The John-Henry Westen Show - December 21, 2021


Unpacking Pope Francis' war on Latin Mass Catholics and why it matters for everyone else

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John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
Pope Francis Benedict Suarez Amoris Laetitia Chris Ferrara Mark Carney Gamaliel Christopher Ferrara John Paul II Traditiones Custodis Cardinal Ratzinger Cardinal Bergoglio Christopher Dawson John Milbank James Martin Pachamama Easter Trendy Parler Foley
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3

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15

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Summary

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

Breaking news out of Rome over the weekend has Catholics looking forward to their traditional Christmas celebrations, the most traditional being those who attend the Latin Mass, which has, for centuries, been the way to do things in the Catholic Church. And yet, the week before Christmas, there s breaking news that there s going to be a crackdown on the traditional Latin Mass.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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00:00:00.000 There was breaking news out of Rome over the weekend.
00:00:03.460 Many people in the week before Christmas looking forward to their traditional Christmas celebrations,
00:00:08.540 the most traditional, of course, being those who attend the traditional Latin Mass,
00:00:11.940 which has, for not only centuries, but for over a millennia in the Catholic Church, been the way to do things.
00:00:18.620 Yes, there was some suppression back in the 60s, but since about 600, Catholics have had this Mass,
00:00:24.820 and arguably, since the beginning of the time with the Apostles, they had the Roman canon.
00:00:30.340 And always in that language that was with the Church, that's still considered the official language of the Church Latin.
00:00:36.720 And yet, out of Rome came over the weekend, the week before Christmas,
00:00:42.340 once all these celebrations are already prepared for,
00:00:45.580 news that there's going to be a crackdown on the traditional Latin Mass.
00:00:49.280 Some of the most insane things you can imagine, like,
00:00:53.040 a priest is not allowed to advertise a traditional Latin Mass in the parish bulletin.
00:00:57.620 Like, a priest who has already said his Sunday Mass cannot celebrate a traditional Latin Mass,
00:01:03.300 which basically excludes the Latin Mass from almost all rural communities,
00:01:07.620 where one priest is offering the Novus Ordo, the new Mass, if you will, in English or whatever language,
00:01:13.360 and then the traditional Latin Mass for those who want that.
00:01:16.040 That permission, by the way, given by Pope Benedict himself,
00:01:20.200 expressly asking the faithful, if they're interested in the traditional Mass,
00:01:25.380 to apply for it, and that the Church should give generous allowance for it.
00:01:31.540 And yet, that all seems to be crashing down upon us right now.
00:01:35.160 You know, the Church, especially today, is so concerned about sacred traditions of Indigenous peoples,
00:01:45.160 and saying sorry for having trampled upon those.
00:01:48.000 We're doing Pachamama in the Vatican itself.
00:01:51.860 It's all about sacred tradition.
00:01:54.040 And yet, here is the Pope himself hacking away at the roots of the Catholic Church.
00:02:01.380 It is unbelievable.
00:02:03.260 We have with us today Christopher Ferrara, a lawyer and one of the successful lawyers
00:02:08.860 who challenged the COVID lockdown anti-Mass forbiddance in various states.
00:02:16.320 You're going to want to stay tuned for this one.
00:02:17.780 Chris Ferrara, welcome to the program.
00:02:38.200 Thanks for having me on, John Henry.
00:02:39.560 Not a good time to be talking about developments in the Church.
00:02:43.740 It's a very sad time, but utterly predictable, given the trajectory of this pontificate.
00:02:49.440 It is indeed.
00:02:50.300 Well, let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.
00:02:52.980 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
00:02:57.540 Amen.
00:02:58.480 Chris, you are a lawyer.
00:03:00.740 You're also someone who attends a traditional Latin Mass.
00:03:04.020 You are, you know, someone who's been devoted to fighting for the rights of Catholics
00:03:09.080 to have freedom of worship.
00:03:11.580 And yet, here we are, week for Christmas, you are confronted with this.
00:03:17.660 If you can, unpack this latest communication from Rome for us.
