In this episode, we talk about race, feminism, and the Jews with Anthony Abante, a Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of St. Augustine, Florida. He talks about why young people are interested in race and feminism, what it means to be Jewish in America, and why our identity should rest in our faith.
00:01:08.080The issues that are facing young people today, it all really does come down to these three issues that they're talking about online, at least.
00:01:14.980The issue of race is an interesting one because it's coming up because of the mass immigration influx.
00:01:23.900There's a place to actually have this conversation where these are American guys who have been told for the past decade that they're worthless because they're white.
00:01:32.160And it's almost like the pendulum is swinging back the other way, and it's going a little too hard at the moment.
00:01:39.040But they are trying to understand what their identity is, and they're seeing, especially during the Biden era, where they just allowed mass immigration from places in the world that really aren't Christian.
00:01:50.880So you're talking about allowing mass Muslim immigration.
00:01:53.740You're talking about just from all over the place, and they come in here, and they aren't assimilating immigration from the past.
00:02:00.820When we were younger, there was always immigration, but people would come in, and within a generation, the kids would be American.
00:02:09.360And it seems like the way immigration is happening now is really just there's no assimilation, and they're keeping their culture.
00:02:16.100So it's leading to things like you're seeing in Minneapolis.
00:02:18.900You had the Somalian daycare fraud thing happening, and you're seeing this really intense conversation happening online where people are concerned with preserving their cultural identity, let's say, right?
00:02:34.600So it's a tough conversation to have, but my big concern is that a lot of these young guys, in having this conversation, that their hearts are going to get a little jaded.
00:02:45.280And they're going to dehumanize people.
00:02:47.820So I think it's an important conversation to have with them.
00:02:50.580You had a theory with regard to what there really should be and how this really should fall out, and what's that?
00:02:58.140So it's actually E. Michael Jones has been talking about this.
00:03:36.040So you already have this intermarriage between two ethnicities, right?
00:03:40.900So you have Italian and German, then Italian and Irish.
00:03:43.020Now, when my parents are born, they both still have a predominantly Italian culture that they're brought up in because the father is Italian.
00:03:53.460Then I come, I'm third generation, and my parents raised me, and I still have like an Italian cultural identity when I'm growing up.
00:04:02.480But my children are now the fourth generation, and they don't really have an Italian identity.
00:04:07.540My kids are just kind of just, you know, just American kids.
00:04:10.920They don't have any affinity to Italy or, you know, or Ireland or any of them.
00:04:19.240So E. Michael Jones was saying that that's actually what happens, where you lose that ethnic identity, that European ethnic identity, because you're not staying.
00:04:30.200It's not Italians marrying Italians anymore.
00:04:32.000It's Italians marrying Germans, Italians marrying the Irish, and that kind of plays out.
00:04:35.760And he says our identity should rest in our faith, and that should be where our cultural markers are.
00:04:42.480So he says instead of white and black, he's like, no, you should be Catholic, you should be Protestant, you should be Muslim, because those are kind of the three categories.
00:04:50.120He says, like, when you talk about white boys, he's like, those are just Protestant guys, you know, that are atheists.
00:04:58.500It's an interesting way to think about it, because for me, especially because my family history is a little bit mixed now between the Irish and the German side, I don't actually know my family history that well.
00:05:12.460Like, beyond my great-grandfather, I can't go back further than that.
00:05:19.700So that's where I actually do derive my identity from.
00:05:22.360It's like, I don't know who came before my great-grandfather, but I know about St. Anthony, and I know about St. Francis, and that's where I see my ancestral tree from.
00:05:32.980It's a very interesting point, but I think we need to add another category, because in my experience anyway, even in America, and I can speak for Canada or whatever,
00:05:42.700but it's not Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, it's Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and atheists.
00:05:53.000Because if you have a Catholic not practicing, don't care, they don't have those cultural markers you were just talking about.
00:06:00.840They don't have the saints as their models and heroes, and that totally changes the playing field.
00:06:05.800So I think it's a really great way of thinking about cultural identity, because in every single culture, your Catholic will be your most outstanding citizen,
00:06:19.620because they will be the ones who practice the virtues upon which are based civilization.
00:08:03.520Let's talk a little bit about another one of these issues that the youth are so intimately interested in right now, and that is in feminism.
00:08:14.780The younger generation right now just seems very jaded from the things they were sold.
00:08:20.520And I think even women are waking up to this.
00:08:22.720Like, there are a lot of women who are waking up saying, they convinced me to go chase a career, and now all of a sudden I'm 30 years old, I have a good job, and my fertile years are kind of running short here.
00:08:33.520And I now have to go and work instead of getting to stay home with my baby.
00:08:37.780And I think even women are waking up to this.
00:08:41.080But what's happened, especially with things like the red pill, is the red pill is kind of like the Andrew Tates and the guys like the Whatever podcast.
