Avoiding Babylon
Avoiding Babylon was started during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. During these difficult and dark days, when most of us were isolated from family, friends, our parishes, and even the Sacraments themselves, this channel was started as a statement of standing against the tyrannical mandates that many of us were living under. Since those early days, this channel has morphed into an amazing community of friends…no…more than friends…Christian brothers and sisters…who have grown in joy and charity.
As we see it, our job here at Avoiding Babylon is to remind ourselves and those who enjoy the channel that being Catholic is a joyful and exciting experience. We seek true Catholic fraternity and eutrapelia with other Catholics who, like us, are doing their best to live out their vocation with the help of God’s Grace. Above all, we try to bring humor and joy to the craziness of this fallen world, for as Hillaire Belloc has famously said:
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!”
Avoiding Babylon
Pre-Conclave Politicking and Maneuvering Has Begun
As the Catholic Church stands at a crucial crossroads following Pope Francis's death, an unprecedented papal conclave takes shape. Unlike previous elections, today's College of Cardinals features a dramatically altered demographic landscape—European representation has dropped from 58% to 42%, with significant increases from Africa, South America, and Asia. Perhaps most striking is the unfamiliarity many cardinal electors have with one another, creating an atmosphere of uncertainty and possibility.
The stakes couldn't be higher as competing visions for Catholicism's future clash behind closed doors. Will the cardinals select a continuity candidate who maintains Francis's pastoral approach, or will they pivot toward a more traditional leader who might restore practices like the Latin Mass? Prominent contenders like Hungary's Cardinal Erdő, Africa's Cardinal Sarah, and Jerusalem's Cardinal Pizzaballa each represent distinct paths forward, with theological implications that will resonate throughout the global Church.
Media influence looms large over these proceedings, with publications like The New York Times framing narratives that some observers view as attempts to shape the outcome. Meanwhile, recent converts to Catholicism watch with particular interest, having never experienced a pontiff who fully embraced traditional Catholic sensibilities. The generational divide among the faithful adds another layer of complexity—younger Catholics often gravitate toward ancient rituals and clear doctrinal positions, while Church leadership frequently focuses on issues that resonate with older generations.
Despite Francis's efforts to decentralize Church leadership, many recognize that "Catholicism and Europe are inseparable," suggesting a European pope might best address the continent's faith crisis. As cardinals deliberate, they must balance competing priorities: healing divisions, addressing secular challenges, and determining whether the Church needs stability or transformation after a tumultuous decade.
Whatever smoke rises above the Sistine Chapel—whether signaling radical change or careful continuity—this historic moment will shape Catholicism's trajectory for decades to come. Join us as we explore the personalities, politics, and profound theological questions surrounding this pivotal papal election.
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SANTE, sante AMARE MORTINE, gradas NOS IN TE SPELAVERUMT In taste bell of errant. You gotta love these broads yikes women's soccer mowing grass.
Speaker 3:Who? Who has their wife mow grass? Do you, does your wife mow grass?
Speaker 1:exactly listen. I shaved my beard until we get a Holy Pope Came in nice and clean shaven.
Speaker 3:I'm always clean shaven outside of penitential seasons.
Speaker 1:Can you even grow a beard? I'm questioning it. You look like the kind of guy that gets a patchy beard if you try to grow it in. I do, I do have a patchy beard.
Speaker 2:RIP.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a curse some guys deal with.
Speaker 3:I'm a Latin, I don't have to care about that. I'm not a biz larper. So true, I'm gonna go shave my beard right now. So true, this is, this is why. This is why you're a rad trad nick. It's because you haven't shaved your beard. You shave your beard, you're gonna start, you know, saying the litany of the, you know the holy fathers of vatican too, and all the holy post conciliar popes.
Speaker 1:So so true, so true, I definitely want to talk to you guys. We're going to get into some stuff tonight. Some of the angles that I've been watching is I'm seeing all of the articles that are coming out right, and the one that jumped out to me right off the bat was there was a New York Times article and the New York Times set it up. As you know, francis's legacy hangs in the balance and there's conservative cardinals coming in talking about unity, but this unity is dangerous and they have to watch for it, and I see that and I think right away that the New York Times is is just deep state propaganda, right. So this is like I just think this is intelligence agencies trying to influence the conclave, like if they use the new york times for that in the secular world, why would you not assume they're going to do that in the ecclesial world?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, I mean it's uh, it's truly, I think, a historic moment. Um, it's a historic conclave. I mean. I sent you the quote from Cardinal Arborelius. Cardinal Arborelius is a European cardinal. He's Papa Bile. He's been a cardinal for a few years. He's like yeah, I know maybe 20 to 30 of the cardinals, cardinal electors. I'll have it figured out by next week. This is a cardinal elector who literally could become Pope and he just doesn't know anybody. It's definitely you would be surprised how much the Cardinal electors are being influenced by things like what the New York Times says, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Sometimes the media is the only exposure these guys have to each other, right? So what's interesting is everybody kind of was like why is why are they pushing the conclave off so far like it was? You know, you had francis's funeral. You're supposed to wait, I think 15 days from his death or something, or nine days from his death or something like that, but they pushed it off a little extra time. And my initial thought is just well, yeah, these guys don't know each other.
Speaker 1:Like the way way Francis kind of operated was he didn't allow these guys to come to consistories so that they would all get to know each other and meet each other and hobnob and things like that. So you have all these cardinals. Like the electorate is completely changed from the last conclave. It's like the last conclave it was like 58 percent European, this time it's like 42 percent, and there's all these cardinals from like far off, like like from asia and from south america and all these things.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people think, because francis picked these guys, that you're just going to get another guy in the mold of francis. And I don't think that's the case. Like there's, francis doesn't even know the guys he's picked. He's counting on his contacts in that country and they're bringing these guys up. So it's an interesting thing that we're seeing, and then Rarate Chelly put out an article today just talking about how there's one thing that's noticeable is that the younger Cardinals that Francis did elect are looking to the older guys and the guys who are kind of veterans to this, who were around for Francis' election, are kind of like this older brother figure that they're all looking to for stability right now because, as wild as it sounds, it seems like Francis' death was unexpected.
Speaker 1:Even though we saw he was sick for a while.
Speaker 3:I saw that as well, some of the Cardinals saying that this was shocking. I don't know how it was shocking you had an 88-year-old man who just got over bronchitis with one and a half lungs, and apparently the Cardinals are just shocked that he passed away. But I think the point you brought up is important and I think that this definitely bodes well. Although I'm neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, I think we need to be clear that nobody knows who's going to be what's going through the mind of the Cardinals or who's going to become Pope, but we can say, we can highlight those external circumstances of what they seem to indicate. Is somebody like Erdo, cardinal Erdo from Hungary. He seems to be, from what I've seen, from what the Cardinals have expressed, you know, he seems to be somebody who you know we got to keep an eye out because he's been conspicuously silent as well, uh, which is which is more telling sometimes than actually speaking out so true.
Speaker 2:What was the uh percentage, anthony of europeans?
Speaker 1:it was like 42 last last time was 58, this time it's 42 it's like 17 17 from south america.
Speaker 2:There's like 50 like you know, it's like the US consensus man. What's going on? I know.
Speaker 3:Interesting as well is that Erdo has friends in Africa. He's highly regarded in Africa, which those cardinals are kind of such a weird mixed bag to think about because they're not in on the politicking and I bet they could be very easily manipulated if, um, because you you know I mean I'm sure you've read about how previous conclaves have went um and it's usually not as squeaky clean and uh free from uh politicking as the rules uh seemingly lay out. So yeah, consider.
Speaker 1:Well, you sent me. This is a paragraph from that Marathi Celli blog. Yesterday we also received some tasty details from the general congregation of cardinals. The interventions of Cardinal Ike and Cardinal Robert Seurat were very well received the former with his doctrinal clarity and accurate diagnosis of the ecclesial situation in Europe, the latter with a voice that, as always, combined spiritual strength with a verbal elegance that does not need to shout to convince. The good tone that prevails among the cardinals is also surprising. There is courtesy, there is listening and, despite the open wounds of recent years, there is a desire for unity. So what I wanted to just touch on is we've had this very strange thing. So you guys are both converts. Nick comes in in 2020. You come in in 2022.
Speaker 1:If we happen to get a Cardinal Seurat or an Ike or an Erdo or even like I'm telling you, everybody was like throwing pizza ball out because of his goofy name and stuff, and they're talking about the Israel, palestine stuff. But what's interesting about pizza ball is that, because he's dealing with so much stuff on the ground, you don't know his actual positions on some of the more controversial stuff. Like he's just not a guy who's out there. You know loud with the boys with these cultural issues, which leads me to believe he's probably much more on the conservative side, just because I think a lot of these guys tended to just quiet down about this stuff to keep their head down, and I think he really did have a lot going on on the ground with with being the patriarch of Jerusalem.
Speaker 1:So, but what's interesting for you guys is you have never known a time where you are defending the Pope against the secular media. So what, what we've had for the past 12 years is the secular media reading about Francis, taking some things out of context to make it sound like he's saying something worse than he actually is at most times, and a lot of the especially for converts coming in like you come in, you're excited to become Catholic. Like you want to defend the Pope and you find that you're defending the Pope against other Catholics. And that's got to be a very strange position to be in, to be in like I'm neither of you ever ever lived through the days of benedict and john paul ii. When benedict gives that regensburg address and the whole secular media comes after him calling him islamophobic and saying things like that, like this.
Speaker 3:That's something you guys have never experienced and it's a there's a possibility you could yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely surreal for me because I went through a discernment process obviously before I converted, and a big part of that discernment process, a major part of what was keeping me from converting, was the sort of aura that Francis had. This is a liberal Pope, this is a progressive Pope, which is falsifying Roman Catholicism. So that was a big part in considering my own conversion. And then, obviously, my Catholicism since then has been, has been, it's it's very, it's very weird to phrase it, especially now that he's dead, but it's been protective of Francis, I guess you could say, because I understand, coming from a point of somebody who is especially speaking back to the Protestants, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:I want to communicate to them that things aren't as bad as you think. It doesn't mean that there's not problems, it just is. It's not something which is destroying or falsifying catholicism. You can still come into the church and, uh, that that's something that I've needed to uh emphasize, but it's. It would be really weird to have you know the actual it's the actual most based Pope ever right.
Speaker 3:Now that he's gone, we can admit that was a meme the whole time. We weren't serious about that. But yeah, I think that those are my thoughts on it. It's very bittersweet, it's very complicated, but you know, I still love pope francis and I still love pope francis. But it's hard for me to uh lie to your face and say that I would uh want another 15 years uh, francis the second like come on, that's just that's just crazy, that the, the, the, the thing that we're going to, I think.
Speaker 1:I think something that's going to be interesting nick said this to me in the break in the green room was, um, like there could be a way that it flips where the guys who were popesplaining are now on the other side. But I don't, I don't think it'll happen like that, because I do think those guys most of them, not all of them, most of them, uh, I'm not talking about like mike lewis and stuff like those guys are gonna freak out if you get a conservative pope. But I think the other guys, like you know, I think generally their instinct was to just, you know, guard their father's nakedness, or however you'd want to phrase it. So, but I do think if the next pope comes in, let's just hypothetically say a Sarah comes in and Sarah says OK, we're getting rid of the gay blessings thing, like we're just, we're just getting rid of it.
Speaker 1:He's from Africa, african bishops came together. What if he just says look, this is a confusing statement, we're going to scrap this one. If he comes in and he starts, he completely loosens the restrictions on TC and brings it back to Samorin Pontificum, then, please God, if something like this ever happened. Let's say, cardinal saras celebrated a latin mass as the pope, like something like that. Now stuff like that starts happening, where you're seeing the francis pontificate kind of get overturned and flipped and stuff like that. I do think those guys are going to have a very difficult time, seeing that they spent the last 12 years defending positions that are just getting tossed out by the.
Speaker 3:I mean you you have to remember that, like cardinal muller, he's he's papa bile a cardinal muller. He has um some degree of of supporters. So cardinal muller is he is not afraid to go out there and to um even state that his holiness has stated things which are heretical. And uh like he came out the I the day after his death and had an interview where he made the comment of of something like nobody wants some old man, you know, going around saint peter's square kissing babies, and this was like the day after pope franc died. You know, I read that and I was like that is definitely harsh. I don't think it was, you know, proper to say something like that so near after His Holiness's death. But he is Papa Bile. I mean, if he became Pope I'm sure he would not shrink back from looking upon his predecessor as problematic.
Speaker 1:People are saying this like Serrat, as a Novus Ordo, 100%. All these guys. Cardinal Mueller, you guys don't understand Cardinal Mueller that we see him now is like this arch-conservative he was a liberal before Christian posted something earlier today that was really interesting and he said I can't believe this chat only came out of a contest. That's awesome. You posted something earlier where you were pointing out how certain cardinal or certain bishops or cardinals, whatever they were under Benedict were like these super based, like conservative guys, and then when Francis came in, it was like they completely flipped on all of their positions.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's like some of these guys Sounds like.
