The Michael Knowles Show - August 15, 2026


＂Do Catholics Worship Mary？＂ Cardinal Burke Answers REAL Posts ｜ Off The Clock

Topics
traditional liturgy traditional Latin Mass desire open borders
Hosted by
Michael Knowles
Guests
Off The Clock
Mentioned
Mary Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke Ezekiel Abraham Isaac Jesus Christ Jacob Flake Blessed Mother Pope Benedict Pure Talk Montserrat Michael Dale Richardson Center Verger Grandeson Thomas Aquinas Thomas Niza Powers St. Augustine Victor Feltes Tyler Lazarus and 15 more
Friendly Fire： AOC's 2028 Dating Game & WNBA's What is a Woman Debate Ep. 2039 - Horrifying Organ Harvest Story Goes Viral

Episode Stats


Length

54 minutes

Words per minute

155.48

Word count

8,491

Sentence count

508

Harmful content

Toxicity

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

25

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run.
00:00:04 Then Dale tried to console us with the quote,
00:00:07 winning isn't everything.
00:00:09 Well, Dale and I are very different.
00:00:12 I get early payout from Bet365.
00:00:14 If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly,
00:00:17 even if they blow the lead later.
00:00:19 Sound familiar, Dale?
00:00:21 Thanks, Bet365.
00:00:22 Must be 19 or older, Ontario only.
00:00:24 Please play responsibly.
00:00:25 If you have questions or concerns about your gambling
00:00:26 or the gambling of someone close to you,
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00:00:30 Got PC Optimum points?
00:00:32 Visit Shoppers Drug Mart for the bonus redemption event.
00:00:35 And get more for your points.
00:00:37 Friday, August 14th to Wednesday, August 19th.
00:00:40 Valid in-store and online.
00:00:45 Could God make a burrito so expensive that he could not buy it?
00:00:49 I think there actually is a serious theological question hidden in there.
00:00:53 They say, can God make a square or circle? 0.98
00:00:55 Well, it's a ridiculous question. 0.86
00:00:56 A circle is a circle and a square is a square. 0.95
00:00:59 God doesn't contradict himself.
00:01:01 See, this is evidence as to why I want to ask my questions instead of taking them from Twitter.
00:01:19 This one is going to be hard to top.
00:01:21 It is my superlative honor and privilege to be joined at one of my favorite cigar lounges
00:01:28 in Nashville for an episode of Off the Clock with His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke.
00:01:35 Your Eminence, thank you very much for coming.
00:01:37 Thank you for the invitation.
00:01:38 I'm pleased to be with you.
00:01:39 This is, I don't, this is not flattery whatsoever.
00:01:42 Someone was asking me, one of my colleagues, right before we were in, gosh, where was it?
00:01:49 Oh, it was in La Crosse, actually.
00:01:51 He said, Michael, do you ever get starstruck meeting all these politicians and actors?
00:01:56 And I said, no, not that much really.
00:01:59 But, you know, there are a few people I would.
00:02:01 And then an hour or so later, you walked into the green room.
00:02:04 I said, this is the example.
00:02:05 This is where I get starstruck.
00:02:07 It's Cardinal Burke.
00:02:07 So in any case, thank you so much.
00:02:09 I really appreciate you making the time.
00:02:11 We have posted to X.
00:02:14 We've asked for all the questions that people have.
00:02:16 Faithful, agnostic, atheist.
00:02:19 It's X.
00:02:20 So, it's infested with the demonic, at least the figuratively demonic, maybe the literally demonic.
00:02:26 So, we'll filter around all of these questions.
00:02:29 First, though, I should point out that 2031 is the 500th anniversary of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
00:02:37 Yes.
00:02:37 And you obviously are rather interested in that subject with the shrine, etc.
00:02:42 Yes, we're making our plans for a five-year preparation for the quincentennial.
00:02:49 And each year we'll be devoted to one of the doctrines on our Blessed Mother, that we come
00:02:57 to know her better, more deeply in order to know our Lord more deeply and to be more closely united
00:03:04 with Him. So we'll begin on December 12th of this year with a year devoted to her Immaculate
00:03:10 Conception. Then the next year will be her Perpetual Virginity, then her Divine Maternity,
00:03:17 the Assumption, and then her mediation of all graces,
00:03:22 her motherhood of the church, we could say.
00:03:24 So I know people can go to sempervirgo.org.
00:03:28 Yes, go there and you can register.
00:03:30 And every day we've taken on, thanks be to God,
00:03:33 we have a wonderful staff to help me.
00:03:35 But every day I will send a meditation for the next,
00:03:39 beginning on December 12th for five years,
00:03:41 there'll be a daily meditation for people
00:03:44 to help them to prepare for this historic event.
00:03:50 I can barely muster a handful of tweets every day
00:03:52 on my random musings, 0.95
00:03:54 and you will have a teaching on the Marian dog.
00:03:56 We started already now to get them ready
00:03:58 because it's going to be a work,
00:04:00 but it'll be a good work
00:04:01 because there's a lot of misunderstanding
00:04:05 and even ignorance about the mystery of the redemption
00:04:09 and the unique role played by our Blessed Mother
00:04:14 as the mother of God, the Son incarnate.
00:04:18 And this, God willing, these five years
00:04:21 will help us to understand that mystery more deeply.
00:04:25 And it's the mystery of our salvation.
00:04:27 Well, okay, this brings us to our first question
00:04:28 from Twitter, which is from Thiago Vinhass,
00:04:32 who says, ask the Cardinal,
00:04:35 why does he worship and pray for Mary,
00:04:38 maybe to Mary, if Jesus says he is the only way
00:04:41 and no one comes to the Father except through Jesus? 0.75
00:04:44 First of all, I don't worship Mary,
00:04:47 I worship her divine son, and that's what she's all about.
00:04:51 The last words of our Blessed Mother
00:04:52 in the Gospel at the wedding feast of Cana,
00:04:55 she takes the wine stewards, this very embarrassing moment,
00:04:59 they're out of wine for the wedding guests,
00:05:01 she takes them to our Lord and says,
00:05:04 do whatever He tells you,
00:05:05 absolute confidence that He would help them.
00:05:09 And so we, our Lord of course, He alone is our Savior,
00:05:14 But as he was dying on the cross to save us,
00:05:17 he spoke to St. John, the Apostle and Evangelist,
00:05:20 representing the whole church,
00:05:23 Behold your mother.
