Pope Francis, a 'false church,' and the Synod on Synodality ｜ Matt Gaspers
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Summary
Matt Gaspers is the new head of Catholic Family News, a Catholic media outlet that focuses on the Catholic Church and the Catholic hierarchy. In this episode of The John Henry Weston Show, Matt Gaspers joins us to talk about what Pope Francis is really up to, and why he should be worried.
Transcript
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Pope Francis, when he opened the so-called Synod on Synodality back in October of 2021,
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he quoted a notoriously progressive, one of the modernist infiltrators at Vatican II,
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we don't need a new church, but we need a different church.
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Well, that's not what our Lord says in the gospel.
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He founded one church, the Catholic Church, to last until he comes again in glory.
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There are very few media organizations that are worth paying attention to.
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And in addition to LifeSite News, if you don't know yet about Catholic Family News, you should.
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Catholic Family News has been around for a long, long time.
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He passed away, but he was a real fighter, a real fighter, always jovial making.
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And Matt Gaspers is now one of the men in charge of it, and I want to introduce you to him.
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He's got some really neat perspectives on the battles that we're facing right now.
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This is the John Henry Weston Show. Stay tuned.
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So let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
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So, Matt, we are here at the Catholic Identity Conference, literally at the beginning of October,
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the month that will launch into what threatens to be one of the greatest calamities of the church in terms of going off kilter.
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It's not like for the last decade we haven't gone off kilter.
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But this threatens to be a real watershed moment, where it seems, you know, if it hadn't been bad enough already for the last decade,
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Well, as I recall, Pope Francis, when he opened the so-called Synod on Synodality back in October of 2021,
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he quoted a notoriously progressive, one of the modernist infiltrators at Vatican II, Father Eve Congar,
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and talking about, we don't need a new church, but we need a different church.
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Well, that's not what our Lord says in the gospel.
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He founded one church, the Catholic Church, to last until he comes again in glory.
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What Pope Francis seems to be trying to do is to make some sort of a counter-church, you might even say an anti-church.
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What Archbishop Vigano has called in his writings a parallel church that's been imposed on the true church of Christ
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since the Second Vatican Council, and Pope Francis seems to be, as Professor Roberto de Mattei has said in the past,
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the ripe fruit of the council and really bringing things to a head, bringing everything to its awful fulfillment.
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I think that's what we're seeing with the Synod on Synodality and some unprecedented errors that are going to be discussed
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and possibly enshrined, you know, as much as they think they can.
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It may be imposed on the faithful, it might be a better way to put it.
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Obviously, even Pope Francis can't change the deposit of faith.
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He can try, I suppose, and his friends, his allies in the hierarchy, but we know that Christ will prevail in the end.
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As I see, you know, the importance of faithful Catholic media, we're kind of like the watchmen of Ezekiel 33,
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where the Lord said to the prophet Ezekiel, I'm paraphrasing, but, you know,
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I'm setting you as my watchman on the Tower of Israel.
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And when you see the invading hordes coming, which we could interpret as the innovators,
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you need to warn the people about what's coming and tell them to arm themselves with the weapon of truth.
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That's the first thing St. Paul mentions in Ephesians 6, to gird your loins with truth.
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And our Lord emphasized that over and over in the Gospels.
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So that's how I see our role in Catholic media, is to be those watchmen on the Tower.
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One of the first thoughts that occurred to me was when you mentioned Professor DeMatte.
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He said very interestingly about the Pope being the Pope sort of of two different churches,
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because it does seem like we're having two different churches.
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And that always reminded me of the prophecies of Anne Catherine Emmerich,
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where it talked about the creation of a false church that she saw being built up.
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I mean, and just to draw again from Archbishop Vigano,
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I know he talked actually at this conference, I think two years ago maybe.
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He talked about the church being eclipsed by this false entity that Pope Francis seems to be at the head of,
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and eclipsing the truth, the beauty, the goodness of the true mystical body of Christ
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through his errors and through, you know, his words and deeds that are leading people astray.
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So I definitely agree with you that we are seeing some sort of a false church come into being.
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But as I said, it's not going to overcome the true church.
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We know that Christ will, just like he was asleep in the boat with the apostles,
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but as soon as he woke up and they said, you know, do you not care that we're drowning?
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He calmed the storm and said, why did you doubt ye of little faith?
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So we have to, in these times, I think our Lord is calling us to a heroic degree of the virtue of faith,
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So it's kind of like a, where do you think we are?