Speaker 3:Congress. Yeah, true, I mean, that's literally true, it's exactly like it. I mean, some of these guys, they're saying I've seen certain Cardinals and I've been reading their profiles, because I've read about probably like 50 or 60 of the profiles on the college of cardinals website. Some of them are like, yeah, we can criminalize homosexual acts. And then like three years later, they're in, you know, they're, they're completely in on, uh, you know, normalizing homosexuals, you know, in sodomitical relationships, um, receiving the Eucharist, like crazy shifts like that over a span of a few years. And you have to ask yourself what the heck happened. Like what is going on here? Are these people basically just politicians playing to whatever the popular winds are? And it's hard to say that they're anything but that, to be honest.
Speaker 1:Hey, let me ask you this. This is a really good question. So, like hypothetically I know it's pretty absurd to even think this is going to happen. Let's just say a bishop was elected who's not a cardinal and he's not present in Rome. I have no idea. How would that play out? Well, I don't think they can release the white smoke until the person agrees to be the pope. So it's like you know, michael often um all three of us receive an immediate excommunication.
Speaker 1:That'd be I'm just cooked we're all had a really good question too. Um, uh, yeah, I, I would say, wait, where's Joe's question? Um, so, yeah, like, a public, sin requires public repentance. So, no, if you're, if you're like a public, like a politician who supports abortion, you can't just go to a priest and confess that I think you have to publicly say you know, I renounced my former position because of the public damage you did. Now it may be enough to get you to heaven, you know, but yeah, I would, I would think, to undo the public damage you caused. So, okay, wait, what was the other quote you sent me? It was the Swedish Cardinal said that he hasn't. Yeah, we talked about that, right, like, like, these guys literally don't know each other.
Speaker 3:It's really, um, it's uh, like the most of these guys have their information from the media and what they've seen in the media we have what we have now, and it was unfortunate that they weren't able to translate into italian yet, although that doesn't really matter because most of the guys um can uh, most of the global Cardinals can speak English. But there is the college of Cardinals report website, which is. This website is literally being used by Cardinals, like in their research for the rest of the candidates and if you read the, the profiles like they are very much to the right. I mean they're pro TLM, they are, you know, obviously they hold to all the Orthodox positions within the right. I mean they're pro-TLM. Obviously they hold all the Orthodox positions within the church. So that's going to be a very important resource as well that I hope a lot of them go to that rather than just going to weird traditional media stuff. But have you guys heard of the situation between Parolin and Zen? Heard a little bit about it. Yeah, I didn't know.
Speaker 3:Oh, so this is. This is like some real quick.
Speaker 1:If you guys do send super chats in, I'm going to let Christian finish speaking and then I'll get to the math. So I don't think I'm ignoring you. I'm going to highlight any super chats that come in, I'll any good questions that come in. Just put a question mark and I'll. But I don't want to interrupt him again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so when it comes to the Cardinal Zen versus Cardinal Parolin situation, so, cardinal Parolin, they had the Vatican-China Accords. Have you ever heard of that? Basically, china gets involved in the appointing of bishops, catholic bishops in China. And obviously, cardinal Zen, he know he's been uh persecuted by the Chinese government. He's literally like on house arrest from the Chinese government. He's a you know, he's a living martyr. Uh, right now uh prosecuted, uh persecuted by the, by the government.
Speaker 3:And Zen like, straight up, like went to the media and like called Parilyn a liar. He's like, he's a liar. He's, you know, he's unscrupulous. He just like threw us to the dogs, like he completely capitulated to the communists and he's, I think, 93 years old, he's really old and he wasn't able to travel at all. But the chinese government let him have his passport back so he could travel for just this. So Cardinal Zen did like everything he could to travel to the Vatican and now he's supposed to like go to the general congregation and like basically smack Parolin in the face in front of everyone and say, like you're a liar, you're unscrupulous. I definitely think that he's shaking in his boots right now because with a lot of those global South and Asian Cardinals. They don't really know as much about the interior politics or some of these major events. They're just dedicated to serving their own communities. But if he did that, I think that would be like a death blow.
Speaker 1:Look already, like Palin's trying to spread the rumor that he's got 50 votes already, like that's. That's how like messed up this guy is and that is going to back I don't think Palin's even in the running. Honestly, I think he'd be way too controversial. I really don't think they're looking for that. And I also think that the guys who went, so the, so the cardinals who lived through the john paul ii papacy and the benedict papacy, I think that they kind of had this feeling that no matter who we put in, whether it's bergoglio or anybody like the you know we're going to see a continuation of those two policies which were essentially like all right, liturgy is cut out for grabs, but the doctrine cannot change like john
Speaker 1:paul ii was very clear on his Veritatis splendor. And then Benedict came in. He was basically the head of the CDF during that pontificate. So I think they thought you know well, the church is going to protect the God will protect the church from error. And then when Francis comes in, I think all of those guys got shaken up and they're going to be much more on their guard for a political Pope this time, and I don't think any of them want that revolution to continue and a lot of the conversations that are going on right now are very focused on look, we need, I think, these, these Cardinals and bishops throughout the world.
Speaker 1:They have been shaken to their core by the faithful being so upset. Like it's one thing to have the media mad at you because you're Catholic, but you could always. We're going to get into this in the after show because I had a two hour 15 on one debate against my Lutheran in-laws, all against me, on Saturday. It was two hours long and when I tell you, we got into everything. Everything it was.
Speaker 1:But this is basically like these bishops are used to dealing with media and people like that coming in criticizing them because of their stance on gay unions or gay marriage and things like that. But they can always present the front and say, look, this is what the church teaches. You know like they can have their own nuanced approach to it, but this is what the church teaches. And that kind of all got. Not that the teaching changed, but Francis kind of put these muddled statements out that made people think these teachings were up for grabs and they're just not. So I think that these bishops and cardinals were really shaken by that and I do think they want stability back and they want their own faithful to love them yeah, it kind of depends on, I think and this is a question for you too but, like if they were to put in.
Speaker 2:In my view, if they were to put in a, say, hypothetically, a sarah or a burke, that would be the catholic equivalent to like. You know, it's 2016 election night and we just like, forget obama I was thinking like basically burning his butt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go, it could be it's that like ground shaking right.
Speaker 2:It just absolutely freaks everybody out. But here's, here's one reason I've been thinking like it wouldn't surprise me if erdo is the candidate that they end up picking. And the reason for this is just because when you look at the whole panoply of candidates, you know they typically don't pick like a guy on the fringe, generally speaking. But the thing that we keep hearing over and over and over again is some type of unity pope and also pope that would be solid on doctrine. Now, I don't know if you guys watched the funeral of pope francis, but when you watched his funeral you know there was so much latin, there's gregorian chant, there's polyphony. Yeah, they're busting out all the old copes. They got rid of um. I had a friend who sent me these uh photos. They got rid of the candlesticks that pope francis used on the high altar of saint peter and they put back in like the old golden ones from the benedict era. So it's like, clearly, the they missed the pumping circumstances.
Speaker 3:I saw, I saw all that right, right the um, like, literally, they didn't, they didn't wait for his body to cool and they were like pulling out the old cope. They were pulling out, you know, the peckpecked world crosses again.
Speaker 2:It was wild. I have a friend who's a he's kind of like a penitential hermit, like discerning hermit, that's over in Rome right now. He goes to the Angelicum, so he's in St Peter's fairly often, and he was informed that back in like the last few years the Holy Father banned most, if not all, just any type of form of mass from taking place at the side altars, and the sacristans would have to come out and they would have to stop people if they were just going to be going up to say mass and it was just really, really awkward. So my thought is it's like okay, clearly there's a lot of people who want the pomp and circumstance, when you take that with the whole. We want a unity pope, but we don't want to go so far right as to just freak everybody out.
Speaker 1:I feel like erdo or something like that would be the candidate because he would be, at least in our view, like center right and and they're also dealing with things like so francis tried to get away from this idea that the church is european, right, so he's electing all these cardinals from outside of europe, but polycism and europe are inseparable. Like they, the faith is europe and europe is the faith. It's just, you do need a very european bishop of rome. Because of what europe is going through, in particular right now, with all the immigration and all the problems they're facing, they're on the verge of losing the faith. Like you really do need a, a european pope. For that reason I mean the, the. It would be crazy to have some another south american pope or some pope from, you know, new guinea or something like.
Speaker 3:It's just, it's crazy to freaking, I call that. There's, like you know, two cardinal electors from the Ivory Coast or something like that. Yeah, I read that and I was like, okay, that's kind of strange. If God blesses us with an Italian pope, it will be a wonderful year because Italians they have a lot going for the like the papacy, and Italians it's like peanut butter and jelly.
Speaker 1:Did you ever read what Benedict said about the papacy? Like he talks about the, the Rome, like the Roman, the diocese of Rome should have a, a bishop who's connected to the diocese of Rome, like and, and he really talks about how important it is that the church is Roman. You know it's like it's it's a very important thing Before we move on. Church is Roman, you know it's like it's a very important thing Before we move on. I do have to do the Recky Sincelor ad. I'm horrible at this stuff. I got to see if Romer left me like a banner or something. But Recky Sincelor is our sponsor and they are amazing. So if you guys want to help support the show, just go to Recky Sincelor. They got a whole bunch of different wine. I just ordered three bottles for myself. If you use the code Resurrexit R-E-S- U-R-R-E-X-I-T, you will get 20% off. The wine is phenomenal. It's the best way to support our show. So I had to just get that done, and usually Rob's better at that stuff. I did.
Speaker 1:I want to get to andy's comment. Um, where the heck is it? Uh, mr wagner, your deeply felt reaction to pope francis's death tempered my reaction to act on the side of charity. Thank you for that, um, I appreciate it. Yeah, well, I'll tell you, I listened to a father, charles murr, this morning and he kind of got me off the black pill a little bit like I, because I kind of have this, I I kind of stand in the middle where, in the middle of the opposite of the middle, I don't want a moderate pope, I would rather, um, a cardinal sarah or a soupage, like I don't want a moderate because the church needs a cure right now and I don't know if the church is ready for that cure and it needs, it may need more, like you will.
Speaker 1:You will understand how deep the crisis is, kind of you know beating until we actually understand that this, this is, this is we're talking about the Catholic faith for all time. We really do have a crisis on our hands and it's not just about having a good Pope. It's way deeper than that. It's about the foundations of the faith itself and how people are living that faith out, our whole understanding of living a penitential life. All these things kind of just are like we're losing our Catholic identity by by mixing too much with the Gentiles. You know, it's kind of like Hellenistic Judaism got. It's like we're we're too mixed in with the atheist culture and we need to kind of distinguish ourselves.
Speaker 3:Mm, hmm, mm hmm Well, I just, I just don't really want a leftist. So yeah, I agree, I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 3:It would be a nightmare for me because I just don't even know how I would continue persuasively evangelizing. I guess I would need to change not exactly change anything essential about what I believe, obviously, or the doctrinal principles, but change my approach for sure. Which would be it would definitely put a damper on it, although, you know, under the Francis pontificate we did have some of the largest gains in conversions to the church. So thank you, pope Francis.
Speaker 1:Well, I think what was interesting about Francis was he would always push to the boundary but like not cross it.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:It was like you know. He kept flaunting the female deacon thing, but he never gave it to you. He would like he would want these things to make people think the church was going to do the thing, and then he like the married priest, all of them, he brought right to the precipice and then he backed off. So I kind of think that is the holy spirit protecting it from going too far. So so I don't know. Like you said, it'll be very difficult to evangelize under a pope like that, just like it was under Francis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it'd be rough. I mean, the reason I say this is, you know, everyone keep my parents in your prayers. Anti-catholic to like every once in a while going to the tlm with me. To like every once in a while, like even on their own going to adoration, to now they're like reading scott hahn, so it's like very, very slow. But if we were to have like a perlin come out or something like that, it would just like my parents, you gotta, you gotta understand it's like they're. They're technically not baby boomers, but they're baby boomers, you know what I'm saying yeah, and it's like.
Speaker 2:These are, you know, fox news, conservative yeah, my dad too man so I'm just like picture, trying to like explain for another 15 years. So, guys, what this really means is this it was so hard yeah we get pizza all in the fox news.
Speaker 3:Conservatives have a different reason for hating us, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:I was like I was trolling with people. I was like what?
Speaker 3:Have you seen the Ick, cardinal Ick? There was an article written about him Like when he became a cardinal, there were no, no. When he became a bishop, there was like national, like freak out all throughout the Netherlands Like people hated him. They were like thinking of literally charging him with like hate crimes for the ways in which he talked about gay people. And then there's like another quote where it's like, yeah, and Cardinal Ick also purposefully downplayed the atrocities against the Jews that the Catholic Church has committed. And I'm like, okay, we're back. I think we're back. Cardinal Ick is going to be.
Speaker 3:You're coming from there too, he's going to be like yeah guys, I don't know why they're complaining. We never mistreated you guys. The papacy has always treated you guys much better than you deserved.
