The John-Henry Westen Show - Famous Catholic Convert reveals his take on Pope Francis

00:00:00.000 This is John Henry Weston. Welcome to the John Henry Weston Show. We are very pleased to bring

00:00:04.860 to you Steve Ray, a very formidable Catholic apologist who has helped to bring thousands

00:00:11.300 into the Catholic Church, but also one of the most unique tour guides of tours to every religious

00:00:18.540 place, especially the Holy Land, where he uses exclusively Christian people to take you around, 0.95

00:00:24.920 which most don't. It's going to be a fascinating interview because we're going to talk about

00:00:29.100 the current coronavirus, what's going on in the Church. Pope Francis, the Church itself,

00:00:33.840 it's going to be great. You'll want to stay tuned.

00:00:51.260 Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross. In the name of the Father,

00:00:54.900 and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:00:57.960 Amen.

00:00:58.860 Steve, welcome to the program.

00:01:00.360 Well, thank you, John Henry. It's good to be here. I have great respect for you and the work

00:01:04.920 you've been doing. I remember the last time I met you was at a fine little restaurant in Rome,

00:01:10.300 and I'm following your work, and I'm subscribed to your newsletters, and thanks for what you're

00:01:16.520 doing for the Church.

00:01:17.300 Well, praise God. You've been a great influence in my life, for sure. As you know, my wife was

00:01:24.840 evangelical when we were just married, and she came into the Church after reading your book and

00:01:31.800 other books by Scott Hahn and so on. So, you've been a great influence in our lives. So, thank you

00:01:36.520 for that. And I'm sure you got that from many, many, many people. So, let's get right into this. I mean,

00:01:44.260 we are in a very strange situation. Coronavirus, lockdown, no masses. Let's talk first about

00:01:50.860 your experience. First of all, give us a little bit of background of, I mean, I know you very well,

00:01:56.160 but for our viewers who don't, a little bit of background about yourself, and then how you're

00:02:01.140 dealing with this current situation. Well, I was born and raised a Baptist, very anti-Catholic family.

00:02:08.600 My mom and dad were converted at a Billy Graham crusade in 1953. I was born a year later.

00:02:14.680 Raised Baptist, and I have to say that even though I discovered the fullness of the Catholic Church,

00:02:19.620 I have no regrets for the way I was raised because my mom and dad gave me a great schooling and what

00:02:25.400 it meant to be holy people who love Jesus more than anything else, and what it meant for a husband

00:02:30.200 and a wife to love each other and raise a family. It gave me a great school so that when I eventually

00:02:35.540 got married, I married a wonderful woman, and we've been married 43 years. We have four great

00:02:41.980 Catholic kids and 18 grandchildren right now, and the oldest one is already thinking he might like

00:02:48.500 to be a priest, but when I was 39 years old, I discovered the Catholic Church, and it wasn't

00:02:54.200 because I saw anything good about the Catholic Church, because I didn't. It was covered with a 1.00

00:02:58.320 mist and a fog of misinformation and lies that I had been taught my whole life. My journey to the

00:03:03.400 Catholic Church together with my wife, we've always done everything together, and we still do,

00:03:07.340 and we discovered the problems with Protestantism. What is worship? What is the source of authority?

00:03:14.260 How many churches did Jesus start? All of these big issues, and I almost became an agnostic until I

00:03:19.960 discovered the fullness of the faith in the Catholic Church. That was 27 years ago this month,

00:03:26.660 actually. We came in on Pentecost Sunday, 1994, and we have never looked back.

00:03:32.260 Amazing. Amazing. Tell me a little bit about that. What were these specifically errors you learned

00:03:41.100 about the Catholic Church, what was taught to you, and how did that work in your life, the feeling of,

00:03:47.540 and how did you even find out that there were, in fact, not true what you were being told?

00:03:51.780 Well, my wife, we were driving home from our evangelical church service one Sunday at noon, and my wife said,

00:03:57.820 I have a problem. I cannot go there and listen to that preacher anymore and call it worship.

