Ep. 1732 - Pope Leo XIV Elected： Everything You Need to Know
Summary
No one could have predicted who the new Pope would be. He s a dual citizen of the United States and Peru, and was born in Chicago. He is Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was chosen by the cardinals to be the next Pope.
Transcript
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Abemus Papam, the cardinal electors have picked a new pope.
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That is precisely the name that I called before it was announced.
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In non-pope related news, Kanye West has a new song out.
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So I guess that part actually probably was predictable.
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Interestingly, though, the song has a lot of artistic merit to it.
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It's actually an artistically very interesting song.
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I said before the pope was announced, I said that I was hoping for the pope to take the regnal name.
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And then a little while later, the pope came out and announced in Latin that he had picked Leo XIV.
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And we'll get into why I was hoping for that in a second.
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But I did predict the pope's name, which was cool.
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I did not predict who the pope was going to be.
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And no one predicted who this pope was going to be.
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They always say you go in, you go into the conclave of pope, you come out a cardinal.
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Okay, the betting markets are really bad on picking the pope.
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And the betting markets were terrible on picking this pope.
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We didn't think we'd get an American pope for the next 500 years.
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He's born in the U.S., U.S. citizen, also dual citizen with Peru.
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He is Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, born in Chicago.
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Augustinian, so he defines himself, particularly as having been formed by the teaching of St. Augustine, which is a good sign.
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He's a canon lawyer, so that should be a good sign.
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He comes out, he gives the speech in Italian, because this is his first urbi et urbi speech to the city and to the world.
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And it is traditional to give this speech in Italian.
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I was actually thinking, I don't speak Spanish.
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I don't, the one language other than English that I have a decent command on is Italian, which is almost entirely useless almost all of the time, except for in this moment, because I was actually able to understand what the pope was saying.
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Who said, with you I'm a Christian, and for you I'm a bishop.
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In this sense, we can all walk together to that country that God has prepared for us.
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Okay, then he starts speaking in Spanish, and my Spanish is not that good.
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He says, I want to say, you know, a little word, a little hello in Spanish.
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Because he worked in Peru, he was a Peruvian citizen.
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Now we want a synodal church that seeks always the peace and charity to be close, especially to those who suffer.
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You know, when a king speaks, and traditionally when a pope speaks, he says we and our instead of I and mine.
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The reason he does this is because he's speaking from the office, you know, as the representative of, as the kind of embodiment of the people.
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We're a little more populist with our language.
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So some people were disappointed by that, that he didn't, why, the first American pope, he doesn't say anything in English.
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You know, he says, I want to say a quick hello in Spanish to my Spanish friends and my Peruvians.
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I'd prefer the whole thing in Latin or Italian, but okay.
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Really good sign here is that he comes out in the vestments, the formal vestments of the pope.
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Francis made a show of not wearing formal vestments, of not living in the papal palace.
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He lived in a little apartment, of not driving the fancy pope car.
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He had these little fiats made for his papacy, for his pontificate, rather.
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And this was supposed to be a sign of humility.
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I, however, do not read that as a sign of humility.
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I read that, the breaking of tradition and a performed kind of simplicity.
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I read that sometimes, not to cast aspersions on Pope Francis.
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I'm not saying it's his intention, but the way it reads to me is a kind of false modesty.
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I think that to be truly humble in this office, one has to diminish one's preferences.
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Even if one prefers simplicity, even if one prefers not to wear all the vestments and the smells
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and the bells, really the humble thing is to say, no, no, no, I am no longer living for my own accord.
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I am taking on this office and all that it entails.
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So I took it as a very good sign that Pope Leo XIV came out in the vestments and spoke in Latin and all the rest of it.
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And the Pope then, just one other bit I'll play from his speech, he called on Our Lady.
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And he had everyone pray the Hail Mary in Italian.
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We ask the special grace of Mary, who's our mother,
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because our Lord gives Mary to us when he gives her to St. John and says,
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Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
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pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
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The church, from the very beginning and very traditionally,
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you know, gives a special veneration to Our Lady.
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I know some people in the audience, certain Protestants won't like that,
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but just saying from the standpoint of trying to ascertain,
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Is this going to be more innovative and modern and whatever?
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However, that's very traditional, very respectful.
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The best sign is the name because he said very little in this speech.
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He didn't really indicate all that much what he's thinking of for his pontificate.