00:05:25 In other words, he gave his mother to us as our mother
00:05:28 in that way that she was the first to accept him in her womb,
00:05:35 the announcement of the Archangel Gabriel,
00:05:37 accept the Redeemer into the world.
00:05:39 She helps us to draw near to him and to accept him as our Savior.
00:05:43 She's incomparable help.
00:05:45 And how could we know God incarnate,
00:05:50 God who united our human nature to his divine nature
00:05:54 in the womb of the Virgin Mary
00:05:55 and not know his mother and love her? 0.97
00:05:59 It was her fiat,
00:06:02 what she said to the angel,
00:06:05 because she couldn't understand how this could be,
00:06:06 that she was a virgin.
00:06:08 She was a consecrated virgin.
00:06:11 she couldn't understand how she would have this child. And the archangel explained to her that
00:06:17 it would be the work of the Holy Spirit. And then she said, let it be done according to your word.
00:06:22 And that for us is the beginning of our salvation because God, the Son, has entered the world,
00:06:28 conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary to save us.
00:06:33 I think at a very plain level, I try to be respectful of my friends' mothers.
00:06:38 And I think the mother of God probably deserves even more respect than that.
00:06:45 Exactly.
00:06:46 Exactly.
00:06:47 Okay.
00:06:48 The next question is from Thomas Bowers.
00:06:55 How does a person who believes in a higher power but not the church find a way to come to Christ?
00:07:02 You know, this became very popular in recent decades.
00:07:04 People felt spiritual but not religious.
00:07:07 They believed in some higher power, but not organized religion.
00:07:12 So I'm kind of dismissive of that now, even though I once thought that as a teenager.
00:07:18 Maybe that's why I'm dismissive of it now.
00:07:20 But I think there are a lot of people who earnestly think, look, I want to find God,
00:07:24 but I don't know, I don't buy this church stuff and the smells and the bells.
00:07:28 Why does it need to be organized and so formal?
00:07:30 I think that, first of all, that a person has this attraction to the supernatural, to the divine, is already a sign of grace at work.
00:07:43 And then they need to answer the question, who is God?
00:07:51 And that, we find the answer to that in his revelation of himself in the Holy Scriptures and in the whole tradition of the church.
00:08:00 which embodies both the covenants of the Old Testament
00:08:05 and the New and Eternal Covenant of the New Testament.
00:08:10 And I think basically there's only one way
00:08:16 that they will be able to respond to that attraction,
00:08:22 and that is in the Catholic Church
00:08:24 in which the fullness of the revelation of our Lord is taught.
00:08:29 St. Paul, you might remember, he spoke in the Areopagus,
00:08:34 and the Athenians at that time were very progressive people and so forth.
00:08:40 So they had this altar to what they called the unknown god,
00:08:44 a kind of an anonymous god that people would honor.
00:08:50 And he spoke to them.
00:08:53 He always felt he was a failure
00:08:54 because he didn't speak strongly enough
00:08:57 about that Jesus Christ is the God
00:09:02 that you want to come to know and to worship.
00:09:07 But when one has this attraction,
00:09:12 one then must go to the Word of God
00:09:16 and the Holy Scriptures,
00:09:18 and then the church in which the Holy Scriptures
00:09:20 came to be as an expression of God's revelation.
00:09:24 It does seem, you know, when God in the Old Testament, which, you know, is prefiguring the new, when he tells his people to worship him in a certain way and to pray in a certain way and to organize themselves in a certain way, it boggles the mind of modern people who want everything on their own terms.
00:09:44 That's exactly it. God calls us to himself in the integrity of his own being, not to make our own God. Like in the Old Testament, the story of the Tower of Babel, the people thought that they could build a structure to reach up to God instead of worshiping exactly as you put it, worshiping in the way in which God teaches us.
00:10:09 And they had it all in the Old Testament scriptures and all of the details about divine worship to respect God as the origin of all being, the source of all being, and our participation in his being, but as his children, not as other gods.
00:10:30 Right, right. Well, on the particulars of what God tells us to do, we have a question from one of our Hebraic writers here. This is, let me see if I can pull it up. Here it is. This is from, I lost it. Here we are. This is from my Jewish friend who happens to be sitting right over there, who's an associate producer of this show, Jacob Falach, who says, with respect to his eminence and Catholics at large, how do, nothing good is going to follow from that.
00:11:00 With respect to no offense intended, you know you're going to hear the most offensive thing ever.
00:11:04 He says, how do Catholics reconcile the belief that Jesus is the figurative third temple as described by the prophets as well as the final sacrifice for humanity's sins?
00:11:13 When Ezekiel specifically gives the temple's measurements, 500 by 500 cubits, and also says sacrifices will occur on it by the priests.
00:11:23 Was Ezekiel therefore a fraud according to Catholic belief?
00:11:27 Well, no.
00:11:28 All the prophets are preparing the way
00:11:32 for the fulfillment of what they were teaching.
00:11:37 And yes, the temple was a prefigurement
00:11:41 of God's dwelling with us in the most extraordinary,
00:11:46 most perfect way possible
00:11:48 by taking our own human nature
00:11:50 and uniting it to His divine nature,
00:11:53 becoming one with us in order to save us.
00:11:56 And so in the Old Testament, Ezekiel, all the law and the prophets sometimes is called, is all pointing, leading to our Lord.
00:12:10 And he himself said in the Sermon on the Mount, I've not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to bring them to their fulfillment.
00:12:16 And so we understand that all of the care for the dimensions of the temple, for the appointments in the temple and so forth, all of that is in view of this perfect dwelling of God with us by the redemptive incarnation.
00:12:38 And so, we accept the book of the prophet Ezekiel as part of the canon of Holy Scriptures for us, as it is also for the people of Jewish faith.
00:12:53 And we see nothing contradictory in it.
00:12:57 Yes.
