Famous Catholic Convert reveals his take on Pope Francis
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Summary
Steve Ray is a Catholic apologist who has helped to bring thousands into the Catholic Church, but also one of the most unique tour guides of tours to every religious place, especially the Holy Land where he uses exclusively Christian people to take you around which most don t. It s going to be a fascinating interview because we re going to talk about the current coronavirus, what s going on in the Church, and the Church itself.
Transcript
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This is John Henry Weston. Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. We are very pleased to bring
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to you Steve Ray, a very formidable Catholic apologist who has helped to bring thousands
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into the Catholic Church, but also one of the most unique tour guides of tours to every religious
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place, especially the Holy Land, where he uses exclusively Christian people to take you around,
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which most don't. It's going to be a fascinating interview because we're going to talk about
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the current coronavirus, what's going on in the Church. Pope Francis, the Church itself,
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it's going to be great. You'll want to stay tuned.
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Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father,
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Well, thank you, John Henry. It's good to be here. I have great respect for you and the work
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you've been doing. I remember the last time I met you was at a fine little restaurant in Rome,
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and I'm following your work, and I'm subscribed to your newsletters, and thanks for what you're
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Well, praise God. You've been a great influence in my life, for sure. As you know, my wife was
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evangelical when we were just married, and she came into the Church after reading your book and
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other books by Scott Hahn and so on. So, you've been a great influence in our lives. So, thank you
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for that. And I'm sure you got that from many, many, many people. So, let's get right into this. I mean,
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we are in a very strange situation. Coronavirus, lockdown, no masses. Let's talk first about
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your experience. First of all, give us a little bit of background of, I mean, I know you very well,
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but for our viewers who don't, a little bit of background about yourself, and then how you're
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dealing with this current situation. Well, I was born and raised a Baptist, very anti-Catholic family.
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My mom and dad were converted at a Billy Graham crusade in 1953. I was born a year later.
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Raised Baptist, and I have to say that even though I discovered the fullness of the Catholic Church,
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I have no regrets for the way I was raised because my mom and dad gave me a great schooling and what
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it meant to be holy people who love Jesus more than anything else, and what it meant for a husband
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and a wife to love each other and raise a family. It gave me a great school so that when I eventually
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got married, I married a wonderful woman, and we've been married 43 years. We have four great
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Catholic kids and 18 grandchildren right now, and the oldest one is already thinking he might like
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to be a priest, but when I was 39 years old, I discovered the Catholic Church, and it wasn't
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because I saw anything good about the Catholic Church, because I didn't. It was covered with a
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mist and a fog of misinformation and lies that I had been taught my whole life. My journey to the
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Catholic Church together with my wife, we've always done everything together, and we still do,
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and we discovered the problems with Protestantism. What is worship? What is the source of authority?
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How many churches did Jesus start? All of these big issues, and I almost became an agnostic until I
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discovered the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church. That was 27 years ago this month,
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actually. We came in on Pentecost Sunday, 1994, and we have never looked back.
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Amazing. Amazing. Tell me a little bit about that. What were these specifically errors you learned
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about the Catholic Church, what was taught to you, and how did that work in your life, the feeling of,
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and how did you even find out that there were, in fact, not true what you were being told?
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Well, my wife, we were driving home from our evangelical church service one Sunday at noon, and my wife said,
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I have a problem. I cannot go there and listen to that preacher anymore and call it worship.
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It might have been a good sermon, and we may have sung a couple good hymns, but it's not worship the
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way God wants us to worship. Something's missing, but I don't know what it is. All of you Catholics knew
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what it was, but we did not. We knew nothing of the Eucharist, of the sacramental life, and that started
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right there, the whole search for what real worship was, and when we went, now that I've been traveling and
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making documentary movies of the salvation history called Footprints of God, and we've
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lead pilgrimages. I've been to Israel almost 200 times, Rome 170 times, all over the biblical world.
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I've realized that every single church from the very beginning when they were first built
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had one thing in common. They may have ever been stone or wood or whatever shape, but they all had
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one thing in common. That was an altar in the center, in the front of the church, and in front of that
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altar was a priest. Our church did not have an altar and a priest. We had a podium and a preacher,
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and I realized that the churches that we were going to were a different religion than the very
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first Christians knew. That was one issue. The other one was soul of scripture or the Bible alone. That was
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my theme song. I would have died for that, along with Martin Luther. I even had Martin Luther t-shirts
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made up because he was my hero. He brought real Christianity back from oblivion, but as time went
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on, the more I loved the Bible, and I have over 20,000 books in my house, John Henry. That's just
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because I always wanted to know. Most of them are theology and biblical and history because I wanted
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to know what God wanted of my life, and the more I studied and loved the Bible, the more I realized that
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there are a lot of other evangelicals. Whenever we'd get together, we would argue about what the Bible
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meant. Should a baby be baptized? Yes or no? In the evangelical world, you've got opposing points
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of view. Can you lose your salvation or not lose your salvation? There's opposing points of view.
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The whole evangelical world was arguing about passages of scripture. That's why they have so
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many different denominations. My dad was a church hopper. He'd disagree with the pastor, and he'd go to
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another church, and I was the same way. So what is the authority for the believer? And it couldn't be
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just the Bible alone because who had the authority to close the canon of the Bible? That's the Achilles
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heel of Protestantism. And I realized that the church could, that the Bible could never be the
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only source of authority. There had to be tradition and a magisterium, which, three-legged stool, you
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know. And anyway, that brought me there. And then the other one, how many churches did Jesus start?
