The John-Henry Westen Show - OUTRAGE： Archbishop Cancels a Catholic Family Business

00:00:00.000 My prayer, my hope for my children is that even despite all of these things that are happening,

00:00:06.860 that they will not lose their faith, that they will stay strong in their faith.

00:00:21.220 I'm going to tell you a story, a story that's going on for you most particularly right now.

00:00:30.780 I'm going to tell you a story about betrayal, infidelity, and grave hardship.

00:00:40.420 I'm going to tell you a story about successors of the apostles who are not living up to the mission.

00:00:49.440 I'm going to tell you a story that involves great corruption, great evil, but also great hope.

00:01:00.000 I'm going to tell you the story of Sanctus Ranch.

00:01:03.940 You've all heard about cancellations now of priests, especially and even in this diocese.

00:01:08.940 You've heard about cancellation of good deacons.

00:01:11.500 You've heard about cancellation of Latin masses.

00:01:14.280 You've heard about cancellations of good orders.

00:01:17.540 You've heard about cancellations of good bishops.

00:01:20.160 God bless Bishop Strickland.

00:01:22.940 But this is unique because this is the attempted cancellation of a holy Catholic family and their own private business.

00:01:36.160 Since when, in all the time that the liberal bishops have championed the rights of workers,

00:01:48.380 the rights of people to have what they need to survive,

00:01:53.420 have you ever heard of the cancellation of a family, let alone a family with six children?

00:02:03.720 But yet, that's what you're living today.

00:02:08.880 So, stay tuned to this episode of the John Henry Weston Show.

00:02:12.420 And let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:02:19.060 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

00:02:23.860 Amen.

00:02:25.280 So, I'm going to read to you the article, which is going to appear on LifeSite News in a few days,

00:02:33.260 touching this very topic.

00:02:34.960 In a devastating blow to a faithful Texas Catholic family with six children

00:02:42.540 who've made their living running a private ranch,

00:02:45.200 the Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas, has issued a letter to all Catholics

00:02:49.500 directing them not to do business with the ranch.

00:02:52.740 The January 30th letter prohibits all clergy, schools, retreat centers, Catholic groups,

00:02:57.020 quote, from contracting with or utilizing Sanctus Ranch

00:03:02.180 for any Catholic-sponsored retreats, meetings, activities, or spiritual endeavors, end quote.

00:03:06.660 Even where contracts were already signed,

00:03:09.560 the bishop directed them to discuss it with his legal team

00:03:12.460 rather than fulfill their contractual obligations.

00:03:16.220 Archbishop Gustavo Garcia Siller instructs Catholics generally against Sanctus Ranch,

00:03:21.720 telling them, quote, not to, and I quote,

00:03:24.300 to participate in any of its activities, end quote.

00:03:27.540 So, you might ask yourself,

00:03:31.100 what could motivate such an absolutely serious sanction,

00:03:37.740 something that is so drastic you've never heard of it before?

00:03:42.180 Could it be, for instance, that, you know, there is some,

00:03:48.020 are they promoting abortion?

00:03:51.040 Are they promoting homosexuality, same-sex marriage?

00:03:53.440 Are they offering contraception to guests?

00:03:56.280 Are they, you know, advocating women priests?

00:04:01.220 Or are they offering scandalous sex education in the school here?

00:04:06.500 Is there come some kind of sex scandal involved?

00:04:11.640 Were they instructing people against the teachings of the church?

00:04:16.940 Obviously, the answer to that is no.

00:04:21.580 A resounding no on all fronts.

00:04:23.360 In fact, it's just the opposite.

00:04:24.360 You know, it's interesting, though,

00:04:28.620 in this very diocese,

00:04:31.020 there are Catholic priests and Catholic teachers

00:04:35.120 guilty of every single one of those charges,

00:04:39.740 and none of them have been issued a censure,

00:04:42.980 let alone been canceled.

00:04:44.900 What's wrong in the archdiocese?

00:04:51.900 Dan Savigny is the founder and owner of Sanctus Ranch,

00:05:03.780 and he and his family, his wife Jennifer and their six children,

00:05:07.560 run this ranch for the glory of God.

00:05:11.220 Dan, thank you for being with us.

00:05:12.740 Well, thank you for coming down.

00:05:13.900 And it's an amazing place.

00:05:16.860 We've been here just over the day and looking around.

00:05:20.520 Let's start with this chapel.

00:05:21.820 I mean, this is incredible.

00:05:24.980 Beautiful artwork you've got here.

00:05:27.820 The marble work is incredible.

00:05:31.520 You know, how long did you...

00:05:32.280 You constructed this yourself, or had it constructed?

00:05:35.500 We did, yes.

00:05:36.800 This building was actually built,

00:05:38.780 and we thought it was going to be a meeting space.

00:05:41.160 And then as the Lord kept putting on our heart

00:05:44.380 different retreats and other things that were going on,

00:05:46.540 we needed a bigger place for worship.

00:05:48.940 And so earlier this year, back in about August,

00:05:52.820 we went ahead and started to construct the sanctuary here,

00:05:56.580 and Regina Chapel came to life.

00:05:58.580 Wait, August is...

00:06:02.420 This...

00:06:04.580 Wait a minute.

00:06:05.400 Like, less than half a year ago?

00:06:07.680 That's right.

00:06:08.180 About six months ago.

00:06:09.900 And we just...

00:06:11.000 We knew that that was the time,

00:06:12.820 and so the Lord spoke to me,

00:06:14.540 and the next day we started construction.

00:06:18.100 So did you have a big crew here?

00:06:20.400 Because, I mean, obviously you can't lay all this

00:06:22.800 and do all this in such little time.

00:06:25.040 So what did you have for a crew?

00:06:26.260 Actually, it was great.

00:06:27.080 It was myself and my two older boys,

00:06:29.740 and we got started and did all of the construction

00:06:32.600 on the base levels,

00:06:34.420 built out the altar rail,

00:06:36.480 built out all the backdrops, the altar,

00:06:39.060 and then I had a crew come in that I assisted,

00:06:41.400 and we did the tile together.

00:06:43.900 Wow.

00:06:44.360 That was about eight weeks.

00:06:47.020 Well, let's look at a clip of that,

00:06:49.600 because that's just unreal.

00:06:51.820 So, okay.

00:06:53.820 Tell us about...

00:06:54.800 What is Sanctus Ranch?

00:06:55.540 How did you dream this up?

00:06:57.280 Where did this come from?

00:06:58.800 I had been involved in a lot of youth ministry,

00:07:01.520 other ministries.

00:07:02.540 My wife had also been involved.

00:07:04.520 We had six children.

00:07:05.540 And, you know, so as we would go out

00:07:07.180 and go to different retreat centers,

00:07:08.700 we were always struck

00:07:10.040 that they were a little bit underwhelming,

00:07:13.280 kind of subpar.

00:07:14.280 My wife is an Italian.

00:07:15.580 She's a great cook,

00:07:16.480 and the food was never that great.

00:07:18.160 And so, you know,

00:07:19.460 we had early on in our marriage

00:07:21.300 started to feel this call

00:07:22.480 that the Lord might be asking us

00:07:24.480 to build a retreat center.

00:07:26.660 Originally, we were not in Texas

00:07:28.220 when we started to have that first little nudge,

00:07:31.240 but then as we got to Texas,

00:07:33.040 it resurfaced,

00:07:34.720 and we knew that back in 2016,

00:07:36.700 it was time.

00:07:38.040 We weren't sure how exactly,

00:07:40.640 but we began to just take a look

00:07:42.240 for property that might be available

00:07:44.160 that we could build a retreat center

00:07:46.020 and build a place where people could

00:07:47.580 kind of retreat from the world,

00:07:49.500 come out,

00:07:49.920 and encounter our Lord at a greater level.

00:07:52.020 And so that's how it started.

00:07:54.080 So this was started out of a faith conviction,

00:07:58.260 but yet you had to earn for your family

00:08:02.240 to make do.

00:08:03.380 You've involved all your kids in this work,

00:08:05.460 your wife in this work.

00:08:06.760 It's a struggle, a labor of love.

00:08:09.920 You're making ends meet, hopefully,

00:08:12.780 but it looks like something you've poured into

00:08:15.560 rather than got lots out of.

00:08:16.880 Yeah, so when we first started,

00:08:19.040 we were going to have both our religious retreats,

00:08:21.560 and then I also had a company at the time

00:08:23.180 I was doing some consulting.

00:08:24.720 We were able to do that for a period of time,

00:08:26.760 but then we hit the great pandemic,

00:08:29.020 and that shut everything down in the retreat world,

00:08:31.840 and as we didn't have any staff,

00:08:34.800 we had to kind of consolidate.

00:08:37.180 So really, for the last two or three years,

00:08:40.120 we've been rebuilding.

00:08:41.460 We had built out tons of facilities.

00:08:43.960 We have 110 beds here at Sanctus Ranch,

00:08:47.320 and so it's a lot of work,

00:08:49.700 and so there are many hours that it's my wife Jennifer

00:08:52.520 and I and the kids,

00:08:54.260 they're being voluntold to get everything done

00:08:56.900 so that we can kind of keep this place operational.

00:08:59.920 Beautiful.

00:09:00.560 And now, over this past year or more,

00:09:04.120 things have been going fairly well

00:09:05.380 with regard to getting people in for retreats

00:09:07.880 and things like that happening.

00:09:09.500 Yeah, it's been going well.

00:09:10.860 Interesting, I will say, since the world shut down

00:09:15.060 and our church decided to shut down,

00:09:18.920 ever since then, retreats have come back in.

00:09:21.740 We've been very busy.

00:09:22.900 Every weekend we'll have a retreat,

00:09:24.360 but the numbers have been smaller,

00:09:25.960 and so even that, with the numbers being smaller,

00:09:28.460 has been an adjustment,

00:09:30.040 but it was really starting to pick back up,

00:09:33.120 and we thought 2024, you know,

00:09:35.220 we might have just weathered the storm enough

00:09:37.600 and the Lord was going to start to bring some new things.

00:09:42.040 Well, indeed, he sought to bring a new thing,

00:09:44.900 not something that you were expecting.

00:09:48.680 So, that was the first thing that struck me.

00:09:52.520 The Archbishop, Archbishop Gustavo Garcia Siller,

00:09:56.620 releases this letter that's unreal.

00:10:00.320 Now, providentially, I knew you

00:10:02.640 because you and your son Matthew came down

00:10:04.400 to Rome Life Forum in Rome,

00:10:05.940 and I got to know you there.

00:10:08.260 And all I knew, and I'll say,

00:10:10.240 you don't have to close your ears,

00:10:11.060 but you're just a holy, faithful Catholic

00:10:14.020 who wants to do what God wants,

00:10:15.520 and you've got a beautiful son

00:10:16.800 who looks like he's leaning toward priesthood

00:10:19.740 at the very least,

00:10:20.420 and that's awesome.

00:10:22.000 And I have a holy jealousy

00:10:23.260 because I, you know, I've got six sons.

00:10:25.440 I hope one of them might be where your Matthew

00:10:28.060 is in discerning priesthood like that.

00:10:31.400 But to see that letter from the Archbishop,

00:10:35.300 that was,

00:10:36.520 the only term that comes to mind is vicious

00:10:39.240 because it's attacking your livelihood

00:10:44.020 in addition with false accusations.

00:10:47.020 But tell us about the impact of that letter.

00:10:51.780 As I understand,

00:10:52.460 it was sent from the Archbishop

00:10:53.700 to every parish in the diocese,

00:10:57.080 a group that calls itself Catholic in the diocese,

00:11:01.680 to all the religious houses in the diocese.

00:11:04.540 It is, it says it prohibits them,

00:11:08.320 which is a formal command.

00:11:09.720 And then to the faithful,

00:11:11.860 the rest of the diocese,

00:11:13.280 just all Catholics,

00:11:15.700 he says, yeah, don't go to anything,

00:11:18.100 any of their activities.

00:11:20.000 So like if you guys hold a fishing tournament

00:11:23.260 with a fish fry after,

00:11:25.560 they can't come to that either.

00:11:27.120 That doesn't,

00:11:29.040 it's not, forget about it.

00:11:30.520 No, we shouldn't forget about it.

00:11:31.540 But let's say it's beyond immoral.