00:12:58 You know, I was just reading through Genesis yesterday, actually, and it occurred to me, a lot of the commentary, especially from atheists and unbelievers, is they'll try to debunk the Bible.
00:13:11 And if you try to debunk the Bible, you will succeed at whatever it is you're attempting to do.
00:13:16 You know, even in the first two chapters of Genesis, you can find an apparent contradiction, which is in one of the tales of the creation, the plants come before the humans.
00:13:27 And in the other tale, the humans come before the plants.
00:13:30 So in modern times, people will just say, well, there you go.
00:13:33 There's a contradiction.
00:13:33 It's not inerrant.
00:13:35 It's not divinely inspired.
00:13:36 I can go on and do what I please.
00:13:39 But you're not going to get a lot out of the book if you begin that way.
00:13:43 If instead you begin and you say, well, look, based on this historic fact, namely the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord,
00:13:51 If we can, like, believe that this book has something to offer us, 0.97
00:13:55 that maybe, you know, 2,000 years of Christians haven't all been a bunch of dolts, 0.72
00:13:58 then you can say, okay, well, there are actually different angles on the account of creation, 0.71
00:14:03 a cosmic angle and an anthropological one.
00:14:06 You know, when our Lord says to forgive our brother 77 times,
00:14:10 he's not telling us not to forgive him 78 times.
00:14:13 That's right.
00:14:14 It seems to me that, you know, if Ezekiel is giving numbers for the temple,
00:14:20 There might be a deeper significance to that, figurative or moral or anagotical.
00:14:24 Of course, it's the order of God, the order that he intended from the beginning,
00:14:29 which was disrupted by the sin of Adam and Eve.
00:14:33 And so, this right order, this proportion, the beauty of it,
00:14:39 all of that is meant to bring us back to him.
00:14:42 And eventually to recognize him at his coming as the anointed of the Lord,
00:14:49 the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
00:14:52 And so that's the way, yes, and you point out,
00:14:56 for centuries, the most learned of men
00:14:59 have been studying the Holy Scriptures,
00:15:01 writing commentaries on them,
00:15:03 and only to preach the faith,
00:15:08 to announce the faith to others,
00:15:13 not to come up with these artificial contradictions,
00:15:17 you say to debunk the Bible. 0.99
00:15:19 Yeah, good luck, good luck if you will. 0.98
00:15:22 This is one thing we need to get over,
00:15:25 that our generation is the first to discover
00:15:29 the truth about things.
00:15:31 All of us, our life is a gift,
00:15:32 and also so much culture and knowledge
00:15:37 is given to us a gift and the faith of most of all.
00:15:40 And we ought to be deeply grateful for that
00:15:42 and to try to deepen it,
00:15:43 not to be prideful and think that, well, I can do better than this.
00:15:51 Yeah, you know, I think about this in particular with regard to St. Thomas Aquinas,
00:15:55 because I go back to St. Thomas so frequently.
00:15:57 I just think when I have a disagreement with Thomas Aquinas,
00:16:02 I think I have to assume he's right.
00:16:05 That's not necessarily going to be the case,
00:16:07 but I think betting odds are he's going to be right.
00:16:10 And this is true for all of the great doctors of the church, church fathers.
00:16:13 St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Great, St. Leo the Great, Irenaeus, all the great fathers of the church, and they all fundamentally are in agreement with each other, but studying these truths from different angles, from different approaches, and even using different metaphors, different forms of literature to present the truth.
00:16:41 Yes. Even when some of my Protestant friends would kind of razz each other about religion,
00:16:48 and they would go after me and say the Eucharist is a kind of developed tradition or praying to
00:16:53 Mary, to use the example we just cited. That's a new thing you Catholics invented. And I think,
00:16:58 well, you know, the early Christians kept pretty good notes. So you can go back to Justin Martyr
00:17:02 and the very early Christian writers talking about the Eucharist. You can go back to the,
00:17:08 I think it's the Rylan's Papyrus with the first prayer to the Blessed Mother in the second century.
00:17:13 Yes, so to him precede him under your protection.
00:17:19 No, this is exactly the case.
00:17:24 And we have in the catagombs in Rome from the very first century's images of the Mother of God,
00:17:30 of the Blessed Mother holding the child Jesus clearly,
00:17:33 the people professing their faith in her divine maternity.
00:17:38 And in that way, professing most of all their faith in both the divine and human nature
00:17:45 and the one person of our Lord.
00:17:48 Next question.
00:17:50 I hope we've answered that from my colleague and friend Jacob.
00:17:54 Next question.
00:17:54 This is from, this also sort of relates to Judaism, but it's more from a Protestant angle.
00:17:59 This is from Ruslan K.D., who is a prominent Protestant apologist.
00:18:02 He says, if Protestants are separated brethren in imperfect communion with the church, why
00:18:09 does Catholicism actively seek their full communion with Rome, while the Vatican says
00:18:13 it does not support any specific institutional mission aimed at converting Jews?
00:18:19 What is the theological distinction?
00:18:20 Well, the church proclaims the truth to everyone, to Jews, to Protestants.
00:18:31 We believe that in the church, one finds the announcement of the fullness of the revelation of God in Christ his son.
00:18:43 And in the church, he calls his mystical body.
00:18:47 And so we don't, we announce that to everyone.
00:18:51 We don't force anybody, everyone to become Christian, become Catholic.
00:18:56 but we certainly, if we didn't think that salvation came to us through the church,
00:19:09 why are we members of the church?
00:19:12 Why don't we, it just becomes indifferent that you could be Jewish,
00:19:16 you could be Protestant, why am I a Catholic?
00:19:20 Because I believe that the fullness of the means for my eternal salvation
00:19:25 are found in the Catholic Church.
00:19:27 And I announce that not with any kind of condescension
00:19:31 or anything else, but simply this is what we believe
00:19:35 and this is why we believe it.
00:19:37 And people will either accept it or they won't.