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He said, I will build my church, not churches. And if your brother sins against you, take it to
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the church, not one of the churches. All of these things started to cause big problems
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until I discovered, and I'm kind of a rebel at heart. I mean, I'm non-conformist just by my nature.
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And all of a sudden, I realized that becoming a Catholic could be the most non-conformist
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thing I could possibly do, the most politically incorrect thing that I could possibly do. And that,
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so the fear of becoming Catholic at one point was, I'm a skeptic at heart too, John Henry. And so I've
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told people that the reason I'm a Catholic is I'm a skeptic at heart. And once I started to study it,
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I had to prove it true, or I wouldn't believe it. That skepticism in me has to have proof.
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Once I studied this all, I came into the Catholic Church by reading books, not by talking to anyone.
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And that was 27 years ago, and we've never looked back.
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Wow. Wow. What a fascinating journey. So given your background, it's all in the faith. I mean,
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you've lived this way, your life. You've got these amazing kids who are really steeped in faith as
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well. So where are you right now? I mean, this has been, and I presume you, like most of the world
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right now, are deprived of the Holy Sacrifice, the Mass, and have been even for months. What do
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you make of where we are and where are you at exactly? I'm very disappointed in the whole way
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the thing has happened. In the past, when you have pandemics and plagues and things like that, you put
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the people who are sick away. You hide, you protect. My mother's 98 and a half years old. She's probably
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going to die soon, and I won't even be able to see her before she dies. There's something, I understand
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why that's that way, and I want her protected and kept out of the, because she's one of the vulnerable.
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But in the past, you kept the sick, the vulnerable, the elderly away. You didn't keep the world away.
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The world kept going out to work and take care of business and going to church and having the freedom
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that we expect to have. This is the first time ever that you have sequestered, you have isolated
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the whole world and not just the sick. I think there's something not right the way it's being
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handled. I think that the, I'll tell you in a nutshell what I think. It's four points. Number one,
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a horrendous virus came out of China, and that's why I call it the Chinese or the Wuhan virus. I don't
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call it the other names. Call it what it is. It's a virus that came out of China, and it was
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justifiably terrifying to people. Number two, a lot of people came up, scholars supposedly,
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experts with statistical numbers of how bad it was going to be, and millions of people were going
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to die, even in the United States. Their numbers were wrong, but it scared people. And then number
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three is politicians, and I would include in this religious leaders, were afraid of being accused of
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doing too little too late, so they did too much too soon without getting all the information. And
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then the fourth step in that is now that we realize we've done too much too soon, people are afraid to
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back off and open the economy and the churches back up because they're afraid of being accused of the
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deaths of people that will inevitably happen. That may be a radical way to look at it, but I've never
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been known to follow the crowd. I've always thought that we should be thinking about these things
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from a spiritual point of view and from a historical point of view, and what we're doing now is
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unprecedented, and it's destroying many people's lives. The question is, is the cure worse than the
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disease? I'm out of work for eight months. Our pilgrimages, I've already lost eight buses of pilgrims
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to date. That's okay. We can survive this. But I've heard numbers up to 50% of small businesses will
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go out of business in the next six months over this, and you have to wonder if the cure is more
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dangerous and destructive than the disease itself, if we handled it properly.
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Yeah, it's just unbelievable. What's going on right now, I think, though, is also telling for
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the church. In times of plague in the past, the church was seen to be totally heroic. In fact,
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all times of adversity is where the faithful, especially the clergy, are able to shine in a
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way that they're really not able to at other times, because in times of real adversity, you know,
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in war, chaplains will go out. In times of pandemic, before, you had priests willing to die
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even to go and minister to the sick and the suffering, willing to risk their own lives to
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be able to administer the sacraments. And we now have this complete shutdown where the church isn't
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shining. She's just looking at, she's hiding away. What do you make of that, and what are your
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thoughts there? Well, one of the whole ideas when I converted and coming to grips with the celibacy
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of the priesthood and of the religious life was that when Protestants, when you were in an area that
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had a plague or a wars, the Protestant pastors would be the first ones to leave because they had
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families to consider, and they'd be the first ones to leave. But who stayed behind in the war zones and
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in the plague areas, like Damien of Molokai with the lepers on Hawaii? Well, these, it struck me and
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impressed me so much that those who were the Catholics celibates, the religious and the priest
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would stay behind when the Protestant pastors all left. And they would even die in serving because
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they felt that taking care of the poor and serving was giving their life up for Jesus, even if they would
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get sick too. Unhappily, I don't see that mentality during this. I see people hiding themselves and
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closing the churches and being afraid. And I know, I understand bishops don't want to be accused of
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having their people die, bringing them into churches and having the virus spread or whatever. I also
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understand there's a priest shortage and bishops are concerned about keeping their priests safe and all
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of that. And I don't want our priests to die either. But there seems to be a lack of the sense
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of heroism or courage that the clergy has demonstrated in the past. And I'm not criticizing
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any one person or any group of people. I just don't see the same sense of urgency and heroics that I did
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in the past with other situations in history. Yeah, we've got priests who are volunteering to go out
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there. And yet they're forbidden. And that's the whole point. They're stuck between wanting to serve
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and being forced to obey not only their bishops, but also the secular society. But I don't being
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forbidden to have the mass. And I have grandchildren right now who are supposed to be having first
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communion. And they're being deprived of confession. And I have so many people write to me, Steve,
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I'm in sin and I need to go to confession. And I, what do I do? Well, in a couple hours today,
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I'm doing another whole show an hour just on confession and what to do when you can't get to
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a priest. And it's causing a dilemma among believers. And I'm afraid that too many Catholics who
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go to church out of obligation and not because of a true discipleship of Jesus Christ. I mean,
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I go to church because I love Jesus Christ. And I believe that you eat his body and blood. It gives
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you a sense of, it gives you grace and it gives you life. But there's a whole caliber of a group
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of Catholics who don't have, they go somewhat out of obligation. And I'm, that's obvious. Protestants
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do the same thing sometimes. But anyway, and I'm afraid that they'll get used to watching TV masses
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and think, you know what, I'll just, this is kind of comfortable. I'll just have a cup of coffee and
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watch it on TV. And I don't know that the churches will be back full again because we have,
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in a sense, let people think that it's not so important as they thought it was.