Speaker 2:What would be amazing is I know so many people who it's funny, like when I when I went to the cathedral. So I went to the cathedral in austin for a really long time and then we were, we were, um, accompanied out. Let's just put it that way. We were accompanied out because the tlm wasn't uh, it was banned from there. But I had all these older people that I would talk to, that would go to the new mass and they're what I call the fox news set days. So it's the. It's like the people who you know they're the most interesting group to me they are.
Speaker 2:It's like everything is amazing, father altman followers and that like they're the most interesting group to me they would come up to me and we would just be talking about, you know, like the weather or something, just randomly, and they're like did you see what that commie pope did this? That I'm like waiting for pizza balla to be get in, because then they're going to be like we got a literal nazi in there. What are we going to do? First a commie, now a fascist. What the heck's happening to?
Speaker 3:our yeah, and he's going to choose. He's going to choose pious the 13th and they're going to be like, oh, they're naming them after hitler's pope exactly, exactly you're such an interesting group because look, say whatever you want about the sedes, but at least they're consistent, right like they're.
Speaker 1:They're. They're very logically consistent in their thesis. It's like, okay, there's been no pope since this time and then everything you know. But to, to, to be like a novice ordo, going like normie and just think francis is, is like I don't know, man, it's just, it's just a strange. You know, I don't, I don't know if I think they just see the church politically, like through american politics. I think.
Speaker 3:I think that's the only way they can see it is through the political lens it's so frustrating because it was one thing to see some of the Catholic commentators give like mixed feelings or whatever when Pope Francis passed out. That was one thing. Yeah, like not exactly excited about hearing stuff like that, but at least I'm more understanding towards it. But then you have like the QAnon tards who are out there saying like, oh, the globalist commie Pope is finally dead. Globalist commie pope is finally dead.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's like it's some, you know, like whorish woman who you know, who like, literally, has never had, you know, an illuminating thought in her entire life, and all she does is, you know, garner simps. That's her entire follower base, and she gets special treatment because she's a woman and she's out there critiquing you, his holiness the successor of saint peter. It's like come on, guys, we, we can't just pretend that these people, um, you know, have anything worthwhile to say about you know, our pope. Like we can, we can come together to tell them well, my.
Speaker 1:My position on this was always look if any protestant ever said something about franc. I'd attack them because, like you don't get to talk about my family like this, but like if I'm talking inside baseball with my Catholic brothers, it's like all right, look guys, we got a little bit of a problem over here, you know what I mean. But like nobody outside the family is allowed to have that conversation. That's an internal family dialogue.
Speaker 3:Yeah especially women, you know, especially women. Could you imagine some random woman like yelling at your dad, Like that'd be, it'd be awful. Yeah, Some broad. You know some broad out there, you know yelling at your dad.
Speaker 1:Did you hear about the theologian who sent the letter to Cardinal Farrell imploring an investigation of Pope Francis being a heretic? He quoted Pope John the fourth and saint pius the fifth. Any thoughts on that?
Speaker 2:I didn't hear about this I, I heard, I heard a little bit about this, but, um, I I answered this actually to some friends the other day it's not gonna happen, it's, it's not gonna happen. I mean basically two things. One, I actually fully agree with christian. I was appalled at some of even my friends who, like when pope francis passed away, were just like gleeful, like I. I give all, all credit to christ. The first thing I did was say a prayer for him, because you know that's only going to be christ well, I had to.
Speaker 1:I had to force myself to. I'm not going to lie like I did pray for him, but I had to like like really it was like a very conscious decision to like make it's like okay yeah it was.
Speaker 3:It was devastating for me because I've gotten in, I've actually gotten into the practice of um. You know, trying not to check my phone first thing in the morning. You know, trying to like do mental prayer before I check any of the online stuff. So I was literally preparing for prayer. You know, out on my couch, like waiting for my coffee to get done, brewing, and my wife like comes running out of the bedroom and she's like francis is dead and like I'm. I'm sitting there trying to like, you know, get into like the proper dispositions to pray and I just hear that and I it just like it. It tore me up, like I was.
Speaker 2:Hey, at least you got at least you got like a decent, you know your wife bringing you coffee and stuff. My experience was totally different. It was I drove all night from an institute parish back home, like a five hour drive because you know everything in texas is like six hours away and I I go to bed at like 1 30 in the morning, get three hours of sleep at like four something in the morning. I have a friend who wakes me up on a phone call and without saying nick, I'm sorry for disturbing you, he's just, like I announced to you, pope francis is. I'm like what the heck?
Speaker 1:but yeah, no, he's, he's not, not gonna be pope francis is not gonna be investigated for for heresy or something so that all right, so that's all so, listen, I don't think he'll be investigated either, but the thing is, we all witnessed the presidential election get robbed, right, like we all saw that in 2020. Like, we watched an assassination attempt. I was like what? We've seen some wild things in the past few years, right, like really wild things we've seen. Yeah, do you think it's impossible that there's such a division inside this conclave that you get two claimants, that there's such a division in this conclave that maybe a group of Cardinals break off and say, no, we're going to pick our own guy.
Speaker 3:Whatever happens, I'm Team Tagli.
Speaker 1:I'm going to say we live in some very interesting times and everything's being presented to us right now Like, oh, everything, the men are so cordial and everything, but the thing is there is no moderate in the eyes of a revolutionary Right. So a lot of people saying, talking about we need continuity from Francis. We cannot just act like this didn't happen and go back to the way it was before. And it's like this is very bizarre that these guys are now talking about continuity, about continuity, when all the catholics who lived through the revolution, when they mentioned continuity, it was like no, you know, because benedict tried really hard to make a hermeneutic of continuity where we saw a continuation of catholicism wasn't a rupture, it was a.
Speaker 1:But francis came in and kind of threw that thesis on its head a little bit and now the revolutionary is like well, we need continuity with francis. So in in my mind, I look at that and it's just, those guys do not see a moderate as a possibility. There is no moderate. It's the revolution must continue. So if you did get a guy like we've been talking about this entire show, I don't put it past a group of left-wing crazy nuts to go and try and elect their own guy and the German church breaks away and we get a real schism.
Speaker 3:That's perfectly possible. You know, there's nothing theologically against it. I don't think it's entirely probable, but you know, working with probabilities, anything can happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, oh, I think it was Mueller actually who brought this very topic up, not like in the last week or something like that, but I don't know if he said he was talking about the German church. I think he mentioned it, but I thought about the reality of if we were to get a Seurat in there or a Burke in there.
Speaker 3:It would not surprise me if German bishops would leave, because it's like in pope francis after pope francis's past, we've seen them go ahead and push forward like the full-on, just, if you will, full-throated blessing of homosexuality um, yeah, I mean, when it comes to the, the german bishops, the german bishops, um, I can't imagine under a uh, you know, orthodox, well, pastorally conservative that's the way I like to phrase it, rather than orthodox, because I do think Pope Francis was orthodox, a pastorally conservative, you know, not slum priest, worker, priest, you know, man of the people, kind of like how Pope Francis was, but like a, you know, like a stickler for the rules. When it comes to one of these individuals, if they become pope, I can't imagine that many would just sit back and tolerate what the German bishops are doing. So it seems like there's going to be a schism one way or another. I can't.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. So, look, I'm looking at it like if you get even what they would consider a moderate or a center right guy, right, because all of these guys are conciliar guys, like they are. They're products of the council. I mean, kale pointed out earlier today that the majority of the cardinals that are there today were around 20 years old when the council closed, or so that means they got ordained in the old right and then the right switched right up to the novus ordo right after their ordination around that. So these guys are still.
Speaker 1:They may not have participated in the council, but they are still children of the council and they lived through that revolution. Now I think if you got a guy who's in the mold that we've been talking about a Saran Erdo, a pizza ball or somebody like that I think that there is grace that comes with the office that could be conferred upon them. And when they see the revolt from the German bishops and they see the revolt from the media, like they may pull, pull, you know, like a real hard, just say you know what it's like. You're not going to gain the love of the world.
Speaker 2:You may as well bring the catholic faith fully to the people, and that's that's what I really pray for yeah, it could come down to the situation of just, you know, at the end of the day and I'm not not saying this to be rude to them, but cardinals are politicians, bishops are politicians, and so sometimes it can come down to just something like, okay, if this pope was to be in, like if a Syrah was to be in, and he was just to come out and one of his first addresses, just like the two great enemies of the West Islam and homosexuality enemies of the west islam and homosexuality it's like, okay, you know, nick doesn't really see the germans sticking around, unless there's some type of lucrative reason to stick around or political reason to stick around. That would be the the only thing well they would have.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, because their whole, they would lose all, all their financial. So, like, like the german church, the way it operates is people get taxed right out of their like paychecks and it goes right to the church. So if you want a Catholic burial, a Catholic funeral, even if you don't go to mass every week, like you need to pay that tax. Now if they break away from the Catholic church, I don't know what happens with that, but I mean all the all the German bishops just need to be arrested and thrown in prison.
Speaker 2:Sanctus. This makes the most sense, honestly.
Speaker 1:And I agree, francis tried to placate them right, and he kept them in the tent and he threw the trads out. That's essentially what he did. But if okay, I'm thinking if you get a Pope that comes in, a Pope that gets elected and says we're going to throw Traditionis out and we're going to bring it back to some more pontificum rules, elected and says we're going to throw tradition on us out and we're going to bring it back to some more pontificum rules, like, I really think you're going to see that side of the church blow up even more zoopy.
Speaker 3:You want zoopy? Yeah, he's the moderate. We looked into zoopy at all, not at all. No, it's so funny. He's kind of like um, he's a progressive cardinal, but so he's like, you know, sant'egidio I think he's Sant'Egidio aligned. He's, you know, like he's probably a little bit further left than Francis. He's kind of like the little bit more progressive option for the Italians over Peril. But Zuppi, even though he's a super big progressive, he like celebrates the Latin Mass and he loves the Latin Mass and he probably would like reverse. He probably would reverse the rules back to the benedict, the 16th rules, which is really, it's really funny. We would have a um, you know, we'd have our uh, I think. I think I saw that the german bishops did a um like a gay, some sort of uh like gay, uh, I don't know, gay aligned mass of like celebration or something stupid like that. We would get like the gay aligned tlm would be well.
Speaker 1:The thing is those guys look, some of those guys. They are gay and they love the pageantry of it it's like anglicans.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the anglicans. They're gay and they just love the love, the, they love the pageantry of it right.
Speaker 1:So you even said how, like the right after Francis goes like they start bringing out all of these old, like these old things, that because there is something so unique, like OK, so I passed this video around today of like a charismatic worship thing and I'm like, would you want to be at this? You know, and everybody is like half the people are like, well, as long as it's not at mass. I'm like, would you want to be at this? Half the people are like, as long as it's not at Mass, I'm fine with it. It's like, no, no, don't say that we are Catholic and Catholics are wholly unique in our weirdness. We incorporate paganism. We don't incorporate evangelical charismatic stuff. That's not what Catholics are supposed to do. Like we. We need to be uniquely weird in our ritual, like our and, and the thing is, that weird ritual that we do attracts people and it attracts a lot of people.
Speaker 1:And this was part of the conversation we'll get into in the next show, because my brother-in-law, who was really not raised in much of any faith we were talking to his mother and his mother is a former Catholic who left the Catholic church, she divorced his father and now she's in the same sex relationship and then she went to an Episcopalian church and all over the place, but she grew up in the revolution. Episcopalian church and all over the place, but she grew up in the revolution. And my brother-in-law was like talking about like church and he's like I don't know if I'm going to go to church, like I kind of want to go where they got incense and like I don't understand what's going on and she just could not wrap her head around why we wanted this ancient ritual like that. Like she lived through the revolution and she couldn't stay. She was giving me the same lines.
Speaker 1:My mom gave me that meat we talked about with kale the other night and she's like we couldn't understand anything. That mass was so stuffy we didn't know what was going on, this and that. But I think those are just catchphrases that they were told and that they like I don't think they actually thought that they never. It's not like they. You know they were little kids during this thing and they kind of heard the catchphrases of the day going around. But there's something really bizarre about catholic ritual that attracts people and especially the young people that are coming and they're looking, they're seeing the chaos of the modern world and they're like I want to go back to something stable and ancient and they love the ritual of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's funny because I was just talking to my mother about this. My mother, she's very Protestant, definitely not a Catholic, but she told me we had a conversation. She told me that she can really understand why a lot of the younger people, especially, with all of the disorder and dismay around us, that we are attracted to something like Catholicism. Because she's like the way that I view Catholicism, which is really weird because a lot of people actually still view us like this, like the way I view Catholicism. They are like completely resistant to any sort of change, like they will stand up to the abortion stuff, they'll stand up to the gay marriage stuff. They'll stand up to the abortion stuff. They'll stand up to the gay marriage stuff. They'll stand up to, you know, the contraception stuff. And they, you know, no matter what, no matter how many people disagree with them, they'll always kind of stick with it. And people still have this view of the church, even though it's kind of funny because a lot of people within the church don't have that view of the church.
