The John-Henry Westen Show - One Year Into Pope Leo XIV： Are Traditional Catholics Losing Hope？

00:00:00.000 Here we are a year later, Cardinal Fernandez is still there. You know, that document that

00:00:03.600 strips the Virgin Mary of titles, it flies in the face of a thousand years of magisterium.

00:00:09.440 It's kind of a problem.

00:00:12.540 Hello, my friends. Welcome to the program. It is a great pleasure for me to bring you someone whom

00:00:17.140 I have watched and listened to for years now. His name is Dr. Anthony Stein. I'm sure many of you

00:00:22.980 know him as Return to Tradition, the podcast. And it's great. I've always found what he does great

00:00:31.360 because what he does is he does deep analysis of what's going on in the news, not just the

00:00:36.540 cursory glance at things. He goes into them in depth and brings to us his incredible insights.

00:00:41.920 He is a convert from agnosticism. And he started his podcast, I believe it was in 2018.

00:00:50.540 So it's been going on now many years through the pontificates of Francis and Leo.

00:00:57.420 And we're here to talk about the current state of the church.

00:01:02.160 Dr. Stein, thank you so much for joining us.

00:01:04.180 Thank you for having me on.

00:01:05.160 It's appreciated.

00:01:06.120 Like I told you before, you are one of the few I still watch because I won't participate in the Circular Firing Squad.

00:01:11.760 So it's good to be here together talking.

00:01:15.400 Let's begin as we always do with the sign of the cross.

00:01:17.040 in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy ghost amen okay so let's get into this

00:01:24.160 today happens to be and i know it won't air uh today but happens to be the one year anniversary

00:01:30.660 of the election of leo the 14th robert prevost um i remember being in rome at the time and i gave a

00:01:38.900 pretty forthright um appraisal uh that wasn't very well appreciated but nonetheless it was

00:01:45.240 from the heart it was honest and and i because i was so shocked and saddened at what had happened

00:01:49.400 i thought oh gosh after 13 years of francis we deserved something better but apparently not

00:01:54.240 today is also the feast day of our lady mediatrics of all graces this is the pope who demoted her of

00:02:00.760 that title why don't we just start there and uh give me maybe your take on how that went down

00:02:06.580 and uh what your thoughts are about uh this pope's appreciation for our lady because man after all

00:02:11.880 Today, he's at the shrine of Our Lady of Pompeii.

00:02:14.880 The mediatrics of all graces, what he has done with that, I think, encapsulates perfectly 0.98

00:02:19.960 this pontificate. 0.97

00:02:20.720 Perhaps the only other thing that perfectly encapsulates it was what he said on May 8th,

00:02:25.260 because today's the one year anniversary that we're recording this, of him being elected

00:02:29.920 pope when he stood on the loggia and invoked Francis, Pope Francis, as if he was a saint

00:02:36.520 in heaven, saying that he was looking down on us from heaven, and then invoked synodality,

00:02:40.940 something like a dozen times in that address and said that he was going to continue the work of

00:02:46.540 Pope Francis. I was shocked too. Meltdown is not quite the right word, but it is the closest I've

00:02:51.220 ever had in a live stream or on my channel of having a public meltdown of some kind because

00:02:55.960 we all read those reports from the College of Cardinals report. His record was pretty well

00:03:03.800 known if you paid attention to the news. He was the man who for the last few years of Francis's

00:03:10.140 pontificate, directly helped him elevate bishops to the episcopate, helped him promote men to the

00:03:16.060 College of Cardinals. He was, if you've seen the quality of men that Francis made bishop,

00:03:22.080 Cardinal Prevost was one of the men most directly responsible for that. And we have seen no change

00:03:27.800 in that since then. In fact, in some ways, it's worse. He just elected or made a bishop in West

00:03:33.420 Virginia, a state with virtually no Hispanic population. If you look at the actual demographics,

00:03:38.880 an illegal immigrant or former rather illegal immigrant to be the bishop there in a state that

00:03:44.760 went to trump by like 40 points why am i bringing up the president this early in this because for

00:03:49.280 the last year there has been a practical back and forth mostly from leo to trump until trump

00:03:54.620 finally broke and i am not defending trump's response because it was i don't think really

00:03:58.960 all that defendable either but there was this constant poking from the from the vatican on

00:04:03.960 immigration policy unveiled references to tyrants rounding up illegal aliens and kicking them out

00:04:08.860 of their countries. I mean, I appreciate the words on unity and all the rest. I do appreciate that,

00:04:13.380 but the actions don't match. And so when you go back to that mediatrics of all graces, I'm 1.00

00:04:17.140 reminded of how damaging to unity that document was. It was right after that document that 0.99

00:04:22.580 suddenly the tone and tenor out of the Society of St. Pius X changed dramatically. Many

00:04:29.520 traditionalists who are harder line than I think you or I are when it comes to the SSPX question,

00:04:34.500 They had taken to task the SSPX under Bishop Follet for 20 years, about maybe longer than that, about the tone of the SSPX towards the Vatican being too conciliatory, willing to move away from some of their language that they use to describe the things going on in the church.