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The phrase, the synodal way, this refers to, in particular, an initiative of Francis to make
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the church less about, you know, formal, authoritative, doctrinal teachings from the chair of St. Peter
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and more about dialogue and inclusivity and synodality in the synod of the synod of the synods.
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Now, that could be perfunctory or that could be because he really was pretty close to Pope Francis.
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And there are going to be people who say, oh, I know exactly what this is.
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There are going to be people freaking out and losing their minds.
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There are going to be people who are really celebrating.
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The name calls to mind Pope Leo XIII, who is one of the great popes that we've had relatively recently over the last 200 years.
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In my mind, one of my favorite popes of all time.
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And the connection to Pope Leo XIII is really, really interesting and I think tells you the most about maybe what we can expect.
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The new pope chooses the name Pope Leo XIV, as I was hoping for, as I called, at least in my hope, if not prediction.
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Pope Leo XIII was pope in the late 19th century.
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Pope Leo XIII is actually the first pope ever to have his voice recorded, and he's the earliest person ever to have his image captured by a camera.
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In 1896, there's this motion picture that was filmed of him, and he's giving a blessing, which is this really beautiful thing.
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The first pope to appear on film, and what does he do?
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He blesses everyone, as if we are receiving the pope's blessing even a century later, a century and a half later.
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Pope Leo XIII is known as the most prolific pope ever.
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Actually, he apparently, according to reports, drank cocaine wine.
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There was this wine that was popular in the 19th century called Vain Mariani, and it was wine that had coca leaf in it,
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and the alcohol would act on the coca leaf, and it activated cocaine, basically.
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And so he took it as medicine, as did a lot of people of his age.
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He said, you know, if he got a little drowsy, according to reports, he'd take it.
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And clearly it worked, because he was quite prolific.
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You've probably heard me, one, say I'm hoping for a Pope Leo XIV to come up.
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And two, you've probably heard me cite his encyclicals before.
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In particular, Quota Apostolici Munaris, that was an encyclical on socialism.
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Leo XIII was really tough on socialism, very anti-socialism.
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He wrote Eterni Patris on Christian philosophy.
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Leo XIII was big on restoring Christian philosophy, Thomistic philosophy in particular,
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And his most famous encyclical is Rerum Novarum, which he wrote about Catholic social teaching.
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And John Paul II, who everyone loves, John Paul II, in his encyclical,
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Centesimos Anos, is writing about Rerum Novarum.
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And he's talking about how the church should relate to politics and to the economic order
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Another reason he might have chosen this name, Pope Leo XIII was the third longest-serving
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Other long-serving pontiffs were Blessed Pius IX, John Paul II.
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But Pope Leo served a really, really long time.
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And this pope, since he's 69 years old, this pope could be pope for 20 years or more.
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Well, I'm a relatively young man that's tying me in.
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The other thing that Pope Leo XIII is really famous for, and obviously there were other Leos
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in the past, I'm just focusing on the most recent Leo, because I think there's a real
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Pope Leo XIII reportedly had a vision at the end of the 19th century that, and I think we
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know exactly when he reportedly had this vision.
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And he says he had this vision of a conversation between God and Satan, and Satan requesting
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75 to 100 years to destroy the church, and God granting that to him.
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And he was so shook by the vision that he wrote the St. Michael Prayer.
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St. Michael Prayer was then recited after every Catholic mass for many, many years around
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In traditional parishes, it's still recited after most masses.
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And the prayer is, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle, be our defense against
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May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the
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power of God, thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world
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I pray this prayer every day, sometimes multiple times a day.
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A really strong masculine prayer, too, you know, cast into hell Satan and all the evil
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spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
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I think, if he is kind of liberal, because there are all these old tweets.
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Now, we now live in the age where the Pope has tweets.
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And there are these tweets where he was kind of attacking J.D. Vance over J.D. Vance's,
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speaking of the Ordo Amoris, the hierarchy of love, the Ordo Caritatis, according to St.
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Thomas, you know, J.D. Vance, using that to defend the Trump administration's policies
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Apparently, the new Pope doesn't like that, where he seems to have been critical of Trump
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So, there's some signs that he's kind of liberal.
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So, if he's kind of liberal, if he's kind of progressive by Catholic standards, which is
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different than American standards, and we'll get to that in a second, then why the name?
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Why pick the name of a Pope that conservatives love so much?
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I think maybe the tie-in here is because of Catholic social teaching, which is really tough
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on communism, really tough on socialism, but also critical of capitalism, also very focused
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on helping the poor and the marginalized and those who are suffering.