00:11:33.960 I don't know, is that even legal?

00:11:36.120 Well, there are questions.

00:11:37.160 And, you know,

00:11:37.900 we, since that letter came out January 30th,

00:11:40.660 when I was made aware of it early in the morning,

00:11:43.800 my text messages kind of blew up.

00:11:46.000 And I read it.

00:11:46.820 I was shocked.

00:11:48.180 I'm very much confused by it.

00:11:50.880 I don't know why this is the approach that was taken.

00:11:54.940 But, you know,

00:11:55.840 we are exploring and continue to pursue

00:11:58.340 canonical and civil action

00:12:01.420 because it is just what we would state

00:12:05.320 is just an egregious overstep.

00:12:07.860 It's an abuse that is quite shocking,

00:12:10.860 quite frankly.

00:12:14.220 So this diocese,

00:12:16.620 Archbishop Garcia-Siller,

00:12:19.520 is controversial

00:12:20.400 for not cancelling things that should be cancelled

00:12:27.040 and for cancelling a lot of things that shouldn't be cancelled.

00:12:31.360 So that's what made me wonder,

00:12:33.140 you know,

00:12:33.360 because you have basically congregants coming here.

00:12:37.060 It's unofficial,

00:12:38.320 and it's not, you know,

00:12:39.800 public in that sense

00:12:40.980 that the bishop has control over it.

00:12:43.000 The bishop's letter, in fact,

00:12:44.940 questions the validity of the mass,

00:12:47.200 which I thought,

00:12:47.860 that's pretty scary

00:12:49.200 because that would make the public think,

00:12:51.440 oh my gosh, it's not a real mass.

00:12:53.100 Whereas you can't,

00:12:54.840 he can't do that.

00:12:55.580 That Father Closter is validly ordained.

00:12:59.760 He is not restricted from saying mass.

00:13:03.620 He's saying this is considered a private mass,

00:13:05.760 even though people can come to it.

00:13:07.800 It's not public

00:13:08.460 in that it's not even in a church.

00:13:10.140 This is a private chapel that you built.

00:13:13.760 That's unreal to me.

00:13:15.260 It was really one of the more shocking parts of the letter.

00:13:18.540 You know, I'm not a canon lawyer,

00:13:21.480 but as soon as I started to read it,

00:13:23.780 it was confusing.

00:13:25.400 And I think that it's unfortunate

00:13:27.600 when we have decrees

00:13:29.580 or information that comes out from the church

00:13:31.940 in that way

00:13:33.060 because it allowed people to question

00:13:35.460 what they might have experienced.

00:13:37.740 As a priest that is here and saying a mass,

00:13:40.780 if someone goes to mass,

00:13:42.360 and that is a validly ordained priest,

00:13:44.260 it is a valid mass

00:13:45.520 as long as you have proper form.

00:13:48.420 And, you know, in the letter,

00:13:49.680 it even said that confessions

00:13:51.460 that were heard here were invalid

00:13:54.620 because the faculties weren't there.

00:13:57.700 And, John Henry, I think the biggest challenge is

00:14:00.500 all of that was stated in a letter publicly

00:14:04.240 and never stated to me prior.

00:14:08.180 There was an opportunity that we were looking to sit down

00:14:12.560 with the archdiocese,

00:14:14.300 and then this letter trumped all of that.

00:14:18.740 So I think it does shock people.

00:14:21.300 It shocks the family members that are here at the school

00:14:24.500 wondering, well, wait a second, did something go wrong?

00:14:27.160 And I just think that that's really poor.

00:14:31.300 It's uncharitable.

00:14:33.780 And really, I hope that there's some resolution

00:14:36.440 that that can be addressed in short order.

00:14:39.980 So this letter, it seemed to drop all of a sudden,

00:14:43.780 but in it, it says they've been trying to contact you for months.

00:14:46.740 And, I mean, it's stark.

00:14:48.380 It's not only a little bit stark.

00:14:49.800 Let me just read, if you mind holding that for a second,

00:14:52.560 let me just read one section of it that I just found.

00:14:54.520 It's so strong, it is unbelievable.

00:14:57.640 It's the kind of condemnation you would think

00:14:59.960 would come from having a pro-abortion priest

00:15:04.080 or a pro-homosexual gathering in a Catholic church or something.

00:15:07.760 But no, it's about Sanctus Ranch.

00:15:10.360 It is not, and the not's in all caps,

00:15:12.880 not, and never has been an approved Catholic apostolate.

00:15:17.800 Have you ever claimed to be an approved Catholic apostolate?

00:15:19.960 No, that's the shocking thing.

00:15:21.400 We haven't claimed that,

00:15:23.160 and that's one of those great misrepresentations.

00:15:25.980 But it goes on.

00:15:27.060 It is a privately owned business

00:15:28.720 that is misrepresenting itself to the public.

00:15:33.240 I cannot and will not be silent

00:15:36.540 and witness the people of God being misled

00:15:39.680 by those who are acting independently

00:15:42.180 of the Catholic church in the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

00:15:48.240 I'm sorry.

00:15:49.280 It's so strong.

00:15:50.500 And it's dropped.

00:15:51.880 They say they've been trying to contact you for months.

00:15:53.780 What happened there?

00:15:54.620 Well, we have had an invitation to go meet with the Archdiocese,

00:16:00.060 and via email, we went back and forth.

00:16:02.660 The holidays were there, so we got it scheduled.

00:16:05.300 And that meeting was scheduled for the last week in January.

00:16:08.460 And I sent an email back to the Archdiocese stating that there were some things I had additional

00:16:15.800 questions about, and that previous weekend, we had a big freeze here in South Texas.

00:16:22.200 And I actually lost the well here, broke pipes.

00:16:26.280 I was standing in six, eight inches of water, and I had to re-plumb the entire thing.

00:16:31.000 And yes, I do that myself.

00:16:32.560 So I sent an email saying that I was asking to reschedule that appointment.

00:16:38.720 And then within a day, I received a letter from the in-house counsel telling me that I'm

00:16:44.220 no longer to speak to anyone and to refer everything to him as the lawyer.

00:16:49.240 And so that pretty much shut down communications.

00:16:52.240 Wow.

00:16:52.460 So, a family guy running a family business does most of the stuff himself, has the freak

00:16:59.240 accident, because in Texas, I don't think things freeze very often, and have to deal

00:17:05.380 with the frozen pipes, so I have to postpone the meeting, and that's it.

00:17:09.820 That was it.

00:17:11.160 And it's really sad.

00:17:13.040 It starts to give one the thought that maybe we're not acting in goodwill.

00:17:19.040 And it's disappointing.

00:17:20.940 You know, in some ways, you can understand that perhaps in public parlance, secular parlance,

00:17:30.640 that's just blowing you off when you say, my pipes froze, like someone ate my homework,

00:17:35.080 and it's a lie.

00:17:36.180 One thing that Catholics don't do is lie.

00:17:40.980 And so, here you are in good faith, and obviously, they either didn't trust you or whatever,

00:17:47.760 but it's just unreal.

00:17:49.280 No, it is, and it's sad.

00:17:51.180 And, you know, it's not like I'm 10 minutes from the chancery office.

00:17:55.180 It was a scheduled appointment, and I just had 100 people coming in for a weekend retreat.

00:18:00.080 I had to put water back on.

00:18:02.020 And so that was the priority.

00:18:04.740 But then it went from a casual meeting, everybody's okay, we're scheduling it, to an attorney's letter,

00:18:11.700 and within six days, I believe, six days, a total public defamation of everything we're doing.

00:18:19.440 Let's talk about the school, because the school is mentioned in the letter that, you know,

00:18:23.380 it's not an official school.

00:18:25.040 I can't remember the exact wording of what the archbishop says in the letter.

00:18:30.000 But he basically attacks the school, Lumen Christi Academy, I believe it's called.

00:18:34.960 And what is that?

00:18:37.080 What's your response to his charges?

00:18:38.740 Yeah, Lumen Christi Academy came about for our family, along with a couple of other families,

00:18:44.020 because we experienced a Catholic school that just had a massive tuition increase.

00:18:49.000 And that was towards the end of last year.

00:18:51.100 And we just were not in that position.

00:18:53.400 You know, we run a retreat center.

00:18:55.400 This isn't something that we could pay those kinds of tuitions.

00:18:59.260 So we started to have this conversation.

00:19:01.360 What should we do?

00:19:02.200 Should we homeschool?

00:19:03.240 Should we do a co-op?

00:19:04.820 And as these conversations moved forward, we really landed on a private micro school.

00:19:09.940 And so we decided to open a private micro school as a group of Catholic laity.

00:19:16.100 And so we wanted a micro school from sixth grade to twelfth grade,

00:19:19.820 where the kids could come and learn in a culture that was an ethos of a school, if you would,

00:19:26.600 that was totally Catholic.

00:19:28.940 But it is not an archdiocesan school.

00:19:31.740 It's never been advertised as an archdiocesan school.

00:19:35.020 It is a classical education in a private micro school.

00:19:38.740 And it was a great way to have something being done here Monday through Thursday,

00:19:43.740 where we don't typically have retreats in.

00:19:46.000 One of the accusations in the letter, too, is that you're illicitly using the name Catholic.

00:19:52.520 That was one of the more humorous and challenging to read,

00:19:57.500 because, you know, if one was to go to my website,

00:20:00.740 they would see the use of the word Catholic is how I reference myself.

00:20:05.860 Sanctus Ranch is not a Catholic retreat center per se,

00:20:09.580 but my wife and I are Catholic.

00:20:10.940 Our family is Catholic.

00:20:11.980 And when you come on this property, we have brought that Catholic tradition into everything,

00:20:17.980 be it the Sacred Heart statues, the statue of St. Michael the Archangel.

00:20:22.380 We've got Our Lady in many different places.

00:20:25.660 And so it's interesting.

00:20:27.180 The attack came as I used the word Catholic without authorization.

00:20:32.200 And yet I will tell you, we've spent the last eight years running a facility,

00:20:36.860 being attacked from the other side,

00:20:38.460 with people that want to come and use the facility, asking,

00:20:42.000 would you mind taking down the pictures of the saints?

00:20:44.620 And I said, no, because I'm Catholic,

00:20:46.600 and that's how we're going to run this place.

00:20:48.680 You're welcome to utilize it or not.

00:20:50.960 But we've never put it out that the school or the retreat center

00:20:54.500 is a Catholic archdiocesan facility.

00:20:58.520 It's unbelievable.

00:20:59.440 This is happening all over the place, and not just here, actually.

00:21:06.000 That there are, not so elaborate as yours, I must say,

00:21:09.340 but that there are ranches and homes being used as sort of sanctuaries for the Latin Mass,

00:21:15.980 which is being canceled just about everywhere.

00:21:18.400 So I see this, and in my interview with Bishop Schneider,

00:21:22.580 who was very much about this,

00:21:24.420 he said, you know, this home churches, if you will,

00:21:28.200 which is what this is in a way,

00:21:30.940 will become the underground church in America,

00:21:34.600 in different countries all over the world.

00:21:37.180 And it's happening.

00:21:38.040 And I think this is an example of the backlash,

00:21:42.040 the officialdom backlash against the underground church,

00:21:44.680 because the underground church is forming.

00:21:47.600 Because what is coming, God forbid,

00:21:50.800 and it's happening, unfortunately,

00:21:51.960 and God knows, but he has a plan for it.

00:21:54.700 But there is a false church being built.

00:21:56.720 One that is accepting of homosexuality.

00:22:00.060 One that is accepting of a woman's right to choose,

00:22:03.640 as it might be called.

00:22:04.600 One that is going to be promoting women in ordained roles in the church.

00:22:10.220 One that is, you know,

00:22:11.940 forbidding of Holy Communion on the tongue.

00:22:15.540 All this stuff sounds familiar,

00:22:17.740 and because it's already happening.

00:22:19.800 There is, there are these little oasis places

00:22:23.300 that have to be off the official map,

00:22:27.120 because they're, you know, it's being squelched.

00:22:32.160 And so this very much sounds to me like a story

00:22:35.800 about the underground church being established,

00:22:39.760 but at the same time facing the kind of shutdown we'd expect.

00:22:43.260 Well, and I think you and I share this as fathers.

00:22:46.300 We have a responsibility.

00:22:47.420 As laymen, we have a responsibility.

