The John-Henry Westen Show - February 14, 2025


Red Rose Rescuers ARRESTED？ ｜ TRIAL UPCOMING

Topics
prison ministry conversations
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Fidelis Will Goodman John Henry Trump Mary Wagner Tucker Carlson Jesus Christ David Nix Joan Linda Gibbons Spiritui Santo Pius XII Mosinski Clinton Francis Patris Islam Nixon Murr
Exposing the Crisis in the Church ｜ David Torkington Prophecy of The Great Monarch： Alive TODAY？ ｜ Xavier Reyes-Ayral

Episode Stats


Length

22 minutes

Words per minute

177.19

Word count

3,911

Sentence count

243

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Father David Nix talks about his experience being arrested for praying outside an abortion center, and how he and other pro-lifers have been treated by the police in the past and the future.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.280 Could you refrain from obeying that sign that said no trespassing and go and save the life of a child?
00:00:15.980 For all of you pro-lifers out there, we're not always winning.
00:00:20.140 You know the fight is back to the states and all the legislation.
00:00:24.000 Believe it or not, it's also back to the states on the arresting and jailing of pro-lifers.
00:00:30.100 So yes, President Trump has done pardons.
00:00:33.300 Many of them were released from jail, 23 of them.
00:00:36.420 But some of those same people who just got released, believe it or not, are being tried in state courts and ready to go back to jail again.
00:00:45.360 And with me is one of those who is not one who is pardoned, but one who is being tried next month.
00:00:54.020 In fact, almost exactly a month from today.
00:00:57.420 Father David Nix is here with us.
00:00:59.760 He is getting tried with Will Goodman, who was already in, and Father Mosinski, I believe.
00:01:05.600 Father David Nix, so good to be with you.
00:01:06.980 Thanks for having me again, John Henry.
00:01:08.520 We always begin with the sign of the cross.
00:01:09.780 Would you lead us, Father?
00:01:10.600 Sure.
00:01:10.860 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
00:01:14.520 Amen.
00:01:15.600 Amen.
00:01:16.280 Thank you, Father.
00:01:17.100 So tell us what's going on.
00:01:18.860 I mean, I think for a lot of people this is going to be a mega shock because they're like, oh, it's all done.
00:01:22.420 We're all finished now.
00:01:23.360 Thanks be to God.
00:01:24.440 They're free, and we're not doing that anymore.
00:01:26.940 But apparently we are.
00:01:27.940 Yes, so I have been arrested for prayerful, peaceful presences in abortion centers twice, and the latter of the two was in New Jersey in 2019 with, as you said, Father Fidelis and Will Goodman and some others.
00:01:42.380 Some of them stay anonymous.
00:01:44.600 And the reason they delayed our trial was first because of COVID, secondly, because our pro bono lawyer had an injury, and then thirdly, because Will Goodman was in prison himself.
00:01:56.320 And so kind of ironically, since Will's now out of prison, they're trying us for this 2019 prayer inside of an abortion center.
00:02:05.660 Wow.
00:02:05.960 And that, I mean, we're going to go into what you were doing there, but this was pretty much a takedown.
00:02:12.800 How many SUVs showed up when they called police on you?
00:02:16.340 I think it was at least 10.
00:02:17.880 So what we do with Red Rose Rescue, as probably most of your listeners know, is we go inside and we hand out roses to the couples who are abortion-minded, and we hand out roses in the hopes that we can save the people there that day.
00:02:31.740 It's not a publicity stunt.
00:02:32.880 Our goal is to do the most immediate sidewalk counseling away from the sidewalk on the inside of the abortion center, begging them to reconsider.
00:02:41.940 And essentially, it's placing our bodies between the tools of the doctor and the bodies of the unborn.
00:02:49.500 It's pretty brutal.
00:02:50.380 Here's a photo.
00:02:51.600 Actually, you were front and center being taken down by the police.
00:02:54.800 Watch these videos.
00:02:55.500 These are a couple of videos of the rescuers being dragged out or carried out, if you will, by police and put into the cruiser's watch.
00:03:05.040 That doesn't look all that comfortable, because you're already cuffed and then being dragged.
00:03:27.660 What is that like?
00:03:28.660 Well, I thought of that line from Hebrews where St. Paul writes,
00:03:32.620 And when I finally saw that the handcuffs had caused some shedding of blood on me, a very, very small amount, I thought, well, you know, for all my sins, at least there's a little bit of participation in shedding my blood for the sins of the world.