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So, maybe it's a kind of a way to unite the church.
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Because one thing that the Cardinals, I think, really wanted was a unity Pope after the very
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Maybe that's a way of saying, okay, conservatives, you're getting your Pope Leo XIII call back.
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But also, maybe you think I'm calling him back because of how based and to mystic and
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into philosophy and because he was tough on communism.
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But the liberals might like it too because he talks about the poor and the marginalized
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and there's a real focus on Catholic social teaching, criticisms of capitalism.
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Maybe it's a way of kind of bringing everyone together and you just don't know exactly what
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Now, Charlie Kirk, a lot of my friends who are Protestants and Jews and a lot of people
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were texting me yesterday to say, well, what do I make of this?
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And so, I was texting with Charlie Kirk and we were kind of going back and forth on how
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And then Charlie pulled up with Turning Point Action the Pope's voting record or the Pope's
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voting registration, at least, because he's an American Pope.
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So, we actually can go in and see how he was registered politically.
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And according to Charlie in TPUSA, this Pope is a registered Republican.
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So, Charlie says, you know, this is a big scoop and he's registered Republican.
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He's voted in Republican primaries when he's not living abroad.
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And our data show that he's a strong Republican and he's pro-life, which is good.
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However, this gets to a point that I've been talking about since Pope Francis died, which
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is that the left-right spectrum of politics does not map neatly onto an institution that
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predates the left-right paradigm by almost 1,800 years.
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You know, if you're a Catholic prelate or a priest or even a lay Catholic, you can't really
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be a Democrat today because the Democrats openly cheer on the mass slaughter of babies
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and the butchering of little kids according to an ideology that denies the sexual nature
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that God has given us and makes a mockery of marriage, which is the image of Christ's
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I hope every Catholic prelate and priest is a Republican.
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No matter what you think of immigration or, I don't know, some tax policy or something,
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talking about pretty basic stuff, when the alternative is a party that openly celebrates,
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not even just tolerates, openly celebrates the mass slaughter of infants and that mocks
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sexual nature and marriage and mutilates little kids, you can't be a Democrat.
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If you are a serious Catholic, you can't be all in on the Democrat party.
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Okay, so again, even that just doesn't tell you exactly what this pontificate is going to
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be, but we hope, you know, hope is a theological virtue and we are called to hope and there
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are good signs, you know, the sign that, that, that he's chosen this name, that he's accepting
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these vestments that, so we trust, I'm a Catholic.
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So, you know, I, I trust that the Holy Spirit will, will stay with the Holy Mother Church.
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If you're, if you're not a Catholic, then you don't think of it quite in that way, but
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I'm, I'm hopeful and we're going to pray and that's what we do as Christians.
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This ain't, this, the Catholic church, well, Hiller Bellock had a good line.
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He says, I'm bound to believe that the church is divinely instituted because I'm a Catholic.
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But if you're not a Catholic, one proof of her divine institution is that no other institution
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conducted with such nabous imbecility would have lasted a fortnight, much less 2000 years.
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So we don't, the church does not, does not, just as the church doesn't map neatly onto the
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left, right paradigm, the church does not measure her, her history in weeks or years or administrations.
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The church measures her history in centuries and millennia.
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That's all I have to say about the Pope for now, because there's really not much else to
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Now turning back to the administration and legacy, President Trump has gone viral, even
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amid everyone focusing on, on the Pope, because of these comments that President Trump made
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about the legacy of the former transportation secretary and the former mayor of South Bend,
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Indiana, former Democrat presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg.
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And when they took over Buttigieg, who has no clue, you know, he drives to work on his
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bicycle with his, with his, in all fairness, with his husband on the back, which is a nice
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And he's actually a contender for president between him and Crockett.
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And this is something I really love about Trump.
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He's talking about Buttigieg and what a bad job he did as transportation secretary.
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And he gets a little joke in there about Pete Buttigieg's somewhat aberrant and interesting
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And, but it's, when you're, when you're married, whether you're really married or even fake
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He says, yeah, Buttigieg was always awful, how ridiculous he drove to work on his bicycle
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with, in all fairness, with his husband sitting on the back of the bicycle.
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And then, you know, look, that's a loving relationship, isn't it?
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I'm not talking about even attitude necessarily.
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I love this tone, which is, we can make a little joke, okay?
