The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 94 - The Media Continues To Run Cover For The Vatican

00:00:00.000 The Vatican Secretary of State, secretary, I don't know why I said it like that, but I did.

00:00:06.700 Let's just go with it. The Secretary of State said today that Pope Francis is serene right now.

00:00:16.060 He's feeling serene despite the allegations against him. And that's nice, isn't it? Isn't

00:00:22.860 that nice to hear? He's serene. The entire Catholic world has descended into moral chaos, 1.00

00:00:28.260 but the Pope is serene. Great. So wonderful to hear. And of course, the Secretary of State

00:00:35.600 did not answer any questions about the substance of the allegations. He didn't have anything to say

00:00:42.260 about that. It has been now four days since the Pope was credibly accused of personally covering

00:00:49.060 up sex abuse, and this has been the Pope's response. Nothing. Not a word, but he is serene.

00:00:55.280 So that's good. Now, the Vatican has issued no statement about these allegations.

00:01:03.680 It did issue a statement, though, yesterday about something. And I remember I saw, you know,

00:01:09.600 I finally saw the headline before I read the entire headline, but it said,

00:01:13.420 Vatican issues statement. And then I said, finally. But then I saw that, no, the statement was to

00:01:20.540 clarify comments that Pope Francis had made, which had offended gay people. People were concerned

00:01:27.320 that Francis had said something that sounded like he was implying that homosexuality is a mental 1.00

00:01:31.980 disorder. So the Vatican quickly clarified that. I mean, they came out and they said, no, 0.98

00:01:36.880 they issued that clarification right away, because that's very important. This is the Vatican's

00:01:42.520 priority, you see. It cares about soothing the hurt feelings of gay people. But as for the spiritual 0.94

00:01:49.200 chaos and despair of devout Catholics everywhere, it has no evident concern. Now, has anybody offered 1.00

00:01:59.340 a plausible defense of the Pope? Well, the liberal Cardinal Cupich, who is a disgrace of a man and an 0.91

00:02:12.160 embarrassment to Christians everywhere, he said that Pope Francis, Pope Francis, you know, doesn't 0.75

00:02:18.240 have time to worry about this, because he's too busy protecting the environment and caring for

00:02:23.460 immigrants. And so he's too busy with all that to bother with these allegations. That's actually what

00:02:28.700 he said. And he also said that he thinks the criticism of Pope Francis is really rooted in bigotry

00:02:35.940 against Latinos. Now, I don't even think that such a thing is, we should dignify such a comment with a

00:02:44.680 response. But I will respond to it anyway. To say, number one, that is idiotic, you disgrace of a man.

00:02:54.840 Number two, Pope Francis is, he's an Italian, he's ethnically Italian, born to Italian parents in 1.00

00:03:05.100 Argentina. So I think the racism charge, considering he's a white Italian man, is, you know, that's a

00:03:16.640 hard one. It's going to be hard to make that land, okay? Now, the leftist media, they claim that there's

00:03:23.680 a coup going on against the innocent Pope Francis being waged by terrible conservatives. And then you

00:03:30.720 have people in the church who have been attempting to deflect from all this by slandering Archbishop

00:03:37.200 Vigano, who's the man who made these allegations, accusing him of his own sex abuse cover-up. Now,

00:03:42.760 he's come out against those accusations and offered documentation to prove that they're false. So

00:03:50.180 Vigano has, you know, he came out with the original allegations, and he has, and he was accused of

00:03:57.780 something. He came out with documentation proving that it's false. So he's very open, and he's

00:04:02.800 responding, and he's engaging, as opposed to pretty much every person who was indicted by his

00:04:09.600 allegations. They've all just clammed up and had nothing or very little to say. Besides which,

00:04:16.160 as I've already said, it doesn't really matter. Even if Vigano were guilty of a sex abuse cover-up,

00:04:25.440 which it doesn't seem that he is, but even if he had done that, it doesn't matter what he's guilty

00:04:29.680 of. He could be guilty of the JFK assassination. It doesn't matter. It has no relevance to the

00:04:36.160 fundamental question. The fundamental question is, was it true? Is it true? The allegations that he

00:04:44.260 made, are they true? That's all that matters. And the weakest defense of all, of course, offered

00:04:51.920 for Pope Francis is the one offered by Pope Francis. It's weak because it's non-existent.

