The John-Henry Westen Show - August 19, 2026


Why the Church Stopped Teaching Wives Must Obey: Tim Gordon’s Nuclear Take


Episode Stats


Length

52 minutes

Words per minute

167.73

Word count

8,819

Sentence count

487


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 With this particular second type of killing, it's really, really important that people
00:00:04.400 understand this because it debunks the entire anti-death penalty narrative in principle from
00:00:10.420 97 to the present day. Well, my friends, I've got a very interesting guest for you today.
00:00:17.360 He is probably the most controversial Catholic podcaster out there. His name is Timothy J.
00:00:24.580 Gordon. And most controversially, he takes on feminism like no one else. In fact, he's wrote
00:00:31.260 the book called Patriarchy. And his film released now of a number of months ago, is released on the
00:00:37.520 Candace Owens network. It's called What a Woman Is, in response to Matt Walsh's What is a Woman.
00:00:42.940 It's fascinating that he has created such controversy, because what really it's based on
00:00:50.060 is a reading of the traditional catechism on the duties of husbands and wives.
00:00:58.580 Let's begin, as we always do, with the Son of the Cross.
00:01:01.000 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:01:05.960 I'm the author of five books.
00:01:08.100 Catholic Republic is my first, and The Case for Patriarchy,
00:01:11.980 which is what that movie is based upon that you're talking about,
00:01:15.140 what a woman is, are two of my five books.
00:01:17.400 I've been in the game for about eight years on YouTube. First year I was doing it was with
00:01:24.680 Taylor Marshall on his channel on that TNT show of 2018-2019 fame, the last seven years.
00:01:31.960 I'm very findable on YouTube on my own channel, Timothy Gordon. Rules for Retrogrades is the
00:01:37.500 title of the podcast. I'm currently making a second documentary on my first book, a second
00:01:43.180 documentary total on my first book, Catholic Republic. There will be some big headliner
00:01:48.080 names and a big headliner distributor for that one too. Question 27 of the Roman Catechism,
00:01:54.960 the duties of a wife. And I'll say this, the first half is not quite explosive like the back half of
00:02:03.340 it. On the other hand, the duties of a wife are thus enumerated by the Prince of the Apostles.
00:02:08.280 let wives be subject to their husbands that if any believe not the word they also may without
00:02:14.140 the word be won by the conversation of the wives while they behold your chaste conversation with
00:02:19.260 fear whose adorning let it not be that outward plating of the hair or wearing of gold or putting
00:02:25.520 on of apparel but the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible of a quiet and
00:02:31.420 meek spirit which is in the sight of god of great price for after this manner in the old time
00:02:38.200 the holy women also who trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection unto their own
00:02:43.980 husbands. Here's where it becomes more interesting. Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord,
00:02:52.500 it should also be a principal study of theirs to train up their children in the practice of
00:02:56.440 religion and to take particular care of the domestic concerns. Unless compelled by necessity
00:03:02.140 to go out, they should willingly keep themselves at home and should never venture to leave home
00:03:07.700 without the permission of their husbands. Again, and in this, the conjugal union chiefly consists,
00:03:14.480 let them always remember that next to God, they're to love no one more than their husband,
00:03:19.920 to esteem no one more highly, yielding to him in all things, not inconsistent with Christian piety,
00:03:25.440 the most willing and cheerful obedience. Okay, then. Well, that's going to ruffle some feathers
00:03:32.540 to say the least um to unpack that last part a little bit even the concept of
00:03:40.400 beyond god to love your husband first sounds weird as odd as that may seem because i think
00:03:47.800 most would say well your children obviously when you were doing the film i think father
00:03:53.540 ripiger actually pointed to these teachings uh saying them very plainly i'm sure you got a lot
00:04:00.220 of pushback? What's what's sort of the main pushback for you, as you found as you were
00:04:06.220 going through this on these issues here? You might not believe it. But what we received
00:04:11.360 over the last several months is just email after email after email of conversion by by women just
00:04:19.280 saying, wow, this is so right. I've started living this way. And everything seemed to fit after 30
00:04:25.300 years, 20 years, 10 years, a couple years, the pushback, I have to go on like Reddit boards and
00:04:32.340 stuff, which I don't like doing anyway, you know, never read your negative clippings or really your
00:04:36.540 positive. Neither is good for the soul. But I not too many critics have reached out and offered even
00:04:44.020 the usual calm box or chat box critique. Everyone who's who's seen it, that's reached out has been
00:04:51.380 And it's been many, many dozens, even in the triple figures, have said this just works.
00:04:59.160 It's so obvious, but I didn't see it before.
00:05:02.120 It's like some sort of conversion chamber where it might sound strange before, like any sort of emperor's new clothes, obvious truth of not only scripture, but just natural law.
00:05:12.800 This is something that everyone kind of knows in their heart.
00:05:15.620 But until they allow themselves to say the word, they're not undone by the spell of feminism.
00:05:22.060 I mean, the idea that, you know, for a Christian especially, that the husband is the leader and that he should be loved next to God and that he is the householder and that a wife owes him obedience is sort of like saying two and two is four.
00:05:38.760 and yet Christians everywhere, because they've kind of come under the spell,
00:05:44.220 confront it at some decisive moment in their formation. And for a lot of people,
00:05:48.740 it's been 60 year olds saying, you know, wow, Tim, I've lived this way my whole life,
00:05:53.860 the feminist way. And, and, um, I, I guess this is just really obvious, isn't it? It works.
00:06:00.100 Do you think that Candace's endorsement has helped that way? Cause I mean, I'm,
00:06:05.300 I'm pretty stunned to hear the witness testimony that that's just,
00:06:09.240 that's pretty incredible.
00:06:10.540 I haven't read her,
00:06:11.740 her book on feminism.