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So very recently, Cardinal Sarah, who is the prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship
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and Discipline of the Sacraments, came out saying that the faithful may not be deprived of Holy Communion
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or Confession. Now, public masses, yes, that's a different thing. But the sacraments of Communion
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and Confession may not be withheld from the faithful. And this coming from the head of the
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department in the Vatican that's supposed to deal with liturgy in the first place. And yet,
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I think there are heroic ways to do these things. And I think as Catholics, when we understand the
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importance of the sacraments, yes, we're not going to die tomorrow if we miss the Mass on Sunday,
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when we've been dispensed from that. But at the same time, we have to realize these are essential
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elements for us as Catholics. They're something Jesus gave us. They shouldn't be taken away from
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us. And even there should be some heroics. I could think of outdoor masses or having church. For
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heaven's sakes, if I can go get an abortion and I can go through Costco and be bumping into people in
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the lines at Costco. And I can go to the liquor store and be buying whiskey and scotch and gin
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with a bunch of other people. And I can do all of these other things. Why can't I go into a church
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and sit six feet apart from people, wear a mask, and why are the churches closed when other things
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are open? To me, there's just something not right about that. There's something that's off base.
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And I'm amazed, I think, too, how quiet bishops, priests, and the Catholic people have been about it.
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Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This comes at a very interesting time in the church because the church has been
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going crazy. Now, the world's been going crazy for a long, long time. We've had probably 50 years of
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some of the worst things ever on the planet. We have abortion, the numbers of babies killed by
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abortion and through contraception, which also can cause abortions, is basically more than all the
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wars in world history at this point in the last 50 years. We've got a situation where
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our Lady of Fatima said, more people go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other
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reason. And you know what's really weird is there are more people today who are viewing porn than
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there were people alive in 1917. So while a lot of people say, you know, oh, things were worse in the past,
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actually, that's not true. But beyond that, even, we have this situation in the church of confusion. When
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Cardinal Carlo Caffara, God rest his soul, came to our Rome Life Forum in 2017, he revealed for the
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first time that the letter, which he had already made public, or at least the part of it made public
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about the, you know, Sister Lucia telling him that Our Lady had revealed that the final battle
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between our Lord and the reign of Satan would be over marriage and the family. And he revealed at
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that conference that he believed those times of the final battle, the decisive battle between our
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Lord and the reign of Satan, were on now with the confusion in the church over marriage and the family
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that had ensued since Pope Francis started the discussions in 2013, excuse me, 2015-2016
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around that issue of divorce remarriage communion. What do you make of the current crisis in the church
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vis-a-vis Pope Francis? Well, do we have about three hours or maybe four hours?
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Let me just start by saying last September, I was invited by the equestrian order of the Holy
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Sepulcher, which is a order of knights that go all the way back to the Crusades. And I'm a member,
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my wife is a dame, and I'm a knight of the Holy Sepulcher, have been for 18 years. And it's an order
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that supports Christians in the Holy Land. That's the whole objective of our order. There were six
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states gathering together in September for their investiture of new knights and dames. And there were
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five bishops in the room and others of great renown. And they asked me to do the keynote talk.
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And I said, sure, I'll do it. And then it got closer to the event. And I said, well, what do you
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want me to speak on? I thought they'd want me to speak on the Holy Land, because that's what I do a
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lot. And this is the order of the Holy Sepulcher. They said, we would like you to speak on this title
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and these words exactly. How does a John Paul II Catholic survive in a Pope Francis world?
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I said, you've got to be kidding me. That's what you want me to talk about. And they said, yes,
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we feel there's something not right going on in the Vatican. And we would like you to address our
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current Pope and how it fits in with your understanding of the church as a convert and so
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I said, wow, okay, I'll do it. And I'm always kind of not been. I have to say, though, that I gave a
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talk on Islam, what every infidel should know, at Franciscan University the year before. If you want
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to watch that, it's an hour talk on Islam, just go to YouTube and type in Steve Ray Islam,
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almost a million views so far. Well, that was a scary talk for me to give because it's politically
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a time bomb. It's a very tense topic to talk about. And I don't know that I could have stepped
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into an even more tough topic and how does a John Paul II Catholic survive in a Pope Francis world
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with all of these wonderful Orthodox folks and several theologians who I won't mention,
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but who you had on your show recently, and others and bishops in the room. And here I am
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standing up there giving a talk on this. Well, I think I got a standing ovation and I've had
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people listen to it subsequently. It's on my website, catholicconvert.com, by the way. It's
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my website, catholicconvert.com. And I have that talk on my website available. And I dealt in that
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situation with, as a Catholic, I came into the Catholic Church because of certainty. I had had the
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Bible alone. And I realized that when Martin Luther threw one Pope out, he created a billion new
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Popes. Every Protestant is their own Pope. Let's face it, because there is no Pope in Protestantism.
