00:00:23There was one. The Papal Posse with Raymond Arroyo had this canonist priest who everybody's come to know and love because he speaks with clarity and with charity, but he gives us the truth of the Catholic faith in times of grave confusion.
00:00:41He's also now with Raymond on the Prayerful Posse as well on Raymond's own network.
00:00:48So it's a great joy for me to have Father Gerald Murray with us here.
00:01:08So, Father, there's going to be, first of all, most of our viewers will know you very well
00:01:13and be very thankful for your speaking the truth at a time when so few did.
00:01:20So, thank you for that on behalf of all of LifeSite's listeners.
00:01:24I want to start off very simply with your background.
00:01:29You know, you're in this milieu now where you're giving commentary, not only on the shows, but that's what you're most known for now, but in writing all over the place as well.
00:01:50Well, it's interesting because I have been doing some TV work in New York, beginning when I was a young priest. New York, of course, the media capital of America, if not the world. And so there were opportunities.
00:02:06And when Fox News came along, someone had recommended me to Fox. So I'd started appearing on them regularly. And as a result of that, I came to the attention of Raymond Arroyo. He also some friends. We have mutual friends.
00:02:20So when Pope Benedict resigned unexpectedly back in 2013, he asked me if I would join the papal coverage of the Conclave, which I said yes.
00:02:32So I was going to join Robert Royal, Father Roger Landry, and Raymond Arroyo, of course, the host.
00:02:49And so two things came out of that. Bob Royal, who was the editor in chief of the Catholic thing.org, asked me if I would start writing columns for his website, which I said I would. And then Raymond Arroyo, a few months after the papal election and said, well, we should continue the discussions that we had during the conclave and the conclave crew became the papal posse.
00:03:15and father landry was off because he was made uh he got a he was assigned to work at the holy
00:03:22scene mission to the united nations so he was occupied but bob royal and i continued and that's
00:03:27how it happened and as you know because you're involved in publishing website and and and media
00:03:33uh things are exploding i mean people doing podcasts all over the world so i get a lot of
00:03:39invitations to do that and i'm happy to do it because it's comp it's compatible with my work
00:03:45as a parish priest, I can sit in front of my computer and answer questions and comment on
00:03:50things. Indeed, indeed. Well, tell us a little bit about your background in the church, because
00:03:56this is one of the questions a lot of people have, because they don't think of it often. They hear
00:04:00this term thrown around, canon lawyer. Explain that for us. What is that? And what is canon law
00:04:07in the church anyway. Yeah, so canon law is a collection of rules, laws that have been
00:04:14given to the church by popes and councils over time. And it began, of course, early in the church
00:04:23because, you know, once the gospels were being transmitted and the letters of St. Paul and the
00:04:30other epistles, you know, questions came up and needed to be answered. So controversies.
00:04:37So we see, you know, the apostles gathered in Jerusalem to legislate about, you know, eating
00:04:42meat with blood in it and, you know, other things of that sort of circumcision. So in the beginning,
00:04:49it's quite clear the church understood we have to give roles because the church is a society
00:04:53which represents Christ, and Christ is the lawgiver, God is the lawgiver, and he entrusted
00:05:02to the church the power to shepherd the faithful, which includes writing laws for them so that
00:08:38And the main issues, which I'm sure we're going to cover, were communion for divorce
00:08:43and remarried which is regulated by canon law uh the blessing of same-sex couples homosexuals who
00:08:50were in a relationship as a couple blessing them that was never foreseen in any laws um then we
00:08:56had the whole question of tradition as custodes uh the latin mass um and the permissions given
00:09:03by pope benedict being withdrawn uh and then there were canonical provisions and to accomplish that
00:09:09which were many of them were very, you know, not according to the book, or they were done in a sloppy way, or they kind of disregarded the broader context of the Latin mass.
00:09:21So that's what we look at. Canon lawyers not only study the law, they have to try to help the church apply it in the sense that they serve as advisors to bishops.