00:22:49.800 We're the spiritual leaders of our domestic church.

00:22:52.480 And so when you and I see what's going on in the church,

00:22:56.580 it's a moment of arrest.

00:22:59.040 Like, wait, no, that's not where we're going to go.

00:23:02.280 That can't be what I'm teaching my children.

00:23:04.740 That is not the faith,

00:23:06.500 the Catholic faith that we have known for thousands of years.

00:23:09.740 And so we must do something.

00:23:11.420 That might mean for some people,

00:23:13.060 they're driving two and three hours to attend a mass that is reverent,

00:23:17.980 that is bringing the faith to their family and enriching that spirit.

00:23:23.760 But for others of us, it might say,

00:23:25.900 hey, right here in my home,

00:23:27.840 I'm going to do whatever it takes

00:23:29.640 to make sure that my family has access to the faith.

00:23:33.200 And that's what my wife Jennifer and I have done here

00:23:35.720 with our business, Sanctus Ranch.

00:23:37.980 We've said we're going to be who we are

00:23:40.700 and we're going to make a place.

00:23:42.700 It can be retreats that are coming out.

00:23:45.020 It may be that people are utilizing Sanctus Ranch

00:23:47.960 and Lumen Christi Academy as a school.

00:23:50.220 And it might be a place where people just come in community

00:23:53.200 because the attack is here.

00:23:55.360 It's at our doorstep.

00:23:57.060 We wish it was the world.

00:23:59.360 We wish it wasn't even our own church at times.

00:24:03.560 But the road of a Christian often leads to the cross.

00:24:07.240 And so I think we all better get ready.

00:24:10.300 Indeed, indeed.

00:24:11.080 Now, you are open to taking this fight to the proper authorities,

00:24:16.420 in other words, to a canonical court

00:24:18.560 or to civil courts if needed.

00:24:23.260 What's preventing you from doing that right now?

00:24:25.040 And what are your needs?

00:24:26.460 Well, one of the things that is really a challenge

00:24:28.600 is when you run a facility like this,

00:24:31.120 you're dependent on the next weekend and the next weekend.

00:24:34.540 What the Archbishop's letter did

00:24:36.920 is it immediately cut off all the retreats.

00:24:41.540 I have retreats where parishes have contracts with us

00:24:45.500 and they just sent me a letter stating

00:24:47.740 that they're going to break the contract

00:24:49.980 and they don't care.

00:24:52.080 Quite frankly, it's most of the retreat weekends we had

00:24:55.720 were Catholic churches that were here

00:24:58.100 and they've all come off the table.

00:24:59.860 So our biggest challenge moving forward

00:25:02.860 is to, number one, not be rash.

00:25:06.260 I think that when people react rashly,

00:25:09.680 sometimes it's not as prudent as it could be.

00:25:11.740 So to be patient, to pray and ask the Lord

00:25:15.480 for what his will is.

00:25:16.940 And then we have to put together a plan

00:25:19.400 because basically we just had the complete elimination

00:25:23.620 of all revenue.

00:25:25.140 And that comes after fighting for the last two

00:25:30.620 and three years just to get back

00:25:33.460 as we held on after the affliction.

00:25:36.820 Wow.

00:25:37.960 Your six children, what are their ages?

00:25:41.780 So my oldest is 23 all the way down to 13.

00:25:45.980 And so these are not games.

00:25:50.820 This letter from the archbishop, you know,

00:25:54.900 when priests are canceled, you're talking about one individual

00:25:58.060 who, God willing, will find some support.

00:26:01.380 They can even sue for support.

00:26:03.180 But this is unique in that the archbishop of his own accord

00:26:08.860 has attacked a Catholic family.

00:26:11.040 A Catholic family trying to live for the faith,

00:26:14.480 he's attacked it with very apparent falsehoods

00:26:19.800 in a way that in some places,

00:26:24.120 lawyers would be rubbing their hands together

00:26:25.900 because they'll be able to go after the archdiocese.

00:26:28.120 I wanted to tell you that, you know, all of you,

00:26:30.300 that there is a life funder set up for the Savinia family.

00:26:35.140 And if you go to the link in this story,

00:26:38.800 you'll find that life funder

00:26:40.080 so that you can support the family in their current needs

00:26:43.080 and also the challenge that they might put

00:26:46.000 to what's going on here.

00:26:48.200 We appreciate that.

00:26:49.400 We're very grateful.

00:26:50.460 As you say, you know, we're a family.

00:26:52.680 This has a big effect on us.

00:26:56.380 Many people don't know.

00:26:58.180 We have folks that come to Sanctus Ranch

00:27:00.660 and have for years and they go,

00:27:01.860 wow, it is so beautiful.

00:27:03.420 It's so wonderful.

00:27:04.280 What they might not know

00:27:05.380 is I took absolutely everything that I have.

00:27:08.880 Everything.

00:27:10.240 And it's in these buildings.

00:27:11.300 And it's in the operation.

00:27:13.720 My wife works 60, 70, 80 hours a week,

00:27:17.420 sometimes even more,

00:27:18.680 to provide all the meals and everything.

00:27:21.740 We've been all in.

00:27:23.340 We've been all in for a long, long time.

00:27:25.980 My children don't have the college education fund.

00:27:28.560 My kids don't have things set aside.

00:27:31.080 We don't have the retirement account.

00:27:32.380 We don't have any of that.

00:27:33.400 And so to take this blow now at that point as a father is difficult.

00:27:39.420 But we'll continue to do whatever we have to.

00:27:42.100 We pray that the Lord will send support if that's his desire for us to continue.

00:27:47.040 We will continue to operate a facility, bring in retreats so that people can encounter our Lord.

00:27:53.880 But it's going to take some help.

00:27:57.480 We need some help.

00:27:58.720 And if there's someone that's listening and they're in that position to help with advice, prayers, we'll take that.

00:28:05.040 Monetarily, it's going to be a little bit of a work.

00:28:09.160 This is David versus Goliath.

00:28:12.360 But we're pretty good with a slingshot.

00:28:14.960 Beautiful.

00:28:15.860 Dan, can you show us around the property a little bit?

00:28:17.980 I'd love to show you guys.

00:28:19.000 So here we are.

00:28:19.920 We're kind of approaching the retreat center.

00:28:22.120 So maybe we'll take our walk up here and I'll show you all the different facilities from our cafeteria to our meeting spaces.

00:28:28.400 And then we'll go check out the lodging in the chapel too.

00:28:31.060 That sounds awesome.

00:28:32.120 Your stonework is incredibly beautiful.

00:28:35.000 Very, very blessed.

00:28:35.980 Some of this was here before my wife and I purchased the property.

00:28:38.900 And then we've continued that same theme in all the buildings that we've gone ahead and built.

00:28:44.060 Amazing.

00:28:44.700 Let's go.

00:28:45.300 All right.

00:28:55.780 So this building was original, right?

00:28:57.900 This building was original.

00:28:59.120 Yeah.

00:28:59.260 And that building over there was a steel frame garage.

00:29:03.320 Ah.

00:29:03.860 And it actually had tractors in it when we bought it.

00:29:07.020 Oh, my.

00:29:07.540 So this is actually now the residence.

00:29:10.840 Yeah.

00:29:11.200 It rambles on.

00:29:12.500 But that one was a five-bathroom, two-bedroom house.

00:29:17.540 And we had six children.

00:29:19.540 So that didn't work out so well.

00:29:21.160 So we took the three-car garage and put in three more bedrooms in there.

00:29:25.740 So.

00:29:26.520 Wow.

00:29:26.800 But never intended it to be where we would live.

00:29:30.100 But it was a better financial decision to stay in the house versus building something else.

00:29:35.340 Yeah.

00:29:36.400 With what we could rent it for as a retreat.

00:29:38.920 Yeah.

00:29:39.200 So this is Magna Hall.

00:29:42.360 This is one of our primary meeting spaces.

00:29:44.520 Actually, we're going to use it for a big meeting tonight.

00:29:46.380 So we'll probably get to see that a little bit more as we move forward.

00:29:49.240 But typically when retreats come in, this is the space that they're going to use for lots of different things.

00:29:54.880 How many can it hold?

00:29:55.480 This can really hold up to about 300 people depending on how you're setting things up.

00:30:00.780 So when they're here, we also have over here the courtyard area.

00:30:05.260 So many of the retreats, they'll kind of come out of their presentations, spend a little time out here.

00:30:10.880 For the school, you'll notice that the kids come out and they play football in the field and soccer and things of that nature.

00:30:18.160 But it's great.

00:30:19.060 One of the beauties of being in Texas is even here in the wintertime, it's beautiful.

00:30:23.400 So we can hang out, spend a little time.

00:30:26.260 We also have our dining facility over here, the atrium.

00:30:29.540 Maybe we'll go take a look at that.

00:30:30.940 Let's do that.

00:30:49.100 So I'm excited.

00:30:49.980 This is Vesper's Lodge.

00:30:51.100 We'll take a look through Vesper's Lodge.

00:30:52.600 This was the first lodging that we built here at Sanctus Ranch.

00:30:56.100 And so we have 20 hotel-style rooms, the ability for 60 people, 60 beds here.

00:31:02.200 And so usually every weekend, Vesper's Lodge is full of people that are getting a little evening rest before the rest of their time on their retreat.

00:31:10.460 Beautiful.

00:31:10.880 So let's take a look at one of the rooms.

00:31:12.240 Please.

00:31:12.500 We have an upstairs there, same floor plan.

00:31:18.000 What you'll notice is as we go down the hall, each one of the rooms here has a particular saint and their story so that each person gets an opportunity to learn that.

00:31:28.220 Vesper's is obviously Latin for evening.

00:31:31.000 We think of evening prayer.

00:31:32.540 And so all of the saints here in Vesper's Lodge are priests, deacons, or nuns that would have had the obligation to the liturgy of the hours.

00:31:40.580 So let's enter in one of the rooms.

00:31:46.800 Oh, wow.

00:31:48.480 So as you can see, we built this room.

00:31:51.440 This is two queens in this room.

00:31:53.640 Some of the rooms have two queens and two twins.

00:31:56.260 We had a local gentleman make all custom furniture in here, Mitsubishi mini splits.

00:32:01.220 And as I was telling you before, you know, we would go to retreat centers and always seemed like our Lord was getting the very lowest possible quality.

00:32:10.720 And at Sanctus Ranch, we said, you should get the best.

00:32:14.280 So we've tried to build something that is the best.

00:32:16.980 Yeah, absolutely gorgeous.

00:32:19.120 A, it's phenomenal.

00:32:20.080 It looks phenomenal.

00:32:20.640 But also, like I noticed architecturally, you have the corners that are sharp.

00:32:27.220 You have the thick moldings.

00:32:29.920 Everything is just drop-dead gorgeous.

00:32:33.520 This is just beautiful.

00:32:34.940 How much of this, like, this is crazy work.

00:32:37.720 Well, one of the things that I'm very lucky with is my father was in construction.

00:32:41.900 And so when we got started on this and we were bringing in investors to help with the project,

00:32:46.680 I was able to design all the buildings that are here and, matter of fact, do most of the work.

00:32:52.600 We would bring in framers and other things.

00:32:55.220 But we were here day in, day out.

00:32:57.140 My boys got to learn construction and all these projects.

00:33:00.920 So it's been nice because I've been able to hold my thumb to the project and say, no, no, no.

00:33:05.960 I want it this way.

00:33:07.180 I want it that way.

00:33:08.540 And so we've gotten the end result that we're looking for.

00:33:11.700 Beautiful.

00:33:12.100 Beautiful.

00:33:12.800 Every facility here, as you'd expect, in a high-end hotel.

00:33:16.680 Just awesome.

00:33:18.020 Right down to the showers, big, big showers and everything else.

00:33:22.260 So just gorgeous.

00:33:23.700 Amazing work.

00:33:24.320 As a big guy, I would always go to retreat centers, and they weren't big enough.

00:33:27.720 So we made sure that they are here.

00:33:29.640 Indeed.

00:33:30.520 So, John Henry, we were back at the chapel.

00:33:32.440 And we have adoration every Wednesday here in the chapel.

00:33:35.520 And you happen to be here on a Wednesday.

00:33:37.100 So let's head inside.

00:33:38.300 Beautiful.