00:04:03.140 It might have been a good sermon, and we may have sung a couple good hymns, but it's not worship the

00:04:07.580 way God wants us to worship. Something's missing, but I don't know what it is. All of you Catholics knew 1.00

00:04:13.400 what it was, but we did not. We knew nothing of the Eucharist, of the sacramental life, and that started

00:04:20.220 right there, the whole search for what real worship was, and when we went, now that I've been traveling and

00:04:26.180 making documentary movies of the salvation history called Footprints of God, and we've

00:04:29.800 lead pilgrimages. I've been to Israel almost 200 times, Rome 170 times, all over the biblical world.

00:04:36.460 I've realized that every single church from the very beginning when they were first built

00:04:40.420 had one thing in common. They may have ever been stone or wood or whatever shape, but they all had

00:04:45.660 one thing in common. That was an altar in the center, in the front of the church, and in front of that

00:04:50.340 altar was a priest. Our church did not have an altar and a priest. We had a podium and a preacher,

00:04:56.820 and I realized that the churches that we were going to were a different religion than the very 0.98

00:05:01.800 first Christians knew. That was one issue. The other one was soul of scripture or the Bible alone. That was 0.94

00:05:07.060 my theme song. I would have died for that, along with Martin Luther. I even had Martin Luther t-shirts

00:05:12.900 made up because he was my hero. He brought real Christianity back from oblivion, but as time went 1.00

00:05:20.660 on, the more I loved the Bible, and I have over 20,000 books in my house, John Henry. That's just

00:05:25.960 because I always wanted to know. Most of them are theology and biblical and history because I wanted

00:05:31.100 to know what God wanted of my life, and the more I studied and loved the Bible, the more I realized that

00:05:36.540 there are a lot of other evangelicals. Whenever we'd get together, we would argue about what the Bible

00:05:41.360 meant. Should a baby be baptized? Yes or no? In the evangelical world, you've got opposing points

00:05:46.520 of view. Can you lose your salvation or not lose your salvation? There's opposing points of view.

00:05:51.540 The whole evangelical world was arguing about passages of scripture. That's why they have so 0.94

00:05:57.320 many different denominations. My dad was a church hopper. He'd disagree with the pastor, and he'd go to

00:06:01.980 another church, and I was the same way. So what is the authority for the believer? And it couldn't be 0.99

00:06:07.420 just the Bible alone because who had the authority to close the canon of the Bible? That's the Achilles 0.81

00:06:13.340 heel of Protestantism. And I realized that the church could, that the Bible could never be the 0.96

00:06:18.560 only source of authority. There had to be tradition and a magisterium, which, three-legged stool, you

00:06:25.160 know. And anyway, that brought me there. And then the other one, how many churches did Jesus start?

00:06:30.100 He said, I will build my church, not churches. And if your brother sins against you, take it to

00:06:34.940 the church, not one of the churches. All of these things started to cause big problems

00:06:41.080 until I discovered, and I'm kind of a rebel at heart. I mean, I'm non-conformist just by my nature.

00:06:47.540 And all of a sudden, I realized that becoming a Catholic could be the most non-conformist 0.89

00:06:52.400 thing I could possibly do, the most politically incorrect thing that I could possibly do. And that,

00:06:57.800 so the fear of becoming Catholic at one point was, I'm a skeptic at heart too, John Henry. And so I've

00:07:05.480 told people that the reason I'm a Catholic is I'm a skeptic at heart. And once I started to study it,

00:07:10.240 I had to prove it true, or I wouldn't believe it. That skepticism in me has to have proof.

00:07:14.840 Once I studied this all, I came into the Catholic Church by reading books, not by talking to anyone.

00:07:19.680 And that was 27 years ago, and we've never looked back.