00:09:32but you know I would I would maintain that under Pope Francis he did not follow the canonical
00:09:39tradition in a way that all of his most of his predecessors certainly in the modern age had done
00:09:46it does seem to have unleashed sort of mass confusion in the church has it not there's a lot
00:09:53of confusion in the church people want to know for instance if I'm divorced and remarried am I allowed
00:09:58to go to communion if I continue to live in that second invalid marriage. And Pope Francis said,
00:10:04in some cases, that the help of the sacraments can be given to those people. And then when
00:10:09questioned about it, he said, well, the Argentine bishops issued an interpretation, which is the
00:10:14only one, which is that, yes, they can receive communion. Well, this violates, you know, laws
00:10:20concerning notorious public sinners are not to be administered holy communion. People who are
00:10:28conscious of mortal sin are not to approach. And certainly the church has ruled that people
00:10:34whose objective state of life is in contradiction with the gospel are not to receive communion. It's
00:10:39a scandalous thing. And most likely the people whose lives don't conform to the gospel know that
00:10:46and therefore are presumably guilty of a mortal sin, the sin in this case of adultery. So they
00:10:52should not be receiving communion because it gives the impression to people either it's not
00:10:57a mortal sin, or if you're in mortal sin, you can now receive communion. And that has an implication
00:11:01for every other sin, because if you can make an exception in one case, why not in others?
00:11:06I remember very well that during that debate, I happened to be in Rome and around a press scrum
00:11:12with Cardinal Blaise Cupich. And I asked him that very question, because he was going on about how
00:11:18it was that, you know, people, if they felt in conscience that they should be able to receive
00:11:22communion, can go up and receive. And he was talking about amorositia, divorce, remarried
00:11:26couples with no possibility of annulment and still living, practicing sexual activity,
00:11:35not living as brother and sister. And I said to them, well, how would that then compare with a
00:11:41homosexual couple who feel in good conscience? They are living fine as well. And he told me
00:11:47that, you know, gays are people too, that the minister of Holy Communion must administer Holy0.98
00:11:55communion, to the homosexual couple that presents itself for Holy Communion in that way.
00:12:01And that was shocking to me, but it didn't ruffle feathers at the time because it was0.66
00:12:18If two homosexuals contract a civil marriage and it's known that they're cohabiting and that they've, you know, done this civil marriage, which the church doesn't recognize as a marriage, well, then they've, number one, repudiated the doctrine of marriage, which the Catholic Church teaches, which is a scandalous thing for a Catholic to do.0.91
00:12:39marriage is only between a man and a woman secondly um by cohabiting they're giving the0.97
00:12:45impression that they're engaging in immoral activity uh because that's the whole purpose
00:12:50of the union so that they can um you know be considered in their minds like a husband and
00:12:57wife and husband and wife engage in sexual relation which are the only natural thing that
00:13:02god intended so you should not if you know this you should warn the couple and say do not come
00:13:07to communion because this is scandalous and your lifestyle is is mortally sinful so that's true and
00:13:15then with the same with couples you know who are in an invalid second marriage I mean imagine this
00:13:21you had a man who's in a parish and he's got a wife and kids and then you know he divorces his
00:13:28wife takes up with another woman and then shows up at the same mass where his real wife and kids
00:13:34are and says, well, guess what? I'm entitled to communion. The answer is you're not entitled to
00:13:39communion. So this is a very serious issue, and it should not be treated in such. And then,
00:13:47you know, communion is not to be administered. The law regulates kind of 915. It regulates the
00:13:53behavior of the minister. He is not to give communion to people in notorious public centers.
00:13:58How do you respond? Because you're immediately going to be confronted with, well, you're not
00:14:03you're not being welcoming. You're alienating people. There was just a podcast the other day
00:14:09where Father James Martin was on with J.D. Flynn, and they went into great depths about
00:14:15the need to be welcoming. And, you know, every time J.D. would raise something about, well,
00:14:21wait, doesn't that seem that we're actually getting into accommodation of the sin?