00:06:14.140 I think it's a few notches back from mine,
00:06:18.060 from what,
00:06:18.560 what,
00:06:18.800 what's been indicated,
00:06:19.980 you know,
00:06:20.260 her book called make him a sandwich.
00:06:22.460 So I don't know if she agree.
00:06:24.960 I mean,
00:06:25.180 good for her that she's willing to platform views.
00:06:27.840 She disagrees with some,
00:06:29.660 and I know she,
00:06:30.460 she really does hate full form,
00:06:33.900 third wave feminism.
00:06:35.300 and aspects of second and first wave feminism.
00:06:37.980 So I really do appreciate her giving a platform to it.
00:06:40.640 But she hasn't, aside from, I think, two mentions on the show,
00:06:44.380 she hasn't pushed it all that hard.
00:06:45.900 She said, it's up on my site.
00:06:47.800 And she's been gracious in the way that you would be
00:06:50.980 if you agreed to platform something.
00:06:53.520 I have a personal and a business relationship with her husband,
00:06:56.120 and he really liked the way the film looked.
00:06:58.880 And he's a good friend, good man.
00:07:00.900 So I think they kind of agreed to do it while disagreeing,
00:07:03.640 disagreeing, at least Candace while disagreeing with portions of it. And she did put, she's like,
00:07:08.540 can I put a disclaimer at the beginning of this? And I was like, of course, but she hasn't pushed
00:07:13.360 really that hard. I think it got two mentions on her show. She let people know it was up. She did
00:07:17.600 play a clip, which I appreciate, but, and I, you know, if she disagrees that heartily, then I
00:07:23.340 wouldn't expect more. So I don't know exactly, um, what it would have done if, as I kind of,
00:07:30.340 you know, you get these stars in your eyes when a project is new and fresh and you have the highest
00:07:34.740 hopes for it. You know, if she was talking about it every day, even for two weeks, the way she
00:07:40.000 really she's a passionate person, she gets on a trail and she doesn't leave the scent. I thought
00:07:46.160 she might do that with that. And if in that case, all of the many, many already conservative house
00:07:51.460 wives who comprise most of her listeners, man, that would have been really interesting. But that
00:07:58.040 that didn't really eventuate. Lots and lots of people have watched this, bought it and watched
00:08:02.060 it. We made it only $1.99, but it never achieved the virality that it would have, you know, if,
00:08:08.220 if things were optimal, if conditions were optimal. So it's hard to fully answer that question.
00:08:12.660 Right. But you've got hundreds of testimonies. That's what's stunning to me of, of people who
00:08:16.840 have tried it the other way and it works. Now that's just a really neat, it's an experiential
00:08:24.600 thing we give it a shot and it actually works so that's really it is the teaching of the church
00:08:29.640 but they're not easy things the whole notion of obey is really weird because it's as as your
00:08:38.860 film points out it's it's beyond well of course when he makes sense we obey and then when we
00:08:45.900 disagree we have a discussion all of which is not forbidden but it's just after that discussion
00:08:52.300 Where do we go when it comes down to now whose way is it that's going to take precedence?
00:09:00.640 Whose way is it that we're going to follow right now?
00:09:02.860 And that's the challenge.
00:09:04.460 So this idea of obedience is beyond where he's right.
00:09:09.220 In other words, where he makes sense to her or where he is even right in terms of this direction we should take with our route for the trip, let's say, even if it's wrong, apart from the difference, the difference being where there's sin.
00:09:31.380 If anyone asks you to sin, whether he's an angel or whatever, anyone in authority, the pope or anything, you refuse.
00:09:40.340 But this direction from the husband is to be taken regardless of right or wrong in an earthly sense, not a moral sense.
00:09:47.800 Is that, am I reading that correctly?
00:09:49.820 Yeah, of course.
00:09:50.580 Of course.
00:09:51.140 I mean, when you consider, when I consider the alternative, I think it's preposterous.
00:09:56.940 Like if you'd read a woman with a job, 76 percent of Catholic women from the previous generations worked at a job, if her boss gave her an order and, you know, let's say she's the VP or something to the president of the company.
00:10:15.480 Well, if the president, who's still her boss, she still has this dignified role and her opinion counts, at least as a matter of first impression, or she can say, I don't know, and push back once.
00:10:27.940 If the president says, no, no, that's a good suggestion, I appreciate, but we're really going to do it this way.
00:10:33.040 Think of how odd, what a clown world or through the looking glass kind of vignette this presents to show everyone being staggered, shocked that she's got to do what her boss says ultimately.
00:10:50.700 No one pretends that this hypothetical woman who's vice president is infantilized or stripped of her dignity or anything like that.
00:11:00.060 And this is her freaking boss, you know, cue up G.K. Chesterton and all the paradoxes that he was saying in the early 20th century about women are willing to – working women are willing to listen to their bosses but not their husbands.
00:11:13.120 This is staggering for people.
00:11:14.300 I really don't – in all honesty, I don't agree that any of – that the Roman catechism contains any hard truths at all.
00:11:22.920 I mean it's a hard truth to, you know, the Trinity or maybe the bread of life discourse.
00:11:28.840 We have to consume our Savior, body, blood, soul, divinity.
00:11:33.220 But to say that a woman must, at the end of the day, follow her boss to whom she swore obedient on the marital altar is so in accord with nature and so in accord with the Bible.
00:11:47.600 And even all seven of the first 20th century popes say exactly what the Roman catechism said.
00:11:54.720 It's actually not such a hard teaching when you re-look at it.
00:11:58.280 Once you've had the conversion and you just say, wow, this is the witchcraft of not only
00:12:03.240 feminism, but just mimetic desire, you know, you've been outwinked, everyone out there.
00:12:08.760 So that's, that's what I would say.
00:12:10.240 It's just, it makes so much sense.
00:12:11.820 You have to follow your boss.
00:12:13.880 Such an interesting comparison to the working world.
00:12:16.760 Cause that, that just switches the focus.
00:12:21.000 Almost everyone can relate to that.