00:07:24.280 Wow. Wow. What a fascinating journey. So given your background, it's all in the faith. I mean,

00:07:31.260 you've lived this way, your life. You've got these amazing kids who are really steeped in faith as

00:07:38.800 well. So where are you right now? I mean, this has been, and I presume you, like most of the world

00:07:46.060 right now, are deprived of the Holy Sacrifice, the Mass, and have been even for months. What do

00:07:53.100 you make of where we are and where are you at exactly? I'm very disappointed in the whole way

00:07:58.180 the thing has happened. In the past, when you have pandemics and plagues and things like that, you put

00:08:03.940 the people who are sick away. You hide, you protect. My mother's 98 and a half years old. She's probably

00:08:10.660 going to die soon, and I won't even be able to see her before she dies. There's something, I understand 0.89

00:08:16.380 why that's that way, and I want her protected and kept out of the, because she's one of the vulnerable.

00:08:23.440 But in the past, you kept the sick, the vulnerable, the elderly away. You didn't keep the world away.

00:08:30.920 The world kept going out to work and take care of business and going to church and having the freedom

00:08:35.980 that we expect to have. This is the first time ever that you have sequestered, you have isolated

00:08:41.900 the whole world and not just the sick. I think there's something not right the way it's being

00:08:47.140 handled. I think that the, I'll tell you in a nutshell what I think. It's four points. Number one,

00:08:52.100 a horrendous virus came out of China, and that's why I call it the Chinese or the Wuhan virus. I don't

00:08:58.140 call it the other names. Call it what it is. It's a virus that came out of China, and it was

00:09:03.820 justifiably terrifying to people. Number two, a lot of people came up, scholars supposedly,

00:09:11.420 experts with statistical numbers of how bad it was going to be, and millions of people were going

00:09:18.780 to die, even in the United States. Their numbers were wrong, but it scared people. And then number

00:09:24.160 three is politicians, and I would include in this religious leaders, were afraid of being accused of

00:09:31.520 doing too little too late, so they did too much too soon without getting all the information. And

00:09:37.780 then the fourth step in that is now that we realize we've done too much too soon, people are afraid to

00:09:43.240 back off and open the economy and the churches back up because they're afraid of being accused of the

00:09:48.060 deaths of people that will inevitably happen. That may be a radical way to look at it, but I've never

00:09:56.300 been known to follow the crowd. I've always thought that we should be thinking about these things

00:10:00.900 from a spiritual point of view and from a historical point of view, and what we're doing now is

00:10:05.460 unprecedented, and it's destroying many people's lives. The question is, is the cure worse than the

00:10:11.720 disease? I'm out of work for eight months. Our pilgrimages, I've already lost eight buses of pilgrims

00:10:17.840 to date. That's okay. We can survive this. But I've heard numbers up to 50% of small businesses will

00:10:26.060 go out of business in the next six months over this, and you have to wonder if the cure is more

00:10:30.740 dangerous and destructive than the disease itself, if we handled it properly.

00:10:35.900 Yeah, it's just unbelievable. What's going on right now, I think, though, is also telling for

00:10:44.060 the church. In times of plague in the past, the church was seen to be totally heroic. In fact,

00:10:52.800 all times of adversity is where the faithful, especially the clergy, are able to shine in a

00:11:00.400 way that they're really not able to at other times, because in times of real adversity, you know,

00:11:06.820 in war, chaplains will go out. In times of pandemic, before, you had priests willing to die

00:11:17.260 even to go and minister to the sick and the suffering, willing to risk their own lives to

00:11:22.960 be able to administer the sacraments. And we now have this complete shutdown where the church isn't

00:11:29.560 shining. She's just looking at, she's hiding away. What do you make of that, and what are your

00:11:35.100 thoughts there? Well, one of the whole ideas when I converted and coming to grips with the celibacy

00:11:41.040 of the priesthood and of the religious life was that when Protestants, when you were in an area that

00:11:47.120 had a plague or a wars, the Protestant pastors would be the first ones to leave because they had

00:11:54.160 families to consider, and they'd be the first ones to leave. But who stayed behind in the war zones and

00:11:59.340 in the plague areas, like Damien of Molokai with the lepers on Hawaii? Well, these, it struck me and

00:12:08.160 impressed me so much that those who were the Catholics celibates, the religious and the priest 0.93