00:03:22.440 Well, it comes in the form of answers to dubia.
00:03:25.260 Father Zee and others have noted that this is obviously a charade.
00:03:29.320 These dubia were a put-up job. 1.00
00:03:31.860 So, for example, who would seriously ask the question, can a priest binate if he celebrates
00:03:38.500 a traditional Mass?
00:03:39.580 In other words, if he offers the Novo Zorro on a particular day, can he then offer the
00:03:44.300 traditional Mass?
00:03:44.960 Nobody asked that question of Rome.
00:03:47.260 The other question, can a priest who has permission to celebrate the traditional Mass
00:03:51.960 have that permission to extend outside of the diocese in which it was granted?
00:03:56.800 Nobody asked that question.
00:03:58.280 Under the 1984 Indults, if you had an Indults, you had an Indults.
00:04:01.100 You could celebrate the traditional Mass wherever you happen to be as a priest in the world.
00:04:05.200 These are additional restrictions that go beyond traditionis custodis, presented in the form
00:04:11.300 of these phony dubia that Father Zee and others have rightly ridiculed as, again, a put-up
00:04:17.360 job, so that they could introduce new restrictions, pretending that they're really interpreting
00:04:23.100 traditionis custodis.
00:04:24.780 Now, these are new restrictions, and what's happening, I think, is that Francis is seeing
00:04:29.500 that the bishops are finding ways around his arbitrary commands by, for example, dispensing
00:04:35.480 from universal law, assuming this qualifies as universal law, in that particular diocese,
00:04:41.460 or just ignoring it and letting things go on as before.
00:04:44.620 This pope clearly intends, as these dubia should make clear to anybody now, to eradicate the 0.99
00:04:52.040 traditional Latin liturgy in the Church.
00:04:54.960 In his mind, it's just a matter of time before he suffocates the traditional Mass movement,
00:05:00.260 which is a movement of young people, and this dismays him and infuriates him.
00:05:04.120 Just a matter of time before he suffocates it, he thinks he can make it go away, but he
00:05:08.140 can't.
00:05:08.540 It's impossible for a pope to abrogate a received and approved rite of Mass in the
00:05:14.520 Church that goes back to the time of St. Gregory the Great, who died in 604, and the canon,
00:05:19.800 as you noted, arguably goes all the way back to the Apostles.
00:05:22.540 He has no power to do that.
00:05:24.460 Cardinal Ratzinger said it would be alien to the spirit of the Church to abolish the traditional
00:05:30.820 liturgy.
00:05:31.360 And as Pope Benedict said, that a pope is not an absolute monarch whose thoughts and
00:05:39.420 desires are law.
00:05:41.260 Well, apparently we have a pontiff right now who thinks that his thoughts and desires are
00:05:45.840 law, and that's what these dubia are all about. 0.92
00:05:48.820 And I would say that, with St. Augustine, an unjust law is no law at all, and it doesn't
00:05:54.620 matter whether it comes from a pope.
00:05:56.300 We're not nominalists.
00:05:57.580 We Catholics don't say, if authority has spoken, that is good and must be obeyed merely because
00:06:04.860 authority has spoken.
00:06:06.080 The pope is the supreme ruler of the Church, but there is no absolute ruler anywhere in
00:06:11.080 the face of the earth.
00:06:12.180 There is no absolute dictator.
00:06:13.900 This is very interesting.
00:06:15.100 We came from a tradition, if you will, I mean, people of our age, let's say, most raised under
00:06:21.800 John Paul II.
00:06:23.320 We came through Benedict, and he was always there anyway.
00:06:26.960 There was kind of a happy medium.
00:06:29.120 You wanted a mass, for most of us not having experienced the traditional Latin mass, but
00:06:34.440 everybody knew they wanted a mass that was not the crazy clown masses of what happened
00:06:40.780 right after the council when they were doing experimentation with, you know, dancing and
00:06:45.660 insanity and puppets and God knows what else.