Speaker 2:have that view of the church.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of people outside of the church that have this view of the church.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting, man. We're going to get into it on the next show because I don't, I don't want to, in case anybody ever sees this on YouTube. But it was such an interesting conversation and it came about because my nephew my nephew made his first communion and I'm his godfather and I was at a Lutheran church. So I'll get, I'll get in and I'll I'll explain it all over there. But I don't know, man, any like I. I went and we did the. I did three or four shows on Wednesday last week and then we had this long weekend where me and Rob didn't do anything. I couldn't wait to just get on and have this conversation tonight because it's it's one of the most exciting times to be Catholic.
Speaker 1:Like you guys are new Catholics and you guys get to experience a conclave pretty quickly within your conversion and you're seeing the internal workings of the church and you're seeing the politics. But I don't remember a conclave ever. I remember, vividly, remember a conclave ever. I've, I've, I've, I remember vividly benedict's conclave. I remember francis's conclave. I do not remember it being this contentious, where people are on the edge of their seats, like man, we really can't get another francis, like it's just what you know you wouldn't have, that people would have loved the jp3 or a benedict the 17th after either of their pontificates yeah, yeah, I think part of that's due to social media, just because it's like, just think about how much media landscape has changed from 2013.
Speaker 2:Now, that's not all, that's not the only reason. A lot of it has been like the confusion that you've seen in the last decade plus, but so much of it is just also people like us even just going and talking about it Cause we've talked about it like even like pre, pre McCarrick in 2018, that it's just the Catholic speaking circuit. That's about it, right, the Catholic answers crowd, some of the more independent hosts, and then kind of Marshall doing his thing, and then, after 2018, and especially after COVID, everything blew up, I mean a decade ago. Any of these conversations, especially where it's just like three guys hanging out just chatting about church politics, it's just so foreign because, like, let's be honest, the only popular catholic youtube back then and also kind of true today is like five easy steps to debunk sola scriptura and it's just like, wow, this is the 50 billionth video I, I think people.
Speaker 1:I think people would prefer this to like the professional Catholic pundits on EWTN, and I think that the like the Catholic Inc. Because we should probably have a conversation about them too on the other side. Eventually, I think we're going to have to have that conversation on the other side. We're going to have to have that conversation on the other side. We're going to have to do the Catholic and conversation, because those guys I think they would love to be sitting and having a conversation like this, but none of them have set themselves up to do it. You know, like they just they didn't put themselves in this realm where they could be honest about things. Like they're kind of in a position where they they have to tow certain lines because they have donors and things like that, so they can't just have these outright honest conversations about things. So I do think we provide a unique insight into these. Like what people would want to listen to, as a conclave is coming up, yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:And yeah, people are saying I'm hope pilling, yeah, okay, so I watched bro I'm just saying I'm just saying I it, I like it, compared to the other night. The other night you were just like Nick, you're out of your mind. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well. So what happened was I saw Vigano's letter and it was just like such a black pill and I'm like man, I got to figure out how I want to go into this Because, first off, none of us know what's going to happen. None of us know, so we can sit here and like, yeah, it's fun to speculate and it's fun to talk about this stuff and say, oh, what if, what if? But none of us know what's actually going to happen. So I'm not going to go into this black pilling. Like I want to go into this, and especially for the new Catholics who've never experienced what it's like to have a Pope who you felt like had your back. Like I want a Pope who I feel like loves his Catholic children. Like I want a Pope with a father's heart, which I really look. It's really nice to have a conversation with Christian where I because, now that Francis has passed, you could be a little more honest about this stuff, because I do know the difficulty that a lot of people had during the pontificate. It's like you're afraid to say certain things and the people that did say it people were accusing us of being crypto, set A's and things like that. But there is something very different about having a poke who you feel like loves you and at least has your back. So when you're defending these difficult issues, like you know, fighting people on the abortion issue or on the contraception issue or any of the big issues, you at least felt like the people who were in charge loved you and had your back, and even the Cardinals that are we see now as progressive leftist lunatics. Those guys even towed the company line and would come to all the pro-life events and they would like.
Speaker 1:It was a very different church 12 years ago, very different, and it's not as different like it was a very different church 12 years ago, very different, and it's not as different as it was from before the council. But, like you know, the pre-conciliated church and the post-conciliated church are drastically different. Don't get me wrong. But there's still a very big difference in the benedict church and the francis church and I don't know what comes next. I'm just praying that it, whatever pope gets elected, there is grace that comes with the office, and I also do believe god has not abandoned his church. Amen, like don't believe god has abandoned this church. I do think that god still knows and no matter what happens, even if we do get a bad pope, I'm like fully confident that it is part of the story of salvation history and god intends for that to be what happens to us in that time exactly, christian put out a really good video, um, like the day after.
Speaker 2:so you were going over basically the conclave and you had this really good line at the very end that like synthesized my feeling on things, which was you know, god, essentially, something like god is still on the throne, I still have hope in god, it's going to be okay. That was the basic just behind it and and I'm reminded of and this is what I've been telling people of the story of Shadrach, meshach and Abednego it's like they were about to be tossed into the flaming furnace and they have this just epic line, right, just think like you're about to. You think you could potentially die, but they say our God is able to save us and if he chooses, he will save us. And even if he doesn't save us, right, he is still God. And even though it's not as dire in my mind, my thought is no matter what happens, right, god is able to give us that which is good and even if he doesn't, he is still good. And the Catholic Church is still true, mm-hmm, absolutely. And the Catholic church is still true, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you. If nobody's watched Joshua Charles's most recent episode or might not be his most recent episode, but he did he did an episode about the church being Roman. It was three hours of some of the most like. It was probably the best podcast I've heard in years. Dude, it was so good. First off, they go at the end of the episode.
Speaker 1:They talk about how the um, the incident where the, the pharisees, come to jesus about, uh, should we pay taxes to caesar? And he's like, well, show me the coin whose image is on the coin. So there's a half shekel tax that the temple charges and there's this, the half shekel like stops being minted by the Roman Empire. So the Pharisees go to the Roman Empire and they ask them if they can mint the coin and all this stuff. And the Roman Empire only agrees to let them mint a coin that has the image of Baal on it. So the Pharisees were telling people you can't pay images, you can't use the Roman coin to pay your taxes to the temple because that would be like offering idol worship. Right, but really the half shekel that they get minted has the image of an idol on it anyway. So but the way he explained it like he goes into it. I'm doing such a terrible job butchering it right now, but what?
Speaker 1:The way he explained it, like he goes into it and I'm doing such a terrible job butchering it right now but what the Pharisees were doing with the court of the Gentiles, which is the outer court of the temple where the Gentiles are supposed to be able to come and worship the God of Israel, they were implicitly denying that the covenant could be shared with the Gentiles, like in this act that they were doing. They were implicitly denying that the covenant could be shared with the Gentiles, like in this act that they were doing. They were implicitly denying that the covenant could be shared with the Gentiles. So all those prophecies in the old Testament about, you know the the Gentiles have seen a great light and all those things like they.
Speaker 1:Just this is why Jesus goes in and he overturns the tables in the temple is is because of the things they're doing there. But that whole podcast just goes into how. When in the temple is because of the things they're doing there. But that whole podcast just goes into how, when we say we're Roman Catholic, it doesn't mean Latin Catholic, it's not, it's not Latin Catholic.
Speaker 1:Especially if you're Byzantine Catholic. Like the Byzantine empire was the Roman empire, like there you are, there is no salvation outside the Roman Catholic church that doesn't mean Latin right, there are plenty of right.
Speaker 2:There's 27 rights under the roman catholic church. Yeah, I was about to say, did they? Did they mention, uh, roman being one of the marks of the?
Speaker 3:church in that, yeah, the mark of romanness. Yeah, I was. I've, uh, I brought this up multiple times to eastern catholics and for some reason they always see it about this. But you know, I guess it's, I guess you know, well, you have, you have the right, you have the right procedure.
Speaker 2:I've told people I said Christian, if he were Pope he would do the best thing. He would go after the bislabbers. He'd take a bunch of scissors, cut off all their beards, force them to say the TLM. And if I was Pope I'd make those things happen.
Speaker 3:And I'd say you know, I know you're married, and they always seem to be very sour about it, but it doesn't make any sense to me. You pledge allegiance, uh, or, you know, pledge your fealty to, uh, the bishop of rome. Like what, what? How could this possibly be offensive to you to call you roman catholic? Like we, we have our catholicity through our communion with the roman pontiff. The definition of schism, you know, is being out of communion with the roman pontiff and those that are in communion with him. Yeah, so I don't, I don't, I cannot even conceive in my mind how, uh, one could be offended by being called a roman catholic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, because the term is first the term is first devised as an insult because the the mark of the church is roman. But, like, you have to think about the structure of the church, the church is the pope in. To think about the structure of the church, the church is the Pope in Rome, which was Caesar was in Rome and then all of his governors throughout the empire and they would govern their provinces and things like that, and that's the whole. That's the Pope in Rome and all the bishops govern their provinces. Like, the church is Roman in its structure, it's Roman in in the way it's built.
Speaker 1:But the word in the way it's built, but the word, the term Roman Catholic, comes about from Protestants trying to insult us, calling us Romanists, you know. So, like it was, the church was actually hesitant to accept the term Roman Catholic, but then eventually it did, when it really started to understand like or work out you know on paper what that actually means. And then they were like yes, we are Roman Catholic. So, bobby said, the conflating of Latin right with Roman Catholic is a problem in the East. I always refer to it at the Latin or Western church to distinguish I'm Byzantine, which means I'm explicitly Roman Catholic, but still a biz LARP.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I hope, I hope that you um, you know, get better. I hope you get cured of your bizlar. I was talking, I was talking with one of these guys, um, in real life, one of the bizlarpers, and I was like you know, you're a roman catholic, you're just not a latin catholic. And they look at me and they're like, oh yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I'm going to start using that. You know, you could easily evangelize the biz larpers.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest tweets.
Speaker 3:Shaving their beards. If you just, you know, show them how they could be called Roman Catholics, then it will just solve all their problems.
Speaker 1:One of the biggest tweets I ever have is I said there's no salvation outside the Roman Catholic church and the all the Easter is flipped out on me.
Speaker 2:I'm like you guys yeah, I always try to, I always try to show them the. I'm like have you heard? You know what the theological note is for the mark of Romanists, right? And they're like what's the theological note?
Speaker 3:And I'm like well, okay, so we are going to go over to locals and we're going to um, oh, christian, you can leave it on your channel if you want. Yeah. So if you want to get it for free, uh, come over to our channel.
Speaker 1:All right, you know what we'll try oh yeah, because, yeah, yeah, that's actually fine. Yeah, if you guys. If you guys aren't local subscribers, you should be, because you guys are cheap and I don't like cheapos, but you guys should definitely be local subscribers on our channel, not christian's channel. So if you want to support the show, come over to locals, but if you are too cheap and you won't reach into your pockets, go over to christian's channel, which is scholastic answers and you can watch the rest of the show over there. Please subscribe to the traditional. Thomas nick's doing a bunch of nerdy stuff over on his channel um, it's actually a lot less nerdy now.
Speaker 3:It's more uh, uh, you know, I think uh a voice crying out in the wilderness of catholic youtube. I like, I like a lot of the, the change in content hey, I appreciate it, man.
Speaker 2:Actually I was telling people like you and I we should do a uh, a day revelazione series, like yeah, that would go through both volumes, like actually slowly but surely, take our time I need to.
Speaker 3:I need to, um, uh, my friend ethan dolan. He was on punch of the quietness actually, uh, probably like a year and a half ago, um, but I need to introduce you to my friend ethan, because we read through a lot of it together and we. That was just so formative for us because it confirmed a lot of the the things that we had determined when we were struggling with Protestantism and then eventually converted.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're great books. I've taken two courses I'm actually finishing up one more course on De Revolazione as we speak using these textbooks, and so they're just phenomenal. Like we got to, we got to do some type of series, but the only person I know out there would be Christian.
Speaker 3:Because he's like one of the only base YouTubers out there. You could bring on Michael Lofton for a DeRivaLaccione series. That could be fun If they don't want to make a Locals account. Just make a Patreon account and then become my patron. So true, a Locals account. Just make a Patreon account and then become my patron.
Speaker 2:So true.
Speaker 1:Okay. So listen, people who are saying they don't want to create a Locals account Wait, where is that? I will say this the conversations we have over on Locals are much more personal. We kind of let our. We say things. I share things I would never share on YouTube. It takes two seconds to go and start a Locals account. If you guys, I'll be watching on Christian's channels. I told you this longer too.
Speaker 1:You're not getting any love from Christian over there, bobby, all right, so we're going to go over there. I want to tell you guys what happened to me on Saturday, and then I think we might have to have a conversation about Catholic Inc. Not just Catholic Inc, there's other people too that the way they're handling conversations I saw Eric Sammons called Candace Owens a total nut job because of her position on the moon landing. Then you see Jordan Peterson calling people psychopaths and all these other things, because they are starting to notice things and I think that if they don't figure out how to handle this conversation better, they're going to have a major problem. Handle this conversation better. They're going to have a major problem because you can't just write people off as crazy and psychopaths and nutjobs.