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Everybody has their Bible and ultimately they are the final word on what authority is. They may have
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a pastor they agree with or a denomination, but there's nothing to keep them from going to another
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one. Now, I came into the Catholic Church because of certainty. And now 27 years later, I see in the
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Catholic Church a lot of uncertainty, which is confusing people, causing people to be distressed,
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even to think of schism or mutiny. Some are leaving to become ultra rad trads and go off and start
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something on their own, reject the Catholic Church as we know it, or leaving to become Protestant or
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becoming apathetic. And I have people ask me this on emails and so on. I am distressed with a lot of
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things that have become uncertain. The way I did this, John Henry, in my talk is I had this box. I
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think I'm on video here. And I called this box the whole and immutable deposit of faith. Jesus, when he
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had his 12 apostles, he gave them the deposit of faith. And they went out and taught and preached
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and practiced it. It was the deposit of faith. It was like a rich man depositing his wealth into a bank.
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Jesus and the apostles deposited the fullness of the faith, the deposit of faith into the church,
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which is the bank. And it's like Jesus said to the apostles, I'm going to give you this box. And
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this is the fullness of the faith. You're to protect it and to teach it, but you are not allowed to add
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anything to it. You're not allowed to take anything out of it. You're not allowed to change it. Do you
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agree? And they all said, yes, we agree. The apostles went out and taught and said they had new bishops
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that were their successors and they handed them the box and said, here's the full deposit of the
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faith that was handed on from Jesus and the apostles. Do you promise to carry this box, to present it,
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to protect it, to defend it, to add nothing to it, to change nothing in it, or to take anything out?
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Yes, we promise that. And that's going on through the centuries. There's always people that want to
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get in this box and change it. Heretics have come along wanting to do that or others. And I feel
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today, John Henry, that in some ways there are people in leadership of the church today who would
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like to be able to change things in that box. And you know what? It makes me angry, I have to say,
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because this is my heritage as a Catholic. Jesus gave this not just to the Pope. He gave it to all
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of us. We have a right to the truth and a right to the untarnished truth, the way it was handed on
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by the apostles and bishops of the early church and the doctors of the church and the councils.
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This is our right. My wife loves to say Catholics have a right to the truth. It's not just something
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they would like to have. We have a right to the truth and the fullness of the truth. And I feel
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that there are elements in the church today trying to reach in that box and change things around,
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put things in, take things out. And frankly, I object.
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It's an amazing way of putting it. It actually, that speaks to true poverty and true generosity.
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Because I think Mother Teresa always said, you know, how everybody was concerned about the poor in
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India. And then she talked about, because she was criticized for bringing nuns to America.
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And she said, no, no, there's a greater poverty there. And it really does. Your analogy, I think,
00:24:26.920
speaks to that perfectly. Because it's the real poverty is the lack of the fullness of the faith.
00:24:35.020
And the real generosity is to give of that fullness of the faith to everyone, to give them not only
00:24:42.940
life here, but to give them eternal life. Astounding.
00:24:48.980
Also, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian Orthodox, everybody knows him from his being enslaved in
00:24:56.380
Russia during the Soviet Union. He also said, and he came and he spoke to the West. And he also said
00:25:02.460
that you are very morally lacking. And you are, he came and said basically the same thing Mother Teresa
00:25:10.180
did. You and the West are failing. You need to regain your morals and regain your courage and your
00:25:15.680
strength. And the West did not like him for that. But we are in big trouble. Now, you know, although I
00:25:22.980
want to clarify, John Henry, that when I talk about the deposit of faith and the powers that be in the
00:25:30.400
Vatican, I am very loyal Catholic. I am a loyal Catholic to the church, to Mother Church, to the
00:25:37.400
councils of the church, and to the office of the papacy. We have had good popes and we've had bad
00:25:42.560
popes. We've had eloquent popes and some less eloquent, some that talk not enough and some who talk too
00:25:47.360
much. Some who are more careful of what they say and some who are less careful of what they say.
00:25:52.780
And I think Jesus chose the weak link first in Peter, who always, he many times spoke out of turn
00:26:00.080
and said things that he shouldn't say and even denied Jesus at one point. And I think when we look at the
00:26:06.380
papacy 266 down through history, there's a whole wide variety of men that have filled that chair.
00:26:15.100
And not all of them were brilliant. Some of them were. Not all were saints. Some were great sinners.
00:26:22.240
But it didn't change the fact that this is the church and that men come and go in that chair.
00:26:27.880
But my goal of being a Catholic is I'm not here because of Peter, Paul, Apollos, or Pope Francis.
00:26:33.560
I'm here because of Jesus Christ. It's his church. The popes come and go, but the church will last forever.