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Trump is not saying, Buttigieg, that damned, blasted sodomite, the purity police will take
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Nor is he, does he have this sort of liberal piety of, you know, how beautiful and brave
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and stunning and beautiful the LGBT LMNOP lifestyle is.
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He goes, yeah, you know, and he probably rides to work with his husband on the back,
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which isn't that great, he's got that kind of, you know, he's got that husband, isn't
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You say, you're not, it's not totally, you know, banging your fist on the table condemning
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someone, he's just saying, that's a little weird, right?
00:22:43.240
I mean, we all admit they're not really married.
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It's two fellas, you can't be, a fella can't be married to a fella.
00:22:49.140
I'm not saying we got to be like really mean to them, right?
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Got a bit of levity to it, but it's got a little reality to it.
00:23:00.200
I, this is one of the things that's really attractive about Trump's political campaign
00:23:12.440
Speaking of layers, Kanye West has just released a song called Heil Hitler.
00:23:19.260
What is surprising, though, is the artistic complexity of the song, which I think a lot
00:23:26.260
And everyone else who, you know, doesn't love Hitler, they're missing it, too.
00:23:30.920
There's actually a lot of artistic complexity to this song.
00:23:33.720
First, though, there's nothing more challenging, more profound, or more essential than being
00:23:38.320
This Mother's Day weekend, Dr. Jordan B. Peterson unveils the trailer for Parenting, a new series
00:23:44.320
Here is the trailer exclusively on Daily Wire+.
00:23:47.680
There is nothing you'll do in life that's more challenging, difficult, and rewarding
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You have little kids for a very short period of time.
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It is a major mistake not to notice that and not to appreciate it.
00:24:10.180
We're dealing with a pattern of misbehaviors with our son, who's three years old.
00:24:14.100
Whenever we want to leave the house, he starts running away.
00:24:19.140
When a disciplinary issue arises, you need to make space to master it.
00:24:23.140
I have to not do what I thought I was going to do for ten minutes to set this right.
00:24:28.660
Our 13-year-old throws tantrums quite often when he doesn't get his way.
00:24:34.820
When you spoil a child, so to speak, you take away from them the opportunity to develop
00:24:39.400
their own competence by doing too many things for them.
00:24:41.760
The consequences of his abdication of thought is that other people think for him.
00:24:53.240
As this is happening, our son turned to some substance abuse.
00:24:56.460
Look for mood changes and behavioral changes, and then you can tell your kid, look, it might
00:25:03.580
be an unpleasant conversation that we have to have, but I'm not going to let you be miserable
00:25:20.880
Discuss what it is that you want from your child.
00:25:23.540
Talk that through so that you're the same person.
00:25:26.560
The more effective you are in laying out these disciplinary rules, the more they'll like you.
00:25:31.080
Rules consistently applied with minimal force and plenty of patience.
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You don't want to let your worry destroy the pleasures of the moment.
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Just because children know less about the world doesn't mean they're not paying attention
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and certainly doesn't mean that they're stupid.
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00:26:06.280
My favorite comment yesterday is from MattyC24, who says, maybe the, oh, now, hold on.
00:26:11.940
So, those are the producers who picked this comment.
00:26:14.840
Maybe the six to eight spam calls I get from India and Pakistan, I will finally see.
00:26:19.680
So, okay, all right, that's a little bit too much of a glass-half-full way to view the brink of nuclear winter.
00:26:28.780
But, okay, but, hey, look, you're always looking for the bright side.
00:26:33.460
Kanye West has a new song out titled Heil Hitler, and it's going viral.
00:26:44.420
I'm just going to play you a little bit of the song,
00:26:46.200
because I think the Nazis who really love Kanye's turn to de Fuhrer and everyone else who's condemning Kanye,
00:26:55.300
I think they're actually missing what this song is about.
00:27:02.580
If you're just listening to it, it's opening up with a bunch of black guys shirtless wearing animal masks.
00:27:06.920
Kind of dark room, dimly lit, kind of ominous sound opening up,
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He says, I got so much anger in me, I don't know how to take it out.
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Then he talks about my nitrous, which Kanye West is reportedly addicted to nitrous,
00:27:49.200
which is a very, very serious drug that really screws up your head.
00:27:51.800
So right off the top, he's saying, I got so much anger in me, I don't know how to take it out.
00:27:59.000
I'm just so full of wrath and anger, which are bad.
00:28:06.740
And I'm hooked on drugs, which are poisoning my brain.
00:28:09.720
That's really screwing up with my logical thinking.
