The John-Henry Westen Show - ‘They Treat Kids Like Gold’： Catholic Family FLEES to Russia？!

00:00:00.000 I've been asked on many different interviews, what's your favorite thing about Russia?

00:00:04.080 And it is absolutely, Russians treat children like gold, like gold bars. That's how they treat 1.00

00:00:09.700 children. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the John Henry Weston show coming to you from Moscow,

00:00:16.520 Russia. We are here in the home of Joseph Schutzmann and his family. Thank you, Joseph,

00:00:22.400 for inviting us. It's our pleasure, John. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:00:26.540 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. Joseph and Anne Schutzmann,

00:00:33.480 thank you for having us. Would your children care to introduce themselves to us? Of course.

00:00:38.460 I'm Luther. I'm Marie Tornet. I'm Joseph. This is Wolfgang. And this is my first Russian son,

00:00:46.500 Misha, or Mikhail. I'm Florian. Florian, good to meet you on camera. We already met before. We've

00:00:54.700 seen each other around since you accompanied your dad on various things. Now, I was most impressed the

00:01:02.380 other day when we went to a very long Orthodox service with the Patriarch Kirill. And then we

00:01:11.040 went to Mass. It was Sunday. And so we went from the one to the other. And it was an Armenian Rite Mass.

00:01:17.940 And you stood and stood and stood and stood and stood for many, many hours. So that was very

00:01:24.980 impressive. Now, you also wrote a beautiful birthday card for your dad. In the birthday card,

00:01:32.100 you expressed he wasn't with you on his birthday, which was kind of sad. But what was he doing,

00:01:36.720 did you say? He was doing Our Lady's work on her day. Isn't that beautiful? And what day is that?

00:01:43.200 Wednesday. And what day of hers is that? Our Lady of Ransom. Oh, beautiful. Do you remember

00:01:49.240 living in America? Yes, I remember some memories. She was cooking with this wonderful straw that had

00:01:54.780 these lovely sandwiches. Do you enjoy living in Russia? Yes, I do. You do. What do you like about

00:02:00.440 it most? The friendly children. Ah, the friendly children. Are there many children here that you

00:02:05.900 get to play with? Not in this village. But we sometimes see adults passing by. But it's usually

00:02:15.600 when we go out in Moscow. And you guys attend a Mass in Moscow every week. And where is that?

00:02:24.700 We go to the Armenian. We go to the Latin. Okay, so you go to the Armenian Mass and to the

00:02:29.880 Latin Mass. So are you learning Russian already? Yes. Chuchot. Okay. I don't know what that means 0.97

00:02:36.920 yet, but that's okay. What does it mean? A little bit. A little bit. Okay, very good. Chuchot. 0.82

00:02:42.620 Chuchot. That's going to take me a long time. Last thing for you. Why do you think you are here? 1.00

00:02:50.040 What's the mission? To do Our Lady's work. Beautiful. Thank you, Fleurie. It was great talking

00:02:55.660 to you. My pleasure. For U.S. residents, creating a will has never been easier. Thanks to My Legacy

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00:03:19.580 remembered LifeSite News in your will. Visit MyLegacyWill.com slash LifeSiteNews. Thank you

00:03:26.320 for your support, and may God bless you. Joseph, Ann, thank you so much for having us. You moved from

00:03:32.980 America to Russia. You had six children when you moved. How old was the oldest when you moved?

00:03:40.180 The oldest was Fleurie, and she was six years old, I believe. That's correct? Yeah, it's six under six.

00:03:45.360 Most recently, we were living in Kansas. I'm from Texas originally, but Ann is from Australia.

00:03:50.900 Everybody's going to be asking, why would you do that, and why Russia?

