of children.
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It's like, oh, no, there was a connection there, an obvious one.
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But, no one was willing to call it out except Archbishop Corleone.
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In fact, what he said to his brother bishops at the USCCB meeting,
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It was published and released by the Ruth Institute.
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He'd found a near hundred percent correlation between an increase of homosexual clergy
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And so, Archbishop Corleone told his brother bishops this,
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I think the worst thing we could do is to discredit this study so we don't have to deal
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with it or ignore or deny this reality altogether.
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I think, he added, I think we need to lean into it.
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To flee from it would be to flee from the truth and to be perceived as fleeing from the truth.
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Not only that, he's gone into all the controversial issues where so many people are silent.
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Even in the face of what the trans ideology is doing to children with these puberty blockers,
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He says that he slammed puberty blockers and other transgender procedures for children.
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He called them terrible and an affront to the created order.
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He said there's so much scientific evidence of the harm this does to children,
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And not just in terms of their sexual development, but otherwise too.
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And, he said, in other aspects of physical health.
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But the other side has captured the narrative and many people have been duped into thinking this way.
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I don't know how anyone could think that something that's so obvious as a boy is a boy and needs to grow into being a man can be a question.
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Not only that, do you remember when, like, the whole church was in lockdown and it was so terrible for Catholics everywhere?
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Well, Archbishop Corleone, he actually went public praising priests for clandestinely offering Mass during the COVID lockdowns.
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I know that many of you, he said, I know that many of you found ways to celebrate Mass for your people, even clandestinely.
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I am grateful to you for that and proud of you for doing so.
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Well, he did something else that's amazing, too.
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That's created and caught all the headlines all over, not only America, but all over the world.
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After trying, because you know where San Francisco is, that's the home of Nancy Pelosi.
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And there's a canon law, 915, that talks about denying Holy Communion to pro-abortion politicians.
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Well, to Catholics who don't practice the faith and obstinately so.
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And after trying for a decade to meet with Nancy Pelosi, to counsel her, to tell her that her stances are not aligned with the Catholic Church,
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he, as her bishop, rightfully so, denied her Holy Communion and told all the priests in his diocese to refuse giving her Holy Communion.
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Nancy Pelosi went from there, of course, to the Vatican.
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We're at a very public mass with the Pope present.
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We also had that day the release of a document from the Pope called Desiderio Desideravi,
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which seems to indicate, heretically, by the way, that the only thing needed for the reception of Holy Communion is faith.
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But, I wanted to talk to Archbishop Cordelione about all of what's going on in the U.S. today,
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because there is a great anti-Catholic persecution.
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I wanted to ask him also about what's happening with Nancy Pelosi and all of that,
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and if he regrets that decision because of all the pushback he received.
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Stay tuned for this interview with Archbishop Salvatore Cordelione.
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Each day, we encounter the evils of the woke agenda,
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as the woke corporations, they continue to infiltrate our homes via the media.
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Now, this month, the mainstream media works overtime to spread false teaching
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and make a mockery of traditional families and the Christian values we hold most dear.
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Look at the pushback against Bud Light and Target.
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So, this is our moment to give the world what they need so desperately, the truth.
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There's a surge of interest, and we need to jump on it
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to give the public the truth on life, faith, family, and freedom that they so desperately need.
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Thank you so much for your prayers and for your support and your dedication.
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Let's take advantage of this moment, and by the grace of God,
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may our efforts serve Him and His truth, and may that bear much fruit.
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Archbishop Cordelian, it's so good to be with you.
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If you wouldn't mind, we always start with the sign of the cross, if you could lead us.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
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We are having an immense attack on the faith from America,
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which, you know, should be all about freedom of religion.
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You've recently had something happen there where you are in California,
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The district attorney had decided basically to treat almost as nothing the destruction
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I believe that's where the police even just let all the destruction happen.
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Yes, this was on what they now call Indigenous Peoples Day.
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And as you may recall, it was in the midst of all of those street protests.
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And there was a lot of tearing down of statues and desecrating of monuments around the country.
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And at the same time, this defund the police movement.
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It's one of the 21 missions that the Franciscans started up and down the California coast.
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Not one of the ones personally founded by Sarah.
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But it was in that chain that he began and his successors continued.
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And so they, they protected it because they thought it might've been violated.
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So they put padding around it and then sealed it with a very heavy plastic wrapping material
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So it's very thick and heavy and they seal it up very tight.