00:06:48.480 By the way, which, of course, Cardinal Bergoglio, before he was Pope Francis, had participated in 0.96
00:06:54.640 that kind of a clown mass.
00:06:55.780 But that's the stuff from the 70s. 0.60
00:06:58.580 Everybody can already see that was a bit really weird.
00:07:01.860 People dancing and clapping and bringing up all sorts of things and maybe smoking something
00:07:07.080 odd in the aisles and stuff that's not incense.
00:07:10.020 It's some kind of weird other smoke.
00:07:12.380 There was enough.
00:07:13.080 I mean, people got that.
00:07:14.280 Okay, let's just have a normal, what you would call, I guess, a traditional Novus Ordo or
00:07:19.500 whatever, and that was sort of the way forward and people had the traditional Latin mass already
00:07:25.260 and then came Benedict with a more generous acceptance of that, all wonderful and good.
00:07:29.500 And there was sort of like a go along and get along kind of respect for one another.
00:07:34.180 You have charismatic Catholics.
00:07:35.660 I just saw a post, a video by Father Mark Goring, no traditional priest at all.
00:07:40.680 He's a charismatic priest, but he has great love for his brothers and sisters who love tradition.
00:07:45.540 So he puts out this video where he basically says some reasons why he is supporting in
00:07:50.740 love those traditional Catholics that he knows well and saying why this new move is a bad
00:07:55.920 idea.
00:07:56.380 So there is that.
00:07:57.920 There is that goodwill among Catholics of these different traditions.
00:08:01.800 You might call them, it's almost like different rites.
00:08:04.140 But anyway, it's these different traditions that celebrate the mass, all loving Jesus, but
00:08:09.100 in these different ways.
00:08:10.920 But that's all breaking down now.
00:08:13.160 You see, with Pope Francis, it's like one of those priests or folks from that turn of
00:08:20.720 time when they went against the traditional mass and introduced the new mass, who liked
00:08:25.300 the puppet mass, liked the kind of dancing in sheer outfits, liked the kind of like, maybe
00:08:31.380 let's celebrate mass with as many women as possible on the altar and perhaps can celebrate 1.00
00:08:36.180 with a woman or a deaconess maybe that looks like it could be a celebration. 0.98
00:08:40.080 We all thought that was, you know, oh no, that's not really what we're supposed to, but that
00:08:44.260 seems to be the flavor here.
00:08:47.400 Tell us what you make of this.
00:08:49.380 Well, I think we're dealing with someone who is nothing less than a modernist in mentality.
00:08:54.960 He himself said at the opening to his rather ludicrous synod on synodality that we don't
00:09:01.160 need to create a new church, but a different church.
00:09:05.340 So we have a Pope who thinks he can create a different church.
00:09:09.720 He literally believes that.
00:09:11.400 This is the mind of a revolutionary.
00:09:14.080 And the reason that the charismatics are sympathetic and other people are sympathetic, even cultural
00:09:18.640 commentators, one of them, a French atheist intellectual whose name escapes me, are sympathetic
00:09:24.220 is because they see a brutal abuse of power and the destruction of part of the cultural patrimony
00:09:31.140 of the Western world, the foundation of our entire civilization, the liturgical civilization 0.94
00:09:36.480 that was Christendom for more than a thousand years.
00:09:39.720 Christopher Dawson put it most succinctly when he said, for a millennium, Christianity was
00:09:45.260 the law of the land.
00:09:46.820 And the basis for that society, that civilization, was the liturgy.
00:09:51.500 John Milbank, an Anglican scholar, has said, only a liturgical civilization can save us
00:09:57.020 now from literal violence.
00:09:58.580 Well, he is an enemy of that liturgical civilization. 0.88
00:10:02.680 He talks about flexibility and condemns rigidity, but he is the most rigid Pope I have seen in
00:10:08.080 my lifetime.
00:10:09.420 He is authoritarian and dictatorial.
00:10:11.640 And the reason we have sympathy from outside traditionalist circles is people know a brutal
00:10:16.400 abuse of power, a gratuitous imposition on the rights of people when they see one.
