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Jan. 15, 2023 - The Ben Shapiro Show
54:26
Why Did The Catholic Church Remove This Priest?
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When I see the Democrat Party destroying life, destroying religious freedom, destroying America, destroying our history, our memory, our symbols, when the church stands up and points with a very clear finger, this is evil.
That's not the church being political.
That's the church being the church.
At the end of 2022, the outlet Catholic News Agency obtained a statement from the Vatican Ambassador to the United States.
In that statement, sent out December 13th, the Archbishop informed all U.S.
bishops that Fr.
Frank Pavone was officially dismissed from the Catholic Church with no opportunity to appeal.
Father Pavone is a priest, an anti-abortion activist, as the director of Priests for Life, a prominent Catholic ministry focused on ending abortion.
Through the years, he has at times been considered a contentious faith leader, most notably for putting an aborted baby on an altar to show the reality of abortion.
Another point of friction with the church is that Father Pavone was a religious advisor to President Trump and a very outspoken supporter of the president as candidate and as president because of his commitment to limiting abortion in the country and protecting pre-born children.
The recent Archbishop's statement was vague, though, on which actions actually resulted in Fr.
Frank's defrocking, and the Father's past communications with the Vatican haven't been clear either.
In our episode, Fr.
Frank Pavone explains his struggles with his bishop over the years that ultimately led to being kicked out of the Church.
We'll also discuss differences between Catholicism and Judaism, just how much freedom priests have to wade into politics, and if Democrats can be good Catholics.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show, Sunday special.
A reminder, some of this conversation at the end will be exclusively for our Daily Wire Plus members.
If you're not a member yet, click the link at the top of this episode's description to get the full conversation with Father Pavone and with every one of our awesome guests.
Father Pavone, thanks so much for joining the show.
Hey, Ben, good to be with you.
Thanks for having me.
So why don't we start with the obvious.
Major controversy in November of 2022.
Why don't you describe what went down in November of 2022?
I've never seen anything quite like it with regard to your relationship with the Vatican.
Well, this is really the result of a 21-year battle.
I started leading Priests for Life full-time 30 years ago, Ben, and it's become, within the Catholic community, the largest organization focused on ending abortion.
Ending abortion, obviously, is a priority for the Church.
Many support us, including in the hierarchy, including in the Vatican.
And yet some were annoyed.
You know, we were poking their conscience a little bit, maybe embarrassing them because we were doing the kind of things that a lot of people want to see their pastors and their bishops doing, but they're not doing.
So they come and support us instead.
And a lot of the bishops don't like that.
So for 21 years, various among them have been trying to hinder my work.
And it's a long, long story that we've documented online.
But now they've taken the radical step of saying, you can't be a priest anymore.
Now, you don't throw somebody out of the priesthood without very serious reasons, as you can well understand.
Anybody, Catholic or not, can understand.
You've got to have a serious reason to do that.
And this has simply been a long persecution for the fact that I have been very, very focused on abortion.
I have not been afraid to speak into the world of politics and saying, you know, we've got to elect public servants who know the difference between serving the public and killing the public.
And getting involved politically, it's not something that is out of line for the church to do.
We've got to speak the moral truth into the political arena.
But this is what it's resulted in, in the current climate we have in the church.
Hey, you can't be a priest anymore.
So, what was the articulated reason for saying that you couldn't be a priest anymore?
So, obviously, you believe that it was—do you think it was more an attitudinal thing?
Like, your attitude was too brash for them?
Or was it a matter of actual doctrine that was being violated?
What was the—did they even give you a reason as to why they kicked you out?
Their reasons have shifted over these 21 years.
It's always been something else.
It's always been a shifting goalpost.
You know, they said at certain points, well, we just want to help you, you know, help your ministry to function well.
We have questions, you know, about your finances.
Well, finances.
We've always sent them clean, independent audits every year.
Even the Vatican looked at our finances and said, hey, everything's A-OK.
So it's like, Okay, when one question is settled, then they bring up a different concern.
And in the latest, they actually said I had blasphemous communications on social media.
Now, I'm not aware of having... I'm a sinner like everybody else.
I've got a lot of faults.
I'm honestly not aware of any blasphemy that I've committed.
And, and yet, you know, they make up these things.