00:19:42 They are invited to.
00:19:43 Yes, yes.
00:19:45 And so we pray for the unity of the Church
00:19:47 because we don't believe that our Lord intended 1.00
00:19:51 that there be all these denominations of Christians
00:19:54 and we know historically how all of this came about
00:19:57 and we pray for the reconciliation of those divisions.
00:20:02 Well, okay, there's one last group
00:20:03 that we haven't touched on then.
00:20:04 We've got the Protestants, we've got the Jews.
00:20:06 The one last group that is especially represented
00:20:08 on Twitter, the Eastern Orthodox.
00:20:10 Oh, yes.
00:20:11 There are a lot of ortho bros on Twitter
00:20:13 and one of them asks, he might, I think he's Orthodox,
00:20:17 he's at least interested in the question,
00:20:18 from Verger Grandeson, the filioque,
00:20:23 why is it important?
00:20:24 This might be the only even semi-popular podcast that is going into the Filioque way today, but I'm actually quite interested in it.
00:20:33 Yes. Well, to be honest with you, I don't understand the objection to it.
00:20:42 In other words, if one understands that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same substance,
00:20:52 but three distinct persons.
00:20:56 The action of the Father is with the Son in the Holy Spirit.
00:21:05 And so I, to be honest with you, and I haven't studied this in great depth,
00:21:12 but I think if this is understood correctly,
00:21:16 I don't see where the Orthodox would have a difficulty.
00:21:20 You know, it is true, historically, it was added a little later, but not much later.
00:21:26 So, for the people who don't follow these sort of Latin controversies, the filioque means with the son.
00:21:34 With, yes.
00:21:34 And this was a controversy between the West and the East in antiquity, because the original creed says the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.
00:21:44 Yes.
00:21:44 And then we were dealing with the heresy of Arianism, which denied the divinity of Christ.
00:21:49 So there was a clarification that was added,
00:21:51 said the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son.
00:21:54 And the Eastern Orthodox don't like that.
00:21:57 So if you go into an Eastern church,
00:21:58 they don't put the, and the Son part.
00:22:02 Right, but I don't think it's because they don't believe
00:22:06 that the Holy Spirit came forth from the Father and the Son.
00:22:11 Because the Trinity is one,
00:22:14 And it would be even our Lord said, the Father and I are one.
00:22:19 And he said, I've come to do the will of my Father.
00:22:24 In the agony in the garden, he says, not my will, but thy be done.
00:22:27 And so I think because in Nicaea, the filioque wasn't there.
00:22:35 Constantinople was added.
00:22:37 the church over time finds always fuller expressions of her truths but the truth didn't
00:22:46 change it's just to me it's just a fuller expression of it so i i i trust that at some
00:22:53 point this will uh there'll be a piece about this i hopefully this side of the eschaton because i
00:23:01 you know in the show i i talk about politics ostensibly and there's always culture and
00:23:06 religion brought in but it's a political show which i think helps me understand this filioque
00:23:12 controversy and the split between the east and the west because it the split strikes me much more as
00:23:18 a political split than a theological split you would know more about it than i do well there's
00:23:24 a lot of truth to that i wouldn't be prepared right at this moment to go into it but there is
00:23:29 There is a definite political aspect, the involvement of the emperor of the East and so forth in matters of the church.
00:23:41 And I think that has to be looked at.
00:23:43 I know that that has to be looked at very seriously.
00:23:46 All right.
00:23:48 So the next question is from Father Victor Feltes, who says,
00:23:54 What signs in our time give his eminence the greatest concern, and which give him the greatest hope?
00:24:01 The signs that give me the greatest concern is this rebellion against the law of God.
00:24:08 We see it in many ways, for instance, in the attack on the inviolability of human life,
00:24:14 the attack on the integrity of marriage, the attack on the freedom to worship God
00:24:21 as He teaches us to worship Him.
00:24:26 Those are my great concerns also for our own country
00:24:29 in this 250th anniversary.
00:24:34 The plague of abortion, we have procured abortion.
00:24:38 Over a million children are killed in the womb
00:24:41 in this country every year.
00:24:42 That's horrible.
00:24:44 People mutilating themselves
00:24:45 because they think they have the right
00:24:47 to determine their sexual identity,
00:24:49 which is a gift that's given to us at birth.
00:24:53 We should be happy with the gift as God gave it to us.
00:24:58 And all of this is on the part of man taking,
00:25:06 it's fundamentally a prideful act,
00:25:08 they're taking the place of God,
00:25:10 that I should be able to decide when human life begins,
00:25:12 when my life should end,
00:25:15 what sexual identity I have, male or female.
00:25:19 And those things concern me the most.
00:25:22 And I think they're the font of a lot of other related concerns about the violence, for instance, in society today.
00:25:30 I think when you want a society, well, we just saw in these days in Massachusetts, they signed into law, law which permits the killing of a baby right up to the moment of birth. 0.64
00:25:44 And the governor who signed it is ostensibly Catholic.
00:25:47 Yes. This is an image I saw of these young women cheering on. I don't know if they were young mothers or whatever, but there's something about that that's so disordered.
00:26:01 And so that concerns me the most.
00:26:05 What gives me the greatest hope is I see among many young people a desire to really lead a good and holy life.
00:26:19 We find that the religious communities that are most demanding are receiving great numbers of vocations.
00:26:28 Many young people returning to church, and they want the more ancient usage of the Roman rite, the beauty of the classical Roman liturgy.
00:26:40 All of these are very positive signs.
00:26:43 I see many more families now with more children, and that's also a good sign.
00:26:49 And I remember when I was a young priest, there was this idea that also supposedly inspired by a care for the planet that people shouldn't have more than one or two children.