00:03:55.600 You know, we did talk quite a bit about this. This ironically actually didn't start about

00:04:00.800 by moving to Russia. It was first and foremost about leaving America. You know,

00:04:07.760 Ann had already left her family to marry myself. Had the six children in America, so she already

00:04:17.860 abandoned her country for myself, but then we kind of re-evaluated the situation, the direction in

00:04:23.960 which things are going in America. Certainly the way that things were going in America, I believe it

00:04:31.100 still are going in this ultimately horrible direction. And, you know, a lot of people,

00:04:39.000 when they're kind of thinking about this and the environment for their children, they're thinking

00:04:42.620 about the here and the now, not what's actually coming. And I don't mean the apocalypse. Certainly

00:04:50.180 it's always coming every day, but what happened during COVID destroyed a generation of children.

00:04:55.280 It was already being destroyed, certainly the schools as they are now today, particularly the

00:05:01.580 public schools and whatnot. But after the whole COVID thing and people lost their ever loving minds,

00:05:08.280 we saw an entire generation of children that was destroyed. They were behind and so far behind in

00:05:18.000 their school, loss of focus, lots of experimentations on things that children should never

00:05:24.500 ever be exposed to. And not only are those the children that came back out after COVID, but

00:05:33.380 those are going to be adults one day. And my children will be adults with them and they will

00:05:38.560 live in the world with those children. And that's what we did not want for our children.

00:05:45.440 So you took it upon yourselves to come to Russia. Many people are going to say, but there's other

00:05:52.920 places in the world. Why are you Russia? Aren't they anti-Catholic? And it's not even one of the

00:05:59.100 official religions. And you guys are Catholic. In fact, you're traditional Catholics. What are you

00:06:06.320 doing?

00:06:06.800 You know, we talk a lot about the divine law. We talk a lot about the laws of the church.

00:06:14.200 As Catholics, as traditional Catholics, we have several laws that are, of course, built one on top

00:06:20.040 of the other. But I think that people too often forget that the natural law, all the laws,

00:06:28.120 the original ones and the ones of the Catholic church are created or inspired directly by God.

00:06:36.200 The natural law was the very first law that he imposed on this earth. And if you abandon the natural

00:06:44.040 law and it's come to that, everything else kind of falls apart, falls by the wayside because you've

00:06:52.120 undone this thing. Even though it is written in our hearts, it can be destroyed extremely early in a

00:06:57.680 child. And so with regards to that part, we did do the globe thing. We were looking at like South

00:07:06.440 America. We were like, got a little crazy and like looking at like Mauritius, like, well, what's down

00:07:12.360 there? That might be interesting. You know, the Institute of Christ the King is down there,

00:07:15.720 for example, right? Like maybe we could go there. Where are you going to go? We're not going to go to

00:07:19.560 Canada. No offense, General Henry. Europe is worse off than North America.

00:07:26.040 We had these conversations with friends who are also planning to leave America. You know,

00:07:30.280 they actually told us first that they had planned to leave. And we had had similar conversations

00:07:36.360 between ourselves and like, oh, wow, we didn't know they were thinking about leaving too. Like,

00:07:40.040 oh, like, we're not the only ones. And since then, we've had a lot more conversations

00:07:46.360 with other people planning to leave. But they were planning to come to Russia. And we hadn't thought

00:07:53.080 about Russia first. It was very surprising to us. And we had looked at the globe and we just,

00:07:58.760 you know, at dinner, Florian got the globe for Christmas. And we were just spinning around

00:08:03.000 like, oh, what's it like to live there? And then our conversations became a little bit more,

00:08:07.400 you know, you know, serious, which actually, you know, we, and every week, you know, we would run

00:08:13.640 into something that was, you know, morally harmful in the raising of children, like just the playground

00:08:21.160 down the road, having to deal with, you know, same-sex couples who came to the playground and with

00:08:27.960 the, you know, child and having to kind of, the children are asking questions, you know,

00:08:34.120 why does this boy say he has two mommies? And it was in our face all the time. Every week,

00:08:39.000 there'd be two or three incidents that we had to always kind of try to manage or

00:08:45.080 explain or try not to explain and just, and we found that it interfered with our daily lives.

00:08:50.600 We could not fit. We felt that we were starting to live in a bubble because we stopped taking the

00:08:55.320 children to the grocery store because of all the filthy magazines and just the spirit there.