00:04:54.180 Famously, it was under Archbishop Lefebvre towards the end of his life when he said they accepted 80% of Vatican II.

00:05:01.380 It was just that other 20% wherein the problems lie.

00:05:03.740 That number changed to like 95% under filet.

00:05:08.100 If you actually go read the old news reports and the things he said publicly, they were much more conciliatory.

00:05:13.300 The SSPX were part of the reason we got some more on pontificum.

00:05:16.420 It was through an overture from them to Benedict XVI that that document came to the front.

00:05:21.100 And a lot of SSPX hardliners were not happy with that.

00:05:25.200 Suddenly, after the Mediatrics of All Graces document came out, where you are now forbidden from using it in any formal church thing,

00:05:33.020 your private devotions are fine. It fits perfectly within Amoris Laetitia and Fiducia

00:05:38.180 Supplicans, how the Vatican does these things. They reiterate what the church has always taught

00:05:43.480 on something before then telling you that that's actually not what we're going to do for pastoral

00:05:47.640 reasons. And that's exactly what they did. You can find the co-redemptrix title and mediatrix

00:05:52.980 of all graces title referenced by popes and theologians in one form or another going back

00:05:57.720 to like the 10th century. But now it's always harmful to use it unless it's for your private

00:06:02.500 devotion, as long as you understand fully what the church teaches. It's a strange thing.

00:06:07.480 And after that document came out, the SSPX attitude changed dramatically. And a couple

00:06:12.700 of months later, when the SSPX announced their consecration of bishops that will earn them a

00:06:18.440 questionable excommunication, they cited, Father David Pelleriani cited explicitly the document

00:06:25.280 on the Mediatrics of All Graces as the thing that was the final straw for them, much in the same way

00:06:30.320 that Archbishop Lefebvre's final straw was the Assisi consecrations. I can say positive things 0.98

00:06:35.580 about Pope Leo. He has all the outward externals of what you expect a post-conciliar pope to have.

00:06:40.500 He has a much better personal comportment than Pope Francis did. I think we are all,

00:06:45.740 none of us are too worried about any kind of derogatory language coming out of Leo like that

00:06:51.600 came out of Francis. Even if we chuckled about it with Francis privately, because some of the

00:06:57.200 things he said. My favorite quote from Pope Francis is, there are far too many liberals in

00:07:02.480 the church, liberal priests, and by liberal, I mean homosexual. That's probably my favorite 1.00

00:07:06.360 Francis quote. See, we laugh because it's true. His actions didn't match the language. 0.99

00:07:11.860 We won't get that from Leo. He is more restrained in his language. That's a good thing. At the same

00:07:17.280 time, though, Francis not being so restrained in it made it easy for us to make the point

00:07:21.480 that the actions he took regarding the liturgy, regarding the topics of Fiducia supplicants and

00:07:29.120 Amoris Laetitia, all those things were erroneous and dangerous. They were. Leo's comportment,

00:07:34.080 it makes him much more, a much harder sell, I guess. Even though Fiducia supplicants,

00:07:40.540 but Amoris Laetitia, you've been in this battle longer than I have. Amoris Laetitia was like the 0.63

00:07:45.540 inflection point, wasn't it? A lot of people stopped giving Francis the benefit of the doubt

00:07:49.000 after that document. The Vatican announced that this year, the bishops will be meeting with the

00:07:53.760 Pope in the fall to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Amoris Laetitia. And one of their tasks is to

00:08:00.600 try to figure out why that document didn't bring Catholics back to mass, who, because they decided

00:08:06.260 to get divorced and remarried outside the church, they weren't coming back. And they still aren't

00:08:09.900 coming back, even though they got thrown a bone. They're doubling down on Amoris Laetitia. That's

00:08:14.360 what they're going to do. In the same way that you're going to see it, they've already doubled

00:08:18.100 down on fiducius supplicants, informal blessings.

00:08:21.580 Keyword is informal. 0.53

00:08:23.360 Pope Leo did not reject the German bishops offering blessings to homosexual married couples,

00:08:29.000 married in quotes, or anybody else who wanted them.

00:08:31.820 They rejected formalized blessings, meaning you can't have a blessing ritual in your,

00:08:38.060 the Vatimacum, as they call it in Germany, the big book of rituals.

00:08:41.820 What is it?

00:08:42.220 Is there a proper term for that book, by the way, that the priests have?

00:08:46.020 I know that's what the title they were giving.

00:08:47.780 It was the Vatamecum in Germany.

00:08:49.600 But the Vatican just said no to formalized rituals, not informal blessings.

00:08:54.760 That's it.

00:08:55.440 It's amazing to me the number of conservatives who immediately jumped to, you see, Pope, 1.00

00:09:03.000 Leo is correcting Francis, no more gay blessings. 1.00

00:09:06.480 It's just a pipe dream. 0.89

00:09:07.640 Unfortunately, it's so sad to see.