Like one time they said, they said, oh, well, you said, you said on one of your broadcasts that you would not forgive a person from, for voting Democrat if they came to you in confession.
Well, I said, hey, listen, the voting booth is not a sin-free zone.
You could sin in the voting booth.
But I said, when a person repents, you give them forgiveness.
That's the Catholic teaching.
That's what we were taught in the seminary.
I said, if you don't repent, we can't give you absolution.
And they turn it into, oh, well, you said, you know, you're not going to forgive people.
And it's silly things like this, Ben, utterly silly things.
The other thing they keep saying to me, oh, you're being disobedient, you're being disobedient.
Yeah, well, over 21 years, various bishops have tried to say to me, you can't save babies.
We run the largest ministry in the world for healing people after abortion.
Somebody experiences the wounds of abortion, they want to come to their pastor, find forgiveness.
We equip the churches to do that.
We run these healing retreats.
Rachel's Vineyard, right, is the umbrella group.
That's part of our ministry.
And so, if they say to me, you can't do this, or they want to restrict me from doing this, my question is, okay, Why?
Shouldn't there be a reason?
I mean, obedience isn't like, oh, just because I said so.
And so in the dialogue over that, over these years, tension has developed.
When they've given me a specific assignment, I've been obedient.
I've been cooperative.
And even now, you see, I'm not dressed in my priest collar because if they're saying, well, you can't present yourself as a priest, I'm not going to rebel against that.
I'm going to work through the systems that the church provides to get reinstated.
But if the question of obedience is, well, you can't save these babies' lives, ultimately it comes down to the question of conscience.
Obedience in any sphere of life never wipes away conscience.
And this is something very, very basic and simple.
If I see a child over there whose life is in danger and I want to go over and save him, Trespass laws fall by the wayside.
You know, all kinds of other things fall by the wayside because the saving of life takes priority.
And that's really been the nub of the problem.
For some reason, some of them don't want me focusing on abortion.
So when it came to the statement that it was your social media posts, your blasphemous social media posts, there was a lot of speculation about which particular posts were the ones in question.
It would be nice if they told me.
So they haven't articulated to you which post, which is kind of surprising considering that, again, there is a lot of speculation about one particular social media post in the lead up to the 2016 election in which you put an aborted baby on an altar.
Now, I'm totally ignorant in most facets of Catholic doctrine, as the yarmulke would suggest.
So what is the status of an altar?
What are the rules as far as what you can put on an altar?
What exactly would the blasphemy have been if you were going to steel man the argument and try and explain what they would say is wrong with it?
There are different kinds of altars.
The word has a very, very specific sense.
If you have a church, a recognized Catholic church, where the altar has to be consecrated by a bishop, okay, that is like the highest form of an altar.
What I did prior to the 2016 election is I did a series of seven videos in our office building of Priests for Life where we have a room that we call a chapel and a table that we call an altar.
But it's not in that category of, you know, an officially designated consecrated chapel or altar.
But those are technicalities, of course, and I think that what they were really doing and objecting to that had nothing to do with those technicalities.
But it had to do with the fact that—two things.
I was showing people what an abortion looks like, which wasn't the first time I had done.
I'd been doing it for decades, and they didn't complain before.
Secondly, that I was saying, here is a baby killed by abortion.
You, the voters, can protect babies like this by electing people willing to protect them.
I was making a very simple point and pointing out that, hey, as things stand now in American politics, the Democrat Party is not willing to protect them.
The Republican Party is.
So why is this complicated?
If tomorrow the parties swapped positions on abortion, My message would be exactly the same.
We have to elect people who are willing to protect these babies.
So they didn't like the politics of it.
We got a lot of positive feedback of people saying, hey, it's about time, you know, we ripped the veil off abortion.
And I've always been convinced of that, Ben, that in order, I say, you know, the American people will not reject abortion until they see abortion.
I've always been convinced of that.
I've always done it.
But just so happened at that time, before that election, they said, oh, we have to punish him for doing this.
But there was another thing going on behind the scenes.
And this tells part of the story, what I've been through these last 21 years.
A few weeks before I did that, I had said to this particular bishop in Amarillo, Texas, who has been the source of a lot of this unfair treatment, I said, I have another bishop favorable to my ministry who's willing to accept me.
Therefore, I am formally requesting, and I used all the proper procedures of the church, I'm formally requesting to leave your diocese and to join his.