00:26:39.780
And I'm with the church. I view it as a ship. If you don't mind me using an illustration. Do I have a
00:26:45.380
minute? Yeah, go ahead. Okay. I view this as a ship. And when I became Catholic, I realized I was out on a
00:26:54.260
raft. Okay. Jesus started a ship across the ocean towards the celestial city. This is the way I kind
00:26:59.760
of explain my conversion. And everybody was happy on that ship. There was a captain. There was a crew.
00:27:04.980
There was food and water. The food, of course, was the Eucharist. The water was baptism and the grace
00:27:09.340
of the Holy Spirit through the sacraments. And there was confession and there were showers.
00:27:13.200
There was compass and maps. And that was the scripture and the tradition and the magisterium
00:27:17.800
that we had a great captain. A pope is the captain of the ship and the clergy. And all of us,
00:27:23.200
he invites us. He said, would you like to get on my ship called the Catholic Church? I'm going to take
00:27:26.840
you across the oceans of time to the celestial city. Oh, a bunch of people jumped on. They're so excited.
00:27:31.820
He says, there's going to be trouble along the way. I want you to know this before we get started.
00:27:36.260
He said, on this ship, which is called the Catholic Church, heading through the ocean,
00:27:40.060
there's going to be troubles from within and without. From within, there are going to be times
00:27:44.700
where the clergy and the crew on this ship and the captain are not going to be the way that they're
00:27:49.960
supposed to be. They're not going to function the way that I expect them to. There's going to be
00:27:53.760
problems. But if you stay with the ship, I'll get you to the other side. Sometimes some of the
00:28:00.080
crew are going to even be abusers. And sometimes they're going to teach
00:28:03.460
things that aren't right. There's going to be problems with people on board. They're not going
00:28:07.520
to get along with it. But if you stay with my ship, I'll get you to the other side. There's
00:28:10.560
also going to be troubles from the outside. There's going to be storms hit the ship so bad that you're
00:28:14.660
going to think you're going to die. You're going to be dashed to driftwood. And the ship's going to
00:28:18.600
toss back and forth. You're going to get so seasick you wish you never got on the ship. But if you stay
00:28:22.300
with my ship, I'll get you to the other side. And the people get on the ship and they're so happy
00:28:26.520
and they're all singing, you know, praise the Lord, Lamb of God and all this. But about 1500
00:28:31.640
years into the voyage, some people become disgruntled. This is Martin Luther's time,
00:28:36.420
by the way, for anybody that didn't get the 1500 years number. And they get disgruntled and they
00:28:42.560
decide to get away from the ship. They don't want this captain telling them what to do. They don't
00:28:46.360
want these crew telling them what to do. So they go down to the belly of the ship and they get wood and
00:28:51.040
they find ropes and they lash them together and they make rafts. And they come up and throw their
00:28:55.640
rafts off the side of the ship. And now they're on their rafts and they're going to get to the
00:28:59.600
celestial city on their own. They don't need the ship and the captain anymore. And now there's
00:29:04.060
probably roughly 40,000 rafts all around the ship, all the different denominations and sects and
00:29:10.940
factions and cults and things that are around. But the closer they stay to the ship, the better chance
00:29:15.320
they have to get to the other side. The farther they get away, the less chance. And everything that
00:29:19.760
I had good on my raft, nobody told me that everything we had good on the raft came originally
00:29:25.480
from the ship. Everything I had as a Protestant came from the church. And I wasn't one who jumped
00:29:32.000
off the ship. I was born on a raft. I didn't even know there was a ship. Well, I finally, after a year
00:29:37.240
of paddling around and around, I get back on, I find that ship and I realize the Catholic church is
00:29:41.820
right. And I find a rope and I pull my wife and my kids up and I'm going to spend the rest of my life
00:29:46.500
on the deck of the ship. I am now where there's a place of certainty. I never believed there could
00:29:51.720
be anything as beautiful as a ship. When you live on a raft, John Henry, for your whole life and you
00:29:55.880
all of a sudden discover a big ship, that's quite a discovery. The fullness of the faith in the
00:30:00.240
Catholic church. But now I'm on the ship and I'm tally-ho and I'm all excited. But on the ship now,
00:30:06.820
once I'm in the family, I start realizing, well, you know what? We're still a bunch of humans on this
00:30:10.940
ship and there's still problems. And now I find myself on a ship where the clarion call of truth
00:30:18.100
is not as clear as it should be, where the Pope and others are not as clear as they should be and
00:30:25.040
causing confusion. I'm trying to be very gracious here. And one of my goals as being a member of this
00:30:30.740
ship now is I see people ready to jump off the ship because of these problems that they're having
00:30:36.160
and the lack of certainty about certain things. And my job now is to go out on the deck and spend
00:30:42.540
my time not only calling to the people on the rafts and inviting them to the ship, but my job
00:30:47.280
now is to help try to keep the people who are on the ship from jumping off and saying, no, this is
00:30:51.600
the church. Just hang in there with us. Good popes come, good popes go. This is not about the Pope.
00:30:57.420
It's about this ship that Jesus started and it's his ship. And he's going to get us to the other side.
00:31:02.580
Remember, he promised us there's going to be problems. Stay with the ship.
00:31:05.840
I'm trying to do everything I can because schism and mutiny are not words in my vocabulary. I am
00:31:13.540
loyal to the mother church. I am loyal to my brothers and sisters in Christ. I am loyal to the
00:31:19.020
office of the Pope and the papacy. But I am also honest when I see problems. And one issue, hopefully
00:31:25.960
we'll get a chance, I'll quit now, hopefully get a chance to talk, is what is infallibility and is the
00:31:31.980
Pope beyond criticism? And I think that's a question a lot of people are wondering about.