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They came with the tools they needed to cut through all of that with the spray paint to paint
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it red and then the tools they needed to tear it down.
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They didn't intervene to stop it, even though the parish had an understanding with the police
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department that if protesters trespassed onto the parish property, they would intervene
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After it happened, they did arrest the ones who tore it down.
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It was, I know anyone else has probably would have been called a hate crime, but we're Catholics.
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So we can't expect the same fair treatment as everyone else.
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But I was pleased that when the district attorney charged them with felony vandalism, which it
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And I understand, too, a district attorney has to charge, put the charge out that the
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So I, so that was, I was pleased that at least that had happened.
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But then it took a long time for anything to happen.
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And then four of the five perpetrators who were arrested asked for restorative justice,
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And then they try to bring about reconciliation between the criminal and the victims of the
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When they suggested restorative justice, I suggested that we do it before a trial because I really
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I would have preferred an honest reconciliation and restitution rather than a trial.
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And so I asked, I'd suggest we do it before a trial, but there would have to be an apology
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and a repudiation of what they did that recognized the harm it's done to us, that there be a
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monetary restitution, that we have a credible historian present at the discussion.
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So we're talking about the true historical facts, because there were three eras and people
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There was the mission era under the Spaniards, then the Mexican era, when the missions were
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secularized and the Franciscans expelled, the schools closed and the Indians dispossessed
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And then the California or American period after that, when there was an actual genocide perpetrated
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So there were different abuses of different degrees of severity in the three eras.
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So then the mediator for the restorative justice began to treat the defendants as if they were
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the victims of the crime and the archdiocese, and I in particular, the bad guys, right?
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And so the mediator was working only with the defendants.
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Well, she claimed that they were getting them ready in order to bring them into a conversation,
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She would speak to the pastor and a parishioner at that parish who pretended as if he represented
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the parishioners there, but he was speaking for himself.
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He was on the side of the defendants and against me and pretending as if the parishioners were
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She would send updates to our legal counsel, but she wasn't bringing us involved in the
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And when I bent over backwards to be conciliatory.
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So finally, when this dragged on and on and on, I could not trust that this would be an honest
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So I said, we're going to withdraw at this point.
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And in fact, she misunderstood what that meant.
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Oh, she was so happy that I wised up and was bowing out of the process.
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The pastor represents the victims who are the parishioners, but the victims are beyond
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It's all the Catholics in our archdiocese and even beyond.
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I represent them, but she was so happy when I bowed out.
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And then she realized, oh, we're stopping this altogether.
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So then the DA, when she did this diversion tactic where it reduces the charges to a misdemeanor,
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she said one of the reasons, well, two reasons, lack of a criminal history, but also the defendant's
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When there was no restorative justice, the victims were left out.
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How can you say there was restorative justice when the victims were left out?
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And now they're left with just basically a slap on the wrist to apologize.
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This was about a month ago to do 50 hours of community service and listen to a lecture
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This is very disturbing because we see it's part of this whole movement of attacks on Catholic
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church property and desecration of our sacred symbols going on all around the country.
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There have been over 200 of these in the last couple of years, and they just keep getting
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If it goes unchecked, it will continue to get worse.
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And history teaches us that attacks on property, if they continue unchecked and are accepted
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by the society and now in our society even celebrated, it eventually drifts into attacks
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As you said, just this week, we're going to have the L.A. Dodgers give an award to what
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has to be one of the most upfront anti-Catholic hate groups around.
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They call themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
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These trans men who dress up as nuns and look horrific and do it specifically to poke fun
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at, to demean our sisters, the holy nuns, those women who have given themselves to Christ
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Yes, I said it keeps getting worse, doesn't it?
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Now, it's been tolerated for a long time and never stops there.
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They're celebrating this blatant anti-Catholic bigotry and anti-Christian, because they're
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not only mocking nuns, they're blaspheming our Lord, they're blaspheming our Lady.
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This is a blatant attack on all true Christian believers.
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They're mocking and blaspheming what we hold sacred.
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So it's, I hope the alarm bells are going off in the minds of our peoples.
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Bishop Strickland will be there leading a procession of reparation.
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And he will be, as I understand it, holding a relic of John Paul II, a first class relic.
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Hopefully there'll be many, many Catholics there as well.
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This is an effort that we're trying to do to show that we love the faith, that we love
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our sisters, and that we won't tolerate this kind of anti-Catholic bigotry in America.