00:10:21.740 And they're outraged by it, and they should be.
00:10:23.720 Pope Francis has really been a revolutionary in many, many ways.
00:10:26.940 For us who operate in the moral realm, you know, life's that we pay attention to life
00:10:32.240 and family especially, the very alarming things with the sort of nod and appreciation of cohabitation,
00:10:39.400 which he said, and I quote, is real marriage and has the grace of real marriage.
00:10:42.540 For when he basically said, in grave circumstances, you can allow for contraception if Zika virus
00:10:48.320 is in question, he said, and repeatedly over and over again, about how same-sex civil marriage
00:10:54.520 is okay.
00:10:56.620 And people didn't believe it at first, but after it's repeated three, four, five times,
00:11:02.220 both in planes and then on a movie interview, sorry, it gets out there.
00:11:07.780 So there's all these things, these, you know, promotion of Father James Martin, now of New
00:11:13.400 Ways Ministries, and the Vatican sort of following in lockstep.
00:11:18.520 Do you see a relationship between that and what's going on with the Latin Mass right now?
00:11:22.520 Well, of course, we have a Pope who is, as you say, a revolutionary.
00:11:26.880 And what's remarkable is we've had revolutionary developments in the Church for 50 years, but
00:11:32.320 this Pope has taken it to a quantum level, a quantum leap has happened.
00:11:36.960 Now we see an attack, even on the fundamental precepts of the natural law.
00:11:42.240 Not too long ago, I think it was back in August, he said during the opening address to his,
00:11:48.020 not the opening address, but in another address, it was an airborne press conference.
00:11:52.460 He said, do I scorn the commandments?
00:11:57.160 No, I don't scorn the commandments.
00:12:00.000 I follow them, but not as absolutes.
00:12:03.240 Because I know that it is Christ who justifies me.
00:12:05.780 It's almost a verbatim quotation.
00:12:07.400 That's a Lutheran notion of justification.
00:12:09.700 Our Lord said, if you love me, keep my commandments.
00:12:12.560 He who keeps my commandments abides in me, and I abide in him.
00:12:17.360 The way to be justified is through the grace of God to keep the commandments.
00:12:21.300 They are absolutes, especially the negative precepts.
00:12:24.440 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
00:12:25.920 That's an absolute.
00:12:27.160 He doesn't seem to think so.
00:12:28.420 So the frightening development with this pontificate is he's gone beyond just attacking liturgical
00:12:34.060 tradition, which is catastrophic enough, attacking the precepts of the natural law, right and
00:12:39.160 wrong.
00:12:40.100 And the natural law binds all men, regardless of their religion.
00:12:43.980 All men are bound by the commandment, thou shalt not commit adultery.
00:12:46.840 Thou shalt not kill.
00:12:48.480 Thou shalt not steal.
00:12:49.840 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
00:12:51.800 All of the negative precepts of the Decalogue are absolutes by their very nature because
00:12:57.720 they are divine condemnations of intrinsic evils as to which there is no exception whatsoever.
00:13:03.600 He's trying to create exceptions to intrinsic evils.
00:13:07.160 Absolutely mind-boggling.
00:13:09.080 If you look at Amoris Laetitia, he reduces the negative precepts, especially in the sections
00:13:14.960 of paragraph 300 to 305 thereabouts in the document.
00:13:18.240 He reduces them to benchmarks or ideals, which people in their concrete circumstances may
00:13:25.180 not be able to practice.
00:13:27.360 Well, that's nonsense.
00:13:28.860 Everyone is given the grace of God.
00:13:31.040 Even the ordinary grace suffices to keep the negative precepts of the natural law.
00:13:35.580 You don't need to be a Catholic to avoid adultery. 0.91
00:13:38.720 That's so basic.
00:13:40.140 St. Thomas teaches that although in many cases applications of the natural law can be obscure,
00:13:45.860 the basic precepts are written on our hearts.
00:13:48.440 We know right from wrong.