00:31:37.440
No, absolutely. I think that that issue particularly, because we have had a succession of erroneous
00:31:45.300
statements, also though teachings, and this is what really drove me crazy, despite all the different
00:31:52.420
interviews where there have been problematic statements around homosexuality, contraception,
00:31:56.880
and transgenderism, and all sorts of things, which even conflicted with one another. They
00:32:01.700
were in interviews. But when we started with the formal things of the, you know, the, the
00:32:07.680
exhortation, and then the explanation of the exhortation in a way that totally conflicted with
00:32:13.380
the faith in the Acta Apostolicae Seris, which is sort of like a rule book of bishops, where it
00:32:19.020
called it authentic magisterium. We're in, we're in a real mess right now. And so the idea of
00:32:26.760
infallibility does come up very much. What does that exactly mean? And how does that play into
00:32:33.620
this situation where we have errors coming from the Pope himself on matters, grave matters of the faith,
00:32:40.860
which aren't only just said in interviews, which, you know, or whatever, they're actually written
00:32:46.820
down in sort of official documents. Well, I think you can see some of the confusion, and I'll get to
00:32:52.980
that after this one observation, is that if you live in Europe, for example, and you live in Poland,
00:32:58.920
and you're divorced and civilly remarried, you cannot go receive communion. But if you step across the
00:33:04.640
country line into Germany, you can. Or if you're on Malta, you can. In fact, you're encouraged. Well,
00:33:09.860
you know, the things have changed now. So if you're divorced and remarried, even I like to call
00:33:14.720
it serial polygamy, because in our country today, and in the West, you can, it's, you don't have
00:33:20.780
four wives at once, but you can have them in sequence. The church is now saying that even if
00:33:27.140
you have been divorced and remarried, that you can come for communion in Germany. But if you cross the
00:33:33.260
border into Poland, you cannot because Poland is still holding to the teachings of their favorite
00:33:37.680
pope, which is John Paul II. And, but infallibility is one of the things that I've realized is that
00:33:45.660
people are afraid to question what the pope says, or to challenge anything and feel like they must
00:33:52.880
follow and believe everything he says and requires of us without rational thought or analyzing it,
00:34:01.800
because the pope is infallible. And if he's infallible, then who am I, someone who's fallible,
00:34:07.840
to challenge that or to question it and to ever resist certain things that are taught or practiced?
00:34:14.960
Well, infallibility does not give the pope the power to predict baseball scores next week or what
00:34:21.460
the weather's going to be a year from now. It's not the same as impeccability, where someone is
00:34:26.800
impeccable without sin, without wrong. The pope is a sinner. The pope goes to confession too. He's not
00:34:32.380
impeccable. And nor is he infallible when it comes to baseball scores, to the weather, to the environment,
00:34:40.140
or to immigration. Those are not in his area of expertise. The papal authority has requirements.
00:34:48.220
One is it has to deal with the issues of faith and morals. It can't be about baseball scores or
00:34:54.480
immigration. Those are not the areas that the pope is called where he can make infallible statements
00:35:00.560
about. It's in the area of faith and morals. He has to intend to speak infallibly and to define
00:35:07.180
something specifically for the people of God. It cannot contradict something that was spoken
00:35:12.520
infallibly by popes in the church earlier. It has to be the statement. Infallibility of the pope
00:35:18.120
is a statement made by his own free will without a gun to his head. And each pope has less power and
00:35:24.100
freedom to teach than the one before him because he should and is constrained by the teachings of the
00:35:31.740
popes prior to him. So he should have, any pope, the respect for the teaching of the popes beyond
00:35:39.600
pack in time and not to contradict or to go contrary to them. So in a sense that he has less latitude than
00:35:48.640
the one before him because he's constrained by the one before him. When the pope is under all of these
00:35:54.300
conditions, faith and morals, intends to teach infallibly as a pastor of the church, not contradicting
00:36:00.320
of his own free will, all these things, then the pope can define things infallibly. But it does not mean
00:36:05.380
that any time that he gets on a plane and does an interview or stands up on Wednesday audience and
00:36:11.720
speaks that those are infallible. Now, granted, as the pope, and out of respect for the chair of Peter, one should
00:36:21.720
give deference and respect. But that does not mean complete acquiescence. The next, can I move to the next one
00:36:32.480
that follows, that correlates, is a pope beyond criticism? Well, when I have talked to certain
00:36:40.020
people and say that the whole idea of divorce and remarriage or the idea of entertaining women deacons
00:36:47.480
or a lot of the different issues that have come up in this papacy, and everybody knows them that
00:36:55.560
listens to you and reads your stuff because you're very clear on keeping these things before our eyes,
00:37:00.940
of which I commend you for, and LifeSite News. But I have been accused when I did that of being a
00:37:08.840
schismatic or a heretic when I say something that I disagree with the pope's teaching or ideas on this
00:37:15.180
or that, whether it's on the American economy or immigration or the ecology and this whole, those
00:37:23.020
many other, many other issues. I'm accused of being a schismatic, causing a schism or a division in the
00:37:30.600
church or of being a heretic for disagreeing with the pope. But I have to say that this drove me to
00:37:35.640
the place where I did some research on, is it, is the pope beyond criticism? And I say no. And I'm
00:37:40.880
going to start with Galatians chapter 2, verse 11 in the Bible. We might as well start with a biblical
00:37:45.260
example. St. Paul and St. Peter are both in Antioch. St. Peter has taught that the Jews and Gentiles are one
00:37:54.400
in Christ, that Jews, Gentiles do not have to be circumcised to be in the body of Christ. And yet
00:38:01.740
when the Jews came, these very Orthodox Jews from Jerusalem, he separated himself from the Gentiles
00:38:07.240
and instead contradicted his own teaching was that they're all one in Christ. But when push came to
00:38:12.720
shove, he sided with the Jews and kind of abandoned the Gentiles. St. Paul says, when Cephas came to
00:38:19.400
Antioch, meaning Peter, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned. Paul was not the pope.