00:33:42.100 Beautiful.

00:33:47.800 Beautiful.

00:33:53.260 Beautiful.

00:34:01.960 Beautiful.

00:34:04.100 Beautiful.

00:34:04.940 Beautiful.

00:34:06.300 Beautiful.

00:34:06.800 Beautiful.

00:34:06.900 Beautiful.

00:34:07.860 Beautiful.

00:34:08.100 Beautiful.

00:34:08.440 Beautiful.

00:34:08.860 That's perfect.

00:34:09.380 Beautiful.

00:34:11.060 Beautiful.

00:34:11.220 meaningful.

00:34:11.820 I'm going to go into some of these other things

00:34:23.880 in the diocese, because it's really severe.

00:34:27.860 And I hope most of you know this,

00:34:29.480 so it's just a rerun for you.

00:34:30.960 But I'm going to give you some of the details.

00:34:34.240 So there have been a lot of very good,

00:34:38.000 very holy priests canceled here,

00:34:42.280 very much like a good holy family's business

00:34:45.880 we know being canceled right now.

00:34:48.240 I'm going to run over a few of those things,

00:34:51.060 because I met them all today and spoke with them here.

00:34:59.380 So we were talking with Dan about Archbishop Gustavo Garcia Siller

00:35:06.060 liking to cancel the things that should not be canceled

00:35:09.280 and refusing to cancel things that should indeed be canceled.

00:35:14.720 We've got probably the epitome of the example

00:35:18.680 of a cancellation that makes absolutely no sense

00:35:22.480 in Deacon Jean and Jean's wife, Jeannie,

00:35:27.480 who has really experienced the brunt of this kind of cancellation.

00:35:33.380 Deacon Jean, thank you for joining us.

00:35:34.940 Yes, good to be here.

00:35:38.180 Tell us about your story.

00:35:40.020 Why were you canceled, and how did that go down?

00:35:42.860 Well, we had a friendship of about 23 years

00:35:45.400 with a couple of people in the parish.

00:35:48.180 The short of it is that, for some reason,

00:35:50.820 this person decided that he just decided

00:35:54.980 to get too cozy with Jeannie,

00:35:56.720 but it was touching, inappropriate touching,

00:36:00.120 hugging, bringing her in in a full embrace

00:36:02.320 where there's no people around in his house,

00:36:04.560 coming up behind her, massaging her, and things like that.

00:36:09.280 So I sat down and said, we've got to talk about this, please.

00:36:12.640 The idea wasn't to lose a friendship.

00:36:14.560 The idea was, please, you cannot touch her anymore.

00:36:17.940 You just have to do this.

00:36:19.120 And his answer to me was, women like me touching them.

00:36:24.000 I like touching women.

00:36:27.580 Accept me as I am.

00:36:30.400 How did you react when he said that to you,

00:36:32.100 when you said, you know, this is what I'm going to do?

00:36:34.120 I was shocked.

00:36:35.060 23-year friendship.

00:36:35.980 I said, you've blown up the friendship.

00:36:39.320 Because when you said, I like to touch women,

00:36:42.900 and women like me touching them,

00:36:44.580 he would not have a conversation.

00:36:46.280 All I wanted was, let's talk this through.

00:36:48.740 It's just between us, and we'll move on.

00:36:52.040 And he wouldn't do it.

00:36:52.840 He basically just flipped me off.

00:36:54.900 And I just said, well, I'm sorry.

00:36:57.120 The friendship's over.

00:36:57.980 That's when he decided to go into the pastor.

00:37:00.100 And he went into the pastor.

00:37:04.340 And the pastor called a meeting with Jeannie and myself,

00:37:07.800 and said, I want to talk to you about the Dr. So-and-so situation.

00:37:11.960 This doctor was a very big giver to the parish.

00:37:16.100 And the pastor, I can't put into words,

00:37:20.580 the meetings we had, how he abused us.

00:37:24.600 He shut the door.

00:37:26.280 He sneered at me like this.

00:37:28.200 My wife's sitting there, sneered at me.

00:37:31.740 And he said, and then we have this letter to really bring this down.

00:37:35.640 It says, I expect, to her, to both of us,

00:37:40.400 you will be best friends with this guy.

00:37:42.980 And until then, you will fake it until you make it.

00:37:47.300 Jeannie, did you express to the bishop

00:37:49.400 that you were uncomfortable with his touching,

00:37:52.020 and it was a problem?

00:37:53.260 I wrote a big, long letter to the archbishop.

00:37:56.360 And I never heard a thing.

00:37:58.860 Several times, we requested meeting with the archbishop to discuss this,

00:38:03.500 because I became the problem.

00:38:05.340 I was the victim, but they made me the problem.

00:38:07.720 And the bishop would not meet with us.

00:38:09.940 Did you consider this sexual harassment?

00:38:12.960 Oh, yeah.

00:38:13.620 Oh, yeah.

00:38:14.440 Yes.

00:38:14.800 So this is a prime example of how could a bishop not take this seriously?

00:38:22.320 A woman who feels sexually harassed goes to her husband,

00:38:26.940 begs him to take care of the situation.

00:38:28.420 He tries.

00:38:29.240 The perpetrator refuses, goes to the pastor to complain.

00:38:33.720 The pastor then comes down on you guys.

00:38:38.180 And you told the pastor that you felt this is wrong.

00:38:41.560 And then this goes to the level of the bishop,

00:38:44.160 whom you again tell this is sexual harassment,

00:38:47.580 and yet they blame the two of you.

00:38:50.340 Right.

00:38:50.660 The pastor actually rolled his eyes at me and turned his back to me

00:38:54.980 when I tried to discuss it with him.

00:38:57.640 That's, you know, part of the emotional abuse we went through.

00:39:01.520 He refused to discuss it.

00:39:03.020 We were the problem.

00:39:05.080 Ignored her.

00:39:05.920 And, yeah.

00:39:06.340 He rolls his eyes.

00:39:07.800 I was in there.

00:39:08.480 He rolls his eyes.

00:39:09.340 He turns his back on when he talked to her.

00:39:10.900 So, what year is this?

00:39:15.720 2017.

00:39:16.900 So, this is post-2002 sexual harassment.

00:39:19.900 Everybody's promising up and down that they will do,

00:39:22.260 like, come hell or high water,

00:39:23.720 they will do everything to rectify these kinds of situations.

00:39:26.700 Correct.

00:39:27.560 Yeah.

00:39:27.980 And nothing was done.

00:39:29.300 I was the problem.

00:39:32.280 So, how does this relate then, Gene,

00:39:34.220 to your being canceled as a deacon?

00:39:36.480 Okay.

00:39:37.020 Well, there's, okay.

00:39:38.060 So, what happened, well, on the website,

00:39:40.900 of the archdiocese,

00:39:42.780 there's, when you get into sexual harassment,

00:39:45.740 it said, for example,

00:39:46.960 that you have every right to hire an attorney.

00:39:49.640 We weren't going to hire an attorney.

00:39:51.180 We didn't want money out of the parish.

00:39:53.100 We couldn't get redress.

00:39:54.880 So, we hired an attorney.

00:39:56.380 And the head of the diaconate program said,

00:39:58.860 because you hired an attorney,

00:39:59.720 I'm not talking to you anymore.

00:40:01.200 Well, it's on the website.

00:40:03.240 He's supposed to talk to me.

00:40:04.440 He could have ameliorated this whole situation.

00:40:08.560 So, that was one piece of this.

00:40:10.120 We hired an attorney.

00:40:12.140 And then that led to some other situations.

00:40:16.100 And we get a letter one day from the attorney to the archbishop.

00:40:20.740 Why didn't we have a letter?

00:40:22.160 The attorney, the archbishop, wrote a letter banning us from the parish.

00:40:26.320 Banning us.

00:40:27.460 You know how many friends we had that died?

00:40:30.220 How many babies I baptized?

00:40:32.100 I couldn't go to those.

00:40:33.540 You say, well, why didn't you show up?

00:40:35.080 He'd call the police.

00:40:35.920 We knew he would call the police on us and rush us out.

00:40:38.980 So, we got the banning from that.

00:40:40.700 And then they pulled my faculties.

00:40:42.580 That's the story.

00:40:44.000 Now, it doesn't make sense.

00:40:45.040 There's not a rational basis to this.

00:40:47.360 We came that close, that close to a mental breakdown.

00:40:52.020 Now, because when you're abused by your pastor, by the church you loved, and they turn on you instead of addressing the situation, but we're strong.

00:41:02.780 And through the Lord, and because the Lord says the gates of hell will not prevail, we hung in there.

00:41:09.060 We did not walk away from the church, and then we've moved on to a different parish, and we're restored.

00:41:15.600 Emotionally, it took us years to get, you can't imagine.

00:41:19.140 There's another aspect to this story.

00:41:20.900 I'm going to talk today also with Father Clay Hunt, who was canceled out of this diocese.

00:41:28.100 And I know you worked with him when you were still a deacon.

00:41:30.200 You worked with him in prison ministry.

00:41:31.920 Prison ministry was his, already, after his first banishment, he had a parish.

00:41:40.140 He went and spoke with some city officials about homosexuality, the true teachings of the church, asking them to do the right thing.

00:41:47.480 And for that, was canceled out of his parish.

00:41:51.340 And then he went into this prison ministry where he was with you.

00:41:56.360 But then he was canceled again.

00:41:57.800 Tell us if you could, just your experiences of working with him in the prison ministry.

00:42:02.400 And if you know it, why he was canceled from there, even.

00:42:05.820 Okay.

00:42:06.880 So we were going through all this, and we went to a new parish, and I got involved in prison ministry.

00:42:13.220 My first meeting was Father Clay, because Father Clay had been taken away from his parish and all that, and he was given prison ministry.

00:42:21.600 In all candor, prison ministry often is one of those things, we just put a priest out there because, you know, we don't give him a good parish.

00:42:29.260 Father Clay had this good parish and did all these wonderful things.

00:42:32.160 That's when I went to Father Clay.

00:42:33.700 I couldn't believe it.

00:42:35.180 Father Clay, I have some heroes in my life.

00:42:39.520 Bishop Strickland is one.

00:42:41.360 Father Clay is one.

00:42:42.620 He's a hero priest.

00:42:44.380 Father Clay, he'd come into our meetings.

00:42:47.140 We did the rosary.

00:42:48.420 We prayed.

00:42:49.060 He taught me that Jesus loved those prisoners as much as he loved any of us.

00:42:55.240 He did mass in the prison.

00:42:57.340 I served several, I did eight retreats with Father Clay.

00:43:01.400 Those prisoners, look, they're in there.

00:43:03.560 They're coming in there.

00:43:04.960 They were listening to him.

00:43:05.940 He talked 45 minutes to an hour.

00:43:07.980 I'm looking around.

00:43:08.980 They're riveted on him.

00:43:10.460 He was giving him the gospel.

00:43:11.840 They were giving him the gospel.

00:43:13.620 And out of those prison ministries, we'd get 25, 30 people in RCA, and we'd go down and teach RCA.

00:43:20.560 Father Clay, I can't put into words, he came to my house.

00:43:24.880 Okay, after all this was going on, that Jeannie and I were just saying, I only took too many.

00:43:30.160 He came to my house, did a mass in my home.

00:43:34.260 I had not served as a deacon in the role of a deacon.

00:43:38.000 He said, Gene, I want you to do the gospel.

00:43:39.860 He knows how to heal you.

00:43:42.640 He came two other times.

00:43:44.560 He spent the night.

00:43:45.640 He shows up.

00:43:46.740 He just knows how to heal you.

00:43:48.700 The prisoners loved him.

00:43:50.500 The prisoners were listening to him.

00:43:53.100 I don't know how to describe it.

00:43:55.340 You almost have to experience it.

00:43:57.820 But out of Father Clay's ministry, we came to love the prisoners.

00:44:02.580 And so we'd sit around the table.

00:44:04.320 These guys, unbelievable things, murder, rape, you name it, drugs, drug dealing.

00:44:11.380 They would listen to him.

00:44:13.720 They would respond to him.

00:44:16.140 He would do mass.

00:44:17.120 I'll tell you one thing.

00:44:17.900 He would do mass.

00:44:19.360 But he'd always say, now, look, you need to do confession before we do mass.

00:44:23.740 But I'll tell you what, how many people need to go to confession?