00:04:59.360 He offers no defense. He gives us no explanation. He just waves us off dismissively and says,

00:05:05.900 basically, run along. I don't care. Which is, by the way, what he's been doing to faithful Catholics

00:05:11.640 for six years. Can we imagine that an innocent man would behave this way?

00:05:21.920 It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine. It's hard to imagine that an innocent man would face

00:05:30.180 these allegations and have nothing to say whatsoever. But Pope Francis has cover while he

00:05:36.020 hides. And it is, as I said, cover from the liberal media. I am fully accustomed to seeing the leftist

00:05:45.320 media lie, mislead, slander, spin false narratives. I am not at all accustomed to seeing them lie,

00:05:52.500 mislead, slander, and spin false narratives for the sake of the Vatican. Okay, that is, these are

00:05:57.880 very strange times. That is, as I said, I will never get used to that. If you had told me 10 years ago

00:06:04.260 that I would be, that I would be going after the Pope while the media protects him,

00:06:10.260 I would have been highly skeptical. Then again, if you had told me that Donald Trump would be president

00:06:15.880 and Dennis Rodman would be our ambassador in North Korea, I also would have been skeptical about that

00:06:22.460 as well. But these are the times we're living in. Of course, the primary lie that we're hearing from

00:06:27.380 the media with regard to all of this is that this is an ideological battle. That's what they're telling

00:06:35.820 this. This is a battle of the conservatives versus the enlightened progressives. There was a headline

00:06:41.480 on Reuters yesterday that said, defenders rally around Pope, fear conservatives escalating war.

00:06:49.660 Yes, conservatives are the ones escalating things. It's our fault. It's our fault. It's not the fault of

00:06:55.340 the homosexual networks in the church who have been covering up sex abuse for decades. No, no, it's not 0.99

00:07:00.000 their fault. It's the fault of conservatives, you see. Now, what I want to do is I want to address

00:07:06.580 the idea that this is all ideological, an ideological war, because that's what you're hearing

00:07:15.780 everywhere. And if you're getting your news about this from the leftist media, that's probably the

00:07:21.020 impression you have. It's a false impression for three reasons. Number one, there's nothing

00:07:26.660 ideological about being opposed to sex abuse, unless we're saying that opposition to sex abuse

00:07:33.060 is a uniquely conservative position. Number two, the ideology of Francis's critics

00:07:41.240 is irrelevant, because no matter their ideological convictions, the question they are asking is valid

00:07:50.740 and non-ideological. Did Francis do it? Is he guilty? That's the question. It is not an ideological

00:07:59.420 question, and the ideology of the people asking it is irrelevant. On the other hand, Francis's ideology

00:08:07.600 and the ideology of the cover-up artists in the Vatican, that is relevant because it could be argued

00:08:15.400 that their liberal, non-judgmental, tolerant, open-minded perspective is what led them to support and

00:08:23.060 promote and protect active homosexuals in the first place. And as the floodgates are being opened here 0.99

00:08:31.840 and more stories are coming out, we're seeing this kind of be fleshed out. LifeSite News has two or

00:08:39.720 three articles about new allegations from other people in the Vatican about Pope Francis, and they

00:08:48.240 all revolve around this. They all revolve around his tolerance for active homosexuals around him. Like 0.66

00:08:55.580 there's one where he gave a Vatican apartment to a priest who was a known active homosexual and who had

00:09:04.040 been accused of sex abuse, gave him an apartment, knowing this about him, and this is coming from someone in

00:09:09.680 the Vatican, told this to LifeSite News, knowing this about him, gave him an apartment, and the next 0.99

00:09:16.300 thing you know, there's a gay drug-fueled orgy going on in a Vatican apartment, you know, with this 0.99

00:09:24.700 active homosexual who Pope Francis had given an apartment to. So there's that kind of thing. And it 0.99

00:09:30.720 would seem that his liberal ideology is not irrelevant to this fact. Number three, and this is the most

00:09:43.780 important thing, when it comes to the essential moral teachings of Christianity, there is no

00:09:50.960 conservative or liberal distinction. There aren't different versions or varieties, okay? Now, conservative

00:09:58.840 versus liberal, that might make sense if we're talking about in Catholicism something like the