00:14:26Father Martin would raise, you know, well, wait a minute, what about usury? Are we talking to
00:14:30people about usury and denying them Holy Communion for such things. How do you respond to that kind
00:14:37of a thing? Well, they call that whataboutism. You're talking about one specific sin, and they
00:14:42say, well, you've got 10 other sins here that I'd like to talk about. And you say, well, first let's
00:14:46talk about the question at hand. If you want to talk about usury and other questions, we can do
00:14:51that later. No, the answer, of course, is if usury is wrong, then you're saying homosexual activity
00:14:57is wrong. So you're admitting right off the bat that that's wrong. So therefore, why would you0.59
00:15:04say that it's welcoming to a homosexual couple to tell them that their lifestyle is not sinful?0.98
00:15:10It's not welcoming. The church's job is to get people into heaven. You know, life on earth is1.00
00:15:18short. The life to come is eternal. So we tell people the gospel of Jesus Christ does not include
00:15:24committing mortal sin and justifying it so if you're doing that you're preparing your path to
00:15:30hell not to heaven so yeah it's part of this when you talk about welcoming it's an emotional appeal
00:15:36and sad to say father martin uses that frequently and others do uh which is to say people feel bad
00:15:44about the church's teaching uh the church's teaching should never make people feel bad
00:15:49because Jesus loved everybody. Well, your definition of love is wrong. Jesus loved people
00:15:54in the fullness, which is in the truth. And when you love someone and you see them doing harmful
00:16:01things, you stop them. And when you see people doing mortal sins, you tell them you need to
00:16:06stop committing that act. And I'm not going to facilitate your mistaken idea that this is all
00:16:12right by basically treating you as if you're not committing mortal sin.
00:16:16Now, you talk in the book about, you object to the whole concept that Francis brought forward of synodality. And not only that, this is not only with Francis, it's now Leo, when he came in, the very first thing he said is, we must be a synodal church, and that's continuing now. What's your objection there?
00:16:38Yeah, synodality is a whole program and it's got an office now that is very powerful within the Holy See, but it's undefined because it's a word that's defining something that was based on a previous practice, which was then abolished by Pope Francis.
00:16:59So the brief history is synod means meeting of bishops. It's always meant that. And, you know, Second Vatican Council was called a synod because that's how the language is used in Latin.
00:17:14Pope Paul VI, following the Second Vatican Council's call for a synod of bishops, created the synod of bishops.
00:17:23The synod of bishops is not the world hierarchy coming together at a meeting.
00:17:27It's selected bishops from throughout the world who are invited to Rome, and they meet there with other bishops who work in Rome and the pope.
00:17:35And they meet in order to discuss pastoral topics that the pope wants to talk about.
00:17:41So the goal of the Synod of Bishops was that the Pope would benefit from the expertise and experience of bishops from the wider church, not just the ones who live in Rome, and that the Roman Curia could also, you know, listen to them and understand what they're saying.
00:17:55That, you know, the Synod met many times, and the Popes would issue apostolic exhortations following the Synod of Deliberations.
00:18:04um now what happened pope francis decided to open up the senate to lay people and um he decided
00:18:13that they would have equal vote to bishops well you immediately change the nature of this it's
00:18:17not a meeting of bishops and a meeting of bishops a meeting of shepherds lay people religious are
00:18:22not shepherds so what you've changed this into is kind of a representative uh body chosen by the
00:18:30Holy See or approved by the Holy See because local bishops could propose candidates to be at the
00:18:38synod, but it's now lay people and bishops together. And this was then determined, well,
00:18:44this is what synodality is, shared governance of the church. They call it shared responsibility,
00:18:50but they also call it shared governance because that's exactly what it is. I remember John Henry
00:18:56college, I had a course on the constitutional history of medieval Europe. And the professor
00:19:02said, well, the central question of our course is, who the hell's in charge here? And that,
00:19:08you know, skews the language, but that's basically what this is all about. Who's in charge here?
00:19:14And the synodal way that the Pope started is to give lay people governing roles in the church.
00:19:22And that is confirmed by the latest report from the Canon Law Commission, which precisely speaks of that based on a theory that Cardinal Gillan does, I mentioned earlier, is promoting that baptism confers on the laity the ability to govern in the church because, you know, we're called a royal priestly people.
00:19:45But that's different than the ordained ministry.
00:19:50And beyond it, of course, Sister, forgetting her name, Sister Natalie, who's the secretary of the Synodal Commission, says that synodality is a style.
00:20:03And he says, we don't want a new church. We want a church in a new way.
00:20:08Well, these are vague double talk, to be blunt.
00:20:11What's the difference between a new church and a church in a new way?
00:20:14I'm happy with the church given to us by Jesus Christ, because that's the church he established.