00:09:09.600 But it was very clear from what Leo himself said.

00:09:12.300 I love that the Vatican knew he just did a correction as well.

00:09:15.580 just to underline that, oh yes, gay couple of blessings are still allowed, just not formal

00:09:20.440 ones. It's always for that cotter of Pope's planters, which actually is starting to balloon. 0.71

00:09:28.080 There's more and more Pope's planters of those who used to be calling out Francis.

00:09:33.600 What do you think that is? They see in Leo something different, maybe because of his

00:09:38.700 comportment that you talked about earlier. I just don't get it.

00:09:40.980 I had a few people I know say, hey, you know, Anthony, we don't disagree with what you're

00:09:44.700 saying, but you're, we're tired. We're exhausted. So we're just going to hope that things are

00:09:49.340 improve. I was exhausted. I've, when, when Leo stepped out a couple of days later, I just felt

00:09:54.420 like a utterly exhausted. And I did. If people who watch me remember for about two weeks, I tried

00:10:00.560 to give him the benefit of the doubt. But the problem was I started seeing all the appointments

00:10:04.320 he was making. And that was a lot more subtle than having Abba's dancing queen greet him

00:10:09.760 or even Neil Diamond.

00:10:11.380 I don't have anything against Neil Diamond.

00:10:13.260 If you are a straight person and you like ABBA,

00:10:16.540 my mother liked ABBA, whatever.

00:10:18.160 I find it odd choice to have played in the Papal Palace

00:10:21.080 or to play in St. Peter's Square by the Swiss Guard. 0.57

00:10:24.440 I would say the same thing if they were playing,

00:10:27.220 I don't know, MC Hammer or Iron Maiden or anything else.

00:10:30.880 It would be a weird choice,

00:10:32.520 but it's an even weirder choice 1.00

00:10:34.080 when you have that song in particular is a gay anthem.

00:10:37.940 If you look at a list of pop songs that are gay anthems, that song is near the top of every list, even though it was never explicitly written to be such.

00:10:45.620 And the timing is especially weird because it happened literally the day after the Synod on Synodality's working groups released their documents saying that gay relationships aren't really a sin. 0.62

00:10:55.220 It's doing the gay relationship without God. 0.96

00:10:58.380 That's the sin. 1.00

00:10:59.780 Whatever that means.

00:11:01.040 A lot of people say that they're signaling.

00:11:03.140 I don't know about that.

00:11:04.560 I do believe in Providence and maybe Providence is signaling, but this document that just came

00:11:10.200 out is so stunning. And it was funny to me that it came out literally the next day. So one day

00:11:16.580 they're saying absolutely not to the German bishops. And it's funny because that's an old

00:11:23.960 story. Nothing changed there. That was from 2024. I guess they're responding to Marx's announcement

00:11:32.680 that they're you know having these courses and whatever about the ritualized blessings and

00:11:37.380 they're saying no to that based on the 2024 thing it's interesting just time-wise because it was

00:11:42.220 like one day that next day this and under francis i developed this i don't know it was like a pattern

00:11:50.440 every time you saw something good you were likely the next day or something to get something just

00:11:56.800 or next few days just something terrible so no it'd be like incoming if it's a good news

00:12:02.000 because then something else is going to happen.

00:12:04.600 Do you notice that pattern as well?

00:12:06.120 Did you sense that?

00:12:07.400 Yeah, I did.

00:12:07.980 And I don't know if such a pattern,

00:12:10.200 if there's any kind of pattern to this under Leo,

00:12:12.500 but I definitely picked up on that pattern

00:12:14.020 to the point where I don't remember what the news was,

00:12:17.160 but after he described procuring an abortion

00:12:19.560 being akin to hiring a hitman, 0.50

00:12:21.480 which again, one of my favorite things Francis said,

00:12:23.880 and if his actions match that,

00:12:25.640 honestly, I have an unpopular take on Pope Francis.

00:12:28.840 If he had all those verbal things that he said

00:12:31.280 that made people uncomfortable, including some of the more foul things. If he had said, if his

00:12:36.560 actions were as orthodox sounding in their content as those things, I think a lot of conservatives

00:12:41.660 would have liked Francis a lot more. They would have been like kind of these weirdly positive

00:12:45.260 comparisons to Trump, right? Because what's the biggest problem most of us have with Trump,

00:12:49.580 aside from maybe the relationship to Israel is his mouth or his online habits, right? But if

00:12:55.580 his action, but a lot of his policy actions, a lot of us don't have that many problems with. 0.85

00:12:59.600 But if in the same way, Francis's words, hiring a hitman, too many homosexuals, all the what was the other one, the Italian slang term that I'm not I'm not going to try to butcher.

00:13:10.160 And you're going to put this on YouTube and we've already, you know, towed a line a little bit. 0.64

00:13:13.540 I don't want to cross it, but you'd probably all know which one I'm talking about.

00:13:18.060 If his actions had matched that, we would have a far less problem.