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Because St. John Yud said that when our Lord is truly angry,
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you can, the most evident sign of his displeasure or the worst punishment he can give is sending us bad priests.
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And we, we've got that in spades now, in, in the person of the Pope himself, in, in many, many, many cardinals, bishops, and priests.
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And I'm not even talking about the sexual abuse scandal or anything like that, just in terms of heresy.
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So do you think we're already at a turning point in terms of that punishment is enough?
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Or do you think we're going to see more of a traditional sort of physical calamity before we get a cleanup in the church?
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Everybody knows, and I believe fervently, that the triumph of the Immaculate Heart is coming.
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But will that hope come, in your opinion, after a calamity of more gravity than we saw with, let's say, the First and Second World War?
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Or will it come sort of after sort of this spiritual calamity that we're going through with heresy rampant in the church?
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Well, I tend to look at all of this through the lens of the message of Our Lady of Fatima, as I'm sure you do as well.
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And just thinking about the vision that the Vatican released in the year 2000 about the bishop dressed in white walking through a half-ruined city full of dead bodies of clergy and laity and people on their way to be martyred and such.
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You know, there could be a spiritual meaning to that as well, but I think, you know, in light of other prophecies, it could very well be a literal physical chastisement.
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And then also, of course, we know that there's a missing part of Our Lady's words that we really need.
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The first secret of Fatima was the vision of hell, and the children clearly knew what they were seeing, and yet Our Lady still took the time to explain to them,
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you have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go.
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So it seems ludicrous to believe that she would show them this much more difficult vision to decipher without giving them what our friend Chris Ferrara calls the soundtrack to the vision.
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You know, she had to have explained what was going on to them.
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She couldn't have just left it with that vision.
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So we know there's something left, and we know that it begins with the words,
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In Portugal, the dogma of the faith will always be preserved, et cetera.
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So we need to know what that et cetera says, I think.
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Because when Portugal went pro-abortion, I thought, oh, no.
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Because it says, in Portugal, the dogma of faith will always be retained.
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It's like when Ireland went first pro-same-sex marriage, then pro-abortion.
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St. Patrick sat on that rock forever to get the promise from our Lord.
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But our Lord also says in the scriptures, when I return, will I find faith?
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So those, you combine all that, it starts to paint quite the reality check for us.
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I remember talking, this is now four years ago with Bishop Schneider, maybe five.
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And I asked him, you know, for what should we do?
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What's the best thing we can do right now with our kids, our families and home and whatever?
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He said to me, prepare your children for martyrdom.
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Yeah, I mean, I think we could very well be facing some very challenging times in the near future,
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And we should prepare accordingly, kind of as Noah did with his family at the prompting of the Lord.
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I think one thing that we definitely need to do is be forming our children in the truth of the faith
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Because ultimately what we face, what's been the case from the beginning is a battle of the truth of God
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And then through his intervention, the world and the flesh giving us the same problems.
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So we need to be teaching our children the faith from solid sources.
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And speaking of Bishop Schneider, he has an excellent new resource in that regard
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that not only deals with the faith in general and, you know, the sacraments, the commandments,
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all of the meat and potatoes of the faith, but he also addresses a lot of contemporary errors.
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And it's a very helpful resource in that regard.
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Credo Compendium of the Catholic Faith by Bishop Athanasius Schneider.
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Now, this, as you've described it, is a work that's akin to the old Baltimore Catechism,
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But as you were saying, it sort of is updated with all the modern problems and errors and things.
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Let me just ask you, for instance, with one of the big things that we're undergoing right now
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because it's one of the big things that they're saying.
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You've had all sorts of cardinals and bishops saying that, oh, yes, we're going to have that.
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Yeah, he actually has a whole section in here devoted to that very subject in the chapter on holy orders.
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Now, some of them, that's only being pushed by probably the more extreme elements in the church,
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because even moderates recognize that's simply impossible because our Lord instituted a male priesthood
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because they represent him who is the bridegroom and the church is the bride.
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So what happens when you have a female in the role of the priest?
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Well, basically, you have spiritual lesbianism going on, which is obviously not okay.
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But thankfully, Bishop Schneider even addresses the issue of them becoming deacons.
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So he asks, may women nonetheless receive the order of deacons after he's explained they cannot become priests?
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The sacrament of holy orders is one sacrament conferred in three grades.