00:10:03.480 liturgy, you know, how the mass is celebrated and so on. Conservatives will tend to favor more

00:10:09.000 traditional, more reverent approaches, and their view is absolutely right because the liberalization

00:10:14.100 and secularization of worship is an abomination before God. But here maybe you do find a conservative

00:10:19.280 liberal dynamic where obviously, as always, the liberals are wrong as they are wrong about basically

00:10:24.140 everything. But when it comes to the moral truths, when it comes to something like the homosexual act, 0.83

00:10:30.460 for instance, which is what a lot of this revolves around and where the supposed ideological war hinges

00:10:35.880 in the church, but here there is only one correct Christian position. Those who say the act is immoral

00:10:43.940 are not conservative, they're just Christian. Those who say that it is not immoral are, they're not liberal, 1.00

00:10:52.260 they are actually rejecting the authority of Scripture, rejecting natural law, and if they're Catholic,

00:10:58.580 they're rejecting the teachings of the church. That is not a liberal position, that is just an un-Christian 1.00

00:11:04.260 position. That is a position that, as a Christian, is not available to you. So when it comes to these moral 0.64

00:11:12.400 truths, there aren't different ways of looking at it. There is only one way of looking at it.

00:11:18.540 There is only one truth. There is only one thing you're allowed to believe if you want to continue

00:11:26.180 being a Christian. Now, I am not, at the moment, interested in discussing whether Christianity is

00:11:33.860 right about homosexuality or about any other moral point. That's beside the present point.

00:11:40.080 The present point is simply that Christianity does have a teaching on these subjects. That's the point. 0.79

00:11:51.040 And if you wish to, and if you're not Christian and you don't agree with the teachings, well, fine,

00:11:56.380 whatever, you don't have to agree with them. But if you claim to be Christian, you have to agree 0.97

00:12:01.980 with the teachings. You can't disagree with them. The Bible clearly condemns the homosexual act 1.00

00:12:10.900 repeatedly, including in 1 Corinthians, Romans, 1 Timothy, all across the Old Testament, most notably

00:12:17.400 in Leviticus and Genesis. Moreover, Jesus Christ himself defines marriage. In both Matthew and Mark,

00:12:24.140 he teaches that marriage is when a, quote, man and his, quote, wife come together and, quote,

00:12:29.220 become one flesh. He defines marriage. He says, this is what marriage is. He offers a definition.

00:12:37.520 That's the Son of God. So what we are left with is a full, uncompromising, explicit consensus across

00:12:46.620 both the Old and New Testament about the nature of marriage and the moral depravity of the homosexual 1.00

00:12:51.840 act. Every church for almost 2,000 years affirmed these teachings. No Christian theologian or thinker of

00:12:59.220 or any legitimacy found or claimed to find any pro-gay interpretation of any of the verses mentioned

00:13:06.100 above. That is because no such interpretation can be found. It isn't there. It doesn't exist. We must

00:13:12.060 either accept with humility the biblical view on this topic, or we must throw the Bible out and

00:13:18.460 Christianity along with it. And if we're going to do that, then we are not Christian. 0.67

00:13:23.500 Again, if we try to retain our progressive views, then we must be doing so on one of the following

00:13:35.880 three foundations. Okay, so if you want to say, well, no, you know, the homosexual act is fine, 1.00

00:13:47.000 or, you know, or if you want to have a, in general, a more liberalized idea of sexual morality,

00:13:54.880 sex outside of marriage is fine, so forth. Well, if you're going to do that, then you have to be 0.98

00:14:00.700 doing it on one of the following three foundations. Number one, the Bible is wrong. Number two,

00:14:07.280 this behavior was wrong during biblical times, but it is no longer wrong. Number three, the Bible

00:14:16.600 actually supports this behavior, but its support is so subtle and hidden that nobody noticed it for

00:14:22.760 20 centuries until we came along and discovered it. Now, as a Christian, the first foundation,

00:14:29.640 the Bible is wrong. That doesn't work because it denies the moral authority of Scripture.