00:27:00 And I remember when I was a young priest, this mother came up to me in tears.
00:27:05 It was in the Catholic school, and she had announced to one of the teachers that they were going to have their third baby.
00:27:12 And the teacher said to her, don't you think you should have more regard for the invite?
00:27:18 For the trees?
00:27:19 Yes, for the environment and not be overpopulated.
00:27:24 Well, these are the kind of things, but I think that's past.
00:27:29 I see many positive signs,
00:27:32 and I hope we need to raise up in our country leaders,
00:27:37 real statesmen who have principles, who respect the natural law,
00:27:41 and who see that any positive law has to be rooted in the order that God has placed in creation
00:27:50 so that you don't have these Supreme Court decisions that tell people that they can decide what their—
00:27:59 A new definition of marriage, for instance.
00:28:01 Exactly right.
00:28:02 Right now, go to puretalk.com slash Knowles.
00:28:05 There are certain things in life that deserve a lot of thought.
00:28:07 Faith, family, the state of the church, the future of the country.
00:28:09 Your wireless bill should not be one of those things, okay?
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00:28:57 puretalk.com slash Knowles to make the switch to Pure Talk.
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00:29:06 There's a lot in there. On the point of the young people returning, I travel around a lot,
00:29:11 maybe not as much as you, but I travel around a lot, and I go to a lot of different parishes,
00:29:15 sometimes Novus Ordo, you know, the new Mass, and I prefer the traditional Latin Mass, as do many of
00:29:21 my age cohort. And I've noticed the parishes are filling up, and younger people are going.
00:29:28 But if you want the real young people, and especially the real young people who have lots
00:29:33 of kids who are really into it and really on fire, it does seem to me that skews toward
00:29:40 the traditional Latin Mass.
00:29:42 Yes.
00:29:42 The Novus Ordo parishes tend to be older, fewer kids, more open seats.
00:29:47 Yes.
00:29:48 Just an observation.
00:29:49 No, it is true.
00:29:50 One time, a highly placed figure in the church made the comment that once all these older 1.00
00:29:59 people die out there won't be any requests for the traditional latin mass and i found that rather 1.00
00:30:06 amusing i said obviously he never went to one of those masses because they're filled with young
00:30:11 families young people in general but also young married people and they have many children there's
00:30:16 lots there are a lot of crying babies and so forth uh and i'm responsible for a few of those crying
00:30:22 babies every week well i always say it was say to priests when they would express impatience i said
00:30:27 Don't be impatient.
00:30:29 That's the future of the church.
00:30:30 We let them cry.
00:30:33 People will hear what they need to hear from you.
00:30:35 But anyway, I have a very good friend
00:30:39 who's the Archbishop of Utrecht, Cardinal Willem Eich.
00:30:43 And he's told me that in the last years in Holland,
00:30:47 where it seemed like the church was dead, really.
00:30:50 I mean, their participation was so low
00:30:53 that now the young people are coming back in great numbers.
00:30:56 But he told me, he said, they want the traditional liturgy, they want something that speaks, not that the more recent usage is valid, there's no question about that and so forth, but the more ancient usage communicates more fully and more richly the divine action.
00:31:20 That this is our Lord Jesus Christ who's come down to renew on the altar, to make sacramentally present his sacrifice on Calvary.
00:31:31 And the young people are simply, they're attracted.
00:31:35 And then they want that.
00:31:36 And he said, then they want to know what the church teaches about things.
00:31:39 They don't want everybody saying, you know, oh, everything is fine.
00:31:43 You're just fine.
00:31:45 Be nice.
00:31:45 Yes, as one young person said to me, came to see me to ask me some questions, he said, I've come to see you, and don't tell me that I'm all all right, I'm a sinner.
00:31:56 And we all are, but I think this is really a positive sign. 1.00
00:32:02 But as far as I can see, there will be an ever greater number of Catholics
00:32:11 who are worshiping the way that we worshiped for over 15 centuries.
00:32:15 And there's nothing contradictory about that.
00:32:18 But there's this idea that somehow the form of the Roman right up until the reforms after the council is all bad, no.
00:32:31 Well, you know, I will get back to the Twitter questions, but one just for myself on this point, which I care about a lot.
00:32:37 I think you deserve to ask.
00:32:38 Thank you, thank you.
00:32:41 Like the earlier question, when people say, why do you have to pray to Mary?
00:32:46 Why do you have to pray to the saints?
00:32:47 You can just pray to God directly.
00:32:48 I say, well, I can.
00:32:49 Yeah, that's true.
00:32:50 Yeah, I can do that.
00:32:51 But why wouldn't I avail myself of all the help I can get?
00:32:55 And I think that for the people who say, well, the new form of the Mass is valid, so why don't you just go to that?
00:33:01 I say, yeah, it's valid, and I can, and I do go to that sometimes.
00:33:04 But if you have a lot of young people who are desiring this use of the Mass that we had for 1,500 years, that they feel is speaking to them and nourishing them in a special way, and they're really drawn to that, why would you restrict that?
00:33:24 Pope Francis restricted the traditional Latin Mass after Pope Benedict had liberated or acknowledged that it never should have been suppressed in the first place.
00:33:33 So, where would you say that stands right now as we're in a new pontificate looking ahead?
00:33:38 I'm not asking you to predict the future, but how do things look right now?
00:33:42 I think that the most important thing is for those who love the traditional Latin Mass
00:33:50 to make known to their bishops and to the Holy Father most of all
00:33:55 their desire to worship according to this form
00:33:59 and that they're not calling into question
00:34:02 the validity of the Second Vatican Council,
00:34:05 but that they're simply saying that this form of the Mass,
00:34:09 which was never suppressed and never could be,
00:34:12 the fact of the matter is it's been celebrated continuously
00:34:16 even in our time.