00:09:01.160 There are continually even more and more problems that we ran into just, you know,

00:09:07.160 Yeah. And people dressed terribly, you know, in the park.

00:09:11.880 And so the, the, the conclusion is, is, you know, the, you start eliminating continents pretty quickly.

00:09:19.960 Right. So finally we're just like, okay, so you got Russia and China is basically left.

00:09:26.440 Australia is out. Right. I mean, so again, it's the process of elimination. You're like, okay,

00:09:31.320 yeah. There's like this China thing that doesn't work for us. Russia is what's left. And matter of

00:09:38.840 fact, haven't we been as traditional Catholics, have we been praying for Russia every day for

00:09:44.600 our whole lives? You know, I, you know, I don't believe the mainstream media, for example, right.

00:09:49.880 Except when it comes to Russia, that was certainly entrenched. Of course, at least they must be right 1.00

00:09:55.240 about that. I mean, that's common knowledge. We've been saying that for decades. Why would they lie to us

00:10:00.600 about that? But then it was like, well, at least Russia has a future. We do know that. 0.89

00:10:07.080 We do know that Russia has the future. It's promised by our lady specifically.

00:10:13.400 Maybe that's an option. I've been listening to, you know, the president Putin speak for

00:10:19.800 many years, you know, and, and again, we're told that Russia is evil. So at the very best, if you, 0.50

00:10:26.760 if it happens, what Putin is saying seems to somehow resonate with you, at the very least,

00:10:34.200 it must be a trap. They're, they're just trying to trick us into believing that they actually mean

00:10:41.640 this. But then again, you know, you've, you've been here for a week now. We talked a lot about

00:10:47.720 Potemkin villages, Potemkin steaks, Potemkin furniture. I mean, there's a lot of Potemkins, 0.69

00:10:55.320 you know, around here. The problem is when it went from facades in the real story to the huge

00:11:01.000 metropolis to we went four hours away to another town and there's others and more and more.

00:11:09.240 So it's like they're building a Potemkin country filled with all the good things. And then I don't 0.79

00:11:14.280 know what it is anymore. The popular perception though, is everything Putin says is a lie. And,

00:11:19.080 or you don't even know what he's saying because it's Russian and they're just dubbing over it and

00:11:22.760 making it up. Also, of course, they're anti-Catholic because of course, Russia doesn't 0.98

00:11:27.960 allow Catholicism. It's not one of their official religions. Therefore it's out. And that's weird

00:11:33.160 because you guys are here and you're going to Catholic mass, a traditional Catholic mass. In fact,

00:11:38.360 how does that even work? You've got to dispel for us some of this very popular notions. Because you

00:11:44.920 have to remember, people honest to goodness don't believe that there's a pro-family attitude in Russia,

00:11:52.920 that they're more pro-life than anyone else, that they are. Because we've heard these things,

00:11:57.720 you know, in the news, oh, Russia made LGBT propaganda illegal. And most of the Catholics would 1.00

00:12:03.880 say, good, but it's Russia. Good, but it can't be real because it's Russia. And maybe it's mean

00:12:09.000 because it's Russia. It's that bad. You've lived here now a couple of years. Have you been like, 1.00

00:12:16.840 oh my gosh, they were right. It's, it's actually secretly bad. What's life like here?

00:12:24.520 Shockingly good. We were so relieved. Remember how relieved were you like, oh, I have muscles that

00:12:32.280 are loosening in the back of my neck. I can move my head. It was true. It was true. You're living in

00:12:38.040 a country where people treat, I've been asked on many different interviews, what's your favorite

00:12:43.480 thing about Russia? And it is absolutely, we're just talking on a very pragmatic, practical level.

00:12:49.560 The Russians treat children like gold, like gold bars. That's how they treat children. 1.00

00:12:56.520 And you know, and when you come from a country that doesn't value their children at all,

00:13:02.840 right? And they don't realize that supporting a large family, even just encouraging large family,

00:13:13.160 I mean, like the normal people out on the street, when you're walking around with your family

00:13:17.000 and you walk around in America. I know if somebody might come up to your wife and ask

00:13:21.080 her why she doesn't watch TV or does she do anything else with her time other than make kids,

00:13:27.400 you know, on one hand, where you come here and you have like people like shouting from across the

00:13:32.040 street, like, well done, keep going, more children. And it's like welcoming smiles. People are happy to see

00:13:40.920 the large family. When we first came and had to manage public transport, it was very hard to have

00:13:47.400 everyone getting under the trains and the buses. And everyone, like, the hearts are warm here.