00:12:23.920 Of course you follow the directions of your boss.
00:12:27.260 you don't want to get fired you want to have your job that only makes sense and yet with regard to
00:12:33.320 the husband-wife relationship is the mindset as you said in the beginning for like 99 point whatever
00:12:40.900 percent is completely different now it is and i'm not saying that the the it is like a you know
00:12:48.500 paid relationship no no one's saying that but it's very true that in fact even over and above
00:12:56.100 a boss you would owe obedience to your husband as a wife so that's just that's that's pretty
00:13:05.140 stunning there are notions from both the enlightenment and the reformation that make this
00:13:09.880 in my view you know converted view two and two is four simple like that reductive seem less so
00:13:17.540 and i would say one of them is that's i think a great analog that helps people to see
00:13:22.700 is the very puritanical wasp notion of the parent who's talking to his teenager and says,
00:13:31.200 I'm your father, not your friend.
00:13:33.600 This is utterly, utterly anti-Aristotelian.
00:13:37.940 It's anti-Thomistic in the sense that St. Thomas and Aristotle say,
00:13:42.260 no, the best friendships in life are friendships not of peers, but of unequals.
00:13:48.560 Aristotle argues this, I think, in the seventh book of the Nicomachean Ethics, and he repeats it in the third book of the Politics, and St. Thomas gives it as full endorsement.
00:13:57.700 Best friendships are that between a king, meaning in like a polis, and his subject, you know, friendship of unequal.
00:14:05.900 Father and his son, best friendship of unequals, and a husband and his wife.
00:14:11.580 So you can form these close friendships that waspy people after the Enlightenment and the Reformation christen or sort of black christen with the notion of egalitarianism.
00:14:23.320 They sprinkle that poison water of egalitarianism all over and they say, well, peer friendships, those are the best ones.
00:14:29.220 Those are the ones informing modern psychology and DSM-5.
00:14:33.060 You know, you get into trouble with your friends.
00:14:35.400 A friend is just a lover of your soul for Aristotle and St. Thomas and the church.
00:14:40.020 And the best friends are the ones who love you so much.
00:14:44.100 Like a king with the subjects, it, of course, comes from the model of King Jesus.
00:14:48.460 And a father with his son, you would never, as a knowledgeable Catholic, say, I'm your father, not your friend.
00:14:53.940 I'm your best friend.
00:14:55.700 You know, your friends want to have a good time with you.
00:14:57.700 Some of them might survive the challenge and become type three Aristotelian friends where you actually develop virtue together.
00:15:03.000 But that's all I care about.
00:15:05.020 And, of course, St. Thomas will say of these three examples, he'll imply that there's only one of these that grows, these friendships of unequals, that grows into a single body, you know, one head members, and that is husband-wife.
00:15:23.680 So Jesus raises it to the dignity of sacrament at Cana,
00:15:27.780 and therefore it's even a holier, closer, more intimate best friendship between husband and wife.
00:15:34.680 Some of the red pill guys mock this notion as feminist.
00:15:38.000 It's not under the proper heading.
00:15:39.920 It's actually just patriarchal and Christian.
00:15:42.220 You are the best friends, but it's a friendship of unequals,
00:15:45.320 and you're closer than even a king and a subject or even a father and his son.
00:15:49.760 And then all the conditions for the possibility of understanding, I think, are actually set.
00:15:55.260 I get it.
00:15:56.480 Living that out in today's world, even once you ascribe to this truth, it's tough anyway.
00:16:06.240 The milieu that we live in, because everybody fights it, everything you see in media everywhere
00:16:13.360 is opposed to this.
00:16:15.300 In fact, it's the exact opposite, if you will.
00:16:17.580 How do you live this out?
00:16:18.580 I know you're a dad. You've eight children, if I'm correct. Yep. And you've been married now,
00:16:24.320 what, 20, what is it? You're at 30 years already or no? No, I'm coming up to 21. 30 would be cool,
00:16:30.720 but 21. I'm so sorry. I'm at 32. So you're in the midst of doing this. You're living this in a way.
00:16:38.660 Where do you move along the road to getting to that oneness? Well, I think the point of departure
00:16:44.040 also lies in this fact in intellectual history of the world that Christianity of course Roman
00:16:54.040 Catholicism was literally the first worldview I don't mean religion I mean worldview inclusive
00:16:59.900 of secular philosophies by which a woman selects her husband and this is not only determinative
00:17:07.720 not only it's not her dad doing it or her parents setting her up or some some um some
00:17:13.320 institutional mandate. But it's invalid if she herself did not choose the man. The man chooses
00:17:21.620 the wife, the wife chooses the man. And there's no one else in sacramental Christianity, in Roman
00:17:28.180 Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy also. If there was any more than those two rendering the decision
00:17:35.860 for themselves, I love you, you love me, let's go get married. Man picks woman, woman picks man,
00:17:42.600 then it's null and void, right? It's literally, that's the safest way to procure an annulment is
00:17:49.440 if you have some third party that's deciding, not the parents, not the father. This isn't some
00:17:55.780 bizarre, you know, side quest of patriarchy. It's literally the woman and the man choose each other.
00:18:02.640 And the reason I'm leaning into this so much, John Henry, is because when folks who have been
00:18:08.220 brainwashed by all the brainwash out there assume that patriarchy is inherently heavy-handed
00:18:14.000 they aren't understanding that this is a woman who yes has to obey her husband and everything
00:18:22.240 aside from categorical sin so even his his prop she thinks probably imprudent commands prudent
00:18:30.240 you know fronisist prudence won't be revealed until the end of time but you can say this is
00:18:35.420 probably dumb, but she's going to obey even his probabilistically imprudent commands until the
00:18:42.800 end of their marriage. But she gets to pick her boss. So if a woman finds it extremely off-putting
00:18:50.160 to be micromanaged, then don't marry a micromanager. Don't marry a heavy-handed guy.