Got no response.
And then, the response I got was, I'm punishing you for making this video.
Well, if a bishop issues a punishment like that, it makes the process of transferring to another diocese, it puts it on hold.
So I'm looking at this saying, yeah, I've done this kind of thing before, I haven't said a word, and now when I have an avenue to get out from under your oppressive authority, you put a roadblock in the way.
Seems to me that is what was really going on.
Well, how does the church draw these lines?
I mean, obviously, there's criminal lines.
You know, a priest commits a crime against a child or against a parishioner or something.
Right.
Clear cut.
Clear cut.
Obviously, everyone understands that's a line that's crossed.
How does the church draw lines in terms of, say, rhetoric?
The rhetoric is too extreme.
You've said something that's blasphemous.
And typically, I mean, in Judaism, blasphemous has, like, very specific connotations.
I mean, normally in religious communities, from what I understand, if you were to say, I assume, in the Catholic Church, Jesus is not divine, that would be blasphemous in the Catholic faith.
I'm not aware what would make it blasphemous to even put an aborted baby on a not consecrated altar as you talk about.
And so, this is the part where I'm wondering, are there any other situations that you're aware of where rhetoric alone, where the rhetoric is just, say, inflammatory or passionate, but doesn't actively contravene Catholic doctrine?
Has that ever been considered blasphemous?
Not blasphemous, but it has been considered reason for restricting the activity of priests.
Let me illustrate it this way.
We see in various dioceses, and for those that are not familiar, diocese is a geographical territory in the Catholic community.
It's overseen by a bishop, right?
And that bishop has responsibility for the priests that work in that geographic area.
Memos go out from the bishops to their priests, giving guidance at various times about various things.
The criteria of what you're saying about where does the church draw the lines, very subjective.
A bishop is king in his own domain, and you see the whole wide spectrum of the same situation being treated differently by different bishops, including the way they treat me.
Some of them are like cheering me on.
Hey, preach for life.
This is great.
Others, oh, we don't want you here.
And it's completely subjective.
But, in regard to the point about rhetoric, now these memos are coming out from various bishops, we've got some of them again catalogued on our site, where they're saying not just, you have to teach the official teaching of the church, obviously we're obliged to do that, but they're going way beyond that.
I have memos from these bishops where they're saying, you cannot make people angry.
You cannot be talking about things that divide the people of God.
Well then, what do you have to say about Jesus Christ, who got people so angry that they nailed him to a cross?
I mean, I don't understand it, and I don't see how we can even Abide by such guidance as that.
How can you carry out the duty that you freely agreed to to proclaim God's moral truth in our day and age and not get people angry?
How is that even possible to ask somebody to do that?
So in a second, I want to ask you about sort of the differences within various diocese with regard to the addressing of these issues.
Because it seems like some bishops are perfectly willing to address these issues and others seem very shy and retiring about addressing controversial issues.
I want to get to that in just one second.
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Alrighty, so let's talk about sort of the differences in diocese.
So first of all, how common is it to move from a diocese to a diocese?
Like you were suggesting that you were trying to move from one to another.
Is that a fairly commonly granted thing?
Yes, and it's granted for the good of the priest himself and or of the work that he's doing in service to the church.
And the church has always provided for this simply because The church recognizes that, hey, this is a family, and these are human beings, and there's going to be clashes, and some of them are going to be irresolvable.
So you allow the priest then to request to move from one diocese to another.
It's not an everyday thing, but it's common enough.
When it comes to the variation between the diocese in terms of how they address these issues, the variation seems incredibly wide, right?
Oh, very wide.
You see some bishops who will say, we don't want to give communion to, for example, politicians who claim they're Catholic, but then are in favor of same-sex marriage, transgenderism, abortion.
And then you'll see other bishops who'll say, well, no, no, no, it's totally fine.
You should be able to give communion to these people.
That seems like even more than a variation in rhetoric.
That seems like a pretty strong variation in terms of sort of legal application of bottom line And because there's that variation, things end up going down to the least common denominator.
I've spoken with a number of bishops who have been very, very strong on these issues.
Like, take, for example, someone like Biden.
You know, should he, claiming to be a Catholic, be able to receive communion?