Speaker 1:Because we've lived through a lot of events over the past 15 years mainly the past six years, though, with what the government did to us that people are starting to look at all of the narratives they've been fed for a very long time and they're starting to question everything. And they're not going to be opposed to hearing a point of view that says, yeah, maybe we didn't land on the moon because the government lies to us about everything. The same people that killed JFK that same decade might've lied to us about landing on the moon. Maybe the narrative we heard from world war two is nonsense. They need to. If they want me to stick with these narratives that they've been giving, they're going to have to present a better story than they've given me, so we're going to talk about that on the other side.
Speaker 1:We will see you guys there Thursday night. Rob will be back and we will talk to you guys there. Let me start removing some of these things. All right, I got to leave. I got to take YouTube off. Right, that's YouTube Remove. See you later, youtube. Ok, I could leave it on X.
Speaker 2:I can leave it on X, feeling generous tonight. Yeah, I'll leave it on.
Speaker 1:X. So if you're watching on x, I'll leave it up. So okay, so we go to um my okay. So my nephew's communion is is saturday and they're lutheran and he's my godson now he, I was asked to be his godson before I had my reversion and all this stuff. So I'm like really debating if I should even go to this thing and I decide to go because I'm like, okay, what are? Like what is going to happen if I don't go? It's just going to cause a big fight. I'm going to go but I'm not going to receive. So now I haven't been to this church since, like before my reversion. When the last time I went, it was like it was like more reverent than a novus ordo, like people would go up and receive on their knees they had intention, like it was a super reverent. Uh, lutheran missouri synod service. Oh, it's an lcms interesting.
Speaker 3:Huh, they're lcms yeah, like that.
Speaker 1:So it that. So we go to this thing. Now communion time comes. That when I went this time totally different pastor the whole thing was like a mockery of everything regardless, I would have never received anyway. But me and my wife don't go up to receive. So when we go back to my sister's house, my sister-in-law's house, the family's like well, why didn't you guys receive? I'm like, okay, here it goes.
Speaker 2:I wasn't hungry y'all.
Speaker 1:No, I said look. I said for the same reason that if I invite you guys to a Catholic mass you can't receive. So I break out my missile, my 1962 missile, and I open up to the examination of conscience and under the first commandment, like you're examining, a conscience says have you participated in non-Catholic Christian denominational liturgy? Like, like, have you been to anything non-Catholic? And I'm like I have to go to confession for coming to this thing with you guys. I'm just telling you I'm like no, we could never receive. I said, because the Catholic church and the Lutheran church are not in communion with one another. I said there's some things the Catholic church teaches that are very difficult and they're not easy to understand. But I'm a faithful son of the church and whatever the church teaches I just accept. So then they go around the table and it's one person after another bringing up all the difficult Catholic teachings and they're like well, I don't agree with the church that says this. And the next one well, I don't agree that the church says this.
Speaker 2:My father-in-law said it he's like well.
Speaker 1:I don't agree that they don't let anybody into communion.
Speaker 1:They should let anybody into communion and I'm like dude, but that they don't let anybody into communion. They should let anybody into communion. And I'm like dude, everybody's drinking. They're all yelling at me and I'm just sitting there like this. I'm like are you guys done? Is everybody done? They're like yeah, I'm like this is the Protestant Reformation. I'm like we're sitting through the Protestant Reformation right now.
Speaker 1:The Catholic Church it was one church, the Catholic Church, and then all these people came up and like I don't like this teaching, I don't like this teaching, I don't like this teaching. I don't like this teaching. So, especially the communion one, I said Luther broke communion with the Catholic Church. So it was. You weren't barred from communion. Until Luther broke communion from the Catholic Church. The church was universal and we were all receiving at the Catholic church. But you left for this reason. You left for this reason. You left for this reason. There's not a single reason on earth that I would ever leave the Catholic church, like I. Just the hardest teachings are the ones I love the most. So it wound up getting like my. Like. I said my brother-in-law's mother was raised Catholic. She hit me with the. I went to Catholic school for 12 years. You know the meme and she's like but I left the church because I can't believe in original sin, that infants will go to hell if they're not baptized Literally Lutheran.
Speaker 3:Huh, I said, they're literally lutheran, literally lutheran.
Speaker 1:So like the dude they, so she, she gets into purgatory with it. Like I had to sit and have a two-hour discussion with them. But the way I handled it was I. It never got contentious because every time they'd voice something I said now look, what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you what the Catholic church teaches. I'm not going to tell you I think you're wrong. And this is this. I said I'm just going to tell you what the church teaches and you can't be mad at me that the church has these rules on the book.
Speaker 1:So it wound up getting to a point where I said they were all getting like a little upset with me and I said what you guys are asking me to do is leave my church because you don't agree with my church. I said and it's if I told you that I don't agree with your church, like you'd be mad at me. Like it's just a very bizarre thing that happens. But Protestants think they can come and tell you that your church is wrong and that's not supposed to offend you, but if you say the same thing to them, they'll be super offended. It's just. It was a really really strange conversation, but everything wound up.
Speaker 3:You know, everybody left on a good note. Yeah, I found it to be really strange because, like, I had a conversation with my father-in-law Because my father-in-law, for those who don't know, is literally a Protestant pastor, my grandfather's a Protestant pastor, my uncle's a Protestant pastor. Yeah, I come from a familial environment of Protestant pastors, which is why I was a seminarian. It was kind of like a family thing that a lot of people did, and my father-in-law he was. You know, I told him that we're converting, that we're converting to Roman Catholicism, and at first he was just like, oh, so, like you're converting to Roman Catholicism. I'm like, no, we're converting to Roman Catholicism. And he's like, well, lexi, my wife, like Lexi, wouldn't convert to Roman Catholicism. Like she was raised better than that, she knows better than that.
Speaker 3:Like no, we are converting and then he was very, very upset about it. And I was like you've said before. I've heard you say all the time that you know you're very big-tented, you know you're very tolerant, you know we're all in the same team, type Protestant, like oh, you know, the differences aren't that important, so why are you so upset? You know you're the old, you know the Gary G Lagrange quote the tolerant. What is it? Tolerant in principle, intolerant in practice, type thing. And it's like, well, you don't believe anything, but you know you're really, you really strongly act on something that you apparently don't even care about that much.
Speaker 1:Wait now, did you, did you? Did you both come into the church after you were married or before?
Speaker 3:Yes, this was after we got married. We were married for about a year a little over a year at that point, actually, no, no, this would have a little over a year at that point, actually, no, no, this would have been a little over two years at that point when we entered. When I was thinking about converting, it was about a year, and then about a year and a half when I finally decided to convert, and then, six months later, i-.
Speaker 1:Did your wife convert because you told her to, or was she coming along in the journey with you?
Speaker 3:She was. It was a really strange situation. So I uh, I had sort of like an inkling of a thought about rome and then I did like really intensive reading about it and like a lot of points in which, because I was raised as a normal protestant, I was educated as a normal protestant, so I had a lot of misconceptions about what roman catholicism taught and once I started to get a little bit more interested in it, I started reading more about it and a lot like the first stage, I think, in anybody's conversion process is you see, a lot of the misconceptions go away and that kind of freaks you out. Yeah, so I was at that stage and that was before, kind of like the whiplash where a lot of people have where they're like, okay, my misconceptions are gone and I can kind of view them in a fair light, but I still don't want to convert. So I was kind of in that stage and my wife and I had a long trip because we lived in Florida at the time when I was in seminary and my family lives in Maryland, so it was like a 13 hour car drive.
Speaker 3:So I talked to my wife for you know this, this was difficult, you know, talking to women for hours, but my wife for hours and hours about all of the misconceptions you know, and she was asking a bunch of questions. She was like really kind of piqued her interest because before that point she just wasn't at all. Uh, I mean, she wasn't pro-catholic, she was an anti-catholic. She kind of like didn't really care. Um, you know, she's kind of like I just want to sort of go to church and, you know, read the bible, sort of like didn't really care that much.
Speaker 3:And then like ike's, you know, hours and hours and hours, to where now she was in that stage, to where, all of, by the end of the car ride, you know, she was in the stage where all of her you know misconceptions were drawn away, but she didn't have that whiplash stage. She was like, well, ok, are we going to convert? I was like whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. You know I so I'm sort of like the meme where it's like I'm leading you to things that I cannot myself, uh, you know, have. You know I can, I can tell you about all this stuff, but I'm just not there yet. And it was, uh, a road. I mean, it was like another year before. Uh, I was at the point where I had um. You know we'd fully converted um, but yeah, she was. She was definitely really pro conversion a lot earlier than I was for sure.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Like my wife originally, like when so we got, I knew, to get married in the Catholic church, we had to get a dispensation from my bishop. She had to agree to raise the kids Catholic, but she was Lutheran. And then when I had my reversion, I'm like, well, I want to start going back to mass. And she's like, okay, I'll go to mass. I'm like, but you can't receive. And she's like, what do you mean? I'm like you can't receive at a Catholic church. She goes, okay, well, there's no way I'm going to have my kids going to a church and they're receiving and I'm not going to.
Speaker 1:So my wife goes through the RCIA program because she wanted to be the same faith as her kids, but it wasn't until maybe two years later that she herself had a conversion. So she became Catholic right away. But it wasn't until two years later where the faith became her own. But through the things like, especially what happened on Saturday night, there was something like you never know who's picking things up in these conversations, but my wife. Every time one of these conversations happens with her family, she is just really reaffirmed in how true Catholicism is as she hears me arguing it. So now my sister-in-law, whose son. I'm his godfather. She goes to the communion prep class and while she's in the communion prep class, she's like they're telling her well, this is the true presence of Christ in the communion. And she's like well, what's the difference in Catholics and Lutherans? So the pastor tells her that Catholics re-sacrifice Jesus at every mass.
Speaker 1:My sister-in-law has this list of things she wrote down and she's like so she called my wife like two weeks ago, and she's like I just wish Anthony was there with me. And Nicole's like why, what do you mean? She's like I just wish Anthony was there with me, that's all. And I was like why, what do you mean? She's like I just wish Anthony was there with me, that's all. My wife's like. She didn't answer why. She was just like I just wish Anthony was at the class so he could have been there. I'm like I don't even know what she means by that.
Speaker 1:Then we go to her house and she breaks out this list of all the things the pastor told her about Catholicism Drops the Augsburg Confession, refute this now, basically, dude, she wrote all these notes down. So this whole thing is happening where everybody's yelling and all this stuff and everybody's getting all worked up. And I just said to my sister-in-law I said listen, cassandra, I want you to keep that list. I said because when it's not so crazy and there's not so many people drinking, because if there's no alcohol involved involved would have been a much better conversation, because we're all having fun drinking, like our family's very loud. You know what I mean. So it just was one of those things where everybody's screaming over each other. Nobody was mad, though it was like nobody was mad, it was just kind of like contentious. But like everybody, I was just like look, um, I, I understand all of your like. I understand why you disagree with this.
Speaker 1:Like it's not an easy teaching to think. You know, babies that aren't baptized go to limbo. Like I had to like really explain that. I had to explain purgatory, but by the end of each explanation they saw it differently. And then, when I got into the re-sacrificing Jesus at every Mass and I said that is not what the Catholic Church teaches. What we teach is that we are re-sacrificing Jesus at every Mass. And I said that is not what the Catholic Church teaches. What we teach is that we are re-presenting the sacrifice of Calvary at every Mass. My brother-in-law's mother looks at me and she goes you're teaching a different Catholicism than I was taught. And I said yes, I don't doubt that, like I don't doubt that when she was a kid, they were horrible at catechesisis and they didn't tell her how these things actually were, because I I remember being raised and not being taught these things you know, the craziest moment for me was I.
Speaker 3:I distinctly remember, um, my parents, like I, I was this was like a while ago I was, I was moderating a debate or involved in some sort of debate over the sinlessness of Mary and my mom just happened to ask me because I was at my parents' house at the time, visiting, and I was like, oh, I need to go do something for like two hours. You know, I'll be back. It's just like an online thing that I kind of got to do Like, oh, what is it on? And I'm like, oh, it's on the sinlessness of Mary. You know. You know, catholic and Protestant are debating it.
Speaker 3:My mom's, like the Catholics teach the sinlessness of Mary. I was like, mom, you were confirmed in the Catholic church. You were like a Catholic until middle school. You don't know that the Catholic church teaches that Mary was sinless. And I think back at that and it's obvious, like my mom's, you know she's not dumb or like forgot or anything like that. It was just catechesis was so terrible. You really had like Catholic middle schoolers not knowing that Mary was without actual sin.
