00:02:53.120And maybe for some, making those decisions, that's the reason.
00:02:57.820But why would it be judged to be a place that is unsafe because of this chaos that surrounds it?
00:03:07.740So, like I said, I think it's a consequence of everything we're seeing, which is immoral and is destructive to humanity in very significant ways.
00:03:22.220you're a man of history and we all need to be people of history and if we look at history
00:03:29.180these days will be marked in history as a very devastating time similar to things that we can
00:03:38.400look back in the last 100 years 200 2000 years that when these kind of moral
00:03:47.440um aberrations begin to just take over we need to speak up and i really don't know um the motivation
00:03:58.980for the closure of the holy sepulcher i mean i can surmise a lot of things
00:04:04.320they the the possible reopening or partial that i've heard about i don't know if even that's
00:04:11.060accurate that's part of i know what you're fighting and what we're all fighting is
00:04:15.720so much misinformation so many false messages it's really hard to know what what is yes and
00:04:22.960that's why i think it's so important and i will be a broken record repeating we can never justify
00:04:29.840the large-scale destruction and devastation of civilian life um as morally justifiable we can't
00:04:38.840do that and i think we have to keep going back to that home base with all the chaos that we're
00:04:45.280all dealing with i i think one of the things that we can say is that christianity targeted or not
00:04:54.440the core tense of christianity whether on purpose or not is often in the crosshairs we know that
00:05:01.500i believe talking to people in jerusalem this morning that there were no synagogues completely
00:05:06.500closed um and we know that the church the holy sepulchre was not closed during the last two
00:05:12.560world wars. We know that the idea was to have a Catholic leader and three others in there for a
00:05:19.980live stream service, and that was banned. So it's hard to understand how this was done for safety
00:05:26.340reasons. And moreover, I wasn't aware that the government, the secular government of Israel,
00:05:31.340owned the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, or by the way, the Dome of the Rock, or any other
00:05:38.700religious building owned by someone else in East Jerusalem? I mean, where does this authority come
00:05:45.180from that you can just close someone else's church? Well, I don't think it is true authority.
00:05:53.300And it's basically totalitarian saying, we've got the power, we've got the bombs,
00:06:03.120We can do what we want. And that is, again, as we look at history and we look at this moment, that is about as scary as it gets to have that attitude.
00:06:17.120And sadly, we're seeing that attitude.
00:06:20.640We are the ones with the power, so we are the ones calling the shots.
00:06:25.660Forget what is moral, forget what is true, forget what has historic precedent.
00:06:33.980I mean, I'm sure both of us, for several years now, I get tired of the word unprecedented
00:08:46.340Really, Tucker, what it tells me is that truth is threatening.
00:08:54.260And if you think about the drama of Holy Week, which we in the Catholic faith are in the midst of, when Jesus Christ is before Pilate, and that is historic reality for whatever your faith perspective, this Jesus of Nazareth stood before Pilate, the leader of the Roman Empire that was stationed there in Jerusalem.
00:09:37.860And as he's standing there, really, Tucker, I think that is what's threatening.
00:09:43.080To those who are not living by the truth and humbly seeking the truth, which we all have to do, I don't claim to have it all figured out, but I look to Christ because he is the truth.
00:09:54.080For those who are promoting all of these things, closure of holy sites and attack of innocent people, they are definitely threatened by the truth, not by some propaganda, but by the real truth.
00:10:11.780they find it threatening and to me that really what Cardinal Pizzaballa and the others were
00:10:17.940going to try to do just a live stream very small scale really that was threatening because it's
00:10:25.260about proclaiming truth that really begins to cause people of good hearts whether they have
00:10:34.980faith or not, it causes the human instinct to say, wait a minute, what's going on? When they hear
00:10:42.460truth, that is disruptive, not in a violent way, but just because truth cuts through it all.
00:10:51.300That's what they're afraid of. I truly believe that. So we're still in the middle of Lent,
00:10:56.380inching closer and closer to Holy Week, the days leading up to Easter, when we are called to walk
00:11:01.000alongside Jesus through his suffering, his death, and then finally, gratefully, his resurrection.