And many bishops have said to me privately, no, of course he should not, and I would like to publicly prohibit him from doing so in my diocese.
And then this is what they go on to say.
But a lot of my brother bishops have politicians in their diocese who are just as bad, and if I go ahead and discipline Biden within my jurisdiction, and my brother bishop in his doesn't discipline an equally bad politician or Biden himself,
Then we're calling attention to division within the church and casting maybe my brother bishop in a negative light, and I don't want to do that.
So it all then ends up, you know, simmering down to the least common denominator, which ends up being do nothing, say nothing, But that hurts people.
You've got people out there that are making sacrifices every day to live their faith, whether they're Jewish, Protestant, Catholic.
When we're making sacrifices, we want to please God.
And that means we have to give certain things up.
That means we have to refrain from doing things we might otherwise want to do, or do things we don't like to do.
And we're paying a price, all of us who are trying to please God.
And then we look and we see these other people, they want all the benefits of being known as a Catholic.
And none of the sacrifices, or at least throwing some of the teachings out the window like Biden and Pelosi do.
That hurts people.
And these bishops who don't want to do anything aren't being sensitive enough to that.
These people are living with profound disappointment in the leadership of the church.
I mean, and this I think goes to a broader issue, and this is not just in Catholicism, it's true across mainline religions everywhere, is that what you're starting to see is that the only areas of these religions that are growing are places that actually are quite militant about their faith.
So in Judaism, which my own religion, obviously the only growing demographic in Judaism is the Orthodox.
Every other demographic in Judaism has been declining.
The same thing is true in the Catholic Church.
The same thing is true in Protestant communities.
Mainline Protestantism is having a serious problem with people dropping out, but more evangelical communities are growing.
So what do you think this says about religion overall and how it's weathering in the face of a secular frontal assault?
And what does it say about what leaders should be doing On issues of broad public concern, because it does seem like there are a lot of people who are running away from the fray in the hope that if they're conciliatory, that if they're nice, then more people will come to the church because they won't feel alienated.
Yeah, what it's showing is what the true heart of religion consists of.
If religion is institutionalized, then of course there are reasons for a certain amount of institutionalism.
They nevertheless have to be faithful to what the core is, which is that sacrificial relationship, that covenant relationship with God as they understand it.
And if that's not at the core, you know, for Christians we talk about, you know, do you have a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ or not?
Are you praying?
Are you repenting of sin?
Is it real to you?
Or is this just a club?
Is this just a business?
Is this just an institution?
And that's what's being purified in the dynamic that you just described very accurately.
Where do we find the real life in the various faiths today?
It's among the people who take God at His word, take Him seriously, treat it as a real relationship, and are willing to make the sacrifices that that entails.
Similarly, for leadership, I see a parallel between what's going on in the church and what's going on in American politics.
We see Donald Trump come along and he speaks in a way that American citizens are sitting there saying, hey, that's the way I talk about these issues around the kitchen table, including really getting worked up about something.
I want to know.
That my president gets worked up about the same things I do, you know, and or is happy about the same things I do.
And of course, he had one of the most transparent administration with the tweets and all the time.
I mean, you knew what he was thinking and feeling.
And I think that really that that that helps the American people.
So.
He said things that the people were thinking and feeling, they knew it, it meant something, and then if he promised something, he carried out the promise.
Unlike so many politicians, they're talking and talking and talking, you don't know what they said.
And if you do understand what they said, it bears very little resemblance to what they actually end up doing.
Same thing in the church.
People don't want to sit there and listen to a religious leader speaking or a priest preaching, and end up at the end of it either saying, I don't know what in the world he just said, or, ah, what he just said, well, I could have told myself that.
Oh yeah, everything's okay, you're all right with God, you know, go and have a good day.
It's like we want substance.
We want things that mean something, that challenge us to be more than we are called to be.
Yeah, we want to know that God loves us, but we also want to know that he loves us too much to let us stay the way we are.
He wants his love to transform us, lift us up.
And so the phenomenon that you're describing is a challenge to the leaders.
You know, are you leading the people in faith Because you have some position, title, or garments?
Or because you have faith?
You actually have something.
That they want, and that they want it, not because they've learned that they should want it, but because they see you, and they see what faith is doing in your life.