00:34:19 And more people desire this exactly as you say,
00:34:24 if they're nourished spiritually in this way
00:34:27 and they become more committed to the faith,
00:34:33 why should we deny that to them?
00:34:35 I remember visiting an archdiocese
00:34:37 and always whenever to celebrate a pontifical mass
00:34:41 according to the more ancient usage.
00:34:43 And I always write a letter to the bishop saying I'm coming
00:34:46 and that I'd be happy to meet him if he has time to greet him.
00:34:51 And I remember this, I went to this one diocese
00:34:54 It was a beautiful Mass, very well attended, a wonderful, an old church that had been kept up well.
00:35:02 And I have to say that bishop came himself and attended the whole Mass and greeted all the people.
00:35:09 But when I met with him, he said to me, you know, he said, I have no attraction to it.
00:35:14 But he said, those that do are some of our most devout Catholics.
00:35:22 They show the most respect toward me as bishop and are very generous with what I ask them to do.
00:35:29 And he said, they're clearly spiritually nourished.
00:35:32 He said, why would I deny that to them?
00:35:34 Right, right.
00:35:35 It just doesn't make sense.
00:35:37 It does seem to, you don't have to predict the future, but I will.
00:35:40 And I'm a pundit, so if I get it wrong, I have no responsibility whatsoever.
00:35:44 It does seem to me that the future of the liturgy will very likely be closer to the past than it will be to the recent moment.
00:35:55 That shouldn't surprise us because that is the whole nature of our faith.
00:35:59 St. Paul said when he wrote to the Corinthians, because already at that time there were abuses in the Eucharist,
00:36:06 he wrote to them in a very strong way.
00:36:08 First of all, he gave the account of the institution of the Eucharist.
00:36:11 And when he did that, he said, I'm handing on to you that which I first received.
00:36:17 He wasn't handing on to them something that he made up or that was his, but what he received.
00:36:22 And so we received along the centuries this beautiful form of the Roman Rite.
00:36:28 As Pope Benedict XVI said, what is beautiful and good at one time doesn't suddenly become bad.
00:36:36 and so that it would be recovered and even maybe more and more the liturgical expression of the
00:36:42 church wouldn't surprise me at all. Okay, now, see, this is evidence as to why I want to ask
00:36:48 my questions instead of taking them from Twitter. This comes from Stevie Mac. He says,
00:36:53 could God make a burrito so expensive that he could not buy it? Now, this comes after there
00:36:59 was a big debate on social media over the affordability and the cost of burritos,
00:37:03 And I think there actually is a serious theological question hidden in there.
00:37:07 Could God make a burrito so expensive he couldn't buy it?
00:37:09 Or, as it's sometimes put, can God make a stone so heavy that he couldn't lift it?
00:37:14 Well, let us put it this way, if I may.
00:37:16 Maybe I don't understand the question correctly, but God made us with intellect and free will.
00:37:23 God is the creator of reason, of right reason.
00:37:26 and he also revealed himself to us in his fullness
00:37:31 through the Holy Scriptures
00:37:33 and first through the people of God,
00:37:36 the Jewish, the Hebrew nation,
00:37:39 then the fulfillment of their faith
00:37:43 and the Catholic faith.
00:37:45 But he doesn't contradict himself.
00:37:48 So God, they say, can God make a square circle? 0.99
00:37:51 Well, it's a ridiculous question. 0.91
00:37:53 A circle is a circle and a square is a square. 0.72
00:37:55 God doesn't contradict himself in his revelation when we, St. Thomas is brilliant on this, but also other great theologians, but we, in the revelation that God gives, even in the miracles that he works, they all are perfectly in harmony with the beauty of creation and express its perfection.
00:38:18 They don't contradict it.
00:38:21 And so, you know, when God heals the sick,
00:38:24 restores someone to health, whatever it may be,
00:38:29 God is not, he is the God of reason
00:38:34 and the God of divine revelation,
00:38:38 and it's the same God.
00:38:40 Well, Pope Benedict got in a lot of trouble
00:38:42 at the Regensburg Address
00:38:43 because he pointed out the differences
00:38:45 between the Muslim conception of God
00:38:47 in the Christian conception. And in it, he was quoting this Muslim writer Ibn Hazm, who said
00:38:52 that in the Islamic conception, in this kind of voluntarist conception, God is totally transcendent.
00:38:58 So, if he wanted to demand that his followers worship idols, he could do that. Whereas the 0.88
00:39:03 Christian understanding of God, as synonymous with the logos, is different. It's not pure will. 0.74
00:39:10 it's reason also. Yes, absolutely. And that is a distinct difference between Islam and
00:39:20 Christianity. But even for instance, if we take the story, it's a powerful account of the sacrifice
00:39:27 of Isaac. God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have a child even though they were
00:39:32 advanced in years, and they had the child Isaac, and then God, to test Abraham's faith,
00:39:39 he told him to sacrifice Isaac, which would be really a contradiction, but it wasn't God's will.
00:39:48 And in fact, and so poor Abraham, heartbroken, leads this little boy up to the mountain
00:39:55 to sacrifice him according to the Lord's command. And at the moment when he was going
00:40:02 to sacrifice him, an angel comes and stops him and says, no. And so, God can test us in various
00:40:12 ways, but he doesn't contradict himself. And Isaac, of course, he had his son Jacob, and then
00:40:20 the 12 sons of Jacob, and the whole from which descends then our Lord himself.
00:40:27 And even not merely, I was just reading that this morning or last night, that not merely is God testing Abraham's faith, but he's also prefiguring what he himself will allow to do.
00:40:42 Our Lord carried the wood of the cross to Calvary, and God gave what he would not ask us to do himself.
00:40:54 He offered his own son for our salvation to save us.
00:41:01 Next question from Oreo, with an I, not like the cookie, O-R-I-O, says,
00:41:09 Would it be beneficial for the world if the Vatican gave up its wealth?
00:41:14 We hear this question a lot throughout history.
00:41:16 No, it would be detrimental to the world because the Vatican's wealth is all history and beauty,