00:08:50.400These guys bring on some of the worst feminists that can be brought on, and they kind of point out all the absurdity of what feminism does.
00:08:59.480Now, these guys do a good job of diagnosing what the issue is, but their solution is always very carnal, and it's basically feminism for men.
00:09:07.500It's like meninism or something, you know.
00:09:09.260So they diagnose that feminism is awful.
00:09:12.340Women have been sold this terrible bill of goods and accepted it.
00:09:17.980Women don't view men properly anymore.
00:09:20.360And their solution is, go get yourself in the gym, go buy a nice car, get a nice house, and go through tons of women.
00:09:28.580Like, they're telling men to go use women.
00:09:30.640Andrew Tate tells men, you should never be locked down to one woman.
00:09:34.260You should have multiple kids with multiple women.
00:09:37.040It's really, like, the solutions they come up with are awful.
00:09:41.060And I think that, like, the younger generation is waking up to how bad feminism was, but making sure they get the proper solutions to it is just as important to recognizing the problem.
00:09:55.160What do you see as the Catholic solution?
00:09:57.020Patriarchy, marriage, but with understanding that the wife is subject to the husband.
00:10:03.380Because without understanding that, the whole thing falls apart.
00:10:07.000And I think we're seeing that play out in every home, and it goes all the way up to the Vatican.
00:10:12.680So if you look at the parish level, every priest that is afraid to say no to some of the women in the parish, that's why you're getting girl altar servers.
00:10:22.240That's why you're getting some of the crazy, terrible music.
00:10:26.020A lot of that stuff is just the priest is afraid to tell the woman no.
00:10:28.860So when you go up even higher and you get up to the bishops in the hierarchy, what is synodality at its root?
00:10:34.280The synodality is the men who are in the hierarchy are supposed to tell us what doctrine is, and they're asking the lady, please tell us what doctrine should be.
00:10:45.820And that's not the way God intended it.
00:10:47.420God gave us a hierarchy for a reason, and men are supposed to take the lead.
00:10:51.100There could be different temperaments on men and women, but in the end, it really does come down to if you're a man, you are responsible for your household.
00:11:00.140You have a calling to be the priest of your home.
00:11:02.420You're responsible for the souls of your wife and your children.
00:11:05.920And if you don't, as a man, understand how important that call is, you're not going to live up to the priesthood in the home the way God really wants you to.
00:12:01.740And it's not because of October 7th per se, but I guess you could maybe say it's because of the aftermath.
00:12:07.920Where do you see that going, and where is that at for young people right now?
00:12:11.840What's been really interesting is seeing how differently people actually receive the conversation now.
00:12:18.860So there's a few different things we have to be cautious of when we talk about this stuff, because there are people who hear stuff and they go down a dark road.
00:12:26.720But I always try to avoid getting into the conspiracy stuff when I talk about this topic.
00:12:32.120I try to avoid it's, you know, okay, they control banks, and I guess that's kind of irrelevant.
00:12:38.120Don't watch pornography, don't fall into debt, and stay away from harmful stuff from Hollywood.
00:12:42.680But the actual story of what is the relationship between Catholics and Jews is an important one.
00:12:51.020And it's one that I really just started digging into myself over the last couple of years.
00:12:56.680A lot of it has to do with stuff I learned from the Lighthouse Catholic media talks we all heard back in the early 2000s that you would grab at your local parish, you know.
00:13:04.880But understanding that the golden thread throughout Genesis is all about the covenant, I mean the birthright was supposed to go to the firstborn son, and instead it goes to the secondborn.
00:13:15.780So it starts with Abraham where he has Ishmael and Isaac, and Ishmael is the firstborn, but the birthright goes to Isaac because he's the son of the promise.
00:13:27.200Isaac then has Jacob and Esau, Esau is the firstborn, he's supposed to get the birthright, but he forgoes his birthright, and it winds up going to Jacob.
00:13:36.580Jacob then has 12 sons, his firstborn is Judas, he should get the birthright, but it ends up going to Joseph.
00:13:42.880Joseph gets sold into slavery by Judas for 20 pieces of silver, should sound very familiar, right?
00:13:49.580And he ends up becoming the prince of the Gentiles, and really understanding that whole thread that runs throughout Genesis is all about the birthright and the covenant promises should go to the firstborn, but they don't.
00:14:04.480So God says to Moses, tell Pharaoh Israel is my firstborn son.
00:14:09.460So Moses, by implication, it's Israel is God's firstborn, but what does that mean?
00:14:15.100The nations are his secondborn, and when Christ comes, the Jews reject the covenant, and the covenant goes to the nations instead.
00:14:25.660Now, that enmity there, that they crucify the Messiah, and then there's this antagonistic relationship.
00:14:34.060From the book of Acts, you read about the Sanhedrin persecuting the church.
00:14:39.860That story plays out throughout history, and it's been going on for 2,000 years.