00:18:58.640 And this is the condition for the possibility that is the, I'd say, the logical equivalent
00:19:04.660 of what we say to pro-abortion people, you know, they're like, wait a minute, what if
00:19:09.940 you get in this situation and you just, you know, you just can't have the baby, you have
00:19:15.020 to have your career, you have to have more money, you have to be able to abort.
00:19:19.640 You're like, you're skipping the important first step.
00:19:22.380 You chose to have intercourse with someone, right?
00:19:26.240 The woman gets to choose.
00:19:28.580 Christianity is the world philosophy where the woman gets to choose her boss.
00:19:35.460 So this is like what I have seven daughters.
00:19:38.200 This is what I tell all of them.
00:19:40.240 It's, you know, first thing, they've got to be a good, he's got to be a good man.
00:19:43.600 That's the most important thing, a good Catholic man.
00:19:45.500 But secondly, pick for your temperament.
00:19:48.720 Like if this guy annoys you, you got to go the distance.
00:19:52.360 You know, this might be 50 years.
00:19:54.680 You got to go 15 rounds.
00:19:57.460 And you have to pick someone you're wild about.
00:19:59.740 And you're not going to be wild about someone that if you like micromanagement, he's really laid back or vice versa.
00:20:05.440 If he's really a micromanager and you're laid back, you're going to be put off.
00:20:09.600 You also have to really be crazy about the way they look, the way they walk, the way they talk.
00:20:14.120 You want the most special one for you.
00:20:16.100 And again, kind of like the abortion argument, it's really a very silly pro-abortion argument for a woman to say, well, what can she do?
00:20:24.060 You skip that first step so that ab initio, if we block the first step, you chose to have sex though.
00:20:31.280 That's why this is still operative under the rules of self-determination.
00:20:36.200 It's like you drop a rock off a cliff, say, oh, this rock was always going to hit the bottom.
00:20:41.380 It's like, but you chose to drop it, right?
00:20:43.920 That first act matters.
00:20:45.300 A woman who chooses to marry a man, you are.
00:20:48.020 Now you go from a position of relative sovereignty, if you're 20 or 21 or 22, you got to pick anyone in the world you wanted.
00:20:56.700 You got to deny any suitors who ask you.
00:21:00.520 You're like, no, that's not the right temperament for me.
00:21:02.420 No, I'm just not attracted to that dude.
00:21:04.220 No, that's not the right temperament for me.
00:21:06.300 But when you find it, you're picking your boss.
00:21:08.720 So it's actually far, far, far, far better than a typical job where you don't get to pick your boss.
00:21:13.880 If you go start working, bagging groceries, your boss is, if he's mean, you're stuck with it, and you'll obey everything he does, you know, young women.
00:21:22.480 If he's nice, you lucked into it.
00:21:24.500 That's not what it is with marriage.
00:21:25.960 You pick someone that is going to be the best boss for you, knowing, once we start telling our daughters once again, that you're going to have to obey everything.
00:21:35.900 So take that decision really seriously, but you're still operating under self-determination.
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00:23:53.800 together. Seats are limited, so reserve now. In the fallout, I think, of a lot of this discussion,
00:24:03.100 you got into some controversial areas, even for most people, and it was, I think you called it
00:24:09.620 diaper gate at one time. Your thoughts on men should not be changing diapers, for the most part,
00:24:15.780 there's exceptions, but your thought was they shouldn't be. Explain that for us.
00:24:20.500 Well, a few grounding tidbits of context for one thing.
00:24:24.260 This came from mega Lily White, who's a good Catholic, really, really good Catholic woman.
00:24:30.680 Very likable young woman who tweeted like, look, I don't know, have the right quote in front of me.
00:24:36.200 But what she said is I find it really unattractive.
00:24:39.400 I think there's something really odd if a man is changing diapers for she meant for infants.
00:24:46.160 And I defended her, you know, and he was she was kind of in the process of.
00:24:50.500 of RCIA or whatever, OCIA at the time and coming in. So I was the better known Catholic entity and
00:24:55.960 I defended her and everyone thought it was my tweet. But I'm like, yeah, no, I'll defend that
00:24:59.780 then. I'll still defend it now. Her point was functional gender dysphoria. And this is why we
00:25:05.360 covered it. She's in what a woman is, really delightful person. Her point was she's not even
00:25:11.000 a provocateur. She's just a really, really pleasant young married woman with children.
00:25:16.440 You know, functional gender dysphoria. What's the expectation? Kind of like a man who's a layabout who expects his wife to do his job to, you know, to go in for him. Let's say he works from home and he just sleeps in and expects the wife to get up and, you know, log the first two hours for him from his home office or something.
00:25:41.080 that's what mega and we've talked about it a million times since then that's what she sees
00:25:46.160 everywhere uh around her in she she was living in another country i'm distinctly living in the west
00:25:52.320 that's what i see here that's what my friend will nolan was saying he's seeing in great britain
00:25:57.260 that's what my friend uh mike pentile was saying yeah this is everywhere in canada so we've checked
00:26:03.980 and everyone kind of knows you know you can believe us or your own lying eyes you know
00:26:08.380 So it's not one of those cases. We all know this is what's going on. Because of feminism, women are testing, you know, S-testing men, I'm not sure what we can say here, to see what they can get away with.
00:26:25.020 And widely speaking, it became the cultural norm that the, you know, to use the analogy,
00:26:33.040 the husband, you know, his alarm goes off, he yells at the wife, get up, clock, log my
00:26:38.260 first two hours from the home office.
00:26:39.860 If you don't do it, you're lazy.
00:26:42.300 Except in reverse, you know, women are everywhere having the men do the jobs of women.