00:11:07.160And there's never been a better time to commit to more prayer. If that sounds worth pursuing,
00:11:11.600we sincerely recommend downloading the Hallow app, which we talk about every morning at breakfast
00:11:16.700in my house. Hallow offers thousands of prayers, meditations, music choices to help draw you deeper
00:11:22.360into the passion and listen for God's voice. Jesus died for every person, no exceptions.
00:11:28.200This month especially, remember his sacrifice.
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00:12:59.100nationwide at your local Sprouts supermarket. Stop by and pick up a couple of bags before
00:13:03.660somebody else does. One of the truths that seems the most threatening is that violence is not the
00:13:09.920answer. And so the... I'm sorry? Well, the power of the world isn't the answer. That is what
00:13:21.560threatens them, and that's what they don't want to get into the hearts and minds of just everyday
00:13:29.380people. They don't want that word to get out there that war isn't the answer. Sometimes it,
00:13:36.580I mean, the church, the Catholic church has a doctrine of justifiable war, which is pretty
00:13:43.720strict and pretty clear, and probably very few wars have qualified. And there's serious questions
00:13:52.340about this war. I think it's pretty much unqualified. But that's what we have to keep
00:13:58.520looking at. Look at the principles. And really, Tucker, what I would encourage your viewers and
00:14:04.380all of us, I mean, I'm just one of the viewers in many situations. I'm a bishop who doesn't even
00:14:10.320have a diocese anymore, but I do have an apostolic call that I take very seriously. And I say to
00:14:16.840myself, to you, Tucker, as a good man seeking truth, and all of us who are in this, we need
00:14:23.820to take a breath, we need to calm our hearts, and we need to simply seek the truth. I believe,
00:14:31.800and I feel compelled to proclaim to the world, we know the truth. The truth sets us free. It's
00:14:39.600Jesus Christ. And certainly that was the threat that the Romans and the Jewish leaders wanted to
00:14:47.440get rid of. That's historic reality. They plotted to rid themselves of this truth problem. And in
00:14:56.300many ways, we see the same thing repeated. I mean, it gets masked in a lot of ways, but
00:15:02.140And I pray daily for the leaders of the world, for every nation, for leaders who have the power and the responsibility in this moment to go back to those basic principles.
00:15:16.400They need to take a deep breath and ask themselves, is this true, what I'm promoting, what I'm doing?
00:15:25.080Is it about the truth that sets us free?
00:15:28.960And when we ignore the truth, that is when we are the most bound by violence and evil.
00:15:36.180And we're seeing it played out in our lifetime right in these moments on the TV screen, on
00:15:46.600We're seeing ignoring truth has consequences, and it comes down to each of us individually.
00:15:53.140when we ignored the truth that I am a sinful man who needs to repent and I need to seek the life
00:16:00.480that is Jesus Christ when we try to to hide that to ignore it to eliminate it it doesn't go away
00:16:08.820it will not be eliminated any more than killing Jesus Christ on a cross in the first century
00:16:16.480eliminated the truth that he is truth will not be eliminated but a lot of innocence can be harmed
00:16:24.720when we think we can avoid the truth and do it our way and do it with our power when we go down
00:16:33.740that path it's destructive in so many ways even to those individuals that are doing it but the
00:16:40.540tragedy is there's so many innocents that get lost in it that we must speak against innocent lives
00:16:49.560being just you the the term is collateral damage but that in itself says we have to be very careful
00:17:00.360about allowing our hearts to hearten that we just use terminology for innocents dying oh they're
00:17:07.940just collateral damage. May I ask you to go back for a second as a Protestant myself who's often
00:17:15.860heard the term just war theory, which I think derives from Augustine, but I could be wrong.
00:17:22.480Can you summarize that for people who aren't familiar with what it is just in broad terms?
00:17:28.700What's a justified war? Well, there are four basic points that I can't claim that I can get
00:17:35.500all of them as you know it's it's pretty simple most of the time the truth is pretty simple
00:17:41.000but it has to be the just for theory is based on if war which should be avoided if at all possible
00:17:49.920if it is to be justified it has to be proportionate it has to be now it can't be preemptive it it
00:17:58.500It really, Tucker, goes back in a lot of ways to the right to self-defense, the right to self-defense of one person, the right to self-defense of a nation.
00:18:11.360That is really the core of the just war theory.
00:18:15.120It has to be a real threat, not a perceived threat, not a future threat, but a real threat.