00:13:54.280 People are quick to help, you know, back in America, or even in Europe, I remember traveling,

00:13:59.240 everyone just is in their own little bubble, and they're afraid to step out of it, even to,

00:14:03.480 you know, show charity. But there's such a warmth here, people will just reach out without

00:14:07.080 asking about the stroller. And the old ladies would come off the train, and they would quickly 1.00

00:14:12.520 grab all the hands of the little ones and be like, Davai, Davai. And we didn't know these people,

00:14:17.880 but there's a sense of trust between, you know, humanity is, you know, warm and alive here.

00:14:24.120 They would find children's seats, and we'd walk into the train. And if there were, you know,

00:14:29.160 men and women sitting down, they would, they would, they would get them all to stand up.

00:14:33.160 And then let's see. See, this is a large family. You know, they must sit together. And I remember

00:14:38.200 someone was slow to move once, and she was very sharp with him, and she told him. But you know

00:14:43.320 what? They all respected her because there's, the natural hierarchy is still here. The man deferred

00:14:49.240 to the lady and apologized and bowed his head, and he moved. And he had his earbuds, and he didn't

00:14:54.360 know, but he wasn't moving fast enough for the babushka. And she, she told, she told him what for.

00:14:59.160 And he was polite to her as if it was his own grandmother. We were just so edified with the

00:15:04.120 way that, you know, everyone relates to each other. You know, the women are respectful to the men. 0.86

00:15:09.480 And, um, everyone is respectful to the babushkas because, you know, that's, that's how it is,

00:15:16.200 and it should be. And we just found it, um, you know, remember Jean-Jacques didn't have a hat.

00:15:23.400 Yeah, that's right. He threw off his hat, and it was a snowy day. And we looked down in the stroller,

00:15:28.200 and we were on the way to the next station. We were walking, and he didn't have a hat.

00:15:32.920 And he, and we were wearing his hat. It's a mortal sin, by the way, in Russia. 1.00

00:15:36.200 Yeah. If, if, if your children doesn't, he's not wearing a hat in the middle of winter,

00:15:40.440 let's just say it's less than, you know, maybe 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

00:15:44.520 It was just freezing. It wasn't, like, negative.

00:15:47.160 Yeah, he was bottled up, but he still didn't have the top of his head covered.

00:15:51.320 Man just reaches down. It's like, he doesn't have a hat. Give him my hat. Old man.

00:15:57.560 And he put it on the child.

00:15:59.160 Yeah, he rode with us, and then he was, like, getting off,

00:16:02.760 and we were, like, trying to offer him his hat. And he's like, no, that hat is his now.

00:16:06.120 That is his hat. I can get another hat. That's his hat. And then we ended up exchanging contact

00:16:11.960 information, and he came over and, like, cooked food for us in our home. Like, like, weeks later,

00:16:17.880 right? I mean, it's just. Well, we saw him after that incident. He moved on, and he didn't expect

00:16:23.000 anything from it. Yeah. We saw him at the station frequently on a Sunday because he was traveling

00:16:26.840 at the same time. So after some weeks, he did come over. But he, he would have totally just given

00:16:32.920 that and moved on with his life and not looked for anything. It's really phenomenal. You know,

00:16:37.320 we were sitting the other day talking. I've got eight children. Joseph has seven. And his friend

00:16:43.800 here, Fabrice, has ten. And we're all from different countries. I'm from Canada. You're

00:16:48.920 from America. And Fabrice from France. All of us had the same thing happen to our wives. Almost

00:16:54.760 identical. My wife was yelled at while we had all our little kids. And he said, you know, you're harming

00:17:01.960 the planet. You're so selfish. I can't believe it. And this was a woman. It wasn't a guy. It was, 0.97

00:17:06.520 it was another woman. And I was there. What even is going on? It's insane. But it's really insane.