00:26:47.860 And if a man doesn't want to do the job of infant care, which is distinct, I mean, talk
00:26:52.780 about Aristotle or Plato or any of the sane elders of bygone ages. And they're just like,
00:27:00.900 what was going on? That is more dysphoric than a man in, you know, women's dress. That's just
00:27:08.220 a crazy person, like we say in the film. But a woman who expects a man to do infant care,
00:27:14.280 like regularly, that's insane. Now, of course, Mega in her original tweet, me defending her,
00:27:21.820 weren't talking about in some exceptional circumstance, if the wife is really, really
00:27:27.200 sick and needs the husband to change the infant's diapers, men are just these big lumbering
00:27:34.380 oaths. They're really, really small. And what we showed in the movie was social media phenomenon
00:27:40.600 to substantiate what we're saying, that we're not talking about the exceptional instances.
00:27:45.780 I have changed a couple of my babies out of eight babies that we've had when my wife was very sick.
00:27:55.740 But we're talking about regular occurring man acting as the wet nurse to a baby.
00:28:03.660 And it's really absurd.
00:28:04.700 So that is in that segment of the movie you'll probably remember.
00:28:08.760 They're talking about changing the rules, which is what functional gender dysphoria is all about.
00:28:14.040 confusing the sexes, making them hate their own sex and their own role. Women's bodies are,
00:28:20.480 for heaven's sakes, literally make them into wet nurses. And this co-attends the primary
00:28:27.180 goal of feminism, which was to get women out of the home, particularly when they're infants,
00:28:32.640 but really, more broadly speaking, all the time, and just get them away from their small or
00:28:38.360 growing children. I have an infant in the house, as most traditional people do. If you always have
00:28:43.900 little kids around. I mean, I don't even know how women do the working, but I'm pretty much not
00:28:49.620 around the smaller kids alone until they're one, two, three, then, you know, three, you start
00:28:56.320 spending more one-on-one time with them to, you know, when the dad plays with them, I don't even
00:29:00.860 know how working women are pulling this off. You just have to feed them so much when they're small.
00:29:06.060 We have really small babies. We got to, you know, my wife is intent on fattening them up and,
00:29:10.280 you know feeding and changing go hand in hand so a lot of our audience would be non-working moms
00:29:18.040 who who are at home with their kids but they would particularly the ones who would have like we had
00:29:23.620 we had seven children in nine years then we lost three and then we had another one but
00:29:28.020 you know they're all older now but in those beginning years when I was working from home too
00:29:34.080 because I've been doing life site forever now there were a lot of times when I had to help out
00:29:39.020 with childcare because there was so many little ones and my wife was either breastfeeding and or
00:29:47.180 doing something that was totally occupying with one. And there was sort of an emergency with the
00:29:52.120 others. Um, you're not talking about not being able to do that or are you? Well, this is the
00:29:57.400 first thing that always happens. You know, people will, cause I have a call in segment at the end
00:30:01.480 of my, my show, you know, rules for retrogrades on YouTube and people will go, well, does this
00:30:06.740 apply to me. I mean, it's kind of just like saying, Hey, you know, the, the old meme, you say
00:30:11.420 water's wet. It's just a truth of the universe. Like the Roman catechism is saying here. And
00:30:16.340 people are like, well, what about in this case, if you go to the surface of Mars, you bring a
00:30:21.440 microwave, you, you try, you know, you dry out a cup of water and it theoretically isn't supposed
00:30:26.740 to, I'm just announcing water is wet. I'm not, I'm not, um, doing the dirty work of what you
00:30:32.520 learn in law school is applying, learn the black letter law, but applying the black letter law to
00:30:37.540 the facts is sort of all the work. It's sort of the whole story of our lives individually and
00:30:42.560 corporately. So I'm not really telling people, especially men who are the sovereigns of their
00:30:49.260 own household, exactly how to do it. But what I'm address, what I address and what, what mega
00:30:54.460 is addressing is let's, let's keep the categories correct. Infant care is for women. And, um,
00:31:00.880 And, you know, the men can decide in those instances, the men of their households could and should decide, well, here's my threshold for getting involved.
00:31:12.840 You know, same thing.
00:31:13.660 I remember when I was doing studying to begin the doctorate in Rome at a pontifical school, you know, I asked my wife, hey, would you please go to this one classroom?
00:31:22.620 I got a really bad cold.
00:31:23.980 It was a class at the Angelica.
00:31:25.300 It was a really cool class, Thomas and Islam.
00:31:28.420 Professor was a really cool, famous guy.
00:31:30.280 So I was like, you kind of enjoy this. I kind of want you to see it anyway, because we, you know, talk about everything. I've been trying to describe it to you. But I have a bad cold. Would you go take notes? And it turned into a funny situation. But I don't usually impose on Steph, my wife, to go do my job or to go take notes for me in class unless I deem it's really, really important.
00:31:50.660 And so the underscore here is getting society back on tracks.
00:31:56.280 We're a transgender society.
00:31:57.980 I don't care about crazy men in women's clothes.
00:32:00.940 That's not what I'm talking about.
00:32:02.160 I'm talking about we are an insane feminist isn't a strong enough word.
00:32:06.840 Functional transgender society where people treat you like you're crazy.
00:32:10.640 If you're like, well, I'm the man.
00:32:12.320 I need to earn the money.
00:32:13.560 You know, the man needs to go to a job.
00:32:15.120 If we don't have enough money, I need to get a second job.
00:32:17.140 My wife doesn't need to get a job.
00:32:18.980 We don't each need one.
00:32:19.960 I need two, three, four, as many as it takes, but she's equipped to be at home.
00:32:25.880 And I always took great pride when I did have a nine to five and I get up and, you know,
00:32:32.900 everyone's asleep because we've always homeschooled and women need beauty rest.
00:32:38.460 Kids need more rest.
00:32:39.700 I like being the first one up.
00:32:41.360 I'm up with the crack of dawn.
00:32:43.220 You guys get up at nine, have a comfortable breakfast.
00:32:46.700 I don't have to worry about them driving around in dangerous cars throughout the day.
00:32:51.160 You know, I just know my whole family is safe doing homeschool.