00:44:26.600 Ten people would raise their hands.

00:44:27.620 I'd better see ten people.

00:44:28.960 He'd go ahead and conduct the mass and get those ten people in.

00:44:32.580 One thing I know is that he was told he could do mass in the prison, but he couldn't take confession.

00:44:39.800 That's pure ignorance.

00:44:41.460 Now, he's either going to commit a very serious sin by giving communion to people.

00:44:46.440 They're in prison.

00:44:47.800 Or the prisoner's going to commit a serious sin.

00:44:50.880 Who would, I almost think it has to be stupidity.

00:44:53.740 Who would tell you, you can't take confession before or after you do mass?

00:44:59.340 That was just one of the things.

00:45:00.480 It's like they were slicing him like a thousand small cuts and watching just, this man, I can't put into words the love and respect I have for Father Clay.

00:45:12.640 And we had some rallies down there in the archdiocese.

00:45:19.040 Here's how fear works.

00:45:20.900 I know people of Father Clay, they're afraid to go stand down where the rallies are because people in that archdiocese have seen them, maybe turn them in.

00:45:28.440 Maybe you've got a choir director, a grand knight.

00:45:30.640 They're afraid to go.

00:45:32.260 We weren't afraid to go.

00:45:33.400 I'm proud of Stan of Father Clay.

00:45:35.480 I put up publicly on his Facebook things.

00:45:37.900 I love Father Clay.

00:45:39.960 This man, this person, to feel we've lost this man doing this wonderful ministry.

00:45:48.460 And as you know, all these canceled priests, they're nightmare stories.

00:45:51.680 I've been following this canceled priest website.

00:45:54.780 But you know, Father Clay never takes us out into the public with how he was treated.

00:46:00.220 He doesn't do that.

00:46:01.620 He just lives with it.

00:46:02.480 So, yes, I was with him.

00:46:04.000 I knew him intimately.

00:46:06.980 He's a hero priest of mine.

00:46:09.280 And I'm just hoping that someday that he will be able to come back like Bishop Strickland or some of these other guys that were just, oh, my gosh.

00:46:19.820 Those stories are, how do you even describe it?

00:46:22.920 How would you describe it?

00:46:24.460 He's a holy, holy man.

00:46:26.360 He is.

00:46:26.800 Father Clay's holy.

00:46:27.420 And it's a loss to our church, a huge loss.

00:46:31.300 Yeah.

00:46:32.880 Gene and Jeannie, thank you so much for sharing with us your story.

00:46:36.340 God bless you.

00:46:37.400 One of those priests is one who gave the opening prayer.

00:46:41.680 Father Clay Hunt, the cowboy priest, as he's known on YouTube.

00:46:47.900 is very much a very simple, very holy Catholic priest whose love for Christ so emanates, so shines forth from him that nobody can deny it.

00:47:10.980 Any enemy of Father Hunt would be hard-pressed to say, no, that guy doesn't love Jesus.

00:47:16.000 You just can't say that.

00:47:19.460 So, what's the cancellation all about?

00:47:22.720 Where did those even come from?

00:47:24.980 Well, I know what it comes from.

00:47:26.620 Well, the first cancellation came from speaking the truth of the church in what Pope Benedict called a very dangerous thing.

00:47:36.900 Pope Benedict said that soon it will become impossible to state the teachings of the church in this area of homosexuality.

00:47:45.500 Because in many countries, like my own in Canada, we have hate crime laws.

00:47:51.220 You might end up in jail for saying such things.

00:47:54.180 But you know, it's funny.

00:47:55.240 The teaching of the church is all about love.

00:47:58.480 There is nothing but love in the teaching of the church on this hardest issue, even though every time you open your mouth about the teaching of the church on it, you're called a hater and a bigot.

00:48:11.180 It's amazing.

00:48:12.500 But the response needs to be, I love you enough to tell you that this behavior hurts you.

00:48:21.660 It hurts your body.

00:48:22.300 It hurts your mind.

00:48:23.660 And even worse than that, it hurts your soul.

00:48:25.260 And I want to see you in heaven forever with Jesus Christ.

00:48:30.720 So I love you enough to tell you this, even though you're going to call me a hater and bigot.

00:48:36.280 Even though it might land me in jail.

00:48:41.060 So Father Hunt, who's willing to sacrifice himself, as few priests are.

00:48:46.300 Well, I shouldn't say that.

00:48:47.220 There are lots of priests who are.

00:48:48.760 But unfortunately, I'd say the majority aren't.

00:48:53.700 God canceled.

00:48:55.260 For speaking the truth.

00:48:58.620 That was cancellation number one.

00:49:02.320 And you know, when a good priest gets canceled, thrown out of his parish, his parishioners grieve.

00:49:06.160 They do.

00:49:06.480 Just like the diocese of Tyler, next door, virtually next door to here, is grieving for the loss of their shepherd, the bishop.

00:49:15.600 Bishop Strickland is just incredible.

00:49:18.280 And yet his diocese was ripped of him, of their father.

00:49:21.940 And a parish feels very much like that, too, when a parish gets ripped of its holy priest.

00:49:29.000 There are many tears shed by many parents who knew that their children would now no longer be formed so well by their own beloved parish priest.

00:49:42.120 But Father Hunt went on to do prison ministry.

00:49:47.880 And boy, what a ministry that was.

00:49:52.680 Incredible stories I heard from Deacon Gene, who worked with him in the prison ministry,

00:49:58.200 of hardened criminals, murderers, rapists, coming to sit and listen to Father Hunt for 45 minutes or more.

00:50:12.080 It's incredible because the Lord blesses, the Lord blesses his servants.

00:50:19.960 But woe to those who harm his servants.

00:50:26.780 But lots of those prisoners joined RCIA.

00:50:30.740 Lots of those prisoners became Catholics, instructed in the faith by Father Hunt.

00:50:35.240 Sadly, Father Hunt has been removed from that ministry as well.

00:50:41.380 But the prisoners have very little voice to be able to issue their complaints to the archdiocese.

00:50:48.700 However, the YouTube channel seems to be going very well.

00:50:53.860 So I think Father Hunt is very much yet being used by our Lord.

00:51:07.700 And he will be.

00:51:09.300 Because in that man, and so many other good men in this diocese who have been canceled,

00:51:13.940 is the same fire that will burn unto death.

00:51:18.220 And should we come to the times when we're called not only to this white martyrdom, but to red?

00:51:26.220 It's men like our cowboy priest, who will be ready to sacrifice all for his Lord.

00:51:37.740 So one of the pieces of this puzzle is the cancellation of good and holy priests by Archbishop Garcia Siller.

00:51:46.560 And one of those priests is known, on YouTube anyway, as the cowboy priest.

00:51:52.520 His name is Father Clay Hunt.

00:51:54.020 Welcome, Father Hunt.

00:51:55.360 Thank you, sir.

00:51:56.660 I want to tell you, Mr. John Henry Weston, that we appreciate the work that you do for the Lord and for Holy Mother Church.

00:52:05.020 And I want to say hello to all your viewers.

00:52:09.180 Tell you how much we love you and give you encouragement.

00:52:11.960 Even in the midst of the hardship of these days and unbelievable happenings,

00:52:18.300 that you stay faithful to God and that you make it your business to adhere to the life of Holy Mother Church,

00:52:25.900 the sacramental life of Holy Mother Church, no matter what.

00:52:31.520 Amen to that.

00:52:32.260 So, Father, tell us, you are a priest, anyone who goes to your YouTube channel or you're on Instagram,

00:52:39.600 Father Clay Hunt, they know you are a priest who loves our Lady, who loves our Lord,

00:52:45.200 who's all about preaching about Jesus and living the life of the faith.

00:52:49.040 Why were you cancelled?

00:52:50.140 I'll tell you briefly, I just celebrated 15 years of ordination to the Holy Priesthood.

00:52:59.680 That was on January the 10th of this year, so we say it was our quinceanero, as we'd say in Spanish.

00:53:07.700 And I love being a priest.

00:53:09.140 And we recognize that the priesthood is most essentially, it's the oneness with our Lord Jesus Christ,

00:53:21.140 the priest, the high priest, the only priest.

00:53:24.540 And in the mystery of it, it's the passion.

00:53:27.600 So, we're not disillusioned by these bad happenings, even though it's true that they are somewhat unbelievable,

00:53:41.480 how things have come to be.

00:53:44.400 And I would like to say, as regards to my individual person,

00:53:52.700 I don't want to get into a he said, she said, no pun intended.

00:53:58.580 But there are many injustices that are taking place in the world today, in the church.

00:54:07.480 And that's why I believe the most critical thing is for you, the people of God,

00:54:16.540 to be able to, as a whole, reach a threshold of understanding that,

00:54:22.680 as in my opinion, St. Archbishop Fulton Sheen would say that you may rise up people of God

00:54:36.700 to put the house of God in order.

00:54:39.200 That's what I pray for daily and desire because I don't believe there is any other way

00:54:44.720 for the vindication of the church in the natural order,

00:54:49.860 but through the laity.

00:54:52.660 And I will tell you, I mean, you can research my own particular life through things on the media,

00:55:02.100 but I will tell you, even for my poverty as a man,

00:55:06.640 I have done nothing absolutely against God or against God's people

00:55:13.820 or an offense to Holy Mother Church that would merit

00:55:18.580 or that would warrant, you know, a cancellation.

00:55:24.880 And even though I accept it for the injustice of these days,

00:55:32.660 you know, like they sang to me on the day that I was ordained 15 years ago,

00:55:40.720 you are a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek.

00:55:53.820 And I have every intention, even if I have to be a priest in exile,

00:55:59.060 I've told the Lord many times,

00:56:01.500 I will never go out of my vows to the holy priesthood.

00:56:07.820 That's beautiful.

00:56:08.660 You know, you know, a lot of other priests canceled,

00:56:13.280 but even in this diocese, there are deacons canceled, other priests canceled.

00:56:19.840 Have you seen, I mean, among those deacons, let's say,

00:56:23.560 who we're going to speak to in a little bit,

00:56:26.640 was there something wrong?

00:56:27.880 What was their great crime?

00:56:31.100 That's a good question, sir.

00:56:32.940 And here's the great crime,

00:56:35.580 because people need to come to understand this.

00:56:38.660 In the midst of these things,

00:56:40.700 sometimes people in good faith will ask me,

00:56:44.360 Father, how are these things possible?

00:56:48.100 Or how could men who are supposed to be holy to God do such things?

00:56:54.480 And I remind them that this is absolutely not unprecedented in the history of the people of God.

00:57:07.920 And we go back to the covenant of Moses and the religious leaders,

00:57:14.960 authentic religious leaders to God's people in the covenant to Moses were the high priests,

00:57:21.640 the Pharisees.

00:57:22.520 And I remind people that there was a great tradition of holy Pharisees,

00:57:29.180 you know, men who, as we say, and as we recognize,

00:57:33.880 even for our natural poverty,

00:57:35.640 the grace of God is sufficient that even, in fact, men can be holy.

00:57:41.060 And there were holy men.

00:57:42.960 Even in the time of our Lord, although they were few in number,

00:57:46.120 there were a handful of them.

00:57:48.220 We remember those accounted to in the sacred scriptures like Joseph of Arimathea or Nicodemus or Saul of Tarsus.

00:57:58.160 They were holy men, but the majority of them and the vast majority of them were seduced

00:58:07.100 and freely given themselves into greed, lust, power, envy.

00:58:17.840 And that is precisely what drove them to be in the first degree responsible for the death of our Lord Jesus Christ.

00:58:27.340 So they were the ones, you know, I, I never, I, I knew it,

00:58:33.120 but I never deeply understood it that throughout the entire scripture,

00:58:37.140 even in these days, throughout the entire gospel, even in these days of recent,

00:58:43.960 how many times were the, the Pharisees explicitly against our Lord Jesus Christ?

00:58:51.960 How many times was he trying to hide from them in order,

00:58:57.880 not because he was afraid, absolutely, but because he knew their wicked intention?

00:59:03.600 And that's, that's the number one problem that we're dealing with in our time.

00:59:10.980 I like to call them the modern day Pharisees.

00:59:14.900 And although they are authentically in that place,

00:59:22.280 it's the same spirit that possessed to those men in the time of our Lord Jesus Christ.