00:17:14.680 Fabrice said the same thing. And Joseph said, you've experienced the same. So this is not uncommon for

00:17:21.640 large families in the West. Not uncommon for large families in Europe. I traveled to Germany with five

00:17:28.600 kids once upon a time. And they called us the crazy family. And here you're saying it's the opposite.

00:17:37.560 It really is. The Russian people are really an incredible people. There's a lot of history there,

00:17:44.040 right? Of course, us as Americans, we only know basically what happened from 1917 till 1980 something.

00:17:53.480 Um, if, if you actually went to like a decent college, you might understand just kind of a

00:17:59.800 highlights of that period of time. And that's about all, you know, about Russia. Nobody knows that

00:18:04.920 Russians had a victory parade defeating Napoleon's troops. They had a victory day parade in Paris.

00:18:11.720 Russians were marching through the troops during this period of time. Nobody knows that the Poles 1.00

00:18:16.280 took Moscow and stayed there for a year, right? There's all this historical buildup,

00:18:21.080 right? In these countries of Europe that actually do appreciate the relationship,

00:18:25.560 or at least the history and understanding of the history with Russia.

00:18:29.080 Yeah.

00:18:29.480 I mean, as Americans, the most removed history that we have somewhere, China, Russia,

00:18:33.960 it's just, but these are like the Europeans that got kicked out, out, out into, you know, the cold,

00:18:40.840 so to speak, before the communists, just for the record, right? These are just people that have been

00:18:45.800 excused from history and they're not important. The only reason why they might be of any relevance is

00:18:50.600 because they're evil. And they're the most human people that I have ever met as a country. They're

00:18:55.720 the most human people that I have ever met in my entire life.

00:18:58.360 Well, they have a rich history. People judge Russia just on the past,

00:19:03.560 how many years, in the last hundred years, for example, they have a thousand years of history and

00:19:08.360 traditions that were maintained. And yes, unfortunate things have happened in the country. I'm using that

00:19:15.560 word because, you know, I'm not going to open that box right, right now. But everyone judges

00:19:21.000 Russia as a country on just a small part of what their history has been. People forget that they

00:19:26.120 have a Catholic history too. And Catholicism has been here since the time of St. Olga, St. Vladimir.

00:19:33.160 And it's, it's been in the country, in the country. It hasn't been stamped out. People were practicing.

00:19:37.960 You can't judge all the Russian people because of events that happened in the cities, you know.

00:19:44.120 And it's, it's amazing how people hold the whole country accountable for what happened in the past.

00:19:49.800 Whereas, I mean, if you're going to take that approach, then everyone in Germany should still be, 0.91

00:19:55.320 um, you know, punished like everyone's punishing the Russians. Why, why do, why do people say that

00:20:01.160 Russian citizens are guilty of things that they never, they never allowed or wanted? And you know, 1.00

00:20:07.960 the other problem is still this, I'll call it Western, but the West as a collective has a general

00:20:14.920 feeling of exceptionalism. That somehow we're the smart ones, we're the intelligent ones,

00:20:21.560 we're the victors of and heroes of history. When in reality, we have to share this with the rest of

00:20:28.120 the world. There are a lot of other countries, Russia, not the least of them, certainly,

00:20:34.360 that had a tremendous amount of history that protected Europe from the Turks for 230 some odd 1.00

00:20:40.840 years. I mean, we, we talk about Charles Martel, we talk about Charlemagne, we talk about El Cid,

00:20:46.440 we talk about all these great Western heroes, but we don't really think about whatever happened east of

00:20:51.560 that. The Russians were living with the Mongols and fighting with the Mongols for hundreds of years.

00:20:56.680 They were fighting with the Turks for hundreds of years. They actually died stopping these these 1.00

00:21:02.840 hordes from coming to Europe. Again, about the actual Russian people, I think one of their greatest

00:21:09.400 superpowers that is something that we could learn tremendously from is that Russians as a people

00:21:17.080 separate and judge separately the people of a country and the government of a country.