00:14:33.700 And if Scripture contains moral error, and so much of it too, then we have no reason to believe

00:14:40.140 anything else it tells us. And if we cannot believe what it tells us, then we have no reason to believe

00:14:44.580 that our faith is true. So that doesn't work. For a Christian, that doesn't work. For a Christian,

00:14:50.120 the second foundation that this behavior was wrong during biblical times, but it's not wrong anymore,

00:14:54.660 that doesn't work because it trades objective morality for moral relativism. But moral relativism is

00:15:01.440 incompatible with Christianity because on the Christian understanding, morality is grounded

00:15:06.060 in and flows from an eternal, perfect, all-knowing, and changeless God. If morality is relative, then God

00:15:11.880 is either imperfect and changeable or non-existent. Number three, the third foundation, that doesn't work

00:15:21.740 either, that the Bible actually does support this behavior, but we didn't know it until now.

00:15:25.720 Now, that doesn't work either. Leaving aside the arrogance of that kind of view, where you're

00:15:32.660 saying that every Christian in history was wrong about this, except for you, let's leave aside the

00:15:40.820 arrogance of that. The problem is that it supposes that the Bible is so confusing and so incomprehensible

00:15:49.420 that even its clearest commands and its clearest edicts cannot be known. This view suggests that

00:15:58.160 the Bible may mean the opposite of what it says, and it may take a couple of millennia for us to

00:16:04.940 realize it. So what opposite meanings will we discover in the year 4,000? Perhaps by then it'll turn

00:16:12.280 out that the Bible's references to Jesus as the Son of God actually meant that he's not the Son of God.

00:16:17.460 I mean, anything is possible. And if anything is possible, then Christianity ceases to be meaningful 0.99

00:16:22.620 or intelligible. And if it's not meaningful or intelligible, then it is literally unbelievable.

00:16:28.880 It is not something that a person can believe, because it doesn't mean anything. So none of this works

00:16:37.220 as a Christian. As I said, if you're not a Christian, then whatever, you can take any of those

00:16:43.760 positions that you want. It doesn't matter. You're not a Christian, right? But if you are a Christian, 0.82

00:16:48.120 you can't take any of those positions. None of any of those positions undermines everything else

00:16:53.980 you believe. It undermines the faith that you pretend to profess. So we are left with only two

00:17:00.100 valid options. Be Christian and accept its moral teachings, or don't be Christian. 0.58

00:17:07.220 Christian. Those are the only—that's it. And you can't say, well, yeah, but what if I think that 0.81

00:17:16.560 Christianity is wrong about this, that, and the other thing, but I believe that Jesus Christ is

00:17:21.660 the Son of God. Well, but you don't really believe that, do you? Because if you're saying that the Bible

00:17:28.600 is wrong about marriage, well, Jesus defined marriage. If you're telling me that he's wrong about it,

00:17:34.160 then you can't possibly believe that he's divine, because then he can't be wrong.

00:17:40.760 So you've just removed—by claiming that he spoke falsehood, he spoke out of ignorance,

00:17:49.820 he spoke out of whatever bigotry, you are removing his divinity. So no, you don't believe that Jesus

00:17:55.860 Christ is the Son of God. You say you do, but you don't. Now, on the other hand, you might say,

00:18:02.300 well, I believe he's the Son of God. No, I don't believe that he said anything wrong, but he didn't

00:18:07.180 really say those things. That was made up. He didn't really say—they put that into his mouth,

00:18:11.000 and he didn't really say. Well, okay, but then how do you know—so that part never happened? Well,

00:18:16.720 how do you know any of it happened then? How do you know the incarnation happened? How do you know

00:18:20.780 the crucifixion happened? I mean, you're getting all of it from the same document, aren't you?

00:18:23.820 You can't do that. You can't go through the Bible and start saying, well, that didn't happen. That

00:18:29.820 didn't happen. Yeah, he didn't really say that. No, he didn't say that. That's false. That's

00:18:33.480 completely wrong. No, that moral teaching is incorrect. But yeah, that and that, that's true.

00:18:39.080 On what basis are you doing that? On what authority? Where are you getting this from?

00:18:44.520 One more thing. I think this is a really important point.

00:18:54.440 When we talk about accepting the moral teachings, you know, and I say to be Christian, we have to

00:18:59.760 accept the moral teachings. That is not the same thing as—I am not saying that in order to be

00:19:05.520 Christian, we have to follow the moral teachings perfectly, or we cease to be Christian. That's

00:19:11.500 not what I'm saying. Now, we do have to try to follow the teachings, but that's not the point.