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And unfortunately, we can no longer appeal to conscience or even a basic sense of decency
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So I would agree with Bishop Barron that we need to vote with our feet and not give business
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to those who are mocking us and desecrating what we hold sacred.
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Now, a lot of this actually comes from people who call themselves Catholic.
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And that's one of the things that you've faced most bravely in America.
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You have one of these types of people in your diocese, very public figure in Nancy Pelosi.
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And you have worked with or tried to work with her to bring her to a correct understanding
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of the Holy Eucharist and her stance on attacking life through abortion.
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And do you wish that sort of never happened at this point?
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He brought me with a lot of hard work and taking it very spiritually as well with prayer
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and fasting and masses and trying to do it as pastorally, sensitively.
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Because of all of that, I believe, God got me to the point of absolute clarity and conscience
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I had absolutely no doubt whatsoever when the moment came that I had to do it.
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I don't care about attacks in the media and all that.
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Because I know there are also a lot of people who support this.
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And I know there are a lot of people who continue to pray for her conversion.
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What I regret is the lack of opportunities to be able to gauge her in conversation about
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If you observe anyone who's on that side of the issue, when the hard questions come
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They won't answer about what's going on inside of a pregnant woman's womb.
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They can't be at peace in their conscience because they know they're wrong because they
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cannot give a simple, straightforward answer to a simple, straightforward question.
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So we need to pray for their conversion and continue to witness to the sanctity of life,
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One of the most difficult things probably to deal with was your brother bishops and others
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in religion, in clergy, in hierarchy, who opposed you on this.
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We do have disagreements on how to pastorally handle an issue such as this, not on the principle,
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But I think we've been respectful toward each other to not publicly contradict each other's
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We have to trust each bishop is following his conscience and, and respect that.
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And I think that's happened in my case as well.
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There hasn't been any, uh, public criticism against me from brother bishops.
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I think we all, we're all feeling the discomfort and sensitivity of this.
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And we understand we have to respect each other's judgments in this area.
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One of the last things I'd like to ask you about is just the cancel culture.
00:23:58.520
You might've heard, uh, LifeSite's been taken off YouTube over the last few years, not only
00:24:04.740
They've removed probably nearly half a million subscribers from us.
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Catholics are being denied medical school because they're refusing to go along with abortion or
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You know, uh, secularism is its own form of religion.
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They don't, they won't allow conversation about topics when people disagree.
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Look, look what's happening on elite, uh, campus, uh, campuses, elite universities, Stanford,
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They don't, anyone comes on who speaks an opinion different from their own.
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They shout them down and they're not allowed to speak.
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Sometimes faculty or administrators side with the students and shutting down conversation on
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an important topic with which the students have a different opinion than, than the speaker.
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There's no, it's, that shows you it's a fundamentalist religion because it brokers no dissent.
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It won't even engage in conversation with someone who, who dissents and they have all, all the
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They have their index of forbidden books and, uh, they, they broker no dissent.
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Uh, so, uh, we're heading into a time of, despite their rhetoric on the other side, very severe
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We have to keep faith and reason alive now, not just faith, but reason as well.
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We need to keep both alive because we know from our Catholic tradition, we know that we
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cannot comprehend the truth without faith and reason, both, and they have to work together.
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Each have to make their own unique contribution and serve as a check on the other, because
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when one is removed, the other goes off in a direction that gets away from the truth.
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So we can keep that flame of learning and truth, uh, shining in the midst of this period
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You have the heart of a lion as your, as your name depicts.
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And, uh, we are praying for you every day, but what can we do to help?
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Prayer does work, uh, in, in God's own way, but, uh, God's will.
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So please continue to pray to make your voices heard your, your, um, public, uh, demonstration
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about, uh, the LA Dodger situation is one example, write op-eds, write letters to the
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editor, uh, organize, try to get good people elected to school boards, local city councils.
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And then up from there, we need good, honest, uh, politicians who will true, truly have the
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common good at heart and care for the, those who are needy in a very genuine way.
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So, so do participate in, in, in life, in the public life, uh, in a way that can help
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build up a better respect for each other and a better culture of life.
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And in conclusion, may I ask for your blessing for all of our LifeSite viewers and readers.
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May he let his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
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May he look upon you kindly and grant you his peace, the Father and the Son and the Holy
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Thank you, Archbishop Cordelione, so very much.
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