00:13:49.900 He's attempting in various ways, especially with Amoris Laetitia, to obscure the very difference
00:13:56.640 between right and wrong.
00:13:58.240 And that is frightening.
00:13:59.540 What can Catholics do? 1.00
00:14:02.160 This is the strangest thing.
00:14:03.680 I really feel for my brothers and sisters who are at traditional parishes, because you're
00:14:11.040 leading up to one of the most sacred times of the year.
00:14:13.540 It's not Easter, but the second most sacred time of Christmas, when all your liturgical
00:14:19.300 celebrations were prepared for.
00:14:21.220 You might not have that now.
00:14:24.280 As I understand it, this restricts also marriages in the traditional form and ordinations in the
00:14:30.980 traditional form.
00:14:31.540 What's going on, and what can the faithful do?
00:14:33.920 His intention is to extirpate the traditional Latin liturgical tradition from the church 0.69
00:14:38.160 and to kill off all the vocations that are attached to it.
00:14:41.700 So, for example, he says, I have abrogated the Roman ritual, the pontifical ritual, the
00:14:47.180 rituals that bishops perform.
00:14:48.420 He can't abrogate that.
00:14:50.620 Those are the immemorial rites of the church.
00:14:52.400 He has no power to abrogate them.
00:14:53.760 By abrogating those rituals which the bishops perform, he prevents the traditional ordination
00:14:58.900 of bishops, of priests, rather, according to the traditional rite.
00:15:03.680 But that's why they joined the fraternity, young men who went to the seminary, to be ordained
00:15:08.040 in the traditional manner to offer the Latin mass.
00:15:10.560 He's attempting here to kill off vocations to the traditional seminaries.
00:15:15.640 It's perfectly obvious what he's attempting to do.
00:15:18.200 And so what do we do about it?
00:15:19.340 Well, I tell you, I've been a member of the traditionalist opposition since I returned to
00:15:24.960 the church after my pagan wanderings, as I noted in the remnant, for more than 30 years
00:15:31.020 at this point.
00:15:32.180 What we do is we simply carry on with the traditions.
00:15:34.720 We carry on with what has been handed down to us.
00:15:36.720 We practice the faith of our fathers.
00:15:39.120 And I've always said in things that I've written and in talks that I've given that
00:15:43.020 you cannot find in the documents of Vatican II or in any of the teachings of the post-conciliar
00:15:48.480 popes, including this one, strangely enough, any command to follow a doctrine or dogma that
00:15:57.120 was not a doctrine or dogma of the church before the Second Vatican Council.
00:16:00.840 There's nothing in the council documents, nothing in any of the pronouncements of the
00:16:04.880 magisterium since then, that compels us to believe or to do anything that was not part
00:16:11.680 of our faith before the council began.
00:16:13.820 So we just go on practicing the faith as before.
00:16:16.080 If he tells us we can't do it in a parish church, we find some other place.
00:16:20.480 I remember a time when people had to go to Latin masses in hotel lobbies and independent 0.99
00:16:25.800 chapels owned by civil corporations.
00:16:28.120 Some of those chapels, by the way, are still owned by civil corporations.
00:16:31.500 And maybe it's a good thing that they are, given this development.
00:16:34.560 So we carry on.
00:16:36.180 He cannot order us to cease practicing the faith of our fathers.
00:16:39.360 It's that simple.
00:16:40.220 He has no power to do so.
00:16:41.420 Let's say, for a bishop who wants to do the right thing, but not get his head lomped off,
00:16:47.160 I guess, might not even care.
00:16:48.700 But is a bishop within his moral rights to basically ignore this and just carry on as
00:16:55.120 normal?
00:16:56.040 And also for a priest, what are their—they're basically trying to be good Catholic priests,
00:17:01.820 trying to follow, you know, what they should, Christ's will, and in obedience as they're
00:17:07.740 supposed to.
00:17:08.160 So what's the way forward for them?
00:17:10.380 The church has always taught the primacy of conscience.
00:17:13.180 A well-formed conscience has primacy over a command that causes one to violate one's
00:17:18.380 conscience, if the command is unjust and immoral.