00:32:54.020 I'll call them after I teach my first class or two and maybe they'll be up.
00:32:57.360 I always liked that precisely because it sets the conditions for the possibility of safety and comfort that are concomitant to wifeliness, you know.
00:33:08.180 But at the end of the day, yeah, you can – it's a lovely life, the life of wives.
00:33:13.980 They can really, unless you're a micromanager, which I am not, they can really set their own
00:33:20.900 conditions, you know, wake up late, feed the baby in bed, maybe change the diaper. That's what my
00:33:26.240 wife has always done. Change and feed right there. Start homeschool at even 10 a.m., you know, have a
00:33:32.040 lovely life with plenty of beauty rest. Set your own schedule. Once school is done, we have eight
00:33:37.700 kids. But my wife has always had ample time for journaling. You know, she's written two books,
00:33:44.300 you know, gardening, watercolor. She plays the flute, hang out, take a nap. There's so much to
00:33:50.280 do around the house that is concomitant with that, you know, that style of life. So to change
00:33:57.360 a few diapers here is anything but asking too much. And that's what Megha was saying. And that's
00:34:02.440 that's what we say in the movie where we're going to stand by the categories on that one. Water's
00:34:06.500 wet yeah so it's just like having basically guardrails uh as to here's what the rules are
00:34:12.080 and people can then play within those guardrails and they can be all sorts of variation very much
00:34:17.260 like what the church teaches it's it sets the boundaries of where right and wrong is and within
00:34:23.560 those boundaries everybody's allowed to play which is a lot better than the arbitrary we don't know
00:34:28.760 where we're supposed to stand wanted to talk also about another area that you're really expert in
00:34:33.080 and that is with regard to the death penalty. We have something off the page strange in what's
00:34:39.520 going on in the church today, because we have a situation where the current official teaching
00:34:45.420 of the church, sort of, if you will, at least the teaching of Francis and Leo,
00:34:51.920 is the opposite of what it was in the whole of the church before that. Francis changes the
00:34:59.580 catechism to basically say the death penalty is inadmissible when it was the whole teaching of
00:35:04.260 the church before that it was admissible not only that that the states had the right to and that
00:35:09.100 they could use it as a deterrent and it was even a a necessary following from the fifth commandment
00:35:16.800 thou shalt not kill um so that they could um deal with those who do kill this is pope leo
00:35:24.200 reiterating Francis's teaching, new teaching on the death penalty, and saying, on top of all that,
00:35:32.580 that if you don't adhere to it, you're not really pro-life. Let's watch.
00:35:36.640 Someone who says I'm against abortion, but says I'm in favor of the death penalty is not really
00:35:41.400 pro-life. So someone who says that I'm against abortion, but I'm in agreement with the inhuman
00:35:49.800 treatment of immigrants who are in the united states i don't know if that's pro-life so they're
00:35:54.440 very complex issues i don't know if anyone has all the truth on them but i would ask first and
00:36:01.080 foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human
00:36:07.560 beings in that case as american citizens or citizens of the state of illinois as well as
00:36:13.560 as catholics to say we need to you know really look closely at all of these ethical issues
00:36:19.640 and to find the way forward as church. The church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear.
00:36:25.040 I'd like to get your reaction to that. I know you're an expert on the death penalty.
00:36:29.040 Love to hear your thoughts, first of all, on that, and then on where you think the church is today,
00:36:33.040 given all the ruckus that's going on in this sort of thing.
00:36:37.100 Well, I'll just start by saying that thank goodness for Ed Fazer and Joe Bissett.
00:36:42.520 You know, I've been friends with Ed for 25 years or something.
00:36:46.800 He happened to be a visiting professor at LMU when I was doing a master's there.
00:36:51.240 And Joba said I took a class on the Senate of his when I was briefly in the doctoral program at Claremont.
00:36:57.140 So when these two guys hooked up for their book on the death penalty, the goodness of the death penalty, allegedly it bore real fruits.
00:37:07.700 And allegedly, what I hear from my connections in the Curia in Rome is that they were actually going to, Francis, that is, in 2017, was going to say more.
00:37:20.540 He was going to use proper theological language preclusive of the death penalty.
00:37:26.640 And he changed it to inadmissible because he got a hold of this book.
00:37:30.660 And he just, someone, some advisors or something like that got a hold of him and said, you can't use the theological language because it would be wrong.
00:37:39.160 And that's the, if that story is true, I've heard it a couple of places now, then that's the beauty of our magisterium.
00:37:45.620 Even with a radical, a complete radical like Francis, they know they're bound.
00:37:50.800 The strangeness of the story of the death penalty, I do not track to Francis.
00:37:55.460 I lay this blame at the feet of John Paul II.
00:37:59.540 Second, he had for the first time, just as we talked about the we only have two universal catechisms in the church.
00:38:07.900 By the way, we were talking about this with feminism, only the Catechism of the Council of Trent, the Roman Catechism and the CCC, which was the first, you know, catechism in 400 some odd years.
00:38:21.200 We hadn't had a catechism since the Roman Catechism right after the Reformation.
00:38:24.880 jp2 one pope promulgates the ccc in 93 or 94 the same pope it's not even like a new pontificate
00:38:35.480 just three and a half years later in 1997 issues a correction a catechetical correction of himself
00:38:44.860 and this is where all the trouble begins really this is where i think 100 of the trouble accrues
00:38:50.420 And in this 97 catechism, he corrects himself, essentially, as the promulgator.
00:38:56.080 We know the two main authors of the CCC were not JP2.
00:38:59.740 They were his lieutenants.
00:39:00.980 But he corrects himself three and a half years later.
00:39:04.080 And it's very strange.
00:39:05.420 The 93-94 original version said what the church had always said, left intact the beliefs that the death penalty is a conditional good.
00:39:13.760 It actually leaves intact human dignity.
00:39:16.140 It's actually an exercise of human dignity, as Thomas Aquinas says.