00:20:20We're not going to become a Protestant church, but that's the implication of giving laypeople governance in the churches. Look at the Anglicans. That's what they do. Certainly, the Reform Church is based on John Calvin's ideas. They're all run by laypeople. They don't have a clergy.
00:22:00and he was like whoa now you have that very famous blessing of the same-sex practicing
00:22:11same-sex couple holding hands by father James Martin you have the pope first Francis and now
00:22:17Leo meeting with James Martin very publicly and when Archbishop Gomez brought the gay couple to
00:22:24Pope Leo recently, you know, he joked with them about Wordle, and the whole appreciation
00:22:31for how to deal with the issue of homosexuality in the church seems so off where we're supposed
00:22:38to be. Now, there's official blessings of homosexual couples, not, they have to be impromptu,
00:22:45there's no formal blessing, there's no, it's not meant to look like marriage, but0.96
00:22:49in practice that very little difference because they're usually married anyway if you will
00:22:56there's baptism of the children adopted by homosexual couples there is the it it seems
00:23:05had people living a hundred years ago would freak out and think this is a different church this
00:23:12can't be the catholic church what what do we do with that no it is the catholic church but it's
00:23:18acting in the wrong way. And this is really bad. I agree with you. This is a major problem in the
00:23:24life of the church, the attempt to normalize homosexuality in the church, and it's being0.98
00:23:30sponsored by the Holy See. You know, the synod office issued a document about what were formerly
00:23:37called controversial issues, but they wanted to hide from that. They don't want to think it's a
00:23:43controversy what they're doing about homosexuality so they call it emerging issues and in the course
00:23:49of that report they publish um two annexes which are interviews with two homosexual couples both
00:23:56of whom are personal friends of father james martin by the way uh and one of them is the
00:24:01couple that was appeared on the front page of the new york times uh we know that because the man
00:24:07revealed that he's the author of a book which allowed you to identify who he was and see his
00:24:11picture in any event in those interviews those men asserted that they were married so this is
00:24:19absurd the holy see should never issue a document in which people pretend to be in marriage you know
00:24:27the homosexual unions in no way have any resemblance to marriage it's a complete negation0.96
00:24:33of the divine order but the holy see issues a document without comments saying they're married0.86
00:24:38And then in the course of those documents, they make all kinds of assertions which are wrong.0.59
00:24:43And then they criticize, one of the men criticizes courage, which is the apostolate that is blessed by the Catholic Church for helping people have a problem with homosexual problem.
00:24:59There was no contribution in that report from courage.0.70
00:25:02There was no contribution from chaste homosexual, meaning people have a problem with homosexuality or lip chastity.0.75
00:25:07In fact, there's no call for chastity at all. James Martin never calls for chastity for people who have a problem with homosexuality. He looks for excuses and ways around it in his writings. It's very, very wrong.
00:25:21Now, what's going on here is a falsification of both natural law and the gospel by stating that God created some people constitutively as homosexual.0.79
00:25:34In other words, he made them because he wants them to engage in homosexual activity.
00:25:40There is no homosexual identity as compared to heterosexuality.
00:25:45In fact, both of these terms were inventions of the late 19th century, early 20th century.0.74
00:25:51There is just male and female. And then male and female both have a sexual capacity, which is meant to be used according to God's plan. Any use of the sexual faculty for other purposes is wrong and sinful. It doesn't create you into a new category of human beings.
00:26:08So Father Martin is continually saying that.