00:17:21.240 If it's a moral command, you have to follow it, because then your conscience would not be
00:17:24.820 well-formed.
00:17:25.600 This is obviously an unjust and immoral command.
00:17:28.340 You cannot publish the Latin mass in a parish bulletin.
00:17:32.840 That's preposterous.
00:17:34.160 You cannot celebrate more than one Latin mass in a day in a parish where it's stretched in
00:17:40.940 and a priest has to assist in souls, in the divine worship of souls.
00:17:46.380 You can't celebrate more than one mass a day.
00:17:48.240 These commands are, as lawyers would say, ultra-virus, beyond the authority of the pope. 0.84
00:17:53.220 You cannot abolish liturgical observances or liturgical rites or give commands that are ridiculous.
00:17:59.280 I mean, to use an analogy, let's assume the pope said, I want everyone in every parish
00:18:05.980 where there's a marble altar to get sledgehammers and smash the altars to smithereens because
00:18:11.740 I detest marble altars.
00:18:13.620 Everyone could ignore that command.
00:18:15.480 Well, what if the pope says, I want you to destroy the traditional liturgy?
00:18:18.820 We have to ignore that command.
00:18:20.780 It's beyond his power.
00:18:22.240 So if you're a priest in conscience, your conscience is telling you you cannot follow
00:18:26.040 this command, you can't follow it.
00:18:27.940 So I'm not advising any priest what to do.
00:18:31.080 You have to follow your own individual conscience.
00:18:33.460 As to the bishops, they could find ways around this.
00:18:36.240 If they can't allow the traditional mass in parishes, according to this unjust and immoral
00:18:40.900 command, they could always establish places where the mass would be offered.
00:18:45.440 Call it an oratory.
00:18:47.500 Call it something that's equivalent to a parish.
00:18:50.660 And let the mass flourish in those locations.
00:18:53.640 There are ways around this.
00:18:54.900 And I'm hoping that a lot of bishops will just silently go on with the status quo and pretend
00:19:01.600 they haven't heard this nonsense in the form of these pretend dubia.
00:19:06.720 I saw one priest on Twitter advertising in his bulletin not the Latin mass on the 31st, but
00:19:16.680 he said between the 30th and the 1st, there will be a different type of mass other than
00:19:22.740 a Novus Ordo celebrated at 7 p.m.
00:19:25.500 Yeah, well, yeah, that's ironic because this pope who spent more than eight years ridiculing
00:19:33.240 the doctors of the law who hold the law over people's heads and beat them with a stick,
00:19:38.880 there's no more rigorous legalistic pope than this one. 0.99
00:19:41.780 Just look at these dubia with their ridiculous specifications. 0.94
00:19:45.540 You can only say one Latin mass per day. 0.51
00:19:47.980 You can't say the Latin mass on a weekday if he said the Novus Ordo mass.
00:19:52.560 You can't publish notification of a Latin mass in a parish bulletin.
00:19:57.060 How's that for rigorism and legalism?
00:19:59.540 This pope, I have to say, in all honesty, is everything he accuses others of being.
00:20:04.940 Judgmental, rigoristic, intolerant, non-inclusive.
00:20:10.080 But this is what a liberal is.
00:20:12.840 A liberal is constantly projecting onto others his own defects, and that's exactly what's
00:20:19.660 happening with this pontificate.
00:20:21.280 It's very interesting that you are the one speaking to me about this.
00:20:25.220 You mentioned in the beginning Anglicans, other members of other faiths being interested
00:20:30.560 in this, what's going on right now, showing support for traditional Latin mass Catholics.
00:20:37.160 Catholics, you've represented rabbis in terms of their fight for freedom to worship.
00:20:45.500 What would you, in your opinion, what would you think that they would see in what's going
00:20:51.920 on with the Catholics right now, the traditional rabbis, that is?
00:20:55.060 There's an interesting parallel development here in civil society and in the church, and
00:20:59.580 that development is this.