00:14:44.100Now, once you get to World War II, I think the events of World War II shocked people so much that the church probably looked at that and said,
00:14:57.180And I think they took a softer approach, the way they did everything.
00:15:00.600And instead of saying there's no salvation outside the church, they started making it like, oh, religions can coexist.
00:15:06.360So they have been telling us since the council that never view Jews with suspicion.
00:15:14.560But Jews, since World War II, have been told Christians will give you, they'll make another holocaust.
00:15:21.180So they view us with suspicion while we don't view them with suspicion.
00:15:24.440And that's the problem and the dynamic that's going on right now, and that any time you even try to have a conversation like we're having right now, the accusation of anti-Semitism comes your way.
00:15:34.300And really, we're just talking about this on a story level.
00:15:37.600There should never stir up any kind of hatred towards anybody.
00:15:40.860We're just saying, how do the Jews still play a role in the story of salvation history?
00:15:47.120Do they play a role in the apocalypse?
00:15:49.360If it was the Jews who persecuted Christ the first time he comes, will they persecute the church the second time he comes?
00:15:56.340Because we know the church will follow our Lord into his passion, death and resurrection, right?
00:16:02.200I mean, you have a lot of imagery about Babylon returning and the whore riding the beast and the whore is drunk on the blood of the martyrs and mixing with the nations.
00:16:14.920And, I mean, if the story plays out typologically the way it did the first time, then, yeah, Israel's going to play a significant part in that story.
00:16:23.720Makes sense, because we know that the coming Antichrist, who will persecute the church like never before, will also be the, at least for a time, accepted Messiah of the Jews.
00:17:03.240So after Solomon builds the temple, his descendants then kind of have a war with one another, and the 10 northern tribes break off.
00:17:10.400And the tribe of Dan is in those 10 northern tribes.
00:17:13.080Then Assyria comes in and destroys the 10 northern tribes.
00:17:16.960And they get dispersed throughout the nations.
00:17:19.340So much so that they're essentially Gentiles at that point, because they've lost any kind of identity of, like, Israeli identity.
00:17:27.500So by the time Paul comes, Paul's mission is to the Gentiles, but that mission is actually about bringing the lost children of Israel back.
00:17:37.720Because God promises he's going to reunite the 12 tribes of Israel, but the 10 northern tribes are dispersed throughout the nations so much, you can't actually find them.
00:17:47.100The only way you can unite them is by bringing the Gentile nations into the covenant, and now you get the lost children of Israel.
00:17:52.840So when we say the Antichrist will be the Jewish Messiah, but he's from the tribe of Dan, like, what does that actually mean, the tribe of Dan?
00:18:00.440We don't know where the tribe of Dan is.
00:18:02.400So he could just be anyone, and we just don't know he's from the tribe of Dan.
00:18:07.660It's just something I've been thinking about a lot lately, and it kind of hit me the other day with that.
00:18:12.200Because I've had, when I've, like, kind of talked about this, I've had people push back and say to me, it can't be this person, it can't be this person, because they're not Jewish.
00:18:21.760And it's like, yeah, I don't know if they're necessarily going to be Jewish.
00:18:25.060This is a funny question for me, because as we were saying before when we were talking, that this is really not a question of race with the Jews.
00:18:41.040And that is one place where, as you were saying, you know, after the Second World War, maybe the church thought, oh, maybe we contributed in some way to this, and we want to pull back, and we want to basically make nice with everybody,
00:18:53.620and not stress the fact that extra ecclesiam nulla salis, outside the church, there's no salvation.
00:19:02.260But spiritually speaking, that's not being friendly.
00:19:10.100Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
00:19:15.700And the church knows that, or is supposed to know that.
00:19:18.520So in pulling back, in not being mean, or not evangelizing the Jews, as the late Cardinal Casper said, we must not.
00:19:31.120And as the modern church basically doesn't want to bring the Jews to Jesus, wants to give them, like, a free pass, wants to say, hey, there's some actual theology that's Christian,
00:19:42.980it's Protestant Christian, that says, oh, they have the First Covenant, still blah, blah, blah.
00:19:47.880And we don't have to worry about them, they're all shoe-ins in heaven, it doesn't matter.
00:19:53.400To be honest, though, that's true anti-Semitism.
00:19:57.180You withhold Jesus from the Jews, and there's no saying that they are officially rejecting Jesus by definition of their religion.
00:20:08.760It is an anti-Jesus religion, because they rejected Jesus as the Messiah and are awaiting another Messiah.
00:20:15.260I think they came to the fore, much with Ben Shapiro, and then the later rejection of Candace Owens over Christ as King.
00:20:24.780How do you think we need to now go to these young people and give them this final chapter on the Jews?
00:20:32.640Yeah, the way I've been handling all these conversations is just cautioning anyone that listens to me to not lose your soul to hardness of heart.