00:12:14.900 would stay behind when the Protestant pastors all left. And they would even die in serving because 0.52

00:12:20.660 they felt that taking care of the poor and serving was giving their life up for Jesus, even if they would

00:12:25.620 get sick too. Unhappily, I don't see that mentality during this. I see people hiding themselves and

00:12:33.140 closing the churches and being afraid. And I know, I understand bishops don't want to be accused of

00:12:39.720 having their people die, bringing them into churches and having the virus spread or whatever. I also 0.99

00:12:46.080 understand there's a priest shortage and bishops are concerned about keeping their priests safe and all

00:12:50.520 of that. And I don't want our priests to die either. But there seems to be a lack of the sense

00:12:56.060 of heroism or courage that the clergy has demonstrated in the past. And I'm not criticizing

00:13:02.900 any one person or any group of people. I just don't see the same sense of urgency and heroics that I did

00:13:09.520 in the past with other situations in history. Yeah, we've got priests who are volunteering to go out

00:13:16.980 there. And yet they're forbidden. And that's the whole point. They're stuck between wanting to serve

00:13:22.260 and being forced to obey not only their bishops, but also the secular society. But I don't being

00:13:33.020 forbidden to have the mass. And I have grandchildren right now who are supposed to be having first

00:13:37.640 communion. And they're being deprived of confession. And I have so many people write to me, Steve,

00:13:42.940 I'm in sin and I need to go to confession. And I, what do I do? Well, in a couple hours today,

00:13:48.940 I'm doing another whole show an hour just on confession and what to do when you can't get to

00:13:52.940 a priest. And it's causing a dilemma among believers. And I'm afraid that too many Catholics who 1.00

00:13:59.140 go to church out of obligation and not because of a true discipleship of Jesus Christ. I mean,

00:14:04.240 I go to church because I love Jesus Christ. And I believe that you eat his body and blood. It gives

00:14:08.220 you a sense of, it gives you grace and it gives you life. But there's a whole caliber of a group

00:14:14.540 of Catholics who don't have, they go somewhat out of obligation. And I'm, that's obvious. Protestants 1.00

00:14:21.480 do the same thing sometimes. But anyway, and I'm afraid that they'll get used to watching TV masses

00:14:27.300 and think, you know what, I'll just, this is kind of comfortable. I'll just have a cup of coffee and

00:14:31.140 watch it on TV. And I don't know that the churches will be back full again because we have,

00:14:36.440 in a sense, let people think that it's not so important as they thought it was.

00:14:43.060 So very recently, Cardinal Sarah, who is the prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship

00:14:48.980 and Discipline of the Sacraments, came out saying that the faithful may not be deprived of Holy Communion

00:14:57.000 or Confession. Now, public masses, yes, that's a different thing. But the sacraments of Communion

00:15:03.000 and Confession may not be withheld from the faithful. And this coming from the head of the

00:15:09.920 department in the Vatican that's supposed to deal with liturgy in the first place. And yet,

00:15:14.620 it seems to be completely ignored.

00:15:16.960 I think there are heroic ways to do these things. And I think as Catholics, when we understand the

00:15:22.380 importance of the sacraments, yes, we're not going to die tomorrow if we miss the Mass on Sunday,

00:15:27.460 when we've been dispensed from that. But at the same time, we have to realize these are essential

00:15:34.100 elements for us as Catholics. They're something Jesus gave us. They shouldn't be taken away from

00:15:40.140 us. And even there should be some heroics. I could think of outdoor masses or having church. For

00:15:47.120 heaven's sakes, if I can go get an abortion and I can go through Costco and be bumping into people in

00:15:51.860 the lines at Costco. And I can go to the liquor store and be buying whiskey and scotch and gin

00:15:57.780 with a bunch of other people. And I can do all of these other things. Why can't I go into a church

00:16:02.320 and sit six feet apart from people, wear a mask, and why are the churches closed when other things

00:16:09.300 are open? To me, there's just something not right about that. There's something that's off base.

00:16:16.060 And I'm amazed, I think, too, how quiet bishops, priests, and the Catholic people have been about it.