So, when it comes to the crossover between Catholic doctrine and politics, you've obviously been very vocally in favor of Republicans getting elected because the Republican Party is pro-life, the Democratic Party is, as they say, pro-choice, but anti-life in sort of the traditional connotations of the word.
How do you make the case to people that would say that, you know, Catholic doctrine or religious doctrine, it allows for a variety of opinions in terms of how you vote.
So, okay, sure, the Republican Party is pro-life.
Sure, the Republican Party opposes same-sex marriage.
But the Democratic Party is more for social justice matters.
It's more for economic redistribution.
How do you privilege one idea over another idea and how does that mesh with Catholic doctrine?
How can you draw such a clear dividing line between The relationship between the issues needs to be looked at.
Nobody in the pro-life community says abortion is the only issue.
What we say is that the right to live is the foundation of every issue.
based on the dictates of conscience.
It's because it somehow impacts human life.
Why are we concerned about poverty?
Well, people have a right to food, clothing, and shelter.
Why?
Because they have a right to live.
Why am I concerned about unemployment?
Well, people have a right to make a living.
Why?
Because they have a right to live.
Protection from terrorism.
You can go down the list and it's like, okay, the value of life is obviously at the core of every issue.
Now, if something attacks that foundational value, And says life itself is disposable.
Well, if you can kill a child in the womb, haven't you taken away her education, her health care, and her right to vote?
Yeah, you've taken away everything.
We can't enjoy any other right or any other good.
Unless our life is protected.
And this is how we help people to make those dividing lines.
No doubt, every political party can and should be criticized because every political party is imperfect.
Same with any particular candidate.
And of course, every party, every candidate has things that you can say they're doing well and they're saying that are right.
So how do we weigh and balance?
Well, how are these issues interconnected with one another?
In fact, the American Catholic bishops for all the kind of disparities that we were talking about before, issued a fantastic document in 1998 called Living the Gospel of Life.
And they articulate what I was just saying by using the example of a house and a foundation.
They said all the different issues that we have to be concerned about, like you said, social justice, which covers a wide range of things, can be seen as the interconnected parts of a house.
But the foundation is the right to life.
And then they go on to say abortion, and they also mention euthanasia, attack that foundation directly.
And therefore, and here's the wording they use, they say that a politician's positions on the rightness of these other issues is rendered suspect if they are not advocating the right to life.
John Paul II said it this way.
He wrote a document in 1988 in which he said, The common outcry which is justly made on behalf of human rights is false and illusory if the right to life is not defended with maximum determination.
Now what you said about taking the principles and the individual voter deciding how to apply them has a very strong validity to it.
The church has been given a religious and moral mission Not a political one, in the sense, therefore, that we're not saying the church should become a political party or an arm of a political party.
We have to stand, as a Christian church, we have to stand on the platform, not of the Republicans, Democrats, or any other party, on the platform of the gospel, right?
That's our platform.
And we judge everything in the light of that.
So there's a wide range of room here for, and we always would hold, that the voting choice is the individuals.
But the principles that we inform people of, and the teachings that have to shape those decisions, do have These key components that enable us to say that certain issues are more weighty than others.
Certain issues are non-negotiable, as we would say.
There's no room for a pro-abortion position on the part of a believer when we articulate the principles of our faith.
And that's where you begin to work it out.
So, in a second, I want to ask you whether the divisions from diocese to diocese and inside the Catholic Church among its various thinkers, whether those divisions are more the result of sort of pragmatic judgments about what is the best way for the Catholic Church to gain adherence moving forward and preserve eternal values, or is it really there's a certain ideological shyness that some people have about some of the positions of the Catholic Church?
I'm going to ask you about that in just one second.
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Okay, so let's talk about the divisions inside the Catholic Church and what you think undergirds those.
So, to take the example of my own religious community, because again, I know it better than I know other religious communities, there are differences among rabbis on many of these sort of big issues of the day.
One of the big issues that comes up a lot is same-sex marriage, and there seems to be a couple of divisions among rabbis on this.
Not in terms of the actual policy.
It is well accepted in Jewish law that same-sex marriage is not a reality.
However, there are some rabbis who tend to take the viewpoint that you just don't talk about it so much.
Just like, you know, don't talk about it so much because it alienates people.
Obviously, this issue has become a motivating factor for many people on the social left.
It's become increasingly popular in the United States.