00:26:11And by the way, he evolved because it's no longer just he wants to help homosexuality,
00:26:16he wants to help the whole LGBT, which the church started using, which is regrettable.0.55
00:26:22Do we believe that God made people bisexual, meaning that he intends for them to do both natural and unnatural sexual acts?0.79
00:27:30or skirts that were above the knee, etc., etc.0.81
00:27:33And then to see when Pope Leo had the official LGBT pilgrimage into St. Peter's through the Holy Door, and you witnessed just the most bizarre holding hands, T-shirts, and backpacks with all sorts of language, and transgendered men dressed as women in miniscuits walking through the doors of St. Peter.0.62
00:27:57oh it was a heartbreak but those visuals spoke they spoke loudly to a lot of the priests who0.84
00:28:07want to imitate the holy father and the holy see and being welcoming it's just the confusion is
00:28:14is legion today yep it is and there's only a handful of bishops in the world who support this0.57
00:28:20you know have made have imitated that by having meetings with homosexuals in their cathedrals0.89
00:28:25But that's not how you help people who have a homosexual problem. In fact, that's misleading them. It's giving the impression everything's fine. No, that was a scandalous event. It should never have happened. That part of that gay pilgrimage for the Holy Year was to go to the Jesu Church in Rome, where they heard speeches endorsing the homosexual lifestyle.0.84
00:28:46You know, people are treating homosexuality. Oh, come on, don't get upset. People just stay a different kind of way of living. No, there's only one way that God wants us to live. If we violate it, we're in trouble. And we don't want people to be in trouble. We want them to help them. So I've worked with Courage for years.0.75
00:29:05This is very disorienting to people who are trying to live chastity to be told there's no problem with the lifestyle.0.98
00:29:12And in fact, if you're if you got two homosexuals who want to get a blessing, we'll go around and find a priest who'll do it.1.00
00:29:18And by the way, that's meaningless. It's not a formal blessing. That's meaningless.1.00
00:29:22That's you know, that's like saying, well, milk served in a glass is different than milk served in a paper cup.0.98
00:29:27That's ridiculous. It's the same thing. So now Pope Francis caused tremendous confusion by0.91
00:29:35allowing things like this to happen. In your book, you also address the issue of sexual abuse of
00:29:40minors, vulnerable adults by priests and bishops. That really has taken a toll. I mean, everywhere
00:29:47when people, especially those embittered against the church, they talk about it. They always raise
00:29:52that first. How did Francis deal with this crisis? Well, he dealt with it in different ways.
00:30:00The McCarrick problem, you know, he, when we're told by Archbishop Vigano that McCarrick had a
00:30:05history of homosexual predation on seminarians, he did nothing. He changed the topic. He kept
00:30:12McCarrick around to help him. And then he was told that Benedict had put restrictions on him. I mean,
00:30:18he was all he knew what was going on and he didn't do anything it was only when mccarrick was exposed
00:30:25because a former seminarian had complained to the archdiocese of new york um a board that was
00:30:31handling accusations that he had been abused sexually by mccarrick when he was a seminarian
00:30:37in the men's room at this in saint patrick's cathedral basement and when that came out you
00:30:43know, it took a whole year approximately for that to be investigated. Nobody was told he
00:30:48was under investigation. And then finally, they revealed that he was going to be subject
00:30:52to restrictions. But then subsequently in the New York Times, they published a story
00:30:58by James Grine, who was a child that McCarrick had baptized because he was the child of friends
00:31:05of McCarrick. And he stayed in touch with that family for years, and he regularly abused
00:31:09him and grind you know as it has had you know so many after effects of what happened but he went
00:31:16public with it and only then did the real strict punishment come in and they did a trial or or
00:31:23the administrative process and mccarrick was removed from the priesthood but you know the
00:31:28pope created uh issued a document called vos estes lux mundi which is a document to
00:31:34hold bishops accountable for sexual abuse and for handling cases properly. But it's not,
00:31:41Vosestis has not been observed, in my opinion. And it's failed in the idea of saying we're going
00:31:48to hold authority accountable when they mishandle sexual abuse. Mishandling is a euphemism often for
00:31:54covering up for cases. So, I mean, we had a case of a bishop in Buffalo and the Pope sent an
00:32:02investigator, but we were told this is not a
00:33:47And then when they got the judge, they never told us who the judges are, although they did tell us at least one or more of the judges is female.
00:33:54That's irrelevant. They're here to judge, not to be a quota system.
00:33:59But then that trial has been going on for about a year.
00:34:04The victims have appealed to the Holy See publicly about this. Where's justice here?
00:34:09So the record of Pope Francis, good in some ways, not good in others.
00:34:14yeah just stunning i can't let you go without asking you about this one thing because one of
00:34:19the major things that francis did that really harmed the church during the lifetime still
00:34:25of uh pope benedict was to undo his simorum pontificum which i think was one of the he
00:34:32might have considered it one of the crown jewels of his own pontificate to to restore the generous
00:34:38use of the traditional Latin mass to allow priests who feel called to celebrate this mass of the
00:34:45ages, to allow them to do so. And then it was undone. And it really did feel for a lot of
00:34:53Catholics who love tradition, all these young families, it felt like they were under attack.