00:03:53.080 Of course, only the most precious blood of Jesus is of infinite value.
00:03:57.040 But we as Catholics believe in Colossians 124, which says,
00:04:00.100 I make up for what is wanting in my body for the church, which is the body of Christ.
00:04:05.580 And what's wanting in the sufferings of Christ?
00:04:08.500 Nothing at all.
00:04:09.460 Of course, that was 100% salvific.
00:04:11.700 But because we are also the body of Christ on earth, our participation in the temporal level is certainly lacking.
00:04:19.760 And that's maybe one reason why abortion is still legal.
00:04:22.720 That's not some fake thing where they're dragging them out.
00:04:26.300 It's actually super painful.
00:04:27.580 Because it doesn't look that way, because no one's screaming and shouting.
00:04:31.260 We've watched this happen to Joan numerous times, to Father Fidelis, to Will Goodman.
00:04:37.860 I mean, pro-lifers have seen this over and over again.
00:04:40.380 In Canada's side, we've seen it to Mary Wagner, Linda Gibbons.
00:04:43.700 But there's no noise.
00:04:46.140 There's no shouting and screaming.
00:04:47.980 But it's super painful.
00:04:49.900 Tell us about that.
00:04:50.960 Why is there, like, is it bravado?
00:04:54.220 What is it?
00:04:54.600 I believe that when we were at this abortion center in New Jersey in 2019,
00:05:00.540 the response was so disproportionate.
00:05:03.340 And I can say as an ex-paramedic who ran every single call with police, maybe people don't know that.
00:05:09.400 EMS, we reply every single call with police.
00:05:11.960 99%, rather, of our calls, we reply, respond with police.
00:05:15.680 And it was so disproportionate to have 10 SUVs come flying, lights and sirens, code three, as we say, to the end of this cul-de-sac.
00:05:23.000 I very much believe that probably if we could go listen to the 911 calls, which is all public, so I should probably – I should have probably listened before saying it.
00:05:33.020 So I will just say I suspect the abortionists on the 911 call probably implied we were terrorists because by the time they came in, it was a big cop from – actually, he was an Egyptian, Muslim Egyptian.
00:05:47.140 He looked like a linebacker, and he came in, and the way he arrested Father Fidelis is he body-slammed him on the ground hard work.
00:05:57.980 And I just thought, I don't know if I can endure that.
00:06:02.000 Father Fidelis is a little huskier than me.
00:06:04.180 And somehow, God must answer my prayer because I kind of just got pushed on the ground by him.
00:06:09.360 And God must have known I couldn't handle as much as Father Fidelis.
00:06:12.480 But some of these people have gotten very much body-slammed.
00:06:17.880 And as you know, John Henry, from a lot of the stories of the real – the grandfathers of this movement, the Operation Rescue people, many of them were greatly physically injured in the 80s and 90s.
00:06:30.200 So the people that led the way in Operation Rescue for what we do, some of them endured very severe physical torture.
00:06:39.880 So you're trying to get in there, but you know it's – you know, you're going to get arrested.
00:06:46.420 You know this is, quote-unquote, illegal.
00:06:48.340 You're trying to save the babies.
00:06:49.340 Yeah, I get that.
00:06:50.020 But so what are you doing, and what are you going to say in your defense now that it's going to court?
00:06:55.660 It's a great question because, you know, in defense, we're not going to go in there and say we were never inside the abortion center.
00:07:02.580 First of all, that would be a lie.
00:07:03.900 Secondly, all the evidence is against this because they have the body cams on.
00:07:07.200 And what we do is we take a legal approach of what's called necessity, and the best analogy I've heard is this, that if you were walking through, say, a rich neighborhood and there was a covenant-controlled swimming pool and there was a gate that said no trespassing,
00:07:23.520 but you could see beyond the gate and you saw that the lifeguards weren't paying attention and there was an eight-year-old girl drowning in there,
00:07:30.580 could you refrain from obeying that sign that said no trespassing and go and save the life of a child?
00:07:38.300 Well, of course, every country in the world would support the fact that common sense and jurisprudence always takes precedent over smaller laws like no trespassing.
00:07:49.980 So while we recognize that the abortion center is private property, the requirement to refrain from trespassing takes a second place in the requirement for anybody to stop murder.
00:08:06.140 One of the examples I give is if you were out on a sidewalk in any American city or Canadian city and there were 10 10-year-olds 10 yards from each other on the sidewalk and a man was coming by with a sledgehammer,