The idea of same-sex marriage is equivalent to heterosexual traditional marriage.
And so if you just don't talk about it, then maybe you won't alienate as many people and they'll come in.
And then there are some people who are actively sort of They're embarrassed by the position.
They don't actually understand why, for example, same-sex marriage should be barred by, in Jewish law it's called halakha, why it should be barred by halakha.
And so we're going to acknowledge that that's what the law is, but we're really kind of shy that that's what the law is.
So I wonder if that sort of controversy is mirrored inside the Catholic Church as well.
If everybody's pretty clear on the law and they just are pragmatically, the ones who are shy, if they're shy pragmatically or if they're shy ideologically about these issues.
Yeah.
You know, it reminds me of what people often say when they first hear about my ministry.
They say, priests for life.
Isn't every priest for life?
Right.
You know, because they know the law, the teaching is clear and solid and consistent.
I say, well, we just help them to say so.
And this is the shyness.
It's a mix.
A lot of it is psychological.
In fact, I've worked with psychologists who have studied the Catholic clergy and have said, you know, they find a disproportionate amount of inability to deal with one's emotions when facing criticism.
And these have been some interesting studies over the years that it's like, okay, I'm going to get up there as a celibate man.
I'm going to start talking about abortion.
What happens when, you know, a young mom comes up to me irate after mass and starts yelling at me?
I'm going to feel very uncomfortable and perhaps unable to respond to her.
Now, obviously, There's ways to respond to that anger and whatnot.
But if they feel so uncomfortable that they want to just run away from that kind of potential, in fact likely, happenstance, well then there's going to be silence.
Some of it is ideological.
Some of it is just plain bad formation.
There are common ideas out there.
that chill the ability of the clergy to speak out on these things.
I'll give one simple example related to abortion.
They'll say, well, I don't want to hurt the people in the congregation who've had abortions.
And I point out to these clergy, I say, well, hold on just a second.
No doubt there are women in the congregation that have had abortions, and no doubt they are in pain.
But here's the issue.
If they're sitting there and they never hear you talk about it, They're going to conclude either A, he doesn't know about my pain, B, he doesn't care, or C, he knows and cares, but there's no hope.
There's nothing to be done.
But we do know, we do care, and there is hope.
So speak!
Speaking up about it is not going to increase their pain any more than a headline about abortion or the sound of a vacuum cleaner.
that is going to trigger their memory of that suction machine when they had their abortion.
So it's not like, you know, they think that they're the only ones, you know, that can regurgitate or reawaken this pain.
No!
They're in pain all day long, from many different directions they get triggered.
We've got to be the source of the healing, and in order to give that healing, we've got to be able to speak up.
So some of it is due to the psychological issues, some of it is due to this just bad information, And then, Ben, some of it is due to political loyalties.
Involved in praiseworthy programs related to social justice, but programs that are advancing because there's funding coming from their friends who are Democrat politicians, they're entering into, you know, alliances, agreements, and there are loyalties there where there's almost like, you know, how explicit it is or isn't varies from case to case, but it's sort of like an agreement that, okay, you know, you'll help me as long as I don't embarrass you over abortion.
Or these other issues, like you mentioned, all the gay rights stuff as well.
So when it comes to the broader Catholic Church, not just specific diocese, there's been big debate, and I have a lot of Catholic friends, obviously, about Pope Francis versus Pope Benedict.
Obviously, Pope Benedict recently passed away, at a ripe old age, after having done a lifetime of enormously good work.
I was a big Pope Benedict fan from the outside, obviously, and he was dedicated, I would say, Specifically to the idea that there are eternal truths that are worth preserving, and he made this sort of his central pitch.
If you read his speeches, you read his writings, all of it is about this idea that there are these truths that are worth preserving.
Obviously, we have to use those truths, and then we have to see how they apply to the times and the controversies of the times, but we can't shy away from those truths.
And for this, he was called recidivist, and he was called sort of backwards by the media.
The idea was that he was antiquated, as opposed to the brand new, super progressive Pope Francis.
Every two weeks we read a headline from the New York Times, shocked and bewildered that Pope Francis hasn't come out as both pro-choice and pro-trans.
Every few weeks they'll be like, oh well the Catholic Church has reaffirmed its teaching that gay marriage is not okay.