00:59:31.680 And it is far more insidious in our time because it's not isolated to the Holy Land.

00:59:39.120 It's worldwide and it's surpassing in insidiousness to the times of old.

00:59:47.980 That's why I call these guys of the modern era, the Pharisees on steroids.

00:59:57.220 And, and their bad behaviors can neither be understood logically because it's illogical.

01:00:05.440 It doesn't make sense to a person who has faith to God and who thinks in, in logical manner.

01:00:13.320 Evil is unintelligible.

01:00:16.500 It has no, no authenticity of reason.

01:00:21.000 It's irrational and wicked, but that's exactly what, where we find ourselves.

01:00:29.820 And these, you know, tremendous cancellations will not be able to be understood in a rational or logical manner

01:00:42.380 because in its essence, it's of wickedness.

01:00:47.460 To, to, to put some flesh on those bones, I know that in this diocese, there's all sorts of,

01:00:55.300 even priests who are doing things that would merit cancellations.

01:01:01.020 Some involved even in, in homosexual, sexual things that have been public.

01:01:06.940 Some who have, you know, there've been Catholic education centers

01:01:11.580 who have taught LGBT propaganda against the church's teachings.

01:01:15.400 There are pro-abortion conferences with, with nuns present.

01:01:19.980 There are, um, even, um, there's, there's, even during COVID,

01:01:25.080 there was an absolute prohibition on receiving Holy Communion on the tongue,

01:01:27.960 which is the right of the faithful.

01:01:29.560 Um, there were, uh, you know, these ACT conferences, Catholic conferences that, uh, had,

01:01:36.400 you know, uh, testimonies with LGBT people and things like that.

01:01:40.680 In, in, in a, in a way, a contrary to the church's teaching.

01:01:43.380 None of those were canceled.

01:01:45.980 None of those priests are canceled.

01:01:47.140 In fact, one of those priests is brought into the diocese from another diocese where he was canceled.

01:01:52.220 And yet, yourself, other good and holy priests are canceled,

01:01:56.500 and good and holy deacons are canceled for the reasons of doing

01:02:00.000 what you should be doing as priests and deacons.

01:02:04.300 Uh, that's true, sir.

01:02:07.300 And there, one of the, one of the insidious routes to, to what would make possible for men to think in such a way.

01:02:23.520 And this problem, absolutely, I, I can tell you that I truly love, uh, Archbishop Gustavo.

01:02:33.300 And we worked together for, for years.

01:02:37.240 Uh, you know, I was serving in the far west of the Archdiocese of San Antonio.

01:02:43.380 That's called the, uh, Uvaldi Rural Deanery.

01:02:47.420 And I served as dean there for six plus years.

01:02:51.660 So I had to work very closely, uh, with Archbishop Gustavo.

01:02:55.980 And when he came out of Chicago, because that was in 2011, uh, you know,

01:03:01.600 he's a charismatic person and, and, uh, we, we were rocking and rolling, if you, if you want to say like that.

01:03:11.120 And, and I was happy to serve with him.

01:03:14.200 And, um, but unfortunately to, you know, to things in this, you know, in, in human, uh, nature, human disposition,

01:03:27.420 I mean, you can have, uh, certain poverties that, that, uh, I mean, that's just like a natural thing.

01:03:36.980 Dislikes and things like that.

01:03:39.440 But what we're talking with, and this isn't isolated to just one particular region or one particular area.

01:03:46.600 People need to understand this.

01:03:48.420 This is a tremendous systemic problem in the church, widespread.

01:03:53.600 And as you mentioned briefly, or as you alluded to, I believe that one of the, the most insidious root causes of these things,

01:04:05.140 or what is a common thread is, is homosexuality, you know, in the priesthood, in the hierarchy,

01:04:13.340 and even all the way to high seats, high positions.

01:04:18.860 And what's, how does the old saying go?

01:04:23.560 There's, uh, hell hath no scorn.

01:04:28.480 No fury like a woman's scorn.

01:04:29.920 Yeah.

01:04:30.500 Hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn.

01:04:34.320 And that's, uh, you know, there can be truth in that statement, but there is something even surpassing to that.

01:04:41.700 Hell hath no fury like the, the scorn of a homosexual man.

01:04:47.100 And, and that's why, I mean, when, when persons, first of all, there is absolutely no room in the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ for a man of that disposition.

01:05:01.740 Why?

01:05:02.740 Why is that?

01:05:04.120 Because it's so powerful.

01:05:05.800 And especially if, uh, a man has given himself into that sin, it's, it's, it's so, uh, it's so powerful that it's surpassing to any other temptation.

01:05:19.500 And, uh, the devil, the enemy himself is able to, to use those things.

01:05:32.280 And obviously there's no more important, uh, you know, spiritual position than for a man to be in the priesthood.

01:05:45.380 And, and, and therefore he, a man of that disposition, and especially one who has given himself into those things, it is, it is impossible for him.

01:05:57.720 It, it's directly in opposition to the priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

01:06:02.540 And so even if a man has certain good intentions, uh, he can't handle the spirituality of the priesthood and the responsibility of the priesthood, uh, in that way.

01:06:17.180 And all the, the scandals, especially the sexual scandals that have taken place in the church, it finds its origin in, uh, homosexuality.

01:06:29.700 Um, one of the things, and, and probably we'll end here.

01:06:34.100 One of the things that, um, it certainly seems with the Sanctus Ranch cancellation, there seems to be a tie-in to the Latin Mass.

01:06:44.900 It was, you know, canceled, uh, in certain other parts of the diocese here by Archbishop Gustavo, um, in, in, in the Ordinariate Parish, for instance, and in other places.

01:06:57.400 And here that seemed to be a focus.

01:07:00.380 This is one of these refuges, if you will, that, that people who wanted the Latin Mass could come and receive it, the Latin Mass in this area of Texas.

01:07:08.420 That seems to have been a focus, perhaps, of, of the cancellation.

01:07:12.560 Any, any thoughts that way?

01:07:13.780 One thing that's important to, to realize, especially to, to the lay faithful, I was born in 1972, so that was just shortly after, uh, the suspension of the traditional Latin Mass.

01:07:30.960 And, you know, in, in its essence, that was an insidious move because we recognize that through the, the guidance and the intention of the Lord himself, that's the Holy Spirit, the church through the centuries came to, to that crescendo or perfection, if you will, of worship to God, which we know is the traditional Latin Mass.

01:07:57.980 And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's if you want to say the full power.

01:08:02.000 So just look at, we were talking about it yesterday.

01:08:05.300 You look in the, the 1950s, late 1950s, uh, mass attendance among Catholics was higher than 80%.

01:08:17.700 that's amazing and just a brief few decades

01:08:24.520 after the cancellation if you will of the traditional latin mass the nova sordo

01:08:31.580 in which i grew up in it's not the bad intentions of persons but it's the neglect of the things to

01:08:39.960 god that result in in our to to our tremendous detriment that now only the statistic is eight

01:08:50.720 percent of catholics go to the sunday mass weekly i mean that's that's indicative that there's a

01:09:00.460 tremendous problem and so these movements which is again systemic in the universal church

01:09:09.940 to cancel the traditional latin mass in its origin is demonic and and and and that manifests itself

01:09:21.960 in however it plays out throughout the world but the the one who truly desires and the only reason

01:09:33.800 is because in fact it is the fullness of worship and holiness to god the one who desires the

01:09:41.680 cancellation of the traditional latin mass is the enemy himself and then

01:09:48.320 either in full cooperation or unknowing cooperation it's being played out all over the world

01:09:59.240 what keeps you going father despite being canceled i believe in god amen father clay hunt thank you so

01:10:09.020 much thank you sir god bless you

01:10:10.860 father donald kloster is uh the only priest right now who actually lives at sanctus wrench and offers

01:10:23.160 the holy sacrifice the mass here there's another priest who comes in as well of father wagner

01:10:27.160 um but we wanted to talk to father kloster about uh life here but first of all we'll start

01:10:32.220 talking about uh you're a canceled priest uh what were you canceled for i was canceled mainly because i

01:10:40.820 wouldn't offer the uh the mass in in english and i had been saying the traditional latin mass in the

01:10:48.040 diocese of bridgeport for over two years with the bishop's knowledge and and presumed uh his presumed

01:10:55.180 willingness to let me do it and then all of a sudden things changed i don't know if it was

01:11:00.980 rome if it was pierre if it was if it was the pope himself but it it became very clear that they were

01:11:07.900 singling me out because i was the only one other than a retired priest who said the traditional mass

01:11:13.140 alone and so i lost my faculties on march 7th of last year and father if i might ask it was it a matter

01:11:21.660 of conscience for you what what led you to that that uh that way of being well so i've said the mass for

01:11:29.560 25 years and over the years i've been assigned to several parishes five parishes in fact that offered

01:11:36.460 both and it became clear to me that i was getting no vocations from the from the novus ordo in fact

01:11:44.280 it was 28 to 1 the one novus ordo vocation i did get who was a spiritual directee of mine

01:11:50.100 he became a priest and then left the priesthood here about five years ago so now it's 21 to nothing

01:11:57.960 because seven of the traditional latin mass individuals left their their discernment process

01:12:04.000 so 21 are either in final vows priests or somewhere in the discerning journey and i i can't get over that

01:12:13.860 21 to nothing and all these parishes had substantially more people going to the novus ordo and yet i

01:12:22.320 couldn't get any vocations and it just made me scratch my head and i'm tired i'm tired of literally

01:12:28.360 in a in a figurative sense beating my head against the wall and getting no results i know the traditional

01:12:35.220 mass is fruitful why would i offer a mass that gets me no results so one of the interesting things

01:12:43.760 about this sanctus ranch it's a family owned business they are here and they're they're

01:12:50.060 obviously for them this is a catholic apostolate because they're meaning to bring people to our

01:12:55.100 lord jesus christ they have a beautiful facility here um and they have for the people who come

01:13:02.740 and obviously for their family as well um a a traditional mass that you offer and and other

01:13:09.020 priests have come to offer um somehow behind the cancellation of the whole ranch

01:13:17.160 it seems to me anyway that the latin mass has something to do with it what would you say

01:13:22.700 absolutely and it wasn't in the letter but it definitely i think is at the crux and the heart of why

01:13:28.380 they're trying to persecute sanctus ranch it's also a matter of money it's a matter of families

01:13:34.020 coming here i was told through a third party that i'm not the type of priest that they want

01:13:41.960 representing san antonio they wouldn't really give a reason or or what that meant but that that's

01:13:48.260 curious to me what have i done present the evidence to make me someone who would not represent the

01:13:53.860 diocese well or the archdiocese well i think that's a red herring and i think it really gets to

01:14:00.640 the heart of the issue it's political it's has nothing to do with theology and if it does have

01:14:05.860 something to do with theology then they need to state what that is because heresy is very definable

01:14:11.980 so you are not stripped of your faculties in other words you can still offer the holy sacrifice

01:14:19.400 the mass and explain to us this is a private ranch so it's not a public mass so what's the problem

01:14:25.160 so i'm very familiar with these things this is the sixth time i've lost my faculties in one

01:14:30.520 way or another sometimes it was just i was restricted at one point to just san antonio

01:14:34.940 and i couldn't hear confessions anywhere else confession is a different matter you cannot hear

01:14:40.640 confessions if the the the faculty has been withdrawn and i did i i wrote to archbishop gustavo

01:14:48.520 back in back in late march of last year and he denied me faculties here i know he could have given

01:14:54.660 me faculties had he wanted to he chose not to and so i've not heard a confession in 11 months

01:15:01.000 there's been accusations but they're they're they're they're they're non-founded and you could

01:15:06.820 really ask anyone here i've had several people come up to me and ask me to hear their confession and i

01:15:11.580 always say we have there's other places you can go to confession i i can't hear your confession

01:15:16.400 the other side of that is saying mass so a priest at his domicile has a right to say mass now the

01:15:24.680 ecclesial authorities call it a private mass there's no such thing in canon law it's a mass all masses are

01:15:30.860 by their very nature public and if a priest says a mass that he has a right to say every day and people

01:15:36.220 come to that mass they have a right to come this is private property i'm not saying mass in a church

01:15:43.160 at a published time i have had i have said mass in the sacristy at a non-published time in a parish