00:41:25 all having to do with the history of the church, with the beauty of her worship.
00:41:29 And these are the great treasures of our tradition.
00:41:33 And to give those up would be a sign of a lack of respect.
00:41:39 for the tradition itself and would deprive the future generations
00:41:44 of being able to see, for instance, what they see in the Vatican museums
00:41:48 or in St. Peter's.
00:41:54 There's plenty of wealth to meet the needs of the world,
00:41:59 and it's in our pockets, and we need to come forth
00:42:05 and help all of us as we can
00:42:06 with the needs of those who are poor,
00:42:10 with the other needs in the church.
00:42:13 But the answer is not to selling chalices
00:42:17 and precious vestments and so forth
00:42:20 that come from along the centuries.
00:42:23 Those are, for us, rich treasures.
00:42:27 In a way, when I was an atheist,
00:42:31 I was very attracted to those arguments.
00:42:33 But then I realized not only would it be a bad thing to do, but it wouldn't help the poor.
00:42:39 You would actually be robbing the poor in the sense that when we used to build big great cathedrals and we had lots of beauty all over our churches, that is a gift to the poor.
00:42:49 You know, I'm a successful cigar salesman.
00:42:52 I sell enough cigars that I can go travel to places and see nice art if I want to do it. 0.53
00:42:57 But it was the case for a lot of the history of Christendom that peasants could go and see
00:43:04 the most beautiful marvels that I now have to pay a lot of money to get on an airplane to go fly
00:43:10 to the places that still remain. These were opportunities. These were open to everybody.
00:43:17 And I even think of it not to belabor the liturgical point, but I think I was in Italy.
00:43:22 I go to a mass at a papal basilica, Santa Maria Maggiore, and I'm there with my family,
00:43:27 but I'm the only Italian of the crew. The rest of my family, they don't speak Italian.
00:43:31 So they're saying the mass in Italian, and so I can understand it reasonably well. They can't
00:43:36 understand it. But the changing of the liturgy to the vernacular is supposed to make it more
00:43:41 accessible to everyone. And I thought, all of these people here are tourists. None of them
00:43:45 are Italians. Italians don't go to church anymore. So they're all tourists. Probably none of them
00:43:49 speaks Italian, very few of them. And ironically, had the liturgy not been put into the vernacular,
00:43:56 the liturgy would have been more accessible to everybody who was in this room.
00:44:00 It would have, in fact, seemed like their home parish, even if it were on the other side of the world.
00:44:03 I remember when I was a boy, sometimes neighbors or people we knew would take a trip to a place like Japan or something.
00:44:13 And it was always their comment that they went to church,
00:44:17 and the Mass was exactly the same as in my hometown of Richardson Center or wherever it was.
00:44:23 And that's the beauty of the Latin liturgy.
00:44:26 And now that's quite correct.
00:44:29 Now, in fact, in St. Peter's,
00:44:31 it used to be that the priest,
00:44:33 any priest could celebrate a mass there.
00:44:35 It's from seven o'clock in the morning.
00:44:38 There are of course many altars.
00:44:39 And so, and the priest would come in
00:44:41 with the little group of faithful
00:44:43 and celebrate the Holy Mass.
00:44:45 Now they stopped that and they,
00:44:47 but they say the priest should celebrate mass in Italian,
00:44:51 but that doesn't make any sense
00:44:52 because Italian is not a universal language.
00:44:57 I love Italy, and I speak Italian,
00:44:59 and I'm very fond of the Italian people,
00:45:02 but Latin is our common language. 0.96
00:45:06 Yes, I mean, the Italians, for better or worse, 0.99
00:45:08 they were never that good at colonizing anyway,
00:45:10 so really not that many people speak it.
00:45:12 No.
00:45:13 And they don't have kids anymore in Italy either,
00:45:14 so it's, yes, not ideal.
00:45:16 But I want to make a comment, too, about the poor.
00:45:20 several years ago I was invited to Barcelona by an apostolate for the street people. These were 0.71
00:45:28 young, devout Spanish Catholics who have a love for the traditional liturgy, but they were caring
00:45:34 for the people who live on the street. And so they invited me to offer a pontifical mass at the
00:45:40 church of Our Lady of Montserrat, the shrine of Our Lady of Montserrat, just above Barcelona.
00:45:46 And they bused all of the street people there for the Mass.
00:45:51 The people said, well, there you are with all these fancy vestments and so forth
00:45:59 and this very elaborate liturgy, and these poor people, they were thrilled to death.
00:46:04 Of course.
00:46:04 And they saw it as a great sign of respect that we would give them the finest
00:46:10 that the Church has to offer in terms of a beautiful Mass.
00:46:14 And I was very touched by that.
00:46:15 In fact, many of them, they wanted to touch me
00:46:19 and they expressed their happiness to have been there.
00:46:24 And then we had a nice meal there.
00:46:27 But it was all, it was very appropriate.
00:46:29 Yes.
00:46:30 Yeah, because it's a sign of respect
00:46:32 to dress up for Mass on Sunday.
00:46:34 It's a sign of respect.
00:46:34 I think if I would put on some nice clothing
00:46:37 to go meet a congressman,
00:46:39 surely I should put on nicer clothing to go see God.
00:46:43 And the sign of respect goes the other way too.
00:46:44 If you're going to the far reaches, the flung places to the marginalized people,
00:46:49 to present the fullness of the liturgy is very respectful of the people as well.
00:46:54 Sure. No, exactly.
00:46:55 And I remember as a boy, too, I grew up on a dairy farm in rural Wisconsin.
00:47:02 Thanks be to God, my parents sent me to a Catholic school.
00:47:05 The sisters there were teaching us to sing Palestrina and, of course, Gregorian chant.
00:47:11 And we were just simple farm children.
00:47:13 you could have said well you know those farm children just entertain them with guitar music
00:47:18 or something but in fact we were being given a great gift and to this day i have such an
00:47:22 appreciation for that beautiful music that uh and of course god willing it's more and more
00:47:29 sung in the churches churches too but yeah i agree and i have and uh i was raised not with
00:47:37 the beautiful gregorian chant no i was raised more with the guitar music and every day that