00:13:21.780 And for that reason, I tend to think Leo is in some ways worse than Francis because his outward demeanor, his appearing in the way you expect a post-conciliar pope to appear, his chanting of Latin, his offering a mass publicly, which Francis hadn't done since like, what, 2016 or something.

00:13:44.080 All of those things make it harder to point out that, you know, this same man on the throne of Peter who offers these reverent masses and chants in Latin and has a generally peaceful demeanor about him.

00:13:57.500 And I will never criticize him for trying to intervene in the war on Iran or in any other war because the Roman pontiff should be a peacemaker.

00:14:05.520 The Roman pontiff, let's say a world war were to break out, hopefully not.

00:14:10.460 But if it were to happen, I would hope that the Roman pontiff would be working with whoever's trying to stop that war, regardless of whether, you know, my country is on the right side of it or not, that he should be trying to stop such a thing.

00:14:22.280 He is supposed to be a peacemaker.

00:14:24.140 I will never criticize him for that, even if I don't agree with all the contents of what he's saying.

00:14:28.460 All of that, though, makes it harder to point out that, you know, here we are a year later, Cardinal Fernandez is still there.

00:14:33.460 You know, that document that strips the Virgin Mary of titles, it flies in the face of a thousand

00:14:39.040 years of magisterium. It's kind of a problem. I couldn't imagine this to have happened. But

00:14:44.880 as soon as Francis met with Father James Martin, it was a signal moment that shattered for a lot

00:14:51.020 of people. Oh, we're really there. But then when Leo did it, it hardly went noticed. I mean, it

00:14:57.420 was like, oh yeah, of course you just met with Father Martin. What's the big deal? I don't know

00:15:02.160 how there was no speaking from the American good cardinals, the cardinals that are, how

00:15:10.840 could they not just go hello and warn the Catholics of the world, this can't happen,

00:15:18.560 this is not on, but nothing, silence.

00:15:21.060 You know, there's midterm elections coming up and the party in power usually does pretty

00:15:24.540 badly.

00:15:25.040 I tend to not be sure that's going to happen this time, but the party in power usually

00:15:29.160 does badly. And part of that reason, regardless if it's a Democrat or Republican in office,

00:15:33.420 their own party members, most of them tune out after the presidential election and say,

00:15:38.840 oh, our guy's in, it'll be fine. And then wouldn't you know, their party loses a lot of power

00:15:43.380 afterwards, sometimes all of its power in the House. And I kind of wonder if that's the same

00:15:47.940 thing, is that a lot of Catholics might have tuned out. Or if they pay attention, it's not that much,

00:15:54.840 They go, oh, yeah, the pope did something kind of not great.

00:15:57.360 But man, he's so nice.

00:15:58.940 You know, he's so peaceful.

00:16:01.100 I am reminded of a news story that I think I reported on on the 7th, 8th or 9th of May, right during the conclave, probably before the 9th since it was over right then.

00:16:14.280 But there's a Spanish language news site called Info Vaticana.

00:16:18.080 They are as notorious as your website is in North America.

00:16:21.200 If you were walking around Rome and you saw James Martin and Austin Ivory sitting there and you made eye contact with them, they'd know who you were, I would assume, right?

00:16:29.860 Without question.

00:16:31.000 One of their reporters saw Austin Ivory and James Martin on the 6th or 7th of May with the biggest grins on their face you could imagine.

00:16:38.520 Like they knew something.

00:16:41.180 And the reporter walked up to him and was chatting with him, and then he identified who he was with, and they clammed up immediately.

00:16:46.820 Because InfoVaticana, I often compare it to LifeSite News positively in Europe.

00:16:51.200 When I reported that story, a lot of people didn't want to believe it because Austin Ivory is the papal biographer for Francis.

00:16:56.640 If you still have an interest in the Francis papacy, there's a lot of books about Francis coming out right now written by people on our side of things.

00:17:02.580 I'm actually not sure why, because most people have moved on.

00:17:06.100 The biography written by Austin Ivory called The Great Reformer, the first edition and only the first edition is worth picking up if you can find a used copy.

00:17:14.340 because he lets spill that Bergoglio as cardinal and before that archbishop was

00:17:19.880 complicit in the disappearance of priests by the regime, the Argentinian regime under their

00:17:25.580 dictatorship. That's kind of a big deal that he lets slip in there and future editions just

00:17:30.940 magically don't have in there. And we're getting kind of weird reports like that from Peru about

00:17:35.480 Leo, not about the regime or anything, but his involvement with liberation theology and those

00:17:40.980 sorts of things. And so it is a matter of time, I think, before a lot of the people who are still

00:17:47.000 wanting to give him the benefit of the doubt will stop. And which is why I'm, you know,

00:17:53.020 remaining cautiously optimistic that people will take a more realistic assessment of things.

00:17:56.780 But any realistic assessment, any resistance to the things he does has to be coupled with

00:18:02.720 your own prayer and fasting life. You really, really, really should be praying for him.