00:16:21.860 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This comes at a very interesting time in the church because the church has been

00:16:29.960 going crazy. Now, the world's been going crazy for a long, long time. We've had probably 50 years of

00:16:35.220 some of the worst things ever on the planet. We have abortion, the numbers of babies killed by

00:16:40.020 abortion and through contraception, which also can cause abortions, is basically more than all the

00:16:46.000 wars in world history at this point in the last 50 years. We've got a situation where

00:16:51.820 our Lady of Fatima said, more people go to hell because of sins of the flesh than for any other

00:16:56.840 reason. And you know what's really weird is there are more people today who are viewing porn than

00:17:02.480 there were people alive in 1917. So while a lot of people say, you know, oh, things were worse in the past,

00:17:08.700 actually, that's not true. But beyond that, even, we have this situation in the church of confusion. When

00:17:17.420 Cardinal Carlo Caffara, God rest his soul, came to our Rome Life Forum in 2017, he revealed for the

00:17:25.220 first time that the letter, which he had already made public, or at least the part of it made public

00:17:30.780 about the, you know, Sister Lucia telling him that Our Lady had revealed that the final battle

00:17:36.800 between our Lord and the reign of Satan would be over marriage and the family. And he revealed at

00:17:41.480 that conference that he believed those times of the final battle, the decisive battle between our

00:17:47.860 Lord and the reign of Satan, were on now with the confusion in the church over marriage and the family

00:17:53.580 that had ensued since Pope Francis started the discussions in 2013, excuse me, 2015-2016

00:17:59.680 around that issue of divorce remarriage communion. What do you make of the current crisis in the church

00:18:08.920 vis-a-vis Pope Francis? Well, do we have about three hours or maybe four hours?

00:18:17.440 Let me just start by saying last September, I was invited by the equestrian order of the Holy

00:18:23.560 Sepulcher, which is a order of knights that go all the way back to the Crusades. And I'm a member,

00:18:29.860 my wife is a dame, and I'm a knight of the Holy Sepulcher, have been for 18 years. And it's an order

00:18:35.600 that supports Christians in the Holy Land. That's the whole objective of our order. There were six 0.94

00:18:40.940 states gathering together in September for their investiture of new knights and dames. And there were

00:18:46.640 five bishops in the room and others of great renown. And they asked me to do the keynote talk.

00:18:53.240 And I said, sure, I'll do it. And then it got closer to the event. And I said, well, what do you

00:18:58.880 want me to speak on? I thought they'd want me to speak on the Holy Land, because that's what I do a

00:19:02.800 lot. And this is the order of the Holy Sepulcher. They said, we would like you to speak on this title

00:19:07.340 and these words exactly. How does a John Paul II Catholic survive in a Pope Francis world?

00:19:13.480 I said, you've got to be kidding me. That's what you want me to talk about. And they said, yes,

00:19:21.020 we feel there's something not right going on in the Vatican. And we would like you to address our

00:19:26.160 current Pope and how it fits in with your understanding of the church as a convert and so

00:19:30.980 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

00:19:41.640 talk on Islam, what every infidel should know, at Franciscan University the year before. If you want 0.99

00:19:49.600 to watch that, it's an hour talk on Islam, just go to YouTube and type in Steve Ray Islam,

00:19:56.460 almost a million views so far. Well, that was a scary talk for me to give because it's politically

00:20:04.820 a time bomb. It's a very tense topic to talk about. And I don't know that I could have stepped

00:20:10.460 into an even more tough topic and how does a John Paul II Catholic survive in a Pope Francis world

00:20:16.420 with all of these wonderful Orthodox folks and several theologians who I won't mention,

00:20:20.720 but who you had on your show recently, and others and bishops in the room. And here I am

00:20:25.920 standing up there giving a talk on this. Well, I think I got a standing ovation and I've had

00:20:34.440 people listen to it subsequently. It's on my website, catholicconvert.com, by the way. It's

00:20:38.920 my website, catholicconvert.com. And I have that talk on my website available. And I dealt in that