00:21:23.720 They somehow are able to do that. That's not something that I ever understood. People sometimes

00:21:31.240 have told me when I've told that story, they're like, Oh, no, no, I, I separate the people in the

00:21:36.280 government. Like, yeah, about 30 seconds ago, when it became relevant, because you didn't think about it,

00:21:43.640 because everybody just says the Russians, and those bad people, and how dare they attack

00:21:49.160 this country, and how dare they? And how dare they? You know, we have a tremendous amount of national sin

00:21:58.360 to account for. In America. Right. Absolutely. You think that it's okay that, oh, well, back in this year,

00:22:06.680 that the Russians had this abortion rate, but we had a better year in 2000 and whatever. So that makes you less bad,

00:22:13.160 less bad because you killed some less babies. You're better than they are because you killed less

00:22:20.600 children than them. That makes no sense whatsoever. But as people will see in your interviews, there's a

00:22:27.640 lot of interesting data even there. There is, there is. One of the things that is really strange

00:22:33.480 is for the past at least five, seven, eight years, the internet has been alive with videos of President

00:22:43.160 Putin speaking. And almost without fail, he's saying all the things that conservatives want to hear.

00:22:52.440 He's talking about God as a president. He's talking about pro-life. He's talking about pro-family,

00:22:58.680 especially pro-family. He's talking about keeping Russia, Russian, the way we talk about keeping 0.99

00:23:06.920 America, American, in a good way. And yet it's heard so differently. Half the people who really

00:23:13.640 love it think, oh, it must be dubbed over fake. That's not real what he's saying. They're just

00:23:17.960 making it seem good. The people who know more about it and realize, oh no, that is what he's saying,

00:23:23.160 are like, yeah, but it must be fake. He's just putting on a show for America. It's that bad.

00:23:27.800 And it's that bad also for Catholics. And that's why I think you guys are so interesting because

00:23:35.720 you're Catholics and you're here and you're living here as Catholics. I'm sure many people would have

00:23:44.040 said, oh, well then you're going to be Orthodox then. And are you comfortable being Catholic here?

00:23:50.840 I've given many interviews across the board, both Western and Russian sources. And I don't, I mean,

00:23:59.000 I'm talking about the New York Times. They didn't publish my interview. Wall Street Journal, The

00:24:03.560 Spectator, these kind of outlets, and then RT, TASS and these other ones, right? It's my calling card

00:24:09.480 whenever I give these interviews or they come into our house and they see what we have, our statues,

00:24:16.040 our faith. We wear it on our sleeves. We're very proud of our faith. Very, very, very comfortable

00:24:21.640 with the faith that God has given us. And it's really sad to talk to several people that I communicate

00:24:32.840 with online that I've known for decades and they somehow, I've all of a sudden become a Putin 0.84

00:24:39.640 stooge because I actually went to a different country and experienced what it's actually like

00:24:46.680 on the ground. We've been treated with nothing but respect. Met with many Orthodox people,

00:24:53.320 many Catholic people. You've met several of these people already. It's not like you're just,

00:24:57.960 oh, well, we're alone and we're just living here amongst all the Orthodox. No, there's a lot of 1.00

00:25:03.960 different people, but even the Orthodox people are good and wholesome people. Some of these people

00:25:10.200 that we know, some of these people that you've met, sad to say, sad to say, much better people than

00:25:18.280 many other traditional Catholics that I know. Does that make me think that what we believe,

00:25:24.200 what how I leave my family is not the truth? No, because it doesn't have to do with the people.

00:25:29.640 You know, everybody is so tired. People my age, people are older than myself. Many of these poor people

00:25:37.000 are just tired and they're just dying for some normality. And you know what? It's interesting.

00:25:44.520 I only thought about this just this moment, actually. This is really crazy. These people who've been

00:25:49.960 fighting the faith, fighting for their faith, fighting for tradition, have been fighting for it

00:25:57.640 for so long and they're exhausted. But the world got worse in the meantime. Many families are seeing

00:26:05.560 their children get lost to horrible perversions in this world. And they're just they don't have anything

00:26:12.040 left to hang on to. Where where where am I supposed to tack on? Yes. Where am I supposed to do that?