00:18:23.140i mean you know putting it on the the just person to person context i mean somebody slaps you
00:18:31.800you don't shoot them that is not proportional yes it has to avoid harming um innocents that are
00:18:41.380really have nothing to do with whatever the conflict is in any direct way um and and so
00:18:47.660those basic points are what you have to look at. It has to be, it has to have a reasonable
00:18:55.040expectation of success, that this will accomplish the protection of innocence that it should be
00:19:04.280about. Those points are what we have to keep looking at. And like I said,
00:19:10.620there probably aren't many wars in human history that would qualify as meeting all the criteria.
00:19:20.300Some meet more than others. But I don't know that this present conflict, they're not even
00:19:25.340calling it a war. And I think that tells us something. But this present conflict, I don't
00:19:31.640know that it qualifies on any of those points. Because yes, there was some threat there, but
00:19:37.800But was it justifiable to immediately address that threat, which seemed to be a future threat that may have been very real?
00:19:49.880I don't claim to know all of that, but I think the leaders are challenged to really look more deeply at that.
00:19:57.660And certainly the idea of protecting innocence, honestly, I mean, and again, I haven't been in any war rooms or heard the real discussion, but it seems and what we're seeing, it's like we can expect and we can plan for the collateral damage, which should be always stated as we can plan for innocence to die because of this action.
00:20:27.660Because that's what collateral damage really is talking about.
00:20:32.420So that, I think, is a reasonable, probably not the most scholarly exposition of the just war theory.
00:20:44.340And again, if people say, oh, it gets too complicated, just think about defending yourself, defending your home, defending your family.
00:20:52.900You can't go out and, you know, you have a neighbor that's talking crazy and go and put a bomb in their front yard. I mean, that's not proportionate. That is not reasonable. And it has to be something that is a reasonable.
00:21:08.440And I think one of the greatest points of the Just War Theory, is it likely to be successful?
00:21:18.720Is it likely to have an outcome that brings more peace, more protection, not just to the individuals that you're specifically responsible for, but brings it to the world?
00:21:30.220And so I think that we've got to honestly assess what is happening and acknowledge that no nation seems to be really, and I love the United States.
00:21:44.000I was raised as a patriotic kid. I still believe in a lot of the principles, but when we lose sight of the basic principles of our founding as a nation or as of our faith of Christianity or whatever our faith is, those basic principles have to guide us.
00:22:03.120And we can't allow popular opinion or political agendas to override those basic moral values that should be the pillars that found us, that stabilize everything that is shaking in the world today.
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00:25:03.840to directly do that is wrong, is immoral.
00:25:08.500Going back to that basic principle I started with,
00:25:12.060And anytime civilian life is devastated, it's not morally, it's not done morally.
00:25:22.720It's not something we can just turn a blind eye and say, well, we got to do this.
00:25:28.420The large scale destruction of civilian life is never morally justified.
00:25:34.520Like I said, if I'm a broken record making that point, I believe I need to be because the more I think about that, the more I pray about that, the more I look at what's happening, it says, let's put a stop to this.
00:25:53.740And I understand from what I see in the news that there are efforts of talking about some sort of solutions.
00:26:02.160But the talk seems to always have much less focus and much less power behind it than the bombs and the destructive forces.
00:26:15.000I guess that is, you know, by human nature, maybe that's somewhat natural that when you've got the power, it's hard to restrain yourself from using it.
00:26:26.200We see that played out in so many ways.
00:26:28.520But that is where the moral values have to kick in for the individual man or the individual nation and the leader that is a man or a group of men and women that are leading a nation.
00:26:44.760They need to constantly go back to those principles and asking themselves, is this justifiable?
00:26:52.280Is this something that is moral to do?
00:26:54.640And if it's not moral, then we should just put up a big, bright red stop sign and say, we're not going to do this because it is morally questionable, much less clearly immoral.
00:27:09.500And when we go down the path of saying, well, we've got to do some immoral things, I mean, it's like the end justifies the means.
00:27:17.660I mean, some basic principles of philosophical, logical thought that have guided nations and individuals through history.
00:27:27.920You know, if we get on a path where we say the end justifies the means, then the means can become so immoral that it's just devastating for not just the individuals or the nations involved, but for all of humanity.
00:27:45.300We've got to be very cautious about going down that path.