Speaker 1:Do you know how few Catholics know that the Immaculate Conception is about Mary's conception and not Jesus's conception? Like most Catholics think the Immaculate Con conception is about Jesus and they don't. It's, it's um it it's. It's just sad that that's the case, that that's how they were presented with the faith. But I also think it's kind of amazing that my sister-in-law it's really interesting to me that they all know how seriously I take my faith, right, like they all get that I've studied my faith very in depth. So when they're presenting these arguments to me and they're getting upset, I'm like I have an answer for all of them. But never once do any of them say hey Anthony, maybe I misunderstood this. Like, like you seem to like they're going to the Lutheran.
Speaker 1:My in-laws are not Lutheran because they protest the Catholic church in principle, they're just Lutheran because they were raised Lutheran and they're like oh, we go to church and this is what we do, but like they don't know that there are fundamental differences in Catholicism and Lutheranism. But my sister-in-law seems to be curious and not in a not in a like a confrontational way Like she. She genuinely seems like she wants answers to things you know. And I also think that, like because my brother-in-law wasn't raised in any kind of faith, he can't step up to that role and I think she kind of wishes he did, but he is, he wasn't raised in it, so like he doesn't know. So I think they all kind of look to me for answers to these things and I think if the RCIA process wasn't such a big ordeal and I could just ask a priest hey, can I you know?
Speaker 2:can.
Speaker 1:I catechize this group of people so I could bring the entire family into the Catholic, like I think they would. I really do. I think they would trust my judgment to you know and just say, look, we all want to be going to the same church and receiving communion together. Like we shouldn't be this division and communion like this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It's interesting because this is something I got from reading St Peter Faber and looking at the examples of some saints. Saints, because a lot of people they think of you know, oh, the way that I'm going to do evangelism is, you know, I'm just going to go out there and you know I'm going to go out there and just be confrontational. Like my brother, my sisters, my parents, like nobody in my family is Catholic, like none of them really, even except my little sister, none of them really even go to church anymore. And you know, the way that I've approached it, especially recently, hasn't been like very confrontational. They know that I'm Catholic. It's kind of like a thing that they're aware of.
Speaker 3:I've tried to show forth the fruits of, you know, catholic life, catholic grace, and you know, with this awareness that I'm Catholic, occasionally they'll just ask me questions, yeah, and I found, I found that that method, like once you kind of get a conversation started, like there's a certain you know thing that they kind of know what's going on with being Catholic, they ask questions, you know you, you give answers, or you communicate with them some materials. If you don't know the answer to something, and since they're the ones initiating, it ends up being um, you know, they're listening a lot better. People usually don't listen. If you're just kind of gonna, you know, on a random Saturday you're gonna talk at them too, like, yeah, like people don't want to be lectured or talked to.
Speaker 1:It's dude, dude, it's, it's. It's funny how like little questions wind up coming up all the time. And when I do explain them because I try, I've had to, I've had to change my approach with them, always Right. So whenever I do talk to them about church or anything like that we're doing, like I try to explain it in a way it's like, oh no, we go to this Latin mass and it's like this ancient ritual. And it's like, really Like I never tell them they're wrong, I just tell them about like, oh, this is this beautiful thing that we do.
Speaker 1:And then the biggest I think the biggest attraction to them has been them seeing the way me and my wife live our lives and how well adjusted my children are. And they see that every Sunday, no matter what, we get up and we drive an hour to go to mass every Sunday, no matter what like they're. You know, like we went out Saturday and we were drinking wine all night and I went to his communion Saturday and I still got my ass up and went to confession Sunday morning and then I went to mass, you know, and it's like, so they called us the next day to talk to us about the night before and they were like, that was such a great time. And they're like, oh, what are you guys doing? We're like, oh, we're driving to Mass. And they're like, oh, you have to go to church again. I'm like, yeah, we got to go to church again. That didn't count yesterday. I don't know what to tell you guys.
Speaker 1:But there's been a softening with every conversation, for sure, and I think the teachings of our lady for them would be simple Like my, my in-laws, they, they love the saints, you know, like they're Lutheran but they love the saints. And like I've, I taught my nephew how to pray the hail Mary in Latin and like they, they love that stuff. They just they get caught up in like these weird contentious issues that they've never even looked into before. My favorite, my favorite thing I've told them about Our Lady is I said, you know, one of one of the one of the biggest proofs of Our Lady's sinlessness to me and how important it is to hold that position, like to actually hold that she is the Immaculate Conception and that she is sinless is when you look at the fruits of the Christians who believe that the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholics even if you think the Orthodox are schismatic, whatever your opinion is monasticism and, um, you know, like monasteries and convents are what come from that you don't see anything even remotely resembling that from Protestantism.
Speaker 1:So once you lose the belief that Our Lady is sinless and of ever virgin. Specifically, you lose your understanding of what chastity is and you lose your understanding of the beauty of virginity completely. It's just like totally lost on you. And then you lose the understanding of what a celibate priesthood is. And all these different dominoes just collapse when you lose the belief that our lady is an ever sinless virgin.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this is an approach that I sometimes take. I was in North Dakota this weekend and one of the guys that I work with he was like oh, there's this lobbyist who's at the Capitol, you know, and he's interested in like maybe he's Protestant, but you know, he's kind of you know well-disposed sort of type and I have, like you know, five minutes to have a short conversation with this guy and he's, you know, he's open to and he's like well, I know you do these things. I probably won't get a chance to speak to somebody who's informed like this for a while. So it's like just give me kind of your elevator pitch, sort of thing. And I talked to him and I'm like okay, well, just think about this real quick.
Speaker 3:So in Protestantism you have a lot of family members who are Protestant. You have a lot of friends, people you love, who are Protestant. So in Protestantism, you have a lot of family members who are Protestant. You have a lot of friends, people you love, who are Protestant. A lot of them they're nice guys, right, and he's like, yeah, a lot of them, they have civil, like natural virtues, you know they're not bad people, right and he's like, yeah, I mean a lot of them follow the laws. Take care of't know a single saint, do you? And then he kind of like the wheels kind of turned.
Speaker 1:I'm like Protestants are not, and not just saints. Not just saints in that the Catholic Church canonized the person Like sanctity. This is always why I think the conversation with Orthodoxy is very different from Protestantism. It's because they understand holiness Like. Protestants have no concept of holiness whatsoever. And in their understanding you're saved and you can't lose your salvation. There's no reason to purposely do works to grow closer to God. Right and and especially during Lent, is a time where we reflect on that as Catholics. It's like good works will grow god's love in your heart. But there are some saints who are so much like christ, they have such so much of him in them that they're able to defy the laws of nature in some ways, right like you have, like levitating saints. You have saints that can perform these healings and miracles because they are so much like christ, because of their walk with god, that it it defies nature, brings supernature into things yeah, it gets kind of weird too because it's like christian, you'll know about this.
Speaker 2:But it's like when you look at, for instance, like the puritans, the puritans will write these, you know, 800 page books on like what Christians should think about, which is in a way pretty based, right, and it's just like heavy in exegete from scripture.
Speaker 2:But then on the side they're like they have all these like diaries and journals where they're like writing down their sins and they're like scrupulously looking like am I producing? Not am I, but it's like the Lord producing in my life some type of salvific work producing not am I, but it's like the Lord producing in my life some type of salvific work. And then you end with them all, all these accounts of them having like these terrifying, despairing deaths, and it's really sad because it's like obviously they're a soul number one, but then, number two, it's like you can get to the point where you can rightly recognize that salvation is a work of God. That is is true. But when you get to this point where your actions essentially are inconsequential, ultimately right, um, and they are, will just be, if you will just nothing more than the fruits of a saving faith or something like that, a fiducial faith, then it makes everything weird. It just makes everything weird.
Speaker 1:My friend.
Speaker 3:Oh God, I was going to say this is something that Gary Lagrange brings up when he's talking about, like the mystical life among Protestants and the other non Catholics, because, technically speaking, any amount of sanctifying grace virtually contains the entire mystical life. So if you have somebody who is outside of the visible bounds of the church, they have, you know, they're invincibly ignorant of their errors. They have sanctifying grace, like this person has. They have the seeds of the mystical life. But the those sanctifying means of the Catholic church, the external, especially the external direction of the Catholic Church's teaching, is so intimately bound up with the growth of the spiritual life that they just do not have the tools to get any further. So you have people, you have a lot of these authors who you read, and they're, you know, pastors, writing these massive exegetical treatises their entire lives, these polemical treatises against Rome, even these spiritual works. And there you can see from a perspective of Catholic, ascetical and mystical theology. You can see that these people are still, if anything you know, in the purgative way or maybe even just building, you know, natural virtue and something that even you know Aristotle could reach in his teaching. They're not getting into the mystical life of the Catholic Church, which you see especially through the teaching of St Ignatius. You see, this is brought straight to the layman in our traditional teaching. Like any layman out there can become a saint, you just have to will it sort of thing.
Speaker 3:But in Protestantism, even their you know their clerics, even their, their experts, they're not reaching these the same sort of level that you see in in our hagiographies. They think our hagiographies, they think the displays of sanctity are insane. You know, I've read what a lot of them say. They're like this is just psychosis. You know it's a psychosisosis like who would, who would be, you know, to get away from lust, you know who would be jumping in the brambles. Or you know, you lost your mind doing all this, uh, questionable stuff. It's crazy, but it's like, you know, this actually just seems like the way that a lot of us, the early fathers and a lot of uh, you know saints and sacred scripture act, that they despise the world which they don't despise the world.
Speaker 1:My friend bobby has a thesis where he says protestantism is basically just judaism. Right, so like the jews, they get circumcised and they can't lose their children of god. Like, that's it. They're the chosen people. If you get circumcised, you're in the covenant where protestants say, like a magic spell, and it's's like, I have accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior and that's it, you can't lose your salvation. But it's like essentially the same thing. It's not about like you know, you, you can't. You can't be kicked out of the covenant once you're saved. But the I remember reading before, like as I cause when I first revert, I actually come back in through Protestantism. So like, it comes through, like Protestant radio.
Speaker 1:And I read a book by Andrew Murray about remaining in Christ. Andrew Murray, I guess, is like a you know a writer in the Middle Ages after the Reformation, and he's just constantly talking about remaining in Christ. Remaining in Christ Because Jesus in John's Gospel in the upper room says remaining in Christ, because Jesus in John's gospel at the uh in the upper room says remain in me, if you remain in me, I will remain in you. And he, like he does this whole exegesis on that whole passage and the whole book is about that and it really is impossible to remain in Christ like that, without the Eucharist, like that is the way that happens. So it is this. It's just there's no depth to any of it. There's not a real depth to any of it, it's all just. There's this beautiful scene in I posted it recently. There's a movie, francesco. It has Mickey Rourke play St Francis of Assisi and he's.
Speaker 1:It doesn't make him out to be like a hippie at all, he's just like, like, really just struck by the gospel, and he goes and he lives a life of poverty, right, and he's filthy and he's living in poverty and his friends are just his. Oh, I'm finished. His friends are just so struck by the life he's living that they come to him and they're like what is going on with you? Like why, why, why are you doing this? And he picks up the gospel and he goes uh, when you go, uh, take off your sandals, bring with you no tunic, nothing. And he reads that one line where it says take off your sandals. And he just looks at his friends and he takes off his sandals and he goes and walks around barefoot.
Speaker 1:It's like there's something about he's so captivated by what he's reading in the gospel that he just goes and does it. And it's otherworldly, man, I'm telling you. There's one scene in this movie is otherworldly where you just see how some of the saints are just given so much grace that they could read one line in the gospel and it just transforms their entire life. You know, that's awesome, where protestants, I feel like, don't even like they read the gospel and then the rest of their life is spent in the epistles trying to work out so true so true so they read the gospel once and then the bible is you'll never hear one of the synoptics never, so they they'll.
Speaker 3:So they read the gospel once and then the bible is you'll never hear one of the synoptics?
Speaker 1:never so they they'll. So they read the gospel once and then the rest of their lives are spent in paul trying to work out their theology out of six or seven verses. And they'll read the rest of the epistles, but it all comes down to these six or seven, or, if it's, like when you're, when they're reading the pauline epistles, it's always well one, it's always the pa Pauline epistles, it's always well, one, it's always the Pauline epistles and two it's always the first half of the Pauline epistles, not the second half of the Pauline epistles Exactly.
Speaker 3:Ask them about Romans. You know three, Romans eight. You know they'll know about that but they'll not be able to tell you about, like, romans 14 or something like that.
Speaker 1:Or 9, 10, 11, which are my favorite, or something like that, or 9, 10 11, which are my favorite.
Speaker 2:I love galatians 2 and galatians 3, but when you get around to galatians 5, about like, if you do these things, you shall not inherit the kingdom of god, that's not about christians, that's just to unbelievers.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, it's like it's crazy to me because a lot of my protestant family members it's so hard to get them out of this mindset. It was so hard for me to get out of this mindset. A lot, lot of people don't understand, especially like cradle Catholics. They don't understand the pastoral difficulties around the preaching on justification, because the way that I grew up it was like justification was everything, it was all we talked about. It shaped the way in which we talk about everything. So it's like my family is very much bound up in that. And it's like you have family members who would identify as Christians but they engage in what St Paul describes as those sins to which you cannot inherit the kingdom of God. You ask them, it's like, hey, you're fornicating or whatever, you're doing this or you're doing that, like how, how you, uh, inherit the kingdom of god. And they're like, well, all sins are equal. And you know, don't you sin? You know don't you do these things. And it's like, okay, well, who is imposing some sort of no, they make an exception.