00:38:28.520
Paul was a bishop. Peter was the pope. And yet Paul thought it correct to confront him in public to
00:38:36.640
his face and oppose him and say in scripture that it was because he stood condemned. Now, even in that
00:38:42.940
verse, Paul is still showing respect for the man and for the office because he calls him Cephas.
00:38:51.100
He could have said, I went to Antioch and I talked to Simon. That would have been referring to
00:38:56.280
Simon's name before. But when Jesus gave him the name Petros or Cephas, that means rock,
00:39:03.480
Peter is recognized as that office. Even when Paul criticizes him, he says, I came to see the rock,
00:39:11.380
the one Jesus appointed as the rock of the church and gave the keys. I came to him. But his life was
00:39:18.080
not consistent at this point with his teaching. Therefore, I opposed him to his face. Tertullian
00:39:23.700
says that this was not a matter of theology or infallibility. It was a matter of practice,
00:39:29.320
that Peter was not living, practicing what he taught. So right there, we have a biblical example
00:39:34.520
of a non-pope confronting a pope and disagreeing and criticizing him. And Peter, in all,
00:39:43.060
Peter respected that. Peter was not proud. Peter did not say, well, I'm the pope. I say what I say.
00:39:49.980
Peter respected Paul's criticism. And the pope today and any leader in the church should have that
00:39:57.100
same attitude of being willing to listen and be humble to their fellow bishops and cardinals and
00:40:02.820
not be tyrannical or be dictatorial. Just like Peter gave the great example of being humble before
00:40:10.980
Paul and admit that he said something wrong or was doing something wrong. Thomas Aquinas and Augustine
00:40:17.160
pick up the same thing. Aquinas says, if the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his
00:40:24.920
prelate, even publicly. That means a bishop or the leader of the church. Hence, Paul, who was Peter's
00:40:30.840
subject, rebuked him in public on account of imminent dangerous scandal concerning the faith.
00:40:36.500
This is what Aquinas said. Augustine picks that up as well and uses the same example. And I have more
00:40:42.080
as well if you want to get into them, but those are just a few. But one last one, let me just quote
00:40:46.720
the catechism, in accordance with the knowledge and competence and preeminence which they possess,
00:40:53.440
lay people, paragraph 907, lay people have the right and even at times the duty to manifest to
00:41:02.020
their sacred pastors their opinion on matters which pertain to the good of the faith. And they
00:41:07.260
have the right to make their opinion known to other Christian faithful. In other words, if we see
00:41:12.580
something wrong, we'd have not only the right but the duty to clarify, to speak not only to our
00:41:20.080
prelates, our pastors, but also to our other Christian faithful. Those are pretty strong words
00:41:26.160
from the catechism and Aquinas and Augustine and the book of Galatians itself. So my conclusion,
00:41:32.140
of course, is that criticisms of the Pope. I have a new book, by the way. It's called The Pope,
00:41:36.680
The Papacy, What the Pope Does and Why It Matters, published by Ignatius Press just less than a year ago.
00:41:42.580
And on page 132, I have this sentence, criticism of the Pope should never arise out of a mere reaction
00:41:49.900
to something he says or does. If possible, criticism should be informed by knowledge of the facts and
00:41:56.160
from a position of respect communicated through proper ecclesial channels. This is what we have a
00:42:02.980
respect for the office. We have respect for the Pope. But that doesn't mean we're acquiescent and that
00:42:09.400
we're, say, bootlickers, if you want to use a kind of a crude term. It means that we are respectful,
00:42:15.240
but we're also rational and we learn and study the faith. We have to encourage others to know what
00:42:22.000
this deposit of faith is in scripture and tradition and how it's been taught and to hold fast to that,
00:42:32.880
Unbelievable. Let me ask you, just to conclude here, what, in your experience of what is going on
00:42:40.080
right now, a lot of people have talked about this as a time of chastisement. Some have even said
00:42:46.380
related to Our Lady of Fatima's warnings about chastisement. What do you make of this time? Do you
00:42:52.720
feel it has some greater implication than just, oh, it's just a virus, just a pandemic, and we just
00:42:58.460
have to bear through it and whatnot? Do you feel it has some relation to a chastisement from heaven
00:43:03.300
or what's going on perhaps in the church or in the world or anything like that?