00:18:06.700 I have been saying lately that we are kind of in a testing time, I think, for a lot of us, because you can easily just get angry and just consume lots of angry content.

00:18:18.680 But if you're not engaging in a spiritual work of mercy about this, where it's at least praying, picking up some old fashioned fasting, you should be doing those things, too.

00:18:28.160 And also, you know, working on your own, whatever it is, whatever bad habits you have that send you to the confessional on a regular basis, you should be working on that with whatever way it is that you need to do it.

00:18:38.820 Don't lose your soul over all of this.

00:18:40.620 You know, if your reaction to the photos of Pope Leo when he was deacon or father Robert Prevost participating in that Pakamama ritual in the 1990s, if that sent you into a tailspin, you should probably be working on your spiritual life too.

00:18:56.620 You cannot do this without some kind of prayer life.

00:18:59.920 If I had my copy of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary at hand, I would.

00:19:03.760 That's what I usually recommend to people.

00:19:05.740 Classic Marian devotion.

00:19:07.200 I use the Angelus Press 1962 one because it has the more old-fashioned language.

00:19:12.700 The contemporary translations of it, I personally dislike because they water it down a lot.

00:19:18.940 But also with older language, older, more formalized English, you have to actually engage with what you're praying when you're reading it.

00:19:25.440 So you're not just reading it out loud, right?

00:19:27.940 But work on your prayer life and pray for, here's one, Jesus told us to pray for our enemies.

00:19:34.780 We also know we're supposed to pray for those we love.

00:19:36.920 So somewhere in between that is James Martin, somewhere in between those two poles.

00:19:41.660 You should probably pray for him once in a while.

00:19:43.240 Pray for, if you can bring yourself to do it, Cardinal McCarrick.

00:19:47.300 I was once told a story about a priest who, right after 9-11, was giving a homily and saying,

00:19:53.940 how many of you have ever have prayed for the conversion of Osama bin Laden?

00:19:58.840 He said you could have heard a pin drop in that parish afterwards.

00:20:02.340 Probably almost nobody does.

00:20:03.840 If it makes sense in hindsight to pray for that man's conversion,

00:20:07.080 then there's literally no one else on this earth at this time that you shouldn't pray for the conversion of.

00:20:11.380 There's a long list.

00:20:12.260 You probably could, if you were to, there are saints out there,

00:20:14.740 probably invisible saints among us who spend most of their days praying for

00:20:17.860 all these problematic public figures and some less problematic ones.

00:20:20.940 The prayer life is what will hopefully keep you grounded in the faith in this time.

00:20:24.640 At least that's my hope.

00:20:50.940 addresses and even exclusive access to archbishop sheen's favorite mitre with only 200 seats

00:20:57.340 available this historic night will fill up quickly reserve your ticket now and be a part of an evening

00:21:03.420 for the ages when i think of john bosco's dreams and the anchor of both our lady in the eucharist

00:21:11.020 it is and and trying to survive today without that um without sort of daily mass or daily

00:21:17.900 rosary and stuff like that. Honestly, I don't see it for myself. I'd struggle to try and

00:21:25.280 figure out how that works. Would you say to those who are really hurting in the confusion? Because

00:21:31.640 there's a lot. I actually have a really strange one because I was at a meeting just a couple

00:21:37.460 weeks ago. There was a guy who believed in the church, wasn't Catholic yet, but was hoping to

00:21:45.940 enter but basically said he couldn't sign up to leo and well he said i couldn't sign up to the pope

00:21:54.040 and i was like oh the papacy that's an easy thing to explain he said no no no no he believed in

00:22:00.160 the previous popes but he just couldn't sign up to what's going on right now because he believes

00:22:04.920 the traditional teachings of the church and that puts you at a weird kind of a space to be able to

00:22:11.180 answer him how do you how does he make a profession of faith in a time where it seems like the man on

00:22:18.820 the throne seems to be going in the other direction that's a tough one too because

00:22:22.400 well the easy answer is i think the wrong answer and the easy answer is well there was benedict

00:22:28.020 the tenth or ninth whichever one of the pornocracy benedict was the most infamous pope in history if

00:22:33.160 you are if you know anything about church history and you know and all these other bad and allegedly

00:22:37.680 bad popes from history, but that's the wrong answer. Because if you look at those men,

00:22:42.520 they were just grotesque sinners, you know, secretly fathering children, some of them 0.99

00:22:48.720 probably closeted homosexuals, some of them just bad guys. But what they never did was promote 0.99

00:22:54.460 heresy. History doesn't look kindly upon Pope Alexander VI, but if you actually look at some

00:22:59.480 of his Marian writings, you kind of wonder why we don't have those today. And that was him, right?

00:23:06.300 And that's kind of the common thread with most of these bad popes in history is that they didn't undermine the faith.

00:23:11.980 And what's keeping that person you spoke to out of the church almost certainly is their blatant public contradictions of the faith.

00:23:19.700 It's hard to square the Marian document released by Cardinal Fernandez with the pope's blessing with the church's history.