00:35:00It felt like they were being singled out, called names, quite literally called names. And they
00:35:07were hoping that this might end, but it's continued, and it's continued even with some new force
00:35:13under Leo. So what about that? What about Trisicios Custodes, this seeming attack on the tradition of
00:35:21the Church, of the traditional Latin Mass? Yes, well, Pope Francis is not sympathetic to the,
00:35:28was not sympathetic to the Latin Mass. I mean, that's an understatement. He wrote a letter
00:36:22Because, of course, he said he wanted a welcoming church, but not for Latin Mass people.
00:36:27And he basically, throughout his pontificate, would make asides or comments of what he thought was kind of the instability, psychological instability.
00:36:37He would often say behind this, you know, rigorism is a real problem.
00:36:42So he's categorizing people who like solemnity and liturgy as being rigorous and psychologically disordered, which is not true.
00:36:50And then when the study, which was foreseen in Samorum Pontificum, that I think was after 10 years to be a study of how it's being applied in the church and the results came back very favorable.
00:37:01We found out through another leak. But Pope Francis said, well, I looked at the results and there's a lot of problems out there and I'm concerned about what I'm.
00:37:10So, you know, this wasn't right. Everybody knows it.
00:37:14the idea that the mass which the council fathers celebrated themselves every single day during the
00:37:23second event that this mass is somehow harmful to the life of the church it was while this mass
00:37:28would be celebrated that the council itself produced all its documents what we got after
00:37:34the council many council fathers never anticipated that this is what the result would be so why is it
00:37:42we can critique Catholic morality, natural law, but we can't critique the liturgical project of
00:37:49the concilium, you know, that was created by Pope Paul VI to reform the mass. Of course, you can
00:37:55critique it. We critique all kinds of things in the history. Law evolves over time, not betraying
00:38:03its principles, that's not proper evolution, but applying them when new situations arise. So,
00:38:09So, you know, we have a possibility of, you know, tolerating or favoring people who are attached to something very good in and of itself.
00:38:20Why would we take that away? So now Pope Leo has said to the French bishops they should be generous with people attached to the traditional Latin mass.
00:38:32So I'm waiting to see what that generosity will consist of, because, you know, the restrictions are in place.
00:38:37Cardinal Roach has said a number of times that Pope Leo was not going to change Traditiones
00:38:43Custodes. Well, let's see if that actually is correct and accurate. But I see no benefit to
00:38:50the life of the Church to continue to deprecate the value of the traditional Latin Mass by telling
00:38:57people, in essence, it's dangerous and you have to get away from it. The only way you can say that
00:39:01is if you consider that the Second Vatican Council was upset with the old mass to the degree that it
00:39:07wanted it done away with in significant parts. And that's not true. They wanted to adapt it in
00:39:13some ways to modern needs, but also be faithful to the tradition. They never imagined that we
00:39:20would have seven or eight or nine Eucharistic prayers to choose from in the Missal. Where did
00:39:25that come from? So, you know, this is a problem. It's interesting. I've always wanted to ask a
00:39:31canon lawyer this question about Pius V had that bull, I believe it was, correct me if I'm wrong,
00:39:38it was quo primum, something like that. But 1570, which basically said, this is the mass
00:39:44in perpetuity. No one can be deprived from saying this mass. It was very formal, sort of papal
00:39:51decree language. It wasn't like, you know, maybe in the future, no, he's saying basically for all
00:39:57time this is it and actually benedict when he issued some more in pontificum it gave the same
00:40:04tones like no no it was never abrogated but almost everybody who lived through that period was like
00:40:10what what do you mean never abrogated but anyway he seemed to come back to that saying you know
00:40:15nope it's always been all it is and always will be and this is the way it is traditionus custodis
00:40:20though, really just smashes it. And so how are we to make sense of Pius V and what he said back
00:40:29then? Does it still count? What is that? Well, this is a question of both law and tradition,
00:40:36because the liturgy is one of the instances where sacred tradition is embodied. But the legislation
00:40:42reforming, because Pope Pius did the Tridentine reform of the liturgy, he got rid of a lot of
00:40:49elements and this and that. And the intention was that the Roman Missal would be used throughout
00:40:54the Latin rites. So local rites were given, you know, the ability to continue if they had
00:41:02a significant history, a couple hundred years. The long and the short of it is one pope cannot
00:41:08bind a future pope freedom to promulgate changes in canon and liturgical law. You can't do that.