00:47:42 that goes by. I hear less and less of it in church, and I'm happy to see it. Apropos of that point,
00:47:47 Tyler Lazarus writes, if Cardinal Burke could bring any Christian from the first century into
00:47:53 a Catholic mass today, what would that early Christian recognize? You know, you sometimes hear
00:47:59 that a lot of what we consider distinctly Catholic is a creation of the Middle Ages, and if you took
00:48:04 a first or second century Christian into a mass, they just wouldn't recognize any of it.
00:48:09 Oh, I think what they would recognize would be the substance of worship as they worshiped, but with all of the deeper appreciation for it and the beauty and so forth, which they knew that in their form of worship,
00:48:35 but has found along the centuries this ever greater development in terms of the rites themselves,
00:48:44 the beauty of the vestments and vessels, and so forth.
00:48:47 But fundamentally, they would recognize the same, well, actually, the Mass begins with the same prayers
00:48:58 that the high priest used before entering the temple with the prayers at the foot of the altar, Psalm 42,
00:49:03 and the other prayers that quote the scriptures and so forth.
00:49:10 But then they would see the proclamation of the Word of God
00:49:15 and then its realization in the offering of the Mass.
00:49:20 And I think they would be deeply moved to see how that great mystery
00:49:26 that they knew had founded an ever-fuller expression along the centuries.
00:49:31 Two questions.
00:49:32 I know you have to go, but two questions before you go.
00:49:35 One is, and I hear this a lot myself,
00:49:39 the church is attacked for supporting open borders.
00:49:43 Why does the church, the Vatican has a wall.
00:49:45 Why does the church support open borders? 0.94
00:49:47 Is that a fair charge?
00:49:48 And do we have to support open borders if we're Catholics?
00:49:52 No, the church's teaching with regard to immigration
00:49:55 has never been contained
00:49:58 with the principle of open borders.
00:50:02 We're told that we're to receive
00:50:04 those who are true refugees
00:50:05 and other immigrants
00:50:07 to the degree that we're able 0.96
00:50:09 to properly accommodate them
00:50:11 in society and, of course,
00:50:14 open borders.
00:50:15 We saw what happened recently in Spain
00:50:17 where there was this influx of people
00:50:22 and the Spanish government 0.98
00:50:24 had to send them back but they weren't refugees they were people who were coming to fighting age
00:50:29 men exactly right economic migrants right exactly so no that that's uh i know that some some
00:50:39 iraqs have have said this that to be a catholic you have to say that
00:50:47 anybody has the right to come and that's not true and even pope leo has acknowledged
00:50:52 The countries have a right to regulate who comes in.
00:50:55 Exactly.
00:50:56 And what about the safety of the people, both the people who already live in the country, but of anybody who comes into the country?
00:51:04 If you just have open borders, we've seen what happens.
00:51:07 You can have criminals coming in who are coming to perpetrate horrible crimes that result in people's death and other evils.
00:51:17 And so that has to—you can't have that.
00:51:20 Imagine if Pope St. Pius V had supported open borders at the Battle of Lepanto.
00:51:25 The West would look very different right now.
00:51:27 Yes, that's the other thing too.
00:51:29 People say every war is evil.
00:51:32 That's not true.
00:51:33 The Battle of Lepanto was a great good. 1.00
00:51:36 It saved the church from being destroyed and overcome by Islam. 0.98
00:51:41 And were those men who landed on Omaha Beach to liberate Europe from the Nazi invasion, were they engaged in an evil act? 0.87
00:51:59 I don't think so, not at all.
00:52:01 And people hear this.
00:52:04 They're deeply hurt because they have relatives and so forth who gave their lives to defend freedom.
00:52:10 So we have to think more deeply about these questions.
00:52:14 War is something we always want to avoid,
00:52:17 but as far as I understand, 0.79
00:52:20 as long as man is affected by the original sin,
00:52:24 as long as there will be wars and conflicts,
00:52:28 we have to try to be as much as we can be agents of peace.
00:52:32 But in the same way too with the borders,
00:52:34 yes, we welcome, and I quite agree with the people,
00:52:38 will say, well, neighbors who have been in the country
00:52:41 for 30 years but aren't properly documented
00:52:44 to come in and seize them and deport them,
00:52:48 we need to address each situation with reason and charity.
00:52:54 Yeah, yes.
00:52:56 But to say, yes, to say that the battles of Lepanto,
00:52:58 Vienna, Poitiers, that those were not just wars,
00:53:02 I think they were probably pretty just, you know?
00:53:04 Good enough for St. Pius V, good enough for me.
00:53:06 Yes, and sure, times have changed with the kind of weapons and things we have, but the people still have a right to defend themselves against unjust aggressors.
00:53:18 Yes, and I know we have mere minutes left, but this has been too highbrow for Twitter.
00:53:23 This has been much too polite and highbrow.
00:53:25 So I'll give the usual denizens of Twitter one question before we go.
00:53:29 This is from Sam the Boat Guy.
00:53:30 has God revealed to the Cardinal any upcoming sports championships or winning lottery numbers
00:53:35 that we should meditate upon? No, God doesn't get into that. God only tells us what we need
00:53:43 to save our souls. And I don't think that we'll save our souls with winning lottery numbers.
00:53:49 No, no. And I try to avoid sports betting, which is very good for me this year as a Yankee fan,
00:53:54 because I would have lost a lot of money. Your eminence, obviously people can follow you,
00:54:00 all over. And I hope that they all sign up at sempervirgo.org.
00:54:04 Oh, yes. We'd love to have you so you can receive those messages.
00:54:08 And I did, when I asked for the questions, I did receive
00:54:11 notes and comments. They didn't even have questions. They said,
00:54:16 just tell Cardinal Burke we love him. Well, thank you very much.
00:54:19 I can say, getting back to the top of it, no flattery whatsoever. Not even just being
00:54:24 starstruck, but it is a great honor to be with one of the great men of the church of our age
00:54:30 of any age. Well, thank you, Michael, very much. God bless you and your work. Thank you. See you next time.