00:26:19.160 I'm tired. You know, you come over to Russia and all of a sudden you can breathe again. You're like,

00:26:24.040 hey, I'm ready for round two. Let's go. This is exciting. You can focus on raising your children and

00:26:29.960 you're not afraid about what's going to happen to your children when you're walking down the street

00:26:34.920 or who it is that they might bump into or who it is that they might speak with. You met Florian

00:26:40.680 earlier, for example. She loves talking to people and people have high and like conversations with

00:26:46.440 her Russians here and they just absolutely love having these conversations with her. They want to

00:26:53.560 hug our children. They want to embrace our children and bring us into their tribe. I love that. That's

00:26:59.480 that that's something to motivating to wake up to in the morning. Last question for you, because this is a

00:27:05.480 big hurdle. Language. So this is you come here and I came here and I go to mass every day and I

00:27:17.640 have my phone and I was trying to find the and none of the letters correspond. Pectopause, the only one

00:27:23.480 that works. All the Russians will get that, but nobody else. But anyway, how challenging has that 0.51

00:27:30.680 been for you? And what are your suggestions for people? We came before there were courses available.

00:27:38.920 We were one of the very first families. So we've had a more difficult time to catch up to the language.

00:27:43.720 Our children are homeschooled with the influx of immigrant children. The Russians are protecting 1.00

00:27:51.320 their Russian language and their school system. And you have to learn Russian before you enter

00:27:56.680 most schools. So we're learning it at home. We had a tutor. Florine has caught on very quickly.

00:28:03.720 The other children, we were in the in the playground, my one and two year old and three year old.

00:28:09.560 They speak Russian to the children. I don't know what they're saying.

00:28:13.480 We arrived. They're on their scooters. They just pick it up like that.

00:28:16.760 They haven't. It hasn't been a problem. Wolfgang, the Russian mothers will speak to him.

00:28:21.720 And he was just a newborn when we arrived. And he will nod and do what they say and

00:28:29.480 he will have a little conversation. So they're fine. They just they've had total immersion since

00:28:35.000 the middle children have been slower like Clotilde and Antoinette.

00:28:38.600 They're still learning syllables right now. So they're reading very couple years lower than

00:28:43.320 the Russian children their age. But they're catching on fast. Yesterday I had them doing

00:28:47.320 syllables and Russian pronunciation. They know the alphabet. It's not as fast as we would have liked

00:28:51.800 it to be. But it's not slow either. So I started Russian for only 4 months. I have a lot of lessons,

00:29:03.080 a lot of words, but I have a lot of practice. So any of your viewers can give some feedback

00:29:13.480 feedback to you in your comments about what it was that I said. But the fact is, is that it wasn't

00:29:21.080 perfect Russian, but generally expressed the idea. There's also translators and all this sort of stuff

00:29:26.760 that you can use electronic translators. I will never lie to anybody and say it's an easy language.

00:29:31.720 It's a very difficult language. But if you're doing it for the right reasons, and you pray particularly

00:29:37.880 as we do every morning to St. Jude to help us learn our language. Yes. You can pick up the phone now

00:29:44.840 and talk to somebody and understand them basically what's happening. Yes, yes. And okay. Yeah. Now,

00:29:51.320 it's not like you just picked up the phone. You're like, somebody's calling me. I don't want to,

00:29:55.640 don't pick that up. I sound like a cavewoman. That's probably what it's like. You know,

00:30:00.200 I can put words together and I can get my wants, you know, across. But it's faster now.

00:30:06.840 I started a new method, which one of our very good friends, Mr. Bosman. Yes.