00:23:26.840 It's just you can't do it.

00:23:28.240 it's hard to square fiducia supplicants and Morse Laetitia, which Leo positively invoked

00:23:33.780 fiducia supplicants recently. And the bishops are going to celebrate a 10th anniversary of

00:23:38.220 Morse Laetitia later this year. It's hard to square all that. And I don't know exactly how

00:23:43.440 to address that other than starting to get into some of the potentially not fringe, but

00:23:49.460 more radical interpretations of what's going on. And I don't, I haven't endorsed the, you know,

00:23:56.460 what they call the Benny Plenis position.

00:23:58.580 I find it an interesting position.

00:24:00.800 I'm open to the possibility that Benedict was the last Pope,

00:24:04.500 at least last for now.

00:24:06.960 I'm not a set of a contest,

00:24:09.120 but those are all for clearly compelling positions for a lot of people.

00:24:14.040 How often do you see in your own comments section people saying,

00:24:16.340 that's it, I'm going to become a set of a contest now?

00:24:18.540 I mean, I see it.

00:24:19.380 It does just happen with that order as well. 0.87

00:24:22.360 Just the trans Alpine monks decided to,

00:24:26.460 they just you know and this this is the thing i i wonder if this isn't down to the refusal

00:24:35.200 of the cardinals to speak up and clarify because they're just not that for me is even more stunning

00:24:42.940 than that might sound weird but at this point i'm used to a francis and now a leo what i'm not used

00:24:51.020 to is just absolute silence in the face of just horror obviously for me you know coming out of

00:24:59.560 the pro-life movement that thing with leo about hey if you're not against the death penalty you're

00:25:05.960 not really pro-life and then silence from the cardinals from from from you know the the ones

00:25:12.600 who should have spoken that that that to me was i just i didn't know what to make of it not not

00:25:18.700 statement from leo i've already accepted he's a liberal bishop and that's the way they talk and

00:25:23.320 i'm used to that that nobody says anything that that to me was that was that was beyond the pale

00:25:30.020 that was that was just it especially since francis and leo's positions on the death penalty

00:25:35.480 contradict sacred scripture and the timeless teachings of the church going back to the

00:25:42.720 catacombs. The church has always taught that Caesar has the right to take the life of an

00:25:49.060 offender if that person has relinquished their right to exist because of heinous crimes and not

00:25:54.280 only for the safety of other prisoners and prison workers. That's a modern argument to justify the

00:26:00.820 death penalty. I think there's room to argue for how often it should be applied. I will remind

00:26:05.920 people, I read a shocking writing by, I think it was Innocent the Third, and I know that's going

00:26:10.240 back a long ways, but he advocated for not just the death penalty, but frequent use of it and to

00:26:17.920 have it be what we would consider extraordinarily inhumane uses of it. I'm not saying that's my

00:26:24.400 position. I'm just telling you, you cannot square Francis and Leo's position on capital punishment

00:26:29.960 with the historic teachings of the church. And those teachings can't change. That's the other

00:26:34.780 thing i i remember i used to do apologetics uh with with evangelicals and the popular saying was

00:26:40.920 you know find me one just find me one teaching from the church that's ever changed and i will

00:26:46.780 become a protestant i don't think that line is used much anymore yeah don't use that argument

00:26:50.780 today because they've changed the teachings on who can receive holy communion they've changed

00:26:55.600 the teachings of the process of changing the teachings on homosexuality they've changed the

00:27:00.280 teachings of the death penalty and they've also changed the teachings on ecumenical dialogue and

00:27:04.200 a bunch of other things. So don't use that argument today. It won't serve you well.

00:27:08.340 You're one of those guys who really unpacks things. And it's one of those things that

00:27:13.760 affected me so much because I'm into it and the movement, but very few people have seen that.

00:27:20.860 And to me, it's the reason why Leo is banging the table on the bishops of America to go after

00:27:29.180 immigration. Because in Francis's document, Gaudete De Exultate, it really does lay out,

00:27:36.520 hey, abortion, immigration, it's all the same when it comes to the moral requirement for Catholics

00:27:45.140 to be on side and step up. And it's unreal. And there it is. It's in black and white in an official 0.95

00:27:52.160 apostolic exhortation to which the bishops and the faithful are supposed to submit in mind and will.

00:27:59.180 I don't even know what to do about that because that's just crazy.

00:28:01.800 Catechism contradicts that.

00:28:02.900 I shouldn't have to go into explanation of why having the horrible things that are done 0.92

00:28:06.840 to a baby is not the same as arresting and deporting someone who is in the country illegally

00:28:13.980 is not the same moral question.