00:39:18.920 But 97, he uses this language.
00:39:22.140 I don't have it in front of me, but I have done scholarly work on it even in a doctoral
00:39:27.180 program, and it works like this.
00:39:30.540 He changes it fundamentally, where you can basically only use the death penalty, you
00:39:35.560 have recourse to it anymore as a civil society, on a consequentialist basis.
00:39:41.560 He actually posits consequentialism, which is an evil that the church has condemned without
00:39:46.740 knowing it.
00:39:47.340 And here's how it works. For all 2,000 years of Christianity, there are only two times when it's
00:39:55.580 licit for one human being to kill another. The first is the prerogative that the state holds,
00:40:03.360 literally prerogative, the power of God to intend to kill a human being, whether it's a rule by one,
00:40:10.640 rule by few, rule by many, as long as it's a just regime and they're trying to do their best,
00:40:14.800 They hold the power of God. They can intend to kill this guilty accused. And it doesn't have to
00:40:21.160 just be for murder, by the way. It can be for rape. It can be for heresy, as in the Holy Roman
00:40:25.640 Empire. It's not like it has to be oriented to saving lives. And this is the principle of
00:40:31.560 retributivism laid out by Fazer and Bassett so well. And so there's no principle of double effect
00:40:38.820 in this first instance that's being alluded to or recurred to, I should say. It's literally you
00:40:46.200 have a guilty accused. He's safely housed in this prison. Maybe he wasn't even a murderer. He was
00:40:51.680 just a heretic. But you think because of the principle of retributivism, you're not saving
00:40:57.320 anyone's life. It's just that the state puts him to death. Retributivism just means preserving
00:41:04.560 proportional justice. So in theory, the idea of people, people will boil it down to an eye for an
00:41:11.960 eye, a tooth for a tooth, but the idea of justice, which is, uh, in, in book five of Aristotle's
00:41:19.900 ethics, this is the, the highest, most theoretical form of justice. Okay. So it has nothing to do
00:41:26.880 with saving lives or good consequences or anything like that. The death penalty is good in the case
00:41:32.140 of this adjust state, leveling it wisely, not to save lives, but to preserve the, the, the spirit
00:41:41.180 of general justice. The second, okay. So the second time that it's licit and it's always been
00:41:48.320 taught it's licit for one human being to kill another is not an intended killing. It's a
00:41:53.320 foreseeable killing that is unintended. Now this, this is really hard for people to get their minds
00:41:59.620 around, but this is where the principle of double effect kicks in. If someone breaks in and is going
00:42:04.180 to harm you or someone in your family or even your neighbor, even a stranger, you're not intending
00:42:09.200 to kill them even if you have a handgun and you aim at center mass. You are intending to stop them
00:42:15.100 and it's a permissible certain effect. You don't have to aim at an arm or a leg or anything like
00:42:20.580 that for this aspect of Thomism action theory to be true. You can aim at the heart or the head
00:42:26.360 And you're not intending to kill them.
00:42:28.220 You're intending to stop them.
00:42:32.020 And with this particular second type of killing, it's really, really important that people
00:42:37.400 understand this because it debunks the entire anti-death penalty narrative in principle from
00:42:44.220 97 to the present day.
00:42:46.640 It's not an intended killing.
00:42:48.920 And the second that let's say they're about to stab you and they have their arm raised
00:42:53.320 or they're about to stab your wife, if they think better of it before you've shot them
00:43:00.120 and they lower their arm and they start walking to the door, irrespective of what the legal
00:43:04.240 status would be state to state, it is no longer illicit killing because the principle of double
00:43:12.860 effect kicks out.
00:43:14.260 You're no longer preventing a death.
00:43:16.180 So you don't get to kill them just to be like, well, they're probably going to go do this
00:43:19.320 to someone else.
00:43:20.120 You don't hold the prerogative.
00:43:21.600 Even if that's probably true, you don't hold the prerogative that the state does.
00:43:27.520 So in JP2's 97 Catechism, bear those two, that's it.
00:43:32.380 Those are the only two times a human being can kill another.
00:43:35.360 JP2, I should have gotten the language up in the actual thing, but he literally starts
00:43:42.320 talking about the only continued niche instances of the ability for one human to kill another.
00:43:50.580 He's talking about the state now, which always had this plenary authority, the authority of God to punish as if they can kill based on the principle of double effect, at which point you have to be operating on a consequentialist basis, only if it will save another life.
00:44:07.020 And the funny thing is, this is where you can really prove that it's wrong.
00:44:11.680 It's rare in philosophy that you can make a proof.
00:44:14.320 But John Paul II uses language that says, OK, you're holding them in prison.
00:44:20.060 So they're not in the act of killing anybody, but maybe it's a third world country of low max prison, low, you know, non-supermax prisons, and they're probably going to get out.
00:44:29.980 Well, OK, in those cases, you can still kill them.
00:44:32.440 What he's done is he's tried to hybridize the two licit instances of killing principle of double effect with the principle of retributivism.
00:44:40.980 And it doesn't work.
00:44:42.320 It's actually a contradiction of his own premise.
00:44:45.400 Right. The state, if it's wrong for the state to kill in principle, a guilty accused, then it's wrong for the state to kill to achieve some good end, like saving a life, particularly a life when the guilty accused is just in a low max prison, not about to kill someone.
00:45:03.920 So you can actually prove the error in JP2.
00:45:08.040 He develops it further in the end of his life.
00:45:10.880 Benedict is a little bit less vociferous about it, but he seems to be sympathetic to JP2's view.
00:45:17.000 And then Francis just takes it a step further.
00:45:19.260 But it's all based on this actual provable logical error.
00:45:24.300 You can use symbolic logic and show where they're wrong.