00:21:00.660 The unclean ones are to be banished from the life of the society, whether it's the ecclesial 0.93
00:21:06.560 society or the civil society.
00:21:08.960 In civil society, the unclean ones are the unvaccinated. 1.00
00:21:13.320 And now we see a determined effort to create a two-tiered society, a caste system in which
00:21:17.380 the unvaccinated will be second-class citizens. 0.99
00:21:19.940 And in the Catholic church, we have the unclean ones, the traditionalists, who must be purged, 1.00
00:21:24.700 confined, quarantined, as if they were the harbingers of a deadly virus. 0.59
00:21:29.320 Now, with the Orthodox Jews that I've represented, we have a lot of commonality.
00:21:33.960 I have this conversation with them, which is not privilege, this is just commentary on
00:21:37.600 the state of affairs.
00:21:39.160 We note the parallel between the Orthodox, who are ridiculed as extremists by their fellow
00:21:45.840 Jews, and the traditionalists, who are ridiculed as extremists by liberal Catholics, by modernist
00:21:51.560 Catholics, and by this Pope, who spent the past eight years mocking them, insulting them, condemning
00:21:58.240 them, ceaselessly, almost every day, the Pope who says we must not be judgmental.
00:22:04.400 So the Orthodox Jews are pretty much in the same position.
00:22:07.940 They're countercultural in civil society, and they're counter the religious currents among 0.81
00:22:13.280 Judaism, because on social issues like abortion, they're in line with our thinking, and on all
00:22:22.120 moral issues, in fact.
00:22:23.300 And these are Trump voters, believe it or not.
00:22:26.460 So we have a lot in common with them, and it's my privilege to represent them in these
00:22:30.340 religious liberties cases, because they were the victims of the church closures that, thank
00:22:35.840 God, because of certain victories we won in various federal courts, are now a thing of
00:22:40.280 the past.
00:22:40.660 I don't think even with this Omicron hysteria, we're going to see church closures again.
00:22:45.740 So what we need is a form of liberation in the church that corresponds to what happened
00:22:50.840 in civil society.
00:22:52.000 We have to stop the closures of traditional mass locations and the closures of traditional
00:22:58.140 mass orders that this Pope obviously intends to impose, if he can get away with it.
00:23:02.380 And again, the solution to what he intends to do is simply to go on practicing the faith.
00:23:07.720 Ignore it.
00:23:08.880 Ignore it.
00:23:09.400 What is he going to do?
00:23:11.980 Excommunicate the fraternity of St. Peter if it says no?
00:23:14.760 Is he going to excommunicate the Institute of Christ the King?
00:23:17.660 Is he going to excommunicate the entire church attached to the traditional mass?
00:23:23.200 You mentioned before we got on the air, Suarez's, or maybe someone else did, someone else I was
00:23:27.780 talking to today, mentioned Suarez's hypothetical.
00:23:30.180 This was a reductio ad absurdum in his tract on charity.
00:23:35.920 He said, suppose you had a Pope who excommunicated the entire church.
00:23:39.660 It was hilarious.
00:23:41.360 Or who changed all the rights of the church.
00:23:44.660 Such a Pope, said Suarez, would be a schismatic Pope.
00:23:47.880 And what do you do with this reductio ad absurdum Pope?
00:23:51.940 Well, you resist him.
00:23:53.840 You stop him.
00:23:54.780 You block him at every turn.
00:23:56.400 You can't go along with such a Pope.
00:23:58.360 Now, that reductio ad absurdum is unfortunately, tragically, almost apocalyptically, the reality we're facing today.
00:24:05.680 We have a Pope who says the Ten Commandments are not absolute.
00:24:08.960 We have a Pope who says it's okay to cohabit. 0.65
00:24:11.460 We have a Pope who is chummy with homosexual couples, who thinks gay marriage in the form of civil union is okay, as long as you don't call it marriage. 0.87
00:24:19.760 And who now thinks that he can abolish the immemorial received and approved rite of mass in the Roman Catholic Church because he's annoyed.