00:28:16.000 Does Leo need to sit down and watch some of those videos that nobody likes that the pro-life

00:28:21.140 movement uses, you know, the shows in graphic detail and then shows and then says, please

00:28:27.180 compare this to this and shows a we'll say a particularly rough ice arrest and try to say

00:28:32.920 explain how this is the same do we need to go there but don't be shocked by it those watching

00:28:38.840 this because pope leo very early on told told everybody who his two biggest like the two the

00:28:45.480 two cardinals he admired the most in his life and they were cardinal soupich and cardinal bernardin

00:28:50.860 both of chicago and if you know of bernardine's uh great contribution to the church it was the

00:28:58.560 seamless garment heresy where you where they put widespread unemployment and the nuclear arms race

00:29:04.300 on the same level as abortion same moral level i'm sorry they're not and no i don't advocate for

00:29:11.480 the u.s government spending trillions of dollars on more nuclear weapons

00:29:14.800 they're not the same it's not the same thing and we really need to stop having a blasé attitude 0.74

00:29:21.980 about abortion even catholics have this and i'm not talking about the pew research that shows like

00:29:26.880 was it 40 of catholics who go to mass on a quote-unquote regular basis whatever that means

00:29:32.060 these days they are they tend to call themselves pro-choice i'm not talking that i'm talking those

00:29:37.700 of us who have the right opinion the right attitude about abortion but we see the statistics

00:29:43.340 We just kind of glaze over because we live in a pagan culture that, for prosperity reasons, sacrifices babies and makes it expedient to do so in every single way possible.

00:29:55.720 What is that drug that they use?

00:29:58.740 Milpredastone, whatever it is.

00:30:00.620 You know which one?

00:30:01.180 Yeah.

00:30:01.620 I knew you would know.

00:30:02.900 We criticized, rightly, the Trump administration for not doing anything about it to the point where they actually tried to do something about it.

00:30:09.060 yesterday i think it was the day before from when we're recording this the supreme court

00:30:13.440 said no you can't do that so that drug by mail is legal in the u.s and that is with a

00:30:20.380 six three conservative majority of more than half the court are catholic that issue is on the same

00:30:26.960 moral level we're told as a a horrible monster of a human being kidnapping a small child in this

00:30:36.800 FedEx truck and then being sentenced to death. It's the same moral level. That happened right

00:30:39.800 here in my state of Oklahoma. How is that the same? It's not. Logic says it's not. But we've

00:30:45.880 been asked to stop thinking logically. I have seen bishops in the church argue that high levels of

00:30:53.200 unemployment are the same as procuring an abortion, morally speaking. I've seen them say that about

00:30:59.660 ICE agents rounding up people who should not be here, who have violated what the church has to

00:31:05.000 say on immigration to be here. But sending them back apparently is the same as procuring an

00:31:09.740 abortion. That is how you know we live in an insane time period in the history of the church.

00:31:16.000 And I, for my money, think this is worse than the pornography and probably worse than the Aryan 1.00

00:31:20.100 crisis. Because I would bet that most of those Aryan bishops would have told you that, yeah, 1.00

00:31:24.040 procuring an abortion is evil. I have that suspicion. If you've ever actually read anything 0.99

00:31:28.400 some of those guys said, their errors were pretty serious theological ones, but they weren't moral

00:31:34.580 ones. And it's the sins of the flesh that send more souls to hell than anything else. And that

00:31:39.120 is what, that's right from Our Lady of Fatima, which is why the blessings document, Fiducia

00:31:46.540 Supplicans, and that new synod document are so concerning. They clearly want to change the

00:31:51.520 church's teaching on that. And Leo said that attitudes need to change before they can do

00:31:57.140 things like women's ordination and changing the approach to homosexuality of the church.

00:32:01.820 attitudes have to change and that's what i suspect is one of the core reasons for all

00:32:08.460 these weird appointments he makes these bishops because yeah most of them speak in the united

00:32:13.680 states you'll get these people who will say oh i knew this bishop when he was a priest he was my

00:32:18.380 old parish priest he was great and then that bishop gets up there and the first thing he does

00:32:22.020 starts spouting about abortion or in a really weird way or he starts spouting about immigration

00:32:26.380 i suspect strongly that most of these appointments are about changing attitudes if you get a bishop

00:32:31.460 to start teaching things that are, we'll say, a little more liberal, for lack of a better way to

00:32:36.060 describe it, a little more permissive morally than what they're used to, attitudes will change.

00:32:42.260 The faith is not transmitted bottom up. It's transmitted from those in authority down.

00:32:48.380 Look in your own household. If you've done a competent job, not even a great job, just a

00:32:52.840 competent job of passing the faith on to your children, they'll probably practice the faith

00:32:57.220 to some level as adults, right?

00:33:00.100 That's generally how it goes.

00:33:01.840 And it's not an attack on all the people out there

00:33:04.340 who have watched most of their kids leave the faith.

00:33:07.620 That's not.

00:33:08.600 We live in a very depraved period in history.

00:33:11.040 That's probably why many of them left.

00:33:13.540 But when you have your bishops

00:33:14.620 and your priest preaching a contrary gospel,

00:33:17.320 that's the outcome you're going to get.

00:33:19.860 I've seen it with people amazingly in my own life

00:33:24.280 well before I was on YouTube,

00:33:25.980 You know, in college, I worked at my Newman Center, was a volunteer there.