00:43:08.540
Knowing that God is always in charge and that he allows things to happen. We even know in the book
00:43:17.560
of Job. He allowed Satan to attack Job to prove that Job was really loyal to him. There are times
00:43:23.840
where we are severely tested by God. Even Jesus did, remember. I know we're trying to take out the,
00:43:34.600
the Pope's trying to take out that phrase in the Lord's Prayer, lead us not into temptation,
00:43:41.260
because God doesn't lead you into temptation. But if you look at Jesus's temptation to wilderness,
00:43:45.920
it said the Spirit drove him out into the wilderness for those temptations. Jesus was tempted
00:43:51.820
to show his strength and to be an example for us, I think, that God does at times. The Holy Spirit of
00:43:59.160
God, it says, drove Jesus into the wilderness. I think that there are times where God allows things
00:44:06.260
to happen, and I'm not in a position to know whether he does this actively or allows it to happen,
00:44:13.860
whatever. He's God, he does what he wants, and he allows to happen what he wants. Sometimes things
00:44:18.680
are a result of our own choices. For example, if I go out and hit myself with a hammer and break my
00:44:24.460
skull, you could say, well, God allowed that to happen. Yes, but it also had to do with my stupid
00:44:29.220
choice to hit myself with a hammer. Sometimes we as Catholics and as the world incur these things upon
00:44:37.720
ourselves. In other words, choices have legs. When you make a choice, it gets up and walks around.
00:44:47.720
When we choose things or do things, it has a result. I think that when we deny God so much in our culture,
00:44:55.380
when we're not standing strong for the truth, I think God may allow things to happen that he may
00:45:01.020
not allow it to happen otherwise. I don't know whether this plague is a chastisement by God.
00:45:07.220
It's above my pay grade, let me put it that way. But I certainly know that God, as being in charge of
00:45:13.300
everything, we have this thing going on now. I don't think it's being handled well. I think that
00:45:20.260
we as Christians have the right to speak out about how it's being handled. And sometimes God tests us to
00:45:27.000
see how really strong we're going to be for the faith. What kind of sacrifices are we getting?
00:45:31.820
And I remember Pope Benedict saying that he would rather have a smaller loyal church than a larger
00:45:38.180
church full of non-believers. And I think you can have a big church which has a lot of non-believers,
00:45:47.120
people just there because they're culturally Catholic or they have the card. Somehow they got their birth
00:45:52.080
card and it says I'm Catholic, so I'm that. But Benedict said, and I think it's preferable to
00:45:57.380
have a smaller church which is full of believers and disciples, true disciples of Jesus Christ willing
00:46:03.360
to take risks and do what they need to do for the truth. I tend to be the one that prefers that kind
00:46:10.740
of a church. And if God is using this pandemic to chastise, to persecution, by the way, is always what
00:46:19.660
brings holiness. It's unfortunate that when we're fat and rich and beautiful and young,
00:46:25.760
we don't need God. We've got everything we need. Our life's ahead of us. We've got money and love.
00:46:30.980
But wait till those things are taken away. Wait till we lose those things. Wait till suffering comes
00:46:37.120
and all of a sudden people don't look to themselves and they look, oh God, please have mercy.
00:46:42.640
I've read some statistics that when they have done surveys that more people say that they are more
00:46:48.760
spiritual and religious now because of this than they were beforehand. So if God, he always brings
00:46:54.640
Romans 8, 28, for all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according
00:47:01.020
to his purpose. I have always hung on to that verse. No matter what happens, I have joy because I know God
00:47:06.580
is working in my life and no matter what I see, I know that he's working it for my good and I know
00:47:11.860
he's always working it for the good of the church too. I may not understand why now, but on Monday
00:47:17.500
morning, quarterbacking, we'll be able to look back and say, oh, that's what he was doing. Very
00:47:21.980
good. Exactly. Steve Ray, thank you for being with us. Tell us as we're just ending off here where
00:47:29.440
people can get more of your materials and hear you some more. Everything is on my main website,
00:47:35.780
catholicconvert.com. I know that's hard to remember, but I'm a Catholic convert, catholicconvert.com.
00:47:41.640
There I have a store with all my books. I've got over 50 talks and audio. I get a lot of free stuff,
00:47:46.800
resources, hundreds of documents. I've written letters and arguments with people and so on.
00:47:51.560
I have all my pilgrimages around there. You can actually, if you want to go on a pilgrimage
00:47:55.360
now and you're stuck at home, I have all of the pilgrimages, 10 a year. I put them all up on two
00:48:01.320
hour videos on my website. So you can actually take a whole pilgrimage to Israel today in two hours.
00:48:08.840
Any one of the ones, all of this stuff is a catholicconvert.com. I just closed by saying,
00:48:13.860
John Henry, thanks for having me on. Thanks for what you're doing. You're one of the few
00:48:17.700
courageous people that tackle topics that a lot of people are afraid to touch. Thanks for doing that
00:48:22.440
and serving the church. And I am a loyal Catholic. I'm a son of the church. And I intend to be here
00:48:27.920
until the day I die. And I'm going to be buried a Catholic with all the sacraments, whether there's
00:48:32.320
a pandemic or not. I am a son of the church and I respect the chair of Peter. And I keep praying for
00:48:37.640
the Pope and for our church and for all of us. And God bless you for what you do. Amen.
00:48:44.720
Hello, this is John Henry Weston. I'd like to invite you to subscribe to the John Henry Weston
00:48:49.640
Show YouTube channel if you haven't already done so. There you will find all the past episodes and
00:48:55.160
much more. Thanks again for watching and may God bless you.