01:15:50.160 in these 11 months but no one came it was just me and the sacristy so again this is totally legitimate

01:15:59.600 we've cleared it with canon lawyers we we know what we're talking about and if people want to

01:16:05.060 criticize from the outside present us the evidence because this this ranch and and this apostolate

01:16:12.580 they're popping up all over the country canceled priests are being joined with faithful who want

01:16:18.260 the old mass and it's a grassroots grassroots movement it's been described by some people as the

01:16:25.720 beginnings of an underground church because the latin mass which for some people means a great deal

01:16:33.740 has been taken away from them pope benedict told us uh reaffirming church teaching that it was

01:16:41.040 it should never have been abrogated they had no right to and he he didn't so much as allow for it

01:16:46.980 again as to recognize its allowance that priests are able to say it despite their bishop's contrary wish

01:16:52.920 because it is the mass of our fathers which we can never uh do away with um tell us about your thoughts

01:17:00.360 about the underground church and how this sort of situation may relate to it i could be wrong

01:17:07.100 but from my perspective and talking to priests all over the country this this isn't going away

01:17:13.620 these bishops i don't think they really realize that they're fighting against against god the the demons

01:17:21.400 hate latin they they fear it and in exorcism after exorcism we we find this to be the truth

01:17:28.920 this latin mass is incredibly fruitful it's the only one that the the society isn't smashing the

01:17:36.880 society is smashing the novus ordo uh it's not allowing for growth in the in the anglican use

01:17:42.300 uh you stick a muslim family in the suburbs and all their kids will leave the faith you stick a mormon

01:17:50.580 uh family in the in the suburbs away from their mormon enclave almost all their kids will leave the

01:17:56.560 faith we have seen a rise in atheism and a rise in in agnosticism like never before the only thing

01:18:05.360 that seems to me to be a protective bubble is the latin mass and you stick your kid you stick your kid

01:18:11.220 in the latin mass from the age of seven by the time they leave home at 18 97 of them are going to

01:18:16.500 practice now that's phenomenal and it's at the opposite pole from what's going to happen to novus ordo

01:18:23.100 kids they'll go at about a five percent clip in 11 years so um i tell this to to parents and sometimes

01:18:29.780 it just goes right over their head you see the glaze go over their eyes they don't want to hear it

01:18:34.020 and i'm thinking if i were a dad and i heard that stat because i was you know at the age of until the

01:18:40.640 age of 32 i was not a traddy it was not traditional i don't if i'd ever heard that stat and i was a dad

01:18:47.700 my kids would be in the latin mass the next day so we have this situation is is is rather unique

01:18:57.380 because the bishop has come after a private institution a family family with six kids this

01:19:05.820 is their livelihood um and so i'd just love to hear your comments on that because that that's what

01:19:13.380 to me was so striking about this this is a family-owned business this is a family with six kids

01:19:18.760 who have poured their hearts and souls and and and really sacrificed to build this up yes for their

01:19:26.040 family business but also for the glory of the church they're they're good and holy catholics

01:19:29.420 from everything i can see yes and it was it was shocking the way in which he he slandered mr 70

01:19:36.080 the owner of this property as well as myself and father fashion citing things that were totally not true

01:19:42.080 and i'm thinking well you know your spies were really bad because they didn't get things right

01:19:47.040 and he he said some libelous things in there i was always told as a young priest you sue a bishop

01:19:55.080 you sue a sitting bishop and you'll be blacklisted so i'd never even thought of it before now they've

01:20:01.120 pushed me too far and i'm going to find a lawyer and i'm going to do whatever i can to clear my good

01:20:08.380 name yeah you were accused in there of um having of hearing confessions uh which you haven't done

01:20:16.500 since you're you're being refused the faculties for that uh yet they say you did do it in the in the

01:20:21.720 letter which is quite quite something by itself uh but then in addition to that they give the

01:20:27.600 implication that your masses might not be valid tell us about that yeah i mean anybody who went to

01:20:35.460 ecclesiology 101 would know the difference between validity and liceity there's no question i was i was

01:20:42.180 ordained in st augustine's cathedral in bridgeport by the eventual card cardinal agon in 1995 anybody

01:20:51.040 can find that out i'm a validly ordained priest then then when you when you get into the the little

01:20:58.260 subtleties the other implication which shocked me it implied that somehow that father fashion

01:21:05.320 myself were either mentally unstable or were abusing children now that implication that is so libelous i

01:21:13.540 would never i would never say anything remotely like that publicly to anyone that's that's beyond

01:21:20.380 charity it's beyond the truth it's beyond what we should represent as priests and bishops

01:21:26.540 so what is your thoughts about the ranch its continuation despite the the i mean because this

01:21:37.140 that from a secular standpoint that's killer to a business he basically told all your potential customers

01:21:44.900 all the the customers that are uh involved with the church so the businesses that would uh come in and use

01:21:51.740 these facilities these specifically catholic facilities uh which was used by the archbishop

01:21:56.120 himself before and all sorts of church groups but he basically told them they're prohibited in other

01:22:00.720 words totally forbidden and told the faithful don't even come here for any events nothing yes and

01:22:05.420 i and it we did get some cancellations uh which which i know uh really caused a lot of grief with

01:22:12.240 with the 70 family but i know from a from a spiritual standpoint that we'll we'll get other

01:22:18.660 income sources that we don't aren't even considering now we know that we have had protestants groups coming

01:22:26.740 here and in the letter was nothing about protestant ministers celebrating services here um it it's funny

01:22:34.760 that they call us as maddox but they would never use that word for one of the separated brethren they

01:22:39.620 would never call let's say a lutheran a sismatic um very interesting how how they they manipulate words

01:22:46.860 and they manipulate the story to their which which of course you would you would expect somebody from

01:22:53.080 their perspective to give to give their side but you don't expect them to go overboard and go into

01:22:59.440 some libelous territory the other thing that has really struck me is that spiritually speaking

01:23:06.160 our mass is growing the school is growing and like i said i think the retreats will grow

01:23:12.960 final thoughts first father cluster yeah i guess i would just really like to emphasize that the latin

01:23:21.940 mass is not going away and as you look at it from a spiritual standpoint they're they're trying to

01:23:26.940 smash every diocesan mass currently operating they're leaving for the moment the religious orders alone

01:23:34.360 those religious orders have the best growth and i i know it's because they offer all the sacraments

01:23:42.140 and so they're trying to pigeonhole the the diocesan traditional latin masses into just a mass

01:23:48.760 no confirmations no first communions no baptisms just if you if you have permission it's for the mass

01:23:54.440 a family is not going to be attracted to that and so some families are even deciding to move

01:24:00.740 near the institute of christ the king fraternity saint peter church of the good shepherd and i think

01:24:06.720 going forward there's such growth in those communities around 20 percent a year that that

01:24:14.700 is going to be what eventually saves us and as i as i've always said things came in through the back

01:24:22.060 door with vatican ii and and we have to realize that the the latin mass as it was was a lot of low

01:24:29.880 masses very few high masses almost no solemn high masses now this younger generation these these

01:24:36.300 younger priests they want sung masses they want to to have the solemn high mass uh they they say the

01:24:43.140 mass slower the the sermons seem to be better better prepared and so i think because of the the what

01:24:50.780 happened at vatican ii we're getting we went from 80 percent in 1958 and now we're getting 97 percent

01:24:57.780 so maybe that was the reform that the holy ghost always wanted and that we didn't really see we

01:25:05.140 just saw everything that was happening with vatican ii with the changes of the mass we didn't see what

01:25:09.660 was going to come in 2007 from the back door father cluster so good to be with you god bless you

01:25:16.420 father david wagner is one of the uh teachers here at lumen and christy academy as part of sanctus

01:25:28.220 ranch uh father thank you for joining us it's great to uh be with you thank you for coming all the way

01:25:34.140 down here to talk with us so um tell us something about what's going on here i mean this is very

01:25:40.200 confusing this is a catholic family from all that we know of them and you can see of them in their

01:25:46.860 life it's a holy catholic family i mean you probably shouldn't tell them that to their faces but you

01:25:51.100 know they are striving to live for the faith and they have a great little family business so their

01:25:55.700 family can keep going six children and and but they poured their heart and soul into this beautiful

01:26:01.520 place the shutdowns it's i don't even know what's happening it's unreal uh it is difficult to understand

01:26:09.700 um as you said these uh these these people are hard-working faithful people devoted to uh the

01:26:20.600 mission of this place which is the christian formation catholic formation of uh students and uh as you

01:26:29.980 probably know and have heard we have a a classical curriculum here um we're not teaching the kinds

01:26:36.920 of things that you get in public school or even other catholic schools um they are learning uh the

01:26:44.120 classics they they learn latin we teach history from the perspective of the catholic church i teach

01:26:52.420 english and and history they also are are studying uh mathematics algebra but

01:26:59.480 as you said the the uh the 70 family they are they are devoted and i from my perspective

01:27:08.180 they are responding to the call of of the lord to do all this um and i i i think that uh they're do

01:27:19.160 they're doing very well and um we've more than doubled since we started we started last september with

01:27:26.480 six students we have 15 now and more keep coming around uh you know uh shadowing the the parents

01:27:35.680 bringing their children to shadow and they come to uh the school to to see what's happening here and

01:27:42.280 i think we'll have we'll probably have 40 come september this september so what's going on here i mean

01:27:49.840 you're a priest in the archdiocese san antonio um do you understand any of this and what have you seen

01:27:58.480 of this uh in your own in your own priesthood uh well uh again i don't understand uh what the the

01:28:07.900 leadership of this archdiocese has in mind uh again this is a holy place uh why you would want to

01:28:16.860 uh restrict or curtail it or shut it down i can't imagine um it would be good if if we all just

01:28:25.360 you know to quote rodney hill if we just all got along um but in my experience um i was uh i'm a

01:28:34.640 convert i so i was in the ordinary to the chair of saint peter and then uh the archdiocese invited me

01:28:42.140 i didn't approach them they approached me and asked me if i would want to come into the archdiocese

01:28:47.380 and take a parish which i did for six years and then um for lack of a better term i was forcibly retired

01:28:57.340 uh on what grounds if you don't mind me asking father

01:29:00.880 well others have told me it was it was political it was uh because of my uh orthodox

01:29:10.620 and conservative views my being a traditionalist it was for for those reasons my first year of

01:29:18.640 retirement um i did okay because i had a lot of calls to to do masses at parishes for priests who

01:29:27.640 are on vacation and so forth then that all kind of dried up and uh like at that precise time

01:29:33.660 dan called me up and said i'm starting a school would you be interested in in coming and i said

01:29:39.260 absolutely so at first he wanted me to just come uh say mass daily and and hear confessions

01:29:46.300 then he said would you like to teach full time and i said sure of course now recently you heard from

01:29:54.120 uh the archbishop uh regarding your work at the school what was that uh he demanded that i resign

01:30:00.020 immediately uh and i told him i won't uh i said i'll resign from lumen christie academy just

01:30:07.220 not now maybe you know years from now i'll eventually resign um the response i got through the vicar of

01:30:15.180 clergy was uh he said you can finish out your contract uh to the end of may of this year and

01:30:21.860 then after that you were expecting you to submit a letter of resignation so you are a priest in the

01:30:30.640 ordinary so you came in from the anglican right you were a married man you have children i do i have

01:30:37.060 two children one is a recent college graduate the other one is a senior high school who will graduate

01:30:43.880 uh in may so when the diocese took you away from your parish that you were running for years did

01:30:49.780 they provide for you a salary no they did not i got no salary i got no retirement uh i got literally

01:30:58.060 nothing from them so now you have a job here at the lumen christie academy uh and uh they're telling

01:31:06.540 you you must resign did they tell you when you resign you're going to be getting a salary from them or

01:31:11.220 perish back or anything no they suggested i contact the uh the uh the superintendent of catholic schools

01:31:18.880 to discuss a job but um i i haven't done that and i have no intention of doing that i have every

01:31:27.160 intention of staying here jennifer 70 is the mother of this great family this great sanctus wrench and

01:31:37.640 uh dan's beloved wife jennifer thank you for joining us thank you very much for being here

01:31:42.960 jennifer i wanted to ask you specifically what the impact has been for your family of what's gone down

01:31:50.620 with the archbishop um tell us how that's going for you and for your family well you know it's um it