00:27:50.560And I'm afraid that many of the things that we've seen have crossed that line of just
00:27:57.720saying, we believe, yeah, this is evil.
00:28:01.340Okay, it's evil, but we've got to do it for the good end.
00:28:11.840I mean, people, as you said, who have power tend to misuse it, an often noted phenomenon,
00:28:17.760because it's true. What's different, at least in my lifetime, is seeing self-described Christian
00:28:24.360leaders not only defend violence, but attack anyone who questions its use, and then use the
00:28:32.400Bible to justify it. So I guess what I'm saying is one of the battles here is over what Christianity
00:28:38.640is as a faith. And that seems to me a very important battle, certainly a conversation.
00:28:45.160So what you're seeing some Christian leaders do is say, well, there's violence throughout the Bible
00:28:50.440and God justifies it in some cases, defends it through what the Christians call the Old Testament
00:28:57.340from beginning to end, there's violence against innocence. So it's therefore okay. What is your
00:29:03.780response to that? Well, Tucker, quite simply, probably not surprising, my response is Jesus
00:29:13.360Christ. If we claim, which I do, and I do my best, I mean, I'm a sinner, I mess up all the time.
00:29:21.500We do individually, if we're smart enough to be humble enough to acknowledge that.
00:29:25.940We as nations and we as individuals, we get off the mark, we mess up, but we can always
00:29:31.880repent of that and seek again to follow the truth that is Christ. And that's the distinction that I
00:29:39.100would make. If people are calling themselves Christians, we are of the body of Christ that
00:29:45.260is his church. And we have to look to him. Yes, in the Old Testament, there are many examples of
00:29:54.020destructive power, but that is not the world that we live in. We believe that Jesus Christ
00:30:01.960has redeemed everything. And one of the key points of Jesus Christ, and St. Paul says it
00:30:10.540very well, we are neither Greek nor Roman. We are not individual nations. We are Christian.
00:30:18.420and to use Christianity as a weapon against one part of his body to another part of his body,
00:30:27.320that's a misuse of the message of Jesus Christ. If we look to him, I mean, he died on the cross
00:30:35.660because he embraced that freely as a man and as the son of God, but he was willing to do that.
00:30:45.300He was willing to personally receive the greatest violence of destroying his body and his human life for the sake of the peace that he brings.
00:30:59.080And if we look to Jesus Christ, we can't justify the violence that we're seeing.
00:31:07.400You can hearken back to the Old Testament.
00:31:09.640But if you believe Jesus Christ is the new covenant, that he, I mean, he came out of that world of the Old Testament.
00:31:18.820He is of Hebrew origin, and we should embrace that absolutely.
00:31:27.520But he came to bring a new covenant and to bring a redemption of all of that.
00:31:33.280And just one example of what Christ, if we look to Christ, he's often saying, yes, we used to do this, but this is the new way that through the Father sending me to you is being revealed.
00:31:49.940It used to be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
00:31:55.900He says to his disciples, and we have to really listen to that.
00:32:00.980We may not like listening to Christ himself, but that is what we're called to, especially if we call ourselves Christian.
00:32:12.060That is probably, as you point out, Tucker, one of the greatest issues that we have to face now, because there are many non-Christians in the world.
00:32:21.780And for Christianity to be really co-opted and hijacked in the way that we're seeing is destructive to the message of truth that is Jesus Christ.
00:32:36.600Because I can imagine people saying, well, if this is what Christianity is really all about, I've considered it, but I'm not going to even look at Christianity if that's what it's about.
00:32:50.600But when voices are saying, we can, again, going back to that basic idea of we can destroy civilians violently and in drastic ways and say that it's moral because we're claiming to be Christian, that's nonsensical.
00:33:12.480And it's as offensive to Christ himself as anything could be.
00:37:46.440We have to see it and recognize the way it continues to unfold in our lives.
00:37:51.880I mean, I don't want to label anyone Judas Iscariot, but we need to ask ourselves, every one of us, and I include myself, we have to be very careful and ask, are we beginning to move in a direction that Judas Iscariot would have approved?