00:28:11.980
And so, and it's all because I can't get my kids back,
00:28:14.380
and I'm just totally losing my reason, and I'm just becoming a ball of wrath.
00:28:20.000
With all of the money and fame, I still don't get to see my children.
00:28:23.760
They don't see my Twitter, but they don't see how I be feeling.
00:28:35.160
I'm a Nazi, now she's a foul hero, a foul hero.
00:28:41.740
And it closes out, it's actually like a Hitler speech in German at the end.
00:28:49.900
Because we understand taboos on this show, and we're a family show,
00:28:53.740
you know, we don't like to use a lot of naughty words.
00:28:59.540
So he says, they don't understand the things I say on Twitter, ninja.
00:29:19.240
It refers to black fellas, by the way, if you didn't interpret what the word was.
00:29:32.380
So how could a Nazi, how could a ninja be a Nazi?
00:29:38.300
The exoteric meaning of the song is not possible.
00:29:46.580
or he's saying something else beyond the exoteric meaning.
00:29:52.320
It seems to me that the introduction to the song actually sets that up.
00:30:00.200
I'm just full of anger and wrath and sin and vice.
00:30:17.380
That's how this is going to be reported in the press.
00:30:21.760
And that is how the Kanye haters are going to take it.
00:30:42.400
And then it goes into this pretty clever, by pop culture standards,
00:30:46.380
kind of a clever rhyme, a crazy sounding rhyme.
00:30:53.640
And it grabs your attention because he's saying the thing you can't say.
00:30:58.240
We've been talking about how the N-word is the unutterable word.
00:31:00.020
Well, he goes to a taboo that's even more central to the culture, which is Hitler.
00:31:05.680
Even Hitler is not Hitler because Hitler is a stand-in in modern parlance for the devil.
00:31:09.800
And the old understanding that we had of the Christian understanding,
00:31:12.760
which is there's the incarnation of absolute good and evil as a privation of the good,
00:31:16.740
is flipped on its head in secular modernity, which says there is no such thing as good.
00:31:20.720
There's no absolute good, but there is absolute evil in the person of Hitler.
00:31:25.320
It's just kind of, I won't even call it Manichaean.
00:31:27.900
It's just totally flipping religious reality on its head saying there's only absolute evil
00:31:32.100
and whatever you would call good is merely somewhat distant from absolute evil.
00:31:38.400
The notion of God, Christ, the person of Christ, the Christian religion,
00:31:42.100
that's just to be mocked according to the popular culture.
00:31:49.740
But Kanye is saying here, the Nazis are bad, and I'm bad.
00:31:56.980
I think, look, Kanye opens up by saying something that I think is true,
00:32:01.700
which is he's lost his mind because of wrath and drug addiction.
00:32:08.440
And that sets up the rest of the song to say, don't take this literally,
00:32:13.380
I think at a deeper level, too, that the song is a commentary on popular culture and on technology.
00:32:21.440
The way he's grabbing attention here, he's grabbing everyone's attention.
00:32:25.380
There are a zillion memes all over the internet.
00:32:31.400
He's kind of pointing out where the commentary has gone.
00:32:33.980
We are so desensitized because we're plugged into ever more radical media all the time.
00:32:44.260
I mean, radical and extreme, not only in the message, though there's that,
00:32:54.180
We're getting lights, and we're getting flickering images,
00:32:57.800
We're listening on 1.5x and 2x, and it's also extreme.
00:33:00.240
And Kanye has now said the ultimate thing you can say to get attention.
00:33:11.460
You know, even you think about political commentary.
00:33:16.160
I support the Constitution, I want to cut taxes.
00:33:21.780
I don't know, I don't think a man can be a woman.
00:33:26.220
If you are engaging with politics not to be civically engaged
00:33:32.800
if you're just engaging in it for a dopamine hit,
00:33:45.680
There's no more extreme thing you can possibly say.
00:33:49.760
There's no more incoherent thing you can possibly say.
00:34:04.280
the craziest, least coherent thing you can possibly say.
00:34:32.840
You got to give the guy a little bit of credit.
00:34:36.100
He is artistically capturing people's attention
00:34:54.060
Okay, what if you don't want to be the villain?
00:35:00.240
And oddly enough, the two news stories from today
00:35:39.880
Yesterday's show you had a tongue-in-cheek joke
00:36:28.960
especially the more libertarian branches of the right.
00:37:08.500
Is it going to be enforced by the Constitution?