Speaker 1:They make an exception for two homosexuality and being catholic.
Speaker 3:Those are the only two unforgivable sins.
Speaker 1:Even Ephesians. They'll point out how. In Ephesians it says you are saved by grace, through faith. But the book of Ephesians is the most Catholic book you could ever read. It is Paul laying out his ecclesiology thoroughly about how all things are gathered into one in Christ and the body of Christ is the church. Like it is the most thoroughly Catholic epistle there is. I mean, I don't know how they can read that and miss it.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing I mean what they'll do is, I mean, each group's going to be different, but it's like I think I have the benefit at least of us three is that my family comes from a hardcore, like New Apostolic, reformation, charismatic world. So it's like what they will do is they won't. They will be like, yeah, christian, your reform thought you know that was good for a time, but you know you didn't have the Holy Spirit, spirit and so, and so what, so, what? So they're kind of like actually it's funny I kind of joke like a lot of charismatics in some areas not everywhere, but like are kind of crypto catholic in the sense that they're like, yeah, our apostles and prophets have like the same authority as the og apostles and prophets and we're receiving new revelation today. That's bad, obviously, but we're receiving new revelation today and I found, at least in my experience, they were all hyper antinomians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was really really bad. So I was, I was this one kid, I was this kid who is, you know, calvinistic in a family of antinomians and I would just be sitting there thinking like, okay, guys, you know, like the ten commandments, right, that's like a big thing. And they would just say, I mean like they'd look at a six-year-old Do you know what Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery is? Oh no, well, see, there you go. Why teach the children? That's an exact story that I went through. There's just this insane hyper-emotional religion that they've created.
Speaker 3:But it's those people experience. It's so beautiful being able to evangelize them, because I've talked with a lot of these people before and the genuine ones, like the, the, not the ones who are, you know, just coomers or whatever, but like the genuine ones who are, you know, they understand, they kind of have like this notion of, okay, this is kind of what the mystical life is and these are what the gratuitously given graces are. These are the graces of, you know, like miracles and prophecies and healings and things like that, and it's like, well, actually, those are, those are good intuitions you have, and it's actually the Catholic church which is going to provide kind of what you're catching there in the critique that you're having, I can teach you intellectual stuff and we have the best of the intellectual stuff christian.
Speaker 2:I can teach you right now how to speak in tongues. You just need to pay five hundred dollars and then I can teach you how to speak in tongues what we realized saturday is that everybody, uh, creates a jesus in their own image, right?
Speaker 1:so I have a problem with this, I have a problem with this, I have a problem with. So I have a problem with this, I have a problem with this, I have a problem with this, I have a problem with this. So everybody that protests protests the Catholic church. What you're doing is you're saying I don't want to accept Jesus on the terms he gave me. And I don't think they do it consciously, like I don't think they're obviously not doing it consciously, but in the, in the things they're objecting to, what they're actually saying is I don't want Jesus the way he presents himself. I want Jesus in a way I can accept him. So they created Jesus in their own image, who's comfortable and doesn't put like real demands on them.
Speaker 1:You know, it's always, always comes down to well, I'm a good person and I believe in Jesus. What it comes down to, and I don't care which denomination it is, I'm a good person and I believe in Jesus and I'm going to heaven, regardless of. You know, that's what the five solas comes down to. It's like oh, we can have ecumenical outreach with all these different Christians, even though we fundamentally disagree with all these doctrines. So we should believe these five, which is essentially. I believe in Jesus and I'm doing my best to be a good person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, particular indifferentism is one heck of a drug, but I mean it's just, ultimately it's. I'm reminded of Psalm 49, or Psalm 50, depending on your translation, but where the Lord says you have made me out to be like one of you and you gone out like a whoring, away with adulterers, you've gone off with thieves, you've done all of this actions of wickedness, and it's like is this not the og sin, if you will, of the jews, because it's like they made a god into their own image and and then it's like when god himself actually shows up, you know, then it's crucifixion time, but it it's like how many people, as St Paul says, you know, profess that they know him, but by their works they deny him.
Speaker 2:Like so many people would just rather go on creating a God who's you know lovey-dovey. Or, on the opposite extreme, there's like groups out there who make God where he has no love Like I fell into that a lot before I became Catholic where you know God is just totally a judge and you know, kind of going through St Augustine's despair, it's like how could God, who's perfect, love me? Who's you know absolutely wretched, you know, so it's. It's very sad.
Speaker 1:All right, so now let's get into uh, before we wrap it. Catholic Inc.
Speaker 3:So, speaking of Jews, speaking of Jews, why do?
Speaker 1:you OK. So do you do you OK? Well, let's talk about the Jews. Do you think that is going to be a preeminent issue going forward in the church?
Speaker 3:Yes, I do too.
Speaker 1:I have. I have this. I see all the stuff going on and I just think it is going to be the preeminent issue, which is, I think, why people are hoping a guy like Pete Zabala gets in, because he's at least seen the atrocities on the ground over there. And it's not just you know, because I don't, I don't, I don't know, man, I see the way some, I see the way Catholic Inc is handling this and I'm just like what the hell are you guys doing? Like I don't, I don't get what you guys are doing. It's. It's crazy. And they're all lining up with like the same issues. And it's weird. It happened with Daniel O'Connor with his alien thesis. It's evolution it his alien thesis, it's evolution.
Speaker 3:It's um, like all these uh, all these weird issues are lining up and they all seem to come down to the shibboleth. It's uh, the shibboleth um story from the book of judges to where um, the a certain uh army that israel was fighting because their local dialect they couldn't pronounce the word shibboleth. So if local dialect they couldn't pronounce the word Shibboleth, so if you couldn't pronounce the word Shibboleth, then they'd kill you. So a lot of these issues. They're not really that important in themselves, but if you can't say Shibboleth, then you're done, for they kind of have this notion of what you are and they don't want anything to do with you.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Yeah, I think everybody I I see what they're doing and I see they're bringing certain people up and I feel like the people that they're bringing up and like making the next round of apologists and all that stuff, agree with them on everything and they're just happy to be part of the team and I just I'm, I don't know. I think this is going to end up. I don't know, I think this is going to end up. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a. It's both a theological issue and it's a um, uh, like a political issue. It's all wrapped in one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you can't get away from it. I was about to say like, go on to any any like comment section of a YouTube video and you're going to see some someone talking about this. I mean, you're not going to escape it. Part of it, part of it. I think it's a multifaceted issue.
Speaker 2:You have donors, right. You have kind of some of the ambiguities in the post-conciliar world of, like, how do we interpret this with, you know, in light of everything, certain narratives, right, and then, when you take all this together would say, look at the way gen z is trading this issue, right. Gen z is openly saying like let's question it all, let's actually get into it. I mean like I think, for as an example, it's like I mean a lot of americans are talking about things like ethno-nationalism for the first time, which it's like even just a decade ago would have been so taboo, and it's like it's still kind of taboo, but it's pushing further and further to where in a couple of years it's not going to be, and so it's like we have to deal with this question.
Speaker 1:So the, the, the, the thing with like, especially with like. Did you, did you catch any of our conversation with Father Maudsley Christian? No, okay, so yeah, him bringing up the actual events of that horrible thing, Right, and we were talking last time you were on. We were like you know, I don't know if that's the best way to go about it, cause you kind of get shut out of the conversation the way you. You know you're talking about that and there's ways to bring people over, but the way he explained it was like if the if this event is he didn't say it like this.
Speaker 1:This is what I took from it If this event didn't happen like they said and it is a lie you think of the torment the German people put themselves through. It ruined an entire, it destroyed an entire, more than a generation, three generations of young men, the damage that it did to them afterward. And if it's a lie, that's a man you think about how crazy that is. But going back to the story of all these narratives, I see the way that they're approaching it and they're just labeling people psychopath, labeling people nutcase. It's like don't tell me I'm a nut case because I question the moon landing. Like how can I not question it, like elon musk has been trying for the past 20 years to get back to the moon and he can't get back to the moon. And this is 75 years later and we have much better technology, like clearly something is going on.
Speaker 3:You need, you need the, you need the black women to do the math for you, to figure out how to get there.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's what it is.
Speaker 3:Yes, our black queens have been impressed too long. We can't get any of them to do the human calculator work, it's so true.
Speaker 1:So to call me a nutcase, because I don't like that, they're not even attempting to really address these issues and they're going to lose, it just backfires.
Speaker 3:It backfires on them. I mean that's just a horrible message. It was like, for example, I was talking to a actually a Dominican priest recently. It was like such a. It was such a like a silly conversation, but I think it was important to highlight. There was like a statement that I can't remember the the specific guy's name, but he made it like oh, if you think using the word retarded is okay, then you're not pro-life.
Speaker 1:Oh, what's his name. He runs the pillar over there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he runs the pillar, but I responded to that. I'm like, father, you're approvingly commenting on this. It's like what's what's wrong with you? I mean, it's like sure, I, I I respect people who don't think that you should use certain terms, certain language, like I think this is a, uh, definitely a point of discussion and I think that you could, um, you know, uh, we, we could have a conversation about it. But the way in which a lot of the people who think this type of language is okay, the way that they were being presented, is just like very dismissive. It's very much, you know, acting like you know. You're literally like a pro-choice activist. If you think that this language is okay and it's like, father, how are you supposed to, by having this dismissive attitude towards people who are actually genuine about this, like, hey, because of the conventionality of language, you know things like that. I just don't see this, and most people don't use this term, you know, in this derogatory way.
Speaker 1:You would never say it to a person who's handicapped. Ever, under any circumstance, would you say it to a person, and the only way they're going to get offended is if somebody tells them to be offended by it.
Speaker 3:Exactly and I think that, if you know, if you would have approached it in a in a way that was, you know, normal and rather than just being very accusatory, I think, like you know, it's up in the air, like you could probably convince me that maybe I shouldn't use language like that, especially not in public, but the way in which they approached it it's like's like okay, you are supposed to be as a priest, you're supposed to be in many ways, like a leader and guide of young men in catholic action. You're not doing that. You're more concerned about tone, policing, about the word retard, and it's, it's completely, uh, like flip no person.
Speaker 1:What you're saying is so freaking important here. Right, like these are, these are supposed to be fathers to these young men that everybody just want, like we're, I mean, if the church doesn't grapple with how they're going to handle the young men in the church, like there's a reason that people are watching your show by the thousands and watching our show by the thousands and they're no longer watching the other things like that that. We had the conference I met you at in North Carolina. Right, I got canceled from that conference because I was misogynistic, because I talk a certain way about women, sarcastically, like, sarcastically, like I don't actually demean women, I don't.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like I'm making jokes and I get canceled from that conference because I'm anti-Semitic and misogynistic. And it's like the priest who canceled me. I wanted to grab him while I was there and just be like father, like you see all these young men here, they came to see me. The older men, they're in your diocese, like the old guys that were at that conference. They're the local guys who go to your parish and they're coming for the conference. All of the guys that are here that are under 45 are here because me and Rob are here. They didn't come for anybody else. So you're going to cancel my talk, but forget just the 45 guys that came there.
Speaker 1:There was an entire generation of young men who thought who would think what I was saying was funny, and they're men that need to be spoken to and taught the faith and you, just you, you guys, don't want anything to do with them like you just want to write them off like they're. You can't see the way like we are not in that time anymore. I don't. I was so tempted to respond to jd's tweet with because jd has handicapped kids and I wanted to say um, jd's kids are lovely. Sadly, their father is retarded.
Speaker 3:I wanted to tweet that so bad but I didn't because I didn't I see he takes the issue extremely seriously. I'm sure he's a wonderful guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3:I prefer to try to think better of people that don't like me, because I think that's important for my own sanity and my own sanctification.
Speaker 3:But really, if you want to discipline, I do think there is a lot of leeway for discipline among the ways in which young men think. I think there are seriously problematic points. But if you're going to approach this in a way of dismissiveness, just like assuming, like, oh, you think this way, like you must be thinking this way, in bad faith In a lot of ways, you know, no, I mean, we're thinking, we think this and even if we're erring, it's erring in good faith. So like you ought to be, you know, as a loving father, you know here to correct us If you think what we're doing is so terrible, you know, even even like material sins disposed towards bad acts, so like you should be here to correct us. You should be zealous towards that, and you know, approaching it in this, in this way, is just all their talk of pastoral nonsense, right like if I was a homosexual, you would be a lot nicer to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy, man, like these are young guys who are clearly like fed up with the lot they've been handed because the older generation has completely abandoned us. Like you, look at the polls from Canada and their and their election yesterday, it's completely nuts. Like the older generation just does not have an ounce of concern for what they're handing on to the next generation. It's like they just want their endless cruises, they want their house in Florida and they don't give a crap if housing is affordable for the next generation. They don't care about anything but themselves.