00:38:09.000when we are saying we want hail jesus uh hail to the son of david but we want to shape the son of
00:38:19.400david according to our agenda that is where it gets very dangerous and it culminates in
00:38:25.960in destruction for judas iscariot and apparent i mean real destruction for christ because he is
00:38:33.140truth, because he is God's divine son, what the world can throw at him can't destroy him because
00:38:40.400he's beyond creation. He is the Lord of creation, but he allows it to happen out of love for all of
00:38:49.140us. I mean, it's just so rich with images that can be beneficial to all of us, but for us to
00:38:59.780hear Christ in this time, in this moment in our history, for the world, for this nation,
00:39:05.820for the Catholic Church for Christians, to hear Christ say to those who are literally
00:39:12.320in the moment, nailing him to a cross, killing him, Father, forgive them.
00:45:28.860um well really again you know i'm a simple guy and it comes down to basic simple truth
00:45:37.600ultimately truth is simple yes it's deep it's rich it's hard to fathom but it's not complicated
00:45:44.000in the way that our world is so often complicated as you said i think carrie was removed because
00:45:52.040they didn't like the truth she was speaking the truth about gaza which is verboten by many
00:45:58.040the innocents that have devastatingly died there is just horrible it truly is a holocaust of our
00:46:06.260time but she was they didn't like that truth and they didn't like the truth of her pushing back
00:46:14.240against the agenda that is saying this political zionism is something that christians need to
00:46:21.120embrace no it's not and the catholic church is very clear from everything that i've seen i had
00:46:27.520a conversation with Carrie before I put out my statement, and I had the conversation because I
00:46:36.520was hearing things, and I just wanted to, really, my intention with reaching out to Carrie was just
00:46:42.900to be a pastor and to offer her some support and some consolation. In the midst of that conversation,
00:46:50.280she basically challenged me and asked me, Bishop, if what you're saying you really believe
00:46:57.080your message. My message to her, if I really believed it, was I willing to publicly speak it?
00:47:05.020And I told her I would pray about it and I would consider it. But even as I told her that I would
00:47:13.540pray about it, I knew in my heart that I was, as we say sometimes, Christians say, I was convicted.
00:47:22.820I knew that if I was going to be the man I want to be, if I was going to be the Christian that I want to be, I had to speak up and to not attack anyone, but simply say, you know, and what I tried to do in a rather several more words than this, but basically was say,
00:47:44.580Carrie was removed from that committee because she was speaking truth that the powers that be didn't want to be spoken.
00:47:57.740And because of that, I felt the need to speak out for her.
00:48:05.240You know, I don't think Carrie claims to be a sinless, some sort of perfect woman.
00:48:10.560but she was right in what she was speaking uh you know people can say i mean very often and i know
00:48:18.040you hear this all the time um you know people will when they don't like the truth that's being said
00:48:25.480they'll very often go after the tone and it's human to for the tone to get a little elevated
00:48:33.660when we're speaking truth that especially when it's being opposed i know i can personally confess
00:48:40.820that sometimes as that happens we can when we're facing pushback against something we know deeply
00:48:50.400in our hearts to be the truth we can hopefully not get violent but we can get very animated in
00:48:58.280how we're doing that but and i think that that's what people really pretty cleverly will say oh
00:49:05.500well it was the tone well yeah sometimes the tone but sometimes it may be appropriate when truth is
00:49:13.260being ignored we need to get attention sometimes and again looking to christ is the model um i mean
00:49:20.900he said, love your enemy, but he also was willing to call a spade a spade. And when the leaders that
00:49:32.080he was speaking with were clearly not in the line of truth, he was willing to get pretty animated
00:49:40.080in the way he spoke to them and said things like, you brood of vipers. I mean, I think that was
00:49:46.400actually john the baptist but christ said those kinds of things to the leaders because that's
00:49:55.780what truths demand sometimes we should not return to violence in order to stand for the truth but
00:50:02.740we should do it with vigor with strength and to me that's where where carrie was rejected primarily
00:50:11.820because they didn't want her to speak that truth.
00:50:15.880And they, you know, and you've seen it.
00:50:18.960Well, I think you're an example, Tucker.
00:54:56.160We can find it, but we have to fight for it sometimes.
00:55:00.240And that's what I saw in the response is people are grateful when a voice and, you know, when Carrie and I spoke, you know, God has blessed me in tremendous ways.
00:55:13.880And really, Tucker, I mean, we've never met, but I see you.