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The sacramental ordination of women as deacons would therefore contradict the whole tradition of the universal church,
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both Eastern and Western, and violate her God-given order, since the Council of Trent dogmatically defined,
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the divinely established hierarchy is made up of bishops, priests, and ministers.
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And then, of course, there's the minor orders traditionally.
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But this is such an excellent resource because he quotes like that very often from church councils,
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And it's got a whole section of endnotes at the end for all of the citations.
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He also addresses the hot-button issue regarding, in the context of this,
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weren't there deaconesses in the ancient church?
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And this is also coming from a man who has his doctorate in patristics, the church father,
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For the first five centuries of the church, there is no trace of so-called deaconesses in the West.
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And although the term does not appear in the East,
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these women clearly did not receive the sacrament of holy orders.
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and she does not fulfill any of the things that priests and deacons do,
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but she looks after the doors and attends the priests during the baptism of women for the sake of decency.
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The deaconess was evidently not a woman exercising the office of deacon,
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but rather a completely different ecclesiastical function.
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And I think a lot of this is so great because in earlier times in the church,
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because that really did make still a foundation.
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And now we have a similar thing updated to our current crises,
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which they couldn't have imagined the hell that we'd be in right now.
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I think that's so phenomenal because truly, truly so.
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this is another one of those hot button issues that really the synod's bringing out.
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What does he say about blessing of homosexual unions?
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Let me see if I can find that section real quick here.
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So I don't know if he's, I'm still working my way through the full text,
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but I know he definitely touches on the sins of unnatural vice,
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So I do have a couple of questions and answers I can read.
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This is in the section three on the commandments.
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what of Catholics who are publicly known to commit such sins,
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Catholics engaged in open adultery, cohabitation, pornography,
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homosexual lifestyle, or political activism for such causes.
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For example, the so-called LGBTQ plus agenda must be regarded as public sinners.
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And until they have repented and been reconciled to the church,
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they must be denied Holy Communion by any minister of the sacrament.
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isn't this discipline overly harsh toward sinners whom our Lord invites us to love?
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So he's kind of playing the devil's advocate in the book.
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And the church is obliged to honor our Lord in the Eucharist
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and save the public sinner from eating and drinking judgment unto himself.
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Obviously an allusion to 1 Corinthians chapter 11.
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So, I mean, obviously there's a treasure in there for the whole church.
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Just put out, by the way, just released by Bishop Schneider.
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But there's another thing that we've been discussing
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that they didn't have in previous years that is here now.
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and you had this council of the media, as they called it,
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which was different from the actual council and so on.
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But you really didn't have, especially after the Mass came out,
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the new Mass came out and basically kind of seemed to do away with the old Mass.
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You didn't have a Catholic media that was reporting that.
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People didn't know for years what was going on.
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We have been blessed with Catholic media, instantaneous media,
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so that people all get to see what's happening.
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For a lot of people, it's very confusing and it's leading them astray, whatever, whatever.
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But for those who have the ears to hear and wish to,
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they can see the truth of things in a way that's just stunning.
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Bishop Schneider's been very gracious with his, you know,
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willingness to come on and be interviewed on all these crazy things,
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including, I mean, he could be, you know, his head lopped off, if you will.
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But no, he'd rather answer to God than man, including to the Pope.
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But that role that you talked about with regard to Catholic media today,
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What gives you the courage, the willingness to go into that area,
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which is, it's fraught with a lot of, you can get in trouble with it,
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not only with the church and a hierarchy that's unfaithful,
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Well, I think of the words of our Lord in the gospel of St. John,
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if you remain in my word, you will be my disciple
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and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.
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especially in our times and especially within the life of the church at this time,
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you know, this remnant of faithful in this time,
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from Ezekiel 33 is really an honor and a privilege.
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It makes me think of, certainly not worthy of it,
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but hopefully be found among the apostles of the latter days
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that she's going to raise up in the latter days,
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carry the crucifix in one hand and the rosary in the other
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and are proclaiming the truth of God with boldness
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and bringing souls to repentance and conversion,
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is not only to, obviously we need to report the facts accurately,
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using these news stories as a catalyst or a springboard
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so I think a lot of people look to our apostolates
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smartphones have made news a complete addiction anyway,
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where they're not just going down a rabbit hole
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That issue has gone around the Church right now.
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with our position that we're honestly don't know.
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that there could be a formal schism in the Church.