00:20:46.220 situation with, as a Catholic, I came into the Catholic Church because of certainty. I had had the

00:20:52.720 Bible alone. And I realized that when Martin Luther threw one Pope out, he created a billion new

00:20:59.740 Popes. Every Protestant is their own Pope. Let's face it, because there is no Pope in Protestantism. 0.71

00:21:05.720 Everybody has their Bible and ultimately they are the final word on what authority is. They may have

00:21:11.000 a pastor they agree with or a denomination, but there's nothing to keep them from going to another

00:21:15.960 one. Now, I came into the Catholic Church because of certainty. And now 27 years later, I see in the

00:21:21.820 Catholic Church a lot of uncertainty, which is confusing people, causing people to be distressed,

00:21:28.160 even to think of schism or mutiny. Some are leaving to become ultra rad trads and go off and start

00:21:34.080 something on their own, reject the Catholic Church as we know it, or leaving to become Protestant or

00:21:39.620 becoming apathetic. And I have people ask me this on emails and so on. I am distressed with a lot of

00:21:49.000 things that have become uncertain. The way I did this, John Henry, in my talk is I had this box. I

00:21:56.920 think I'm on video here. And I called this box the whole and immutable deposit of faith. Jesus, when he

00:22:05.080 had his 12 apostles, he gave them the deposit of faith. And they went out and taught and preached

00:22:10.960 and practiced it. It was the deposit of faith. It was like a rich man depositing his wealth into a bank.

00:22:17.380 Jesus and the apostles deposited the fullness of the faith, the deposit of faith into the church,

00:22:22.820 which is the bank. And it's like Jesus said to the apostles, I'm going to give you this box. And

00:22:28.620 this is the fullness of the faith. You're to protect it and to teach it, but you are not allowed to add

00:22:33.200 anything to it. You're not allowed to take anything out of it. You're not allowed to change it. Do you

00:22:40.400 agree? And they all said, yes, we agree. The apostles went out and taught and said they had new bishops

00:22:45.360 that were their successors and they handed them the box and said, here's the full deposit of the

00:22:50.020 faith that was handed on from Jesus and the apostles. Do you promise to carry this box, to present it,

00:22:56.520 to protect it, to defend it, to add nothing to it, to change nothing in it, or to take anything out?

00:23:01.520 Yes, we promise that. And that's going on through the centuries. There's always people that want to

00:23:06.180 get in this box and change it. Heretics have come along wanting to do that or others. And I feel

00:23:12.140 today, John Henry, that in some ways there are people in leadership of the church today who would

00:23:18.180 like to be able to change things in that box. And you know what? It makes me angry, I have to say,

00:23:23.600 because this is my heritage as a Catholic. Jesus gave this not just to the Pope. He gave it to all

00:23:30.540 of us. We have a right to the truth and a right to the untarnished truth, the way it was handed on

00:23:35.760 by the apostles and bishops of the early church and the doctors of the church and the councils.

00:23:40.260 This is our right. My wife loves to say Catholics have a right to the truth. It's not just something

00:23:46.720 they would like to have. We have a right to the truth and the fullness of the truth. And I feel

00:23:52.260 that there are elements in the church today trying to reach in that box and change things around,

00:23:56.940 put things in, take things out. And frankly, I object.

00:24:00.400 It's an amazing way of putting it. It actually, that speaks to true poverty and true generosity.

00:24:08.300 Because I think Mother Teresa always said, you know, how everybody was concerned about the poor in

00:24:14.720 India. And then she talked about, because she was criticized for bringing nuns to America. 0.96

00:24:20.300 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 0.63

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 0.97

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 0.98

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 1.00

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 0.88

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,

00:42:27.040 even if the Vatican is wobbly.

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, 0.99

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 1.00

00:44:29.220 choice to hit myself with a hammer. Sometimes we as Catholics and as the world incur these things upon 1.00

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, 0.86

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 0.99

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.

The John-Henry Westen Show - May 12, 2020

Famous Catholic Convert reveals his take on Pope Francis

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