00:08:18.400 one after the other maybe 30 seconds between each of these 10-year-olds, what man in his right mind would not go up and try to stop that person?
00:08:27.760 And so placing yourself between a killer and his instruments, placing yourself between the killer and someone who's slated for death is absolutely necessity in any time,
00:08:41.000 in any place of Western civilization, even many pagan civilizations would consider this part of what should be part of civil law.
00:08:48.980 So we take the necessity approach to say we are required to place our bodies between the killer and the child regardless of outcome.
00:09:00.640 And then if people want to bring that against us, that's not on our conscience.
00:09:05.340 You know, when I first joined Red Rose Rescue, I kind of thought I was joining something for the PR stunt on the whole thing.
00:09:10.040 But the people who are the real hardcore Red Rose Rescuers like Will Goodman, who's done a lot more time in prison than I have,
00:09:17.540 when you listen to him talk, he may have an extraordinary call, but it's an ordinary response to a murder.
00:09:24.200 When you really digest the fact that this is murder, many of the people in Red Rose Rescue, they're not doing it for the publicity stunt.
00:09:31.300 And their goal is just to save lives that day in that place.
00:09:36.840 And they are resigned to the fact that there's a 99.99% chance they're going to get arrested.
00:09:43.040 But that's not the main goal.
00:09:44.720 One of the super things that I've heard from all the rescuers so far, one of the things they do is they evangelize along the way in prison.
00:09:51.740 Joan, Mary Wagner, they all tell me stories of great prison ministries they have.
00:09:56.720 It's like whole outcroppings of the new opportunity to share the gospel, to share life with those whom they meet on the inside.
00:10:03.020 Tell us about that.
00:10:03.680 Yes, it's really incredible that there are accounts of prisoners returning to the sacraments, amazing evangelization from people like Will Goodman.
00:10:12.640 Some of our priests have heard confessions in prison.
00:10:15.920 And again, that's not the main goal, but God uses anybody that is going to make an offering in any way that he wants.
00:10:24.120 When I was booked in this 2019 New Jersey case, the really big Muslim from Egypt who ended up booking me, we ended up having a two-hour conversation. 0.99
00:10:34.540 And he was a very, very nice gentleman.
00:10:36.820 I don't mean to be ripping on him five minutes ago because he was a very reasonable, decent man.
00:10:43.640 And we had a beautiful conversation about Catholicism versus Islam. 0.99
00:10:48.560 We even discussed why do you think there is no abortion in many Muslim countries?
00:10:52.740 And I'm obviously the last person to defend Islam. 0.77
00:10:55.540 I think it's a wicked world religion, but there's many, many polite, kind people who are Muslims.
00:11:02.000 So he very much actually understood why we were doing this.
00:11:05.840 Once the dust settled and these New Jersey police officers realized we were not the terrorists that may or may not have been reported on this Planned Parenthood or Abortion Center 911 call,
00:11:15.940 once they calmed down, we had some very decent, reasonable conversations about Jesus Christ, the returning to the sacraments.
00:11:24.500 I talked to one cop in that jail station who hadn't been to the sacraments in years,
00:11:28.760 and we had a very good conversation about, hey, it's time to return to the sacraments.
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00:12:02.240 Thank you for your support, and may God bless you.
00:12:05.720 This situation is coming up in one month.
00:12:08.640 What do you think the likelihood is of, you don't think they're actually going to send you to jail time, do you?
00:12:15.520 I believe there's a decent chance we could go to jail for up to 30 days.
00:12:21.880 Father Fidelis called me yesterday, and he said that the 2019 trial has now come to a head.
00:12:29.760 Our trial is going to be on March 14th, which is, at least in the old calendar, maybe the new calendar, also Our Lady of Sorrows.
00:12:37.820 And I thought, ooh, having this happen on Our Lady of Sorrows makes me think this is going to be a little bit more of Mary helping us to strengthen the shoulder more than lighten the load type day.
00:12:47.040 So it worries me a little bit that it's on Our Lady of Sorrows.
00:12:50.060 One of the things that Father Fidelis and I were not sure of in our phone conversation, I think your listeners are going to find this pretty fascinating, was, and we might be wrong, so we have to talk to our own attorney about this.