00:45:26.620 Not only do we have the death penalty change, we have Amoris Laetitia, we have Fiducii Subticans,
00:45:32.460 We have the demotion of Our Lady. We have, let's go on and on. My favorite one, because I'm from
00:45:38.760 the pro-life movement, is the intentional equation of abortion and immigration when it comes to
00:45:44.620 political matters, which we find in Gaudete et Exultate. But these are all official teaching
00:45:51.140 documents on faith and morals. The Pope intending to teach on faith and morals. The Catholic
00:45:57.880 faithful are required to submit to these things in mind and will. And yes, there's exceptions for
00:46:03.620 exceptional cases, but even in those exceptions, you're not supposed to make public your
00:46:09.100 disagreements with the Holy Father. Where in the world are we? I was stunned when I heard
00:46:15.860 Cardinals Sarah and Burke, etc., calling upon the SSPX for obedience when they are withholding that
00:46:24.360 from the faith and morals teachings, which they swore to, uh, in their, uh, when they made the
00:46:30.080 professional faith as bishops. The most stunned I've been, well, actually I was, I was stunned,
00:46:34.600 but not, not, not really stunned was when Pope Leo the 14th said that he stands proudly in the
00:46:41.880 lineage of Chicago archbishops from, uh, Bernadine. Cause Bernadine's the one that made up this idea
00:46:48.360 that's whole life, you know, we're pro-life, but we're whole life. Um, I'm forgetting the little,
00:46:54.000 the nifty little name he came up with for it. But the idea that pro-life means not just abortion
00:47:00.960 and euthanasia, but it means, you know, poverty. It means all the leftist causes as well. That was
00:47:07.880 a shocking moment. Seamless Garment is pretty much openly heretical. It hasn't been decried
00:47:15.080 by a council, but that's shocking. And yeah, you're right. You're actually putting at the
00:47:22.100 front of my mind that Leo is, is fully, fully against the death penalty. I've been, I haven't
00:47:27.800 been on the cover Leo train on my own, my own podcast as much lately, but I was on for the
00:47:34.720 first few months and I was like, watch out, this is going to be bad. We're going to have seamless
00:47:37.840 garment more and more strengthened. I was, I mean, the mark of his pontificate in my view
00:47:44.960 would have been, I mean, the only way it would have been good is if he tended to the death
00:47:52.140 penalty issue and the other most important error of the Francis pontificate, which is Amoris
00:47:57.180 Laetitia, because remember, Amoris Laetitia is promulgated in April of 2016. And it's sort of
00:48:08.660 ambiguous, but rather clear which two sacraments he's talking about restoring to unrepentant
00:48:14.880 adulterers in adulterous second unions. But September, five and a half months later,
00:48:20.600 the Argentine bishop, this is, I think, the most important thing that took place
00:48:24.160 in a bad way. The Argentine bishop said, you're talking about giving communion to,
00:48:29.640 you know, unrepentant adulterers, and we want to do it. And he says, you have the only correct
00:48:34.680 interpretation. And the same day he replies with the respuesta, he sticks it in the act
00:48:40.440 Apostolic Assetis. And he calls it authentic magisterium. Yes, authentic magisterium. So
00:48:47.880 that's troubling. Now, as for the state of the world, I did do a big show on this with
00:48:56.120 Anthony Abate from Avoiding Babylon. The mystery of iniquity and the interpretation of the church
00:49:02.940 during this, I think, most dark seculum obscurum. There's a seculum obscurum in the 900s,
00:49:08.640 which lasted 68 years. That's roughly what we've got going on. This is darker though.
00:49:13.820 There's an interpretive dilemma around every corner. And what I would say is
00:49:19.720 what we're rescued by is Thomistic epistemology. So like if the Pope says that we have to believe
00:49:28.700 in a circular that's all orthogonal or a square that's all circular, we can't even form the
00:49:37.040 phantasms because of the something called the peripatetic principle we can't even form the
00:49:41.920 phantasms for such a planar figure in our heads or you know that the trinity has four persons in
00:49:48.380 it or something so you're not accountable to form a self-contradicting premise something that you
00:49:54.480 know like a logical syllogism whose premises contradict one another you can't even form those
00:50:00.340 syllogisms in your head. So there is no duty there. But aside from that, partly because of
00:50:07.420 my view on patriarchy, if there's a clearly imprudent judgment that these bad men are going
00:50:17.160 to give us, or these bad popes at the very least are going to issue, then yeah, imprudence is one
00:50:25.880 of, if you want to look at it, the benefits of the job. So you go along with imprudences.
00:50:31.980 You're not bound to go along with things like two and two is five or logical impossibilities.
00:50:38.800 And the church has in dark times, not quite as dark as now, operated like this before. But
00:50:45.900 generally speaking, I would just say, you know, something like the Benedict option,
00:50:51.020 be the head of your own household, get to mass on Sunday, go to confession often,
00:50:55.160 And the mystery of iniquity will be revealed at the end of time, won't it?
00:51:01.420 I'm very hopeful that this period will come to a close.
00:51:06.020 It is, I'm into some prophecies.
00:51:11.160 I have a great friend in Xavier Eral who wrote a book called Revelations, which goes through a lot of the Marian apparitions.
00:51:16.640 To me, it's really hopeful because the suggestion that there would be only two worm-ridden popes in our years and that after that it would be better fills me with hope anyway.
00:51:28.500 But Timothy Gordon, I want to thank you for joining us.
00:51:31.100 And I would urge folks to go check out his direct site, TimothyJGordon.com.
00:51:39.100 And God bless you, my friend.
00:51:40.400 Thank you so much.
00:51:41.480 Thanks a million for having me.
00:51:42.560 I really appreciate it.
00:51:43.680 And God bless all of you.
00:51:45.060 And we'll see you next time.
00:51:46.640 Many Catholics today are confused, discouraged, and heartbroken over what they see happening
00:51:57.080 to the Church. Some lose hope. Some lose their faith entirely. But this is not the time to
00:52:02.660 abandon the truth. I'm Father Charles Murr. When I researched Leo XIV's involvement with the
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