00:41:20We can do is prohibit inferiors or subordinates, such as local bishops or kings, to try and deprive
00:41:28people of the rights that are given by the Holy See. But yeah, the language is forceful and it's
00:41:36meant to convey the solemnity of it but you can't do that you can't say that no pope in the future
00:41:41can can issue any change to the liberty because of course it always happened you had a new saint
00:41:47uh you had a new votive mass um you you know pope pius the 12th uh reformed the holy week uh and he
00:41:58changed the number of readings at the easter vigil he added a renewal of baptismal promises
00:42:04that didn't exist. So there were changes, you know, Pius X, the same, he changed the Roman
00:42:09breviary significantly. So the history of liturgical reform is an interesting topic,
00:42:17but this is really the question for Pope Leo is, was it prudent what Pope Francis did
00:42:24in basically saying the only people are going to have access to a regular traditional Latin
00:42:30masses if they live near a fraternity of St. Peter or an Institute of Christ at King Parish.
00:42:35Everybody else is in the cold. That makes no sense. I mean, just think about it. That would
00:42:41be like saying, you know, these restaurants are only allowed in these places. Everybody else
00:42:47were shutting down your franchise. That's not how things should work in life. Indeed. So we get now
00:42:53to the papacy of Pope Leo. He's, you know, been in for now more than a year. We've a lot of people
00:42:59or sort of wait the first year to try and figure out where he's going because he's still not his
00:43:03own man yet. He's, we have though been seeing, because he is actually the, prior to becoming
00:43:10Pope, he was the head of the congregation of bishops. And even if we sort of look beyond a
00:43:17lot of the documentation that came out right now, because it's still sort of leftover, you might say,
00:43:22definitely the appointments, because he's been involved in the appointments of bishops
00:43:25long before he was Pope, because as head of the congregation for bishops, he was intimately
00:43:30involved in that. But then we saw this succession of bishop appointments that has shown at least a
00:43:38continuation of Francis, if not an acceleration, because they are men of that same trajectory,
00:43:46if you will. What are your thoughts on Leo, where he's going? Is he going to continue down the sort
00:43:53of Church of Synodality, or is he going to bring us back to some of the more, what we're used to
00:44:02as the Catholic Church prior to the Francis era? Well, my crystal ball, you know, doesn't work that
00:44:08well. Making a prediction, you can certainly analyze the year and a half record now of Pope
00:44:15Leo. We're praying for him, you know, obviously when he has had this surgery, but I'm very
00:44:21disappointing when Heiner Wilmer becomes the Archbishop of Munster and is the president of
00:44:26the Bishop's Conference in Germany, because this is a man who has serious difficulties with some
00:44:31Catholic teachings. And there are others who have been appointed who likewise, you know, have
00:44:37problems based on, not my thought, based on their public statements, that they're interested in
00:44:43changing Catholic teaching and practice. So all I can say is I hope that Pope Leo will continue to
00:44:49display what i praise him for which is listening to different people you know bishop schneider went
00:44:54to see him cardinal burke has seen him he's met with muller i think he's met with sarah so you
00:45:00know this is good remember cardinal burke and the other dubia cardinals couldn't get in to talk to
00:45:07pope francis about uh morris atizia pope leo has an open door so that that's good so i hope
00:45:14I hope for the good of the church, that the discussion will include people who disagree
00:45:19with the synodal project and the synodal style that we seem to be stuck in right now.
00:45:26Amen to that. I want to tell everybody it's called The Papacy of Confusion,
00:45:30The Controversial Legacy of Pope Francis, available wherever good books are sold.
00:45:34And Father, the only thing left to us now is your final blessing.
00:45:37Very good. And thank you for having me on, John Henry. And keep up the good work at LifeSite.
00:45:41May Almighty God bless all of our viewers, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
00:45:47Amen. God bless you, Father. Thank you. And God bless all of you. And we'll see you next time.
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