00:13:00.520 We have a very good pro bono attorney.
00:13:03.080 But because Father Fidelis and Will were pardoned by President Trump, and on top of that pardon, that also got Will out of prison.
00:13:11.180 And Father Fidelis was already out of prison, but they were both pardoned, and that pardon included getting Will out of prison.
00:13:16.240 Amazingly, within days of being pardoned, the gears of divine providence plopped out something very extraordinary, that Will was at the Trump prayer breakfast within a week of getting released from prison.
00:13:28.440 So he was at the Trump prayer breakfast after this.
00:13:31.300 And so we're very, very thankful to Trump for this.
00:13:34.560 But the reason why we still have this state trial is we think, and again, I'm not sure on this, John Henry, but we believe that because there were federal, quote unquote, criminal accusations against people like Will and Father Fidelis for having block entrances, which kind of goes against the FACE Act that was enacted by President Clinton.
00:13:57.380 They could be pardoned at the federal level, where Red Rose Rescue, we don't block entrants. 0.98
00:14:02.220 Normally, we just get misdemeanor trespassing violations.
00:14:06.960 And so we believe, and we might be wrong about this, that Trump cannot pardon us at the state level, only at the federal level.
00:14:15.120 Now, the reason I kind of doubt the last thing I just said is if you have someone on death row at the state level, my understanding is the president can pardon that person.
00:14:23.760 I'm not giving up total hope that if we did get put in the clink for the full month, Trump, or maybe I'll put it in the positive, maybe Trump would be able to come help us.
00:14:35.720 But, you know, with so much happening in the United States right now, when there's such an unbelievable wave that the conservatives are riding right now with how many people are blowing the whistle on Catholic relief services, how excited people are that Trump is president, how excited people are to expose a lot of the corruption of the U.S. bishops.
00:14:55.540 As we're seeing a lot of even mainstream Catholics wake up to all this, we are willing to suffer for the gospel.
00:15:03.220 But we also think that perhaps the left is going to want to make an example out of people like Father Fidelis and Will and me, because we are at pitch level in this culture war, as all of your listeners currently know.
00:15:15.440 Father, our prayers will definitely be with you. March 14th is the date. We want to make sure that we're praying for you, but also all of our viewers, hopefully for Father Fidelis, for Father Nixon, and also for Will Goodman. You are the three, and it's only the three of you right now, is it?
00:15:30.980 No, we have more. I don't know if she wants her name. The reason she goes anonymous is because the children die anonymous. She doesn't want her name to be famous or anything like that. 0.99
00:15:38.900 Because many of these children, you know, God had a name for these children, and they're not born. And so this isn't just a game of numbers and PR and jail and Trump and politics.
00:15:49.200 These babies God had a name for, and they're not being born. And so we really have to realize this is an emergency. And so Red Rose Rescue functions as emergency workers in all of this. This isn't a PR stunt.
00:16:02.460 There's an emergency that children are dying at the hands of cold instruments of the most cold-blooded killers in the history of the world. And many people are called to do the slow route of like lobbying, but some people are called to the emergency response route, and that's Red Rose Rescue.
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00:16:52.200 I'd love your take actually on what's going on in America, because that's so stunning for people. You know, I'm in Canada and all around the world, people are in shock because there's been, it's like an overnight revolution of common sense, you might say. But what's your take on it from inside?
00:17:06.560 I mean, maybe that's a term that's all over social media, common sense, revolution of common sense, but that's, I haven't heard it. And that's absolutely the best description of January, February 2025 that I've heard so far.
00:17:17.560 Because what we're saying at this point, you know, boys have to be boys, girls have to be girls, you shouldn't kill unborn babies. These are matters of the natural law, not even divine revelation. I mean, they're included in divine revelation, but we're debating things you don't even have to be a Christian to believe in, like you don't mutilate children, you know.