Speaker 3:They'll reverse mortgage their house. We'll talk about that. Oh my gosh man.
Speaker 1:I forgot? I told you about that. This generation is so narcissistic and insane, but they just don't care about the younger generation. And it's like these are young guys that are going to snap. Like they're going to snap. They're not finding girls, they're not going to get married, they can't buy houses, they can't get good jobs Like. What do you think is going to happen? There's going to be a freaking civil war if they don't do something.
Speaker 3:I know this is, this is like a breeding ground of some pretty dark things. Yeah, and I've told, I've told my parents about that. I'm like, hey, you know, mom and dad, how many, how many like unironic or even like ironic, like national socialists, you know, and they're like, oh never. And I'm like, well, yeah, I know quite a few actually, and that's normal. You know, you have these Hitler edits on TikTok getting a million likes.
Speaker 3:It's like there is this sort of thing going down the line and unless you actually treat this, you know, in a pastoral way, that is going to be, you know, constructive. Looking at what are those good, you know what are those goods that they're tending towards and in many ways you know they're having these corrupted goods. What is the way in which we can helpfully and healthfully point them in the right direction, correcting them in a way that is pastoral, in a way that's meant for the salvation of their souls, not virtue signaling in front of other people? What are the ways in which you can healthfully point this out? They're not asking those questions of themselves. They are much more apt to say you know, how do we treat homosexuals? How do we treat these women who are divorced? How do we treat? You know these different groups of people, and it's like, well, how about like the young white men? How about me? How about my children? How about my family?
Speaker 3:It's because how about, like, what am I supposed to do? I mean, I don't have anything that my grandparents had. I mean my grandparents I've mentioned this before on the show. My grandparents built a city. They built Baltimore. They were steel workers. They had nice jobs, they had families they could support. That was completely stripped away from them. And now I have to move in this perpetual way away from the cities. So how about us? Are you going to speak to our issues? And now I have to move in this perpetual way away from the cities. So how about? How about us? You know, are you going to speak to our issues? And Trump could have been somebody like that, but unfortunately, you know, he went about the broad tent way. I almost see no, no priests and nobody in the Catholic Inc who is, um, you know, speaking to this and it's, it's fruitful for being able to actually help people. It's actually like something useful you could talk about rather than endlessly talking about. You know, liberal TikToks or?
Speaker 3:whatever else you want to talk about.
Speaker 2:Well, it's and this is the sad thing when one of us does something, they freak out, yeah, like, if you remember it's like, like the it's. It's a good thing that you see a lot of guys going back and they're trying to I mean to be a little bit meme-ish here but like resourcing or doing a full resource of, like actual Catholic sources and you're seeing, as a result of this, like I mean, you and I talked about it, all three of us Mr Horn's video came out about, you know, catholic fundamentalism. It's like there were some justifying critiques in there and then there was just a bunch of these like insane critiques that kind of went along with it. But it's ultimately because I think a lot of people in Catholic Inc are more informed by secular media than like what we see online, where it's just organic people having conversation.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's secular media.
Speaker 2:I really do think these guys are trapped to putting a very specific message because of donors of it. It's like they're defending themselves from like a secular world and so they're like okay, let's expend all of our time and energy and finance into you. Know, like whenever we had our senator to synodality questionnaire right here in texas, all of the questions were about how can we be more inclusive to minorities and women.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was it. How about us? How about your? How about your people?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think on the ground level it really was like a lot of concern, I think, like the people themselves were like we're worried about our Latin mass, we're worried about our young people, but I don't think. I think they just ignored all that stuff.
Speaker 2:But I mean even just for. I mean this is the insane thing. It's like America has got to the point where it's like its own founding stock are just like these weird ostracized.
Speaker 1:You're right about like the synod. Specifically, it was like they, they, they made that synod, making it like they were. They wanted to listen to young people. They did not listen to young people whatsoever. They listened to the LGBT groups. They listened to the. They listened to the progressive messages from their age. Yeah, they, that's what it was. It was like the youth in their age were concerned about things.
Speaker 3:The youth in our age don't give a crap about this stuff like yeah, that's something that ick said, which is why I just love him so much. He's like he looked at the other cardinals and he's like stop talking about woman's ordination. Nobody's cared about woman's ordination for 70 years. This was like a 1960s discussion. Nobody in the church cares about this. They want to come here, they want to pray, they want to, you know, learn. That's what they want. They don't care about woman's ordination. They don't care about all crazy. What do you guys talk? He's like looking at his fellow bishops. He's like this is madness, is madness. Why are you guys bringing this up over and over again? This is just spiritually dead. This is not fruitful at all for people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're going to lose, Dude. It's why so many young guys are going to orthodoxy. Man, it's like one of the saddest freaking things I really. Oh God, please, man, please, let this freaking conclave do something of value. Like they are still talking about the revolution from the sixties. These guys, it's so nuts. Nobody, nobody young, gives a crap about this stuff anymore. Like I saw an article today, like they're canceling pride events all over and it's like, yeah, the gays could have been happy if they just stopped the gay marriage, but they had to go and cut kids peckers off and now everybody turns on them and nobody wants anything to do with this. But the younger generation does not care about that, except for the brainwashed ones who are, you know, they fell full I'm sure those people are going to mass every sunday.
Speaker 2:I only know, I only know one young catholic who's interested in trans issues and they happen to be a practicing homosexual. But like that, that's literally. That's literally it. Look at what young men are talking about right now. A lot of it's based, a lot of it's kind of going a little far right, so they need to be tempered by grace. But it's like the way I keep telling my parents all the time the wave that is coming into US politics, the older generation, is just not ready to a young guy like I've had candid conversations with young politicians who aren't even like really in our spheres there's not.
Speaker 3:They're not Catholic. And you talk to them and I'm like having genuine conversations about them, about like blasphemy laws, anti-isotomy laws, like anti-adultery laws, and I have a candid conversation with them and they're like, oh yeah, I see, even, even if they don't entirely end up agreeing with me, I'm like, oh yeah, I see that perspective, like I think we, we should be able to have more conversations about this. I think we should tolerate this within our movement. If I talk to anybody over the age of 40, they would think I'm crazy, they would think I'm like Hitler If I, if I bring up these things.
Speaker 1:Dude, I'm telling you, I try to talk about it with even I tried talking about my father last time but like it's the older generation, they just they're not ready for a lot of these conversations. They're just going to get left behind, you know, and it's people I like too. Like that's why I brought it up, because I was like very irked by Eric Sammons saying that about Candace Owens. And it's like you, because, yeah, candace gets a little nutty sometimes. Yeah, like don't just say someone's a nut job because of something, like get into why they're thinking that, they, they think that and like they brush off catholics who are like, uh, you know the evolution thing doesn't? You know I'm not buying it and they write them off as as fundamentalists. We got rid of this fundamentalism with our catholicism. You know I'm not buying it. And they write them off as as fundamentalists. We got rid of this fundamentalism with our catholicism. You know, the council saved us from all that ancient stuff.
Speaker 1:But it's like, yeah, young people are seeing, I hope, like it's just a dead end to even go down that road, like it's just I don't know I well like what?
Speaker 2:what future does it promise me? It's like I'm single right and it's like, oh, what are your dreams, nick? I hope to one day to be able to buy a house Like that is like the zenith right there. And the fact that that seems like a distant reality, that could not be, is quite telling. And I'm not the only one. There's literally millions and millions and millions of young men in america and in western europe who are in the same situation. So this is why it genuinely will be interesting when I'm an old man to like look back and say, okay, like, was it legit, gen z, by god's grace, that like saved western europe and america in Europe and America.
Speaker 3:It's a sort of question as well as like we are in such a providential and I think about this a lot it's like we have to become men of providence, because when you have times like this, you have to take advantage of it. You know, we have people who are willing, people who are able. Like are you? Other people are not stepping up. You know, are you going to be a man of providence and to be able to take this energy and be able to cultivate it for the spreading of Christ's message on earth? Are you going to be able to do Catholic action in any time period that you've been given?
Speaker 3:Because the guys 30, 40, 50 years ago, who were holding down the fort, those people, they didn't have a chance of a sort of immediate victory. They didn't have the people, they didn't have the energy For them. It was like keeping the coals. Now we got like a pile of tinder right there and are you going to be the type of person to take the coals that have been passed down to you and put it on the pile of tinder and actually get the fire going? Are you going to be that type of person or are you going to be a coward. Are you going to be the type of person who are going to try to stand back and keep the status quo and to moderate it, to give quarter to the world? Are you going to be that type of person and I think for a lot of people in our age group, I've seen the type of people who stand up. I've seen those people and all they get is criticism.
Speaker 3:All they get is paul, said nick needs to date a pastor's daughter and take her on a 13-hour cross-country drive to convert no, no you cannot do this nick. You know what the moral is about driving with women. You know you cannot do this nick. You know what the moralists say about driving with women. You know you cannot drive excessively with women.
Speaker 2:That's company keeping nick, you cannot I know I fully agree, plus, the fact is is that if I get sleepy she'd have to drive and then I'd probably never wake up. So that's suicide.
Speaker 1:You can't do that um, somebody, somebody said so it's the church's fault that I can't find a girlfriend. No, but it actually kind of is in a way, because the church is focused on all these stupid issues that don't matter instead of cultivating communities at the parish level, where you should be able to meet your future wife at your parish, but because they're not attracting young men and young women and they're catering to the boomers on the average parish level, that's part of the issue.
Speaker 3:I think you have to get an e-girl, Nick.
Speaker 2:You parish level, that's part of the issue.
Speaker 3:I think, yeah, you have to get an e-girl nick.
Speaker 2:You got to convert an e-girl. So true, so true. I I might have found someone the other day.
Speaker 1:Actually, I'm not gonna lie I might have found someone, but I'll, uh, I'll tell you guys after the show. I think, uh, you guys all need to go and hit one of those steubenville friday night street fairs and just take a novus auto check and make her trad.
Speaker 2:That's the only way. There's no women at the Latin.
Speaker 1:That's what you're talking about the only women who are married and have 10 children. Alright, we're going to have to wrap this. I've got to get up in the morning, dude. This was a fun show man. Yeah, christian, I always love having you on. We'll do more of these as the conclave approaches. Definitely once we see white smoke, we gotta, we gotta do another.
Speaker 3:yeah I'm telling you, I'm, I'm already planning for once the white smoke goes. I've told my editor I'm like I'll have, you know, like three white monsters in the in the fridge, immediately once the I, I will have my celebratory meal, I'll sing the te deum, but once, once the white smoke comes up, the work begins.
Speaker 1:You know I need to I'm gonna take all that if I see white smoke, I'm gonna take that next day off and I'm going to try and jump on other people's shows. I'm gonna. I wanna, I did this is I'll be, I'll be, you'll.
Speaker 3:I'll have like an hour and a half video already prepared by the time you wake up.
Speaker 1:All right, let's do it. Yeah, guys, this is a fun time to be Catholic man. This is an exciting time. We got something happening on the horizon. We will see as it comes closer. I don't know what we're doing Thursday night yet, so we will see all of you guys then. This was fun, all right. You guys want to promote anything? Well, everybody's probably watching on Christian's channel.
Speaker 3:Go subscribe to. I shut it off. I am not a turncoat. I forced everyone to get locals.
Speaker 1:Look at you, good man.
Speaker 2:All right, the only thing you guys already probably know, but I'm just doing my manualist series right now over. We're starting on Thursday, yeah, yeah, starting ascetical and mystical theology. So people are wanting to figure out how to uh pursue some of the stuff we've actually been talking about in here. Definitely go and check that out and uh, yeah, hopefully we'll actually uh, christian, I'll do a day revelazioni series with his friend ethan, because that that actually be pretty fun. That would be fun yeah, we need.
Speaker 1:we need our Catholic nerds. You guys got a nerd out for the rest of us, so um yeah, for me answers.
Speaker 3:You know that's my, that's my YouTube. Yeah, if anybody's interested in the conclave stuff, I they throw us a curveball and it's somebody I don't know anything about and that'll be a rough night. But yeah, keep tabs. I also have been doing a lot of research on and I want to talk about this next time once we get closer to the conclave about some of the traditional spiritual practices during and immediately before the conclave, like the type of prayers that are suggested. Other types of spiritual practices during and meeting the conclave, like the type of prayers that are suggested. Other types of spiritual practices, so you can spiritually unite yourself with Holy Mother Church as she goes through a very rough period. I think it's going to be a rough conclave.
Speaker 1:I do too. Also, I forgot I have Bishop Strickland coming on. Really, do you? Yeah, I don't know what day yet, but Bishop Strickland, I haven't even announced that.
Speaker 2:And I have to bust out the tie For the second time.
Speaker 1:Those of you on Locals, you get a little sneak peek. We will be having Bishop Strickland on and Father Charles Murr. Also, I might want to get into the mysterious Death of John Paul. I with him. Alright, interesting. Alright, guys. We'll see you guys next time. I'm ending this thing. Let's see. Thank you.