00:30:11.480 Charles Bosman has a new method called the Blitz method. Well, it's not new because it's the method

00:30:15.880 that he used to learn Russian very quickly. And I've made more progress in the last month than I

00:30:22.360 have in a whole year. And his, instead of focusing on grammar first, like intently, because the grammar,

00:30:28.840 getting caught up with the grammar is really confusing. Just start memorizing lots and lots of

00:30:33.240 vocabulary. So I was memorizing 20, 30 words a day. And every time I come across a word,

00:30:39.000 I have a big whiteboard and I write it down and I don't have time to be on my phone. So I put the

00:30:43.560 whiteboard in the kitchen and he has great other suggestions as well. So we started using that with

00:30:47.880 the children. And yeah, in the last month, we've really, really made a lot of progress. So I wish I had

00:30:52.760 done that earlier. Just focus on memorizing vocabulary. It's a great point as well to remember that

00:30:58.920 America was, as I understood, founded by a bunch of Europeans and including Russians.

00:31:05.960 And I think it's interesting, again, plenty of Russians moved to America and they figured out 0.76

00:31:10.280 how to work an alphabet that is more or less opposite their own. So what is possible? It is

00:31:17.480 possible. I did want to mention Fulton Sheen's writings about Russia, which seem to have been buried.

00:31:23.240 People who love Fulton Sheen should read his writings about Russia. That's very important.

00:31:28.920 Second thing I wanted to say was when you asked us why we moved here, Russia is very,

00:31:33.560 very dear to my heart, especially my family, because Robert Bergen was my uncle. So he was

00:31:41.720 a great champion of the Fatima cause and worked with Father Gruner. And yeah, we still pray for him.

00:31:46.680 And he was buried in Fatima. And I just, the Fatima connection is very strong with the reason why we

00:31:54.200 came to Russia. I think Sheen's main point in there was to separate, as you were saying before,

00:32:00.920 Russia from the Russian people from communism, because that tends to, in people's minds, just

00:32:07.320 be together. And it's sort of like not turning apart. It needs to stop. Especially now, since they've

00:32:14.760 they've sort of left it behind in there. Interestingly to me, it seems that while the West is still,

00:32:20.280 we're all still burrowing our way down, these guys hit the bottom and coming back up. So...

00:32:25.800 I think the final thought that I would leave with people, there are plenty of people out there who

00:32:31.640 would like to monetize on Fatima. And part of that monetization strategy is reliant

00:32:39.160 on making sure that people remember the message that Our Lady of Fatima gave a hundred years ago,

00:32:48.440 and said that Russia would spread her errors throughout the world. If that hasn't happened yet,

00:32:56.120 um, I don't know when it happened. Because that did happen. But the emphasis is on the past tense.

00:33:05.160 It did happen. It did spread throughout the entire world. The entire world is literally crumbling

00:33:12.840 at its foundations because it did spread. It's not spreading right now. No, Russia was all but destroyed.

00:33:25.400 The president, President Putin took his country, and you can say whatever you want about Putin,

00:33:30.840 the president. But he actually has things to show for what he did. And that's why the Russian people 0.94

00:33:37.160 respect him. And the rest of the world is literally suffering because they're already infected and

00:33:42.840 they're dying. Russia all but died and was brought back from the grave. So if I may be so bold to issue a very, 0.94

00:33:51.800 very important warning that people who think that they can keep their dream alive and their monetization

00:34:02.600 alive by saying that Russia is still spreading her errors throughout the world instead of 0.95

00:34:09.800 It already did. And you are the ones who are leading the sponsors of the evil in this world.

00:34:18.600 There will be hell to pay for that. There will be hell to pay for fighting against Our Lady's wishes.

00:34:24.120 And the people who think that they are the champions of Fatima and literally every day spend their time

00:34:31.640 hating, not seeking understanding, not seeking the consecration of Russia to Our Lady's Immaculate

00:34:38.760 heart. There will be hell to pay for that. Wow. Joseph Schutzman. Ann Schutzman, thank you so much for

00:34:44.120 being with us. God bless you. God bless you. And God bless all of you. This is John Henry Weston from Russia.

00:34:50.440 God bless you.

00:35:15.400 God bless you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - October 03, 2025

‘They Treat Kids Like Gold’： Catholic Family FLEES to Russia？!

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