00:33:30.620 I logged into my personal Instagram for the first time in about, do it about once a year to keep the login working because I don't really care about Instagram.

00:33:37.900 But I actually took a look for the first time in a long time.

00:33:41.180 And most of the friends I had in college who had been in that Newman Center have left the faith.

00:33:45.400 And these were the team members.

00:33:47.360 These were the insiders.

00:33:48.400 These were the young people most on fire for the faith who left the faith either over divorce or left the faith over, you know, the bedroom sins or they left the faith for some other reason.

00:33:59.480 Not all of them, but most of them.

00:34:02.480 Again, these are the most on fire.

00:34:04.140 How many of you watching this know people who were super on fire for the faith who left?

00:34:10.220 Either became a Protestant or they became Orthodox or they just left.

00:34:14.820 Where do you see this going?

00:34:15.640 You are a keen watcher of the church, have been for many years now, coming on almost a decade in a couple of years.

00:34:23.100 But you've been with your ear to the ground and eyes in it all the time.

00:34:30.620 Where do you see this going?

00:34:32.040 What's your thoughts on what we should expect the coming year or the coming years?

00:34:36.640 I think one of the big things you're going to see in the next few months is the question of the liturgy.

00:34:40.540 and that's not just because the this coming conclave is alleged or coming consistory

00:34:48.440 is expected to speak about the the liturgy the french bishops were told by pope leo to

00:34:54.980 find a generous accommodation for those quote-unquote attached to the traditional mass

00:34:59.460 i hate the word attached for it i really do but that aside he told them to do that and everybody

00:35:04.540 breathed a sigh of relief it took that to be a positive sign the french bishops and their

00:35:09.200 response was, well, we are. And then they started listing what their generous accommodation would

00:35:14.580 be, making traditional priests, maybe even the laity, swear essentially a loyalty oath to Vatican

00:35:20.660 II, agree to a revision of the Missal in line with Fiducius Supplican, not Fiducius Supplican,

00:35:26.260 Traditionis Custodis. And which, by the way, if you remember what those were, if the Vatican ever

00:35:31.720 actually implemented formally those changes outlined in Traditionis Custodis, it would

00:35:36.820 require a new Missal. Because one of the things the French bishops want to do is force the

00:35:42.560 traditional Latin Mass onto the Novus Ordo calendar. You know very well that that would require

00:35:48.880 practically a new Missal to be written. Because there are a whole host of feast days that just

00:35:54.080 don't have prayer sets for them in the 1962 Missal. On top of the fact they would want it

00:36:00.420 in the vernacular, which some people think is a great idea, except the entire reason your priest

00:36:04.320 going to ad-lib the mass and the consecration prayers, well, not your priest, I would assume

00:36:07.960 anybody watching the LifeSite News, John Henry Weston show would actually know that if you were

00:36:15.520 at a parish where your priest was constantly ad-libbing the consecration, you'd probably

00:36:18.320 move to another parish. But it's what allows it to happen is the vernacular. But they would want

00:36:25.480 to impose all of these things that require a new missile. So don't be shocked if that happens.

00:36:30.680 The Vatican has hinted they're going to watch what the French bishops are doing for their

00:36:33.780 implementation of Traditionis Custodis through the Leo filter. And with the excommunication,

00:36:40.900 the SSPX coming, because they're going to get excommunicated at this point, we know the Vatican

00:36:44.900 is not hidden, that they've had that response, even though when I read the code of canon law,

00:36:51.140 the questions, the stipulations, there is a clause for the state of emergency. It doesn't say Rome

00:36:56.080 has to declare one for it to be legal. They're still going to excommunicate them. And then you're

00:37:00.280 going to see what happens afterwards. And I don't think it's going to be pleasant. There might be

00:37:06.300 a loosening of Traditiones Custodos with some other caveats. And I think that's going to be

00:37:09.920 probably from July of this year to next year will probably be one of the major drivers of

00:37:16.740 news in the church. But I couldn't be wrong. I've been wrong before.

00:37:20.440 My goodness. Well, I would encourage our viewers here to please, I'm sure almost all of you,

00:37:26.420 if not all of you have already.

00:37:28.180 But please go check out Dr. Anthony Stein's work

00:37:30.940 over at Return to Tradition.

00:37:32.860 Anthony, so good of you to be with us.

00:37:34.440 God bless you.

00:37:35.220 God bless you.

00:37:35.780 And thank you for having me on again.

00:37:36.880 And God bless all of you.

00:37:38.300 And we'll see you next time.

00:37:43.520 Hi, I'm Liz Yor.

00:37:44.960 I'm really urging all the audience

00:37:47.060 to continue to follow LifeSite News

00:37:49.740 for all information news about life,

00:37:53.480 for a great perspective on all the breaking news in the world.

00:37:59.280 Thank you for watching and continue to watch and follow LifeSite News.

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The John-Henry Westen Show - May 22, 2026

One Year Into Pope Leo XIV： Are Traditional Catholics Losing Hope？

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