00:19:17.480 Obviously, nobody follows the moral law perfectly, least of all myself. You can be weak, imperfect,

00:19:25.000 sinful, cowardly, and still be Christian. That's—Christianity is made for it. Jesus says, 1.00

00:19:29.740 I came to call—I didn't come to call the righteous, I came to call sinners. So that's—and that's all of it.

00:19:35.280 And thank God for that, because if only the strongest and most courageous and most qualified could be

00:19:41.060 Christian, then I would be disqualified personally. But here's what we can't do. We can't categorically

00:19:50.500 reject the moral law and say that it doesn't apply to us. We can't do that. We can't say that we

00:20:01.700 worship God and then in the next breath say that His commandments are irrelevant. That doesn't work.

00:20:07.500 So that—you know, I just think this is a distinction that for some reason people struggle

00:20:11.200 with so much. Because at any time you get into this conversation, people say, oh, so you're saying

00:20:15.900 we have to be perfect? No, I'm not saying we have to be perfect. I mean, we should—we strive to be

00:20:20.860 perfect. We strive for holiness. But no, it's—we're not saying that we have to be perfect right now.

00:20:27.540 You take any moral rule, you know, we're not saying that you have to follow it perfectly in order to be

00:20:33.820 Christian. But you have to accept it. You have to accept its legitimacy. You can't say it's not

00:20:41.620 legitimate just because you disagree with it or it's—or it's inconvenient or it's hard. You can't do that.

00:20:47.120 As a Christian, you can't do that for all the reasons I've just outlined. Because you're tearing

00:20:54.260 down the legitimacy of Christianity, which it's a—you can try to do that from the outside.

00:21:04.420 You can't come into the inside and do that. You can't come into Christianity and then try to tear 0.98

00:21:09.120 down its legitimacy while claiming to be Christian. And this is also why people say, well, why are you so,

00:21:15.980 you know, it comes to homosexuality? Why are you so—why are conservative Christians so obsessed

00:21:22.440 with this issue? Why are they talking about it all the time? Well, number one, we're not the ones taught—we're

00:21:27.340 not the ones who are always bringing it up. It—I would much prefer to live in a society where we

00:21:34.000 didn't need to talk about this at all, where it never came up. But I'm not the one bringing it up.

00:21:40.800 There is a loud voice out there, including a voice within Christianity, or people who claim to be

00:21:48.360 Christian, who every day are saying, no, this is okay. We have to accept it. So they're the ones 1.00

00:21:54.940 bringing it up, literally marching through the street. And when—those of us who are conservative

00:22:02.840 Christian, when we resist that and we oppose them, what we're doing is we're defending the legitimacy

00:22:11.220 of our religion, because that's what's being called into question. It's not specific. It's not about

00:22:17.700 homosexuality exclusively specific. It is about that as well, obviously, but that's not—that's not just

00:22:24.280 it. This conversation isn't happening in a vacuum. The reason why we feel so necessary to rebuke

00:22:32.400 Christians who hold this view is because they are undermining—they are calling into question

00:22:37.300 our religion itself. And so that's why that needs to be met. And every age, you know, every era of

00:22:49.360 Christianity, there have been heresies, there have been certain aspects of Christianity that have come

00:22:55.420 under attack. And so those who love the faith and believe in it, it's necessary for them to rally

00:23:02.180 around that truth and defend it and become obsessed with it. When they're not obsessed with it, it's just

00:23:07.680 that there's a certain pillar of the faith that there's a movement trying to rip it down, and so we

00:23:13.540 have to rally around that pillar and say no. And in our time, the heresy revolves all around morality,

00:23:22.000 and especially sexual morality. The heresy basically is moral relativism.

00:23:29.000 And it's a heresy when it's within Christianity, when you have Christians who say

00:23:32.560 that morality changes or that we get to decide what's moral. And so those of us who love the faith,

00:23:39.600 we have to rally around objective morality and say no. You cannot tear down this pillar.

00:23:49.020 All right. We'll leave it there. Thanks for listening, everybody. Godspeed.

The Matt Walsh Show - August 30, 2018

Ep. 94 - The Media Continues To Run Cover For The Vatican

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