01:31:58.200 took us a little bit by surprise um we have been you know faithfully working for seven and a half years

01:32:04.520 to build up this um retreat center it's our home and we have a mission here to just bring people to

01:32:13.400 christ to open our home in a way that um people can come here and they can get away from the craziness

01:32:21.880 of the world and unplug and all of that has just come to a very abrupt stop um we're all in here at the

01:32:34.100 ranch um seven and a half years ago we bought the property um and through a lot of blood sweat and tears

01:32:41.500 and um sweat equity we have put everything in here um our kids do not have a college fund we don't have

01:32:51.800 a retirement fund we're just all in um and this is the second time that we've kind of been impacted by

01:32:59.380 something that the diocese the church has done um in 2020 when the world shut down uh we were booked

01:33:07.300 46 weekends out of the year for retreats and that stopped abruptly and we really wondered whether

01:33:17.120 we could get through this and through dan's creativity we are still here um and then to have

01:33:24.000 it all taken away again we've had contracts with people um and they've broken their contracts with

01:33:30.180 us so the income has literally just stopped um because people don't even feel like they can come

01:33:37.120 to our own events that we host um they've been prohibited they feel like they just can't even

01:33:42.240 you know come here at all so this is the church you love this is the very thing that you are

01:33:51.940 working for and toward um what is that how do you feel that's going to impact your kids

01:34:00.120 my my prayer my hope for my children is that even despite all of these things that are happening

01:34:11.140 um that they will not lose their faith um that they will stay strong in their faith and i feel like

01:34:20.380 where our family is now where our family is now they will um something very miraculous has happened

01:34:28.880 to our family over the last year um and

01:34:33.820 just being a part of the latin mass and having that experience i think has brought our children

01:34:43.900 to a greater um understanding and level of their faith and as a mom all you want is for your children to

01:34:55.120 remain in the faith and know that that is the ultimate um goal and to to get them to heaven

01:35:05.840 and i think in many ways our children have taken us on this journey and we didn't know much about the

01:35:15.520 latin mass or anything like that and i just feel like now we are part of that ultimate pinnacle of our

01:35:22.020 faith this was a pretty direct attack from the archbishop from he who is to be your spiritual leader your

01:35:30.400 spiritual father in in the diocese uh you've been in this diocese for years now the church here has

01:35:38.960 worked with you before what did that feel and what's your feeling or sense towards him right now

01:35:46.540 some people think oh look at the 70s do this for their own you know to say look at us

01:35:57.420 and

01:36:00.240 that's not what it's all about

01:36:04.420 it's about bringing people to christ and we just feel so convicted and if

01:36:11.460 the lord wants to

01:36:13.740 if he wants this

01:36:20.360 he will equip us to be able to fulfill this mission

01:36:25.840 and

01:36:28.320 if it's not meant to be then you know

01:36:31.940 it won't happen you know it's it's it's hard to follow the will of god

01:36:40.020 um

01:36:41.460 and to know is this his will is it not his will

01:36:45.900 and um

01:36:48.300 yeah we just

01:36:50.220 we just want to be here for people we just want to have our home opened

01:36:54.880 to them and so it's

01:36:57.420 it's just it's hard when people judge

01:37:03.380 because people that have known us for you know years right we've been in texas since 2012

01:37:10.640 like they just they don't even feel like they can they haven't even reached out right

01:37:17.600 because they're just

01:37:18.920 i don't know if they're afraid to

01:37:21.860 or what but

01:37:23.600 um

01:37:24.540 you know sometimes you feel like you're on a little island i mean we have amazing friends

01:37:29.020 now new people um supporting us but

01:37:33.260 you know you're constantly asking yourself i know dan is all the time like is this

01:37:40.220 is this the will of god and if it is then we'll fight like hell

01:37:46.620 to keep it

01:37:48.200 and if it's not then

01:37:50.000 god will just shut that door

01:37:52.260 and we'll be okay because he's a strong man and he'll figure it out

01:37:56.820 but

01:37:57.700 you've just worked so hard

01:38:00.480 to build something

01:38:01.820 beautiful

01:38:03.060 people can experience and

01:38:05.700 for someone to just want to just take that away because they're so

01:38:10.860 i feel like he's insecure

01:38:13.520 that's

01:38:15.020 i don't know

01:38:18.440 that's how i feel

01:38:19.740 god bless you

01:38:23.300 we're praying for you we will continue to

01:38:25.520 and i'm sure lots of people will be

01:38:27.100 uh

01:38:28.500 when they learn about it part of the problem is they haven't learned yet

01:38:31.700 yeah

01:38:32.120 yeah

01:38:33.620 we're grateful we're grateful that you're here to

01:38:36.980 tell our story

01:38:38.500 really

01:38:39.840 amen

01:38:41.360 we're

01:38:42.020 very proud to do that

01:38:44.040 thank you

01:38:44.840 matthias 70 is the fifth in the family

01:38:49.060 and uh i hear he's responsible for

01:38:52.260 uh introducing the family to the latin mass

01:38:54.680 matthias thanks for joining us

01:38:56.220 thank you thank you i'm glad to be here

01:38:58.000 so matthias um

01:38:59.580 you seem to be one who has brought the family to latin mass

01:39:02.820 how did that happen what's that about

01:39:03.980 well i've been going to nova sordo my entire life

01:39:06.660 and i really just wanted more reverence

01:39:08.260 and i discovered that there was a liturgy

01:39:10.460 that was very beautiful that

01:39:12.140 we had everywhere in the catholic world before

01:39:14.500 the vatican council and i even discovered what that was

01:39:17.440 and i just wanted to go

01:39:18.500 and luckily it took some time but my family came along with me

01:39:21.520 and now we all go

01:39:22.580 so

01:39:23.780 um

01:39:24.840 this is one thing about the latin mass

01:39:26.880 it's attractive to so many young people

01:39:29.080 um how old are you right now

01:39:30.640 17

01:39:31.300 okay

01:39:32.300 so what was it

01:39:34.720 that you mentioned reverence

01:39:36.820 but there's a lot of young people

01:39:38.760 what do you think is there for young people

01:39:40.200 that it you know

01:39:41.040 i think many people think

01:39:42.380 oh this is an old thing for old people

01:39:43.880 but it seems not to be

01:39:45.080 um

01:39:46.080 i think when you try to

01:39:47.900 not so much sell a liturgy to somebody

01:39:50.320 but rather you let that liturgy draw them into it

01:39:53.440 whereas a lot of times you see with the new liturgy

01:39:55.980 they try to specifically focus on the young people

01:39:59.860 they'll have a life teen mass or something like that

01:40:02.040 and

01:40:02.740 it just

01:40:03.600 it doesn't feel authentic

01:40:05.260 it feels like they're trying to sell you something

01:40:07.400 um

01:40:08.120 but the liturgy isn't like that

01:40:09.420 it's supposed to attract us

01:40:10.560 and bring us in

01:40:11.400 and i feel that's what the traditional liturgy does for young people

01:40:14.160 feels authentic

01:40:15.120 if i can ask you about this current situation

01:40:19.520 what do you make of this

01:40:21.500 the

01:40:22.040 you know

01:40:23.400 what

01:40:23.740 is it going to rock your faith

01:40:26.060 where are you at

01:40:27.120 i personally feel fine

01:40:30.080 in my faith

01:40:30.920 even with everything that has happened

01:40:32.900 um

01:40:33.740 it's still

01:40:34.640 sad

01:40:35.540 um

01:40:36.240 i care for the church very deeply

01:40:38.360 my family has always loved the church

01:40:39.940 and we've always tried to do what we can for the church

01:40:42.060 um

01:40:42.820 but we'll

01:40:43.700 we'll stick on the boat

01:40:45.060 even though there are rocky waves

01:40:47.280 absolutely beautiful

01:40:49.500 thanks

01:40:50.020 thank you

01:40:50.480 god bless you

01:40:51.220 thank you

01:40:51.820 i reached out to the archbishop's office

01:40:53.900 asking them for clarification

01:40:56.360 the communications director

01:40:59.620 sent me back an email

01:41:01.560 with the same press release i already had

01:41:03.960 telling me there's going to be no further comment

01:41:07.420 we're outside the archdiocese of san antonio main offices

01:41:12.420 we are here to witness and partake in

01:41:15.620 this prayer demonstration happening outside the archdiocese

01:41:19.480 office because the archdiocese has chosen to attack a catholic family a catholic family business

01:41:26.140 the savinia family as you all know six children are all in into sanctus wrench

01:41:31.480 all their savings everything they are they felt called by the lord to make this incredible catholic business which offers to everyone the beauty of retreats and a place to have the holy sacrifice the mass to have spiritual direction to have all this from priests who are thrown out who are canceled who have nothing else to do they provide such a beautiful space

01:42:01.480 and true devotion and true devotion and true devotion and it is so much work but their blood sweat and tears have been spit upon cast out by the archdiocese just as many priests have been canceled this is the first time we've seen the cancellation of a catholic family their own private business a business which strove to do the work of christ

01:42:19.480 so we're here we're going to be praying together the divine mercy prayer we're going to be praying and this is being taped by the way on the feast of the chair of saint peter so we're going to be praying for the conversion of the archbishop we're going to be praying the holy rosary we're going to be singing faith of our fathers

01:42:41.480 it's something that is beyond what we've seen so far this is a new step in the

01:42:49.480 you might say underground church we knew persecution was coming we felt that persecution earlier the last couple years

01:43:00.480 from the fbi from the government itself going to the homes of catholic men and women threatening their children

01:43:11.480 with firearms in their faces taking away fathers in front of their children in shackles for nothing but being outside of abortion clinics witnessing to the faith with great charity that same persecution though we see happening now from the church from what should be our fathers in the faith who are cancelling

01:43:40.480 the holiest of the holiest of priests who are cancelling those who refuse to be silent about the truths of christ and who are crushing the mass of our ancestors this is impossible even even those of us who don't frequent the latin mass but still have a love for it because it is the very mass of all of our ancestors in the faith who lived and died for this mass we know from the teaching

01:44:10.460 the pope benedict and before him every pope that this mass is our patrimony one which can't be removed from us and part of this crushing is that issue itself but there's a new point here in the cancellation of a family of a private business which is the livelihood for a father and a mother and their six beautiful children

01:44:37.460 so in a special way it's for the savigny family that we pray it's for the savigny family that they are right now in a way white martyrs for the cause of family in the church and for the great scandal of the corruption in the church that's led us to this point

01:44:58.620 by all rights this deserves to be an international story let's pray together today too that the mainstream media picks it up so that catholics around the world are able to see what's happening

01:45:13.740 it is the voice of the faithful that's called to act right now we're called to spread this travesty but in the midst of the travesty is great hope

01:45:25.080 we believe that wherever sin abounds grace abounds all the more we believe that our lord's promise that

01:45:33.060 you will be given nothing that you won't be able to bear with his grace

01:45:37.220 and if anybody has the grace of the lord it's the savignies

01:45:40.900 the agony in the garden

01:45:42.460 our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done

01:45:50.440 on earth as it is in heaven

01:45:52.720 give us this day our daily bread

01:45:55.180 and forgive us our trespasses

01:45:57.280 as we forgive those who trespass against us

01:46:00.480 and lead us not into temptation

01:46:02.580 and deliver us from evil

01:46:04.300 hail mary full of grace

01:46:07.020 the lord is with thee

01:46:08.480 blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus

01:46:13.600 holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and the hour of our death amen

01:46:19.100 faith of our fathers

01:46:22.440 living still

01:46:25.160 in spite of love

01:46:28.380 in fire and sword

01:46:31.860 oh how our hearts beat high with joy

01:46:38.160 whene'er we hear that glorious word

01:46:43.280 whene'er we hear that glorious word

01:46:44.960 faith of our fathers lowly faith

01:46:51.040 we will be true to thee till death

01:46:57.780 what a martyr

01:47:06.840 how our hearts beat high with joy

01:47:09.160 a of we hear that glorious word

01:47:09.960 in the light of the hour of the horn

01:47:11.100 how our fathers beat love

01:47:12.000 by the captain Lewis

01:47:12.660 as Eve

01:47:12.720 is

The John-Henry Westen Show - February 29, 2024

OUTRAGE： Archbishop Cancels a Catholic Family Business

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