00:24:28.520 If you read Traditiones Custodos, he basically cites his rationale as, I'm incensed by some of the things some traditionalists are saying which cause division.
00:24:40.420 Well, there should be division.
00:24:42.240 Division from the catastrophe over which he presides and a retreat from it into places where there is an oasis of tradition.
00:24:51.900 He hates that.
00:24:53.600 He wants to destroy it.
00:24:55.280 We can't allow that to happen.
00:24:56.560 I think the numbers are showing.
00:24:58.020 We have seen in the last number of years a tremendous growth in traditional Latin mass parishes, particularly where they're available and sometimes where they're not.
00:25:09.080 There was none in, you know, in some places where they cropped up actually during this time of coronavirus because people had no access to their regular masses.
00:25:19.020 So it's been growing by leaps and bounds.
00:25:21.400 Obviously, the Lord's hand is upon those doing that, and there will be no success in trying to crush what God wants.
00:25:32.100 Yes, exactly so.
00:25:33.220 He's infuriated by that.
00:25:34.780 What infuriates the most is that the young people are attracted to this liturgy.
00:25:40.060 I mean, I'm an old codger in the movement.
00:25:41.820 I'm on my way out.
00:25:43.280 They are the future.
00:25:44.120 I remember an article in The Economist.
00:25:46.280 It must have been eight, nine years ago before Francis was even pope.
00:25:50.560 The title of the article in The Economist was, It's Trendy to be a Traditionalist.
00:25:54.860 Horror of horror is the young people are the head of this movement. 1.00
00:26:00.380 If you look at the pilgrimage, the short for pilgrimage every year, the average age is, what, low 20s, maybe even younger.
00:26:05.560 I can't even walk the pilgrimage anymore.
00:26:07.980 It's too daunting at my age.
00:26:10.140 Last time we did it, Foley was, I think I was 62.
00:26:13.280 But it's a young people's movement, and he cannot understand this.
00:26:16.780 And what was his explanation for it?
00:26:18.640 If you read one of his interviews, he says, well, there's something wrong with these young people.
00:26:22.820 Dig, dig, he said. 0.94
00:26:24.080 You'll find some mental defect in these young people. 0.98
00:26:27.060 This is how a revolutionary looks at the opposition, as people who should be characterized as insane and confined and removed from society. 0.93
00:26:37.700 He actually thinks this.
00:26:38.960 But you're right.
00:26:39.800 It can't be stopped.
00:26:41.620 His contention is not with traditionalists.
00:26:44.360 It's with the Holy Ghost.
00:26:45.900 Let me close with this.
00:26:47.040 These are words from the scriptures quoted in Father Mark Goring's little piece, little video on this, which I encourage you to watch.
00:26:57.060 He talked about the warning of Gamaliel, when in the scriptures Gamaliel warns the Sanhedrin or the leaders at the time, those going after the followers of Christ, that, well, no, just let it play out.
00:27:12.580 Otherwise, if you go and try and crush this, you're going to find yourself unsuccessful because you're fighting against God.
00:27:18.620 And I think that's what we have here.
00:27:20.420 I think that's exactly right.
00:27:21.800 And I think this is a war that he's going to lose.
00:27:24.320 And it is a war.
00:27:25.400 He's waging war.
00:27:27.060 On his own flock.
00:27:28.540 And he has been doing it for eight years with his endless insults and condemnations.
00:27:33.800 And now these provisions designed to exterminate traditional mass, it can't succeed.
00:27:39.060 Christopher Farrar, thank you for being with us on this episode of the John Henry Weston Show.
00:27:42.520 Thank you for having me on.
00:27:44.020 Take care and God bless.
00:27:45.480 God bless you too.
00:27:46.360 And let me say to all of you out there, but don't see you again.
00:27:50.340 Have a happy and holy Christmas.
00:27:51.840 And especially to my friends who are attending the traditional Latin Mass, we're praying with you.
00:27:57.520 We're begging your prayers for us at your traditional Latin Masses, which will keep going.
00:28:03.040 And God bless you all.
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