00:17:35.500 And so that's where this isn't so much a Christian revolution as just a revolution of common sense. And thankfully, this revolution of common sense seems to be being led by conservative Christians. That's a really good thing. But that right there proves we have to stop being afraid for saying the most basic obvious truths.
00:17:54.560 And as a thousand people before me have said, the devil clearly overplayed his hand through the left. But we have to ride this wave of courage at this point, because I kind of agree with Tucker Carlson, you know, if you listen closely to Tucker Carlson, he rips on the Republicans more than Democrats. Why? Because they have gone along, reaching across the aisle with evil, possibly paid by Democrats to just, you know, fake people out as Republicans for decades.
00:18:22.600 And this is where we have to say, you know what, we don't reach across the aisle with evil. We want everyone on the left to come to know Jesus Christ, come to know the Catholic Church and to enter the Catholic Church. But we don't compromise on evil anymore. And I think there's enough people waking up that we could get a critical mass. To put it very bluntly, I hope what is happening in the United States with Trump happens at the Catholic Church level. I'm not saying Trump is canonizable material or any of that.
00:18:51.740 But we need someone to clean house and return us to our own roots in the Catholic Church as we see happening in the United States right now. 0.89
00:19:01.080 We do. And Father Murr said the same thing. Others, I know, have said the same thing, clergy especially. You know what, Father, but it's hard to imagine, given the setup of the cardinals, over 99 of them chosen by Francis, yet a lot of people still have hope. Are you one of those who have hope? And tell us why.
00:19:21.440 Well, you know, the College of Cardinals is probably closer to 2,000 years old, but the College of Cardinals choosing the Pope is only 1,700 years old.
00:19:30.500 So there could be a miracle around that system. And as I said to you before we recorded, I've never been accused of being an optimist, but I think there's going to be some miracle.
00:19:40.600 I don't know if it's going to mean the conversion of a cardinal or God's going to come out of left field and do something around that.
00:19:48.680 But I think our next Pope is going to be traditionalists. And I know I sound insane saying that with how the College of Cardinals is stacked against us.
00:19:56.080 But I really believe God loves the Church more than I do. And I think we've reached the tipping point in the madness of apostasy from Rome at this point and the cooperation from the U.S. bishops in this apostasy.
00:20:10.540 And so I think at any tipping point, if you look at Church history closely, God always loves His Church more than even the most faithful priests.
00:20:19.740 And so I don't know how it's going to happen, but something's going to happen.
00:20:24.460 And, you know, schism is the big S word in the Catholic Church, but let's admit it, there's already an internal schism and an external schism is going to be the pressure release valve for a lot of this.
00:20:35.600 So I think just admitting that we have two faiths occupying one church, I think that's what we talked about last time I was on your show.
00:20:42.020 We have two faiths occupying one church.
00:20:44.320 The formal and open admission of that in a schism is going to really allow the true church, not what Fulton Sheen calls the ape of the church.
00:20:53.980 That's what's going to allow the true church to actually grow.
00:20:57.180 Beautiful. Amen.
00:20:58.120 I pray never so much for anything that you're right, because we need it.
00:21:07.520 We need it so badly.
00:21:09.700 The faithful need it.
00:21:11.960 And it would be so awesome.
00:21:13.580 Thank you so much, Father, for joining us.
00:21:15.700 Could you conclude by giving everyone your blessing?
00:21:17.960 Yeah, sure. 0.74
00:21:18.760 Dominus Phobis cum. 0.95
00:21:20.220 Et cum Spiritu tuo.
00:21:22.140 Benedictio de me patentes.
00:21:23.880 Patris et fithi et Spiritu Santi.
00:21:26.380 Descendet super vos et mani et semper.
00:21:28.740 Amen.
00:21:29.560 Amen.
00:21:30.520 Thank you so much, Father.
00:21:31.700 God bless you.
00:21:32.160 Thanks for having me, John Henry.
00:21:32.920 God bless you.
00:21:34.060 And God bless all of you.
00:21:35.680 And we'll see you next time.
00:21:39.640 The Lord be with you.
00:21:40.920 I'm Deacon Keith Fournier, and I hope you enjoyed this video from LifeSite News.
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00:22:00.940 Thanks for watching, and may the Lord bless you.