I'm not aware that Sunrise is So, I wanted to ask you about the differences between Benedict and Francis.
Do you think that those are exaggerated?
Why do you think the perception exists that there has been a shift between Benedict and Francis?
Have you felt inside the church a shift from Benedict to Francis?
There's definitely a difference.
One of the confusions that always arises when there's a transition from one pope to another is that a lot of people are inclined to think about it the way we think of the transition of one political administration to another in our elections for president, for example.
And that only applies to a certain extent within the Catholic Church because of something that you just referred to, that there is a body of teaching that has come down to us for 2,000 years that the Church considers unchangeable.
A pope is not able to just change doctrine.
And you're not going to see them try either.
You're not going to see Pope Francis stand up and say, well now, you know, we have believed this for 2,000 years in the Catholic Church, but I am declaring today that this is no longer our belief.
He can't do that, and he knows he can't do that.
Okay.
So what do they do instead?
They sow confusion.
They'll say something that is open to different interpretations, and when somebody asks them to clarify it, as Pope Francis has been asked by eminent cardinals in the church to clarify certain things, and he has been silent.
So, is it that he's trying in this backdoor way to change and modify these teachings without coming out and saying that he's doing something that he knows he can't do?
Or is it that he's got this idea that, well, you know, to foster vigorous debate within the church and to get people to rethink why we believe certain things is a good thing?
I don't know the answer to that.
I worked at the Vatican under John Paul II, and I had a position there also under Pope Benedict.
And Pope Francis, I have spoken to, I don't know, four or five times about the work that I do in the pro-life arena.
All three of them.
We're strongly encouragement of my work and the things that we do to uphold these changeless teachings of the church.
But in practice, you've got these stark differences.
And then when you combine that, for whatever motive Pope Francis sows confusion like this, Well, you combine that with the way the media is.
I mean, even under John Paul and under Benedict, they'll look for something that they can just spin, and in order to confuse people, it's a toxic combination of dynamics there that is leaving a lot of Catholics very confused.
I mean, a lot of them are just kind of hanging on to their faith by saying, well, you know, No matter what he says, you know, I still have the Eucharist, I'll go to Mass, I know why I'm a Catholic, but if it weren't for that, they'd be out of there.
I mean, it does seem like there's been a radical shift in focus in terms of the issues, even if you just look at the issues that he's chosen to focus on, right?
So he's spent an enormous amount of time focusing on, for example, environmental issues.
Far be it for me to talk again about Catholic doctrine, an area in which I'm not an expert, but it seems to me that if you're talking about sort of a hierarchy of issues that are relevant to today's times, environmentalism and stewardship of the trees seems like that should rank below pro-life issues, it should rank below marriage, it should rank below the immutability of sex.
These are very, very basic issues, like right in the first couple chapters of Genesis.
That global warming should be sort of top of the heap and the thing that Pope Francis seems to, at least in the media, talk most about.
It seems almost as though he is deliberately not talking about the things that are the hottest topics in order to avoid the controversy or maybe to leave an open debate about these sorts of things.
Remember, Ben, when he addressed Congress and there was a certain point in the speech where he said, you know, we have to affirm the right to life of every human being.
And the Republicans started cheering and then he goes on to say, and that's why I stand before you today to oppose capital punishment.
It's like, oh, what's going on here?
Yeah, it's true.
It's very, it's undeniable that he's focusing on certain things.
And not only he himself, but here's the ripple effect that happens in the Catholic community.
If Pope Benedict comes out and says, you know, we got to do something about climate change, then you've got these, as we were talking before about the bishops and the cardinals, there's a trickle effect all the way down where they want to show the Pope how, you know, how much in line they are with him.
And so then it becomes a priority in the diocese.
And it's the first thing that the bishop talks about, and they want to curry favor with the Pope.
Oh, let me show him how pro-environmental we are, and they'll start up an office.
They never existed before, and they asked an office to deal with climate change.
There's another thing going on here, though.
I do know that Pope Francis has very much in the center of his mind and heart and priorities people who are on the outskirts of the Catholic Church.
In other words, people, maybe they were baptized Catholic, or maybe they're not at all connected with the Church, but they're looking at the Church and saying, hmm, I wonder if I'm interested or there's some kind of attractiveness there.
But they may have the idea that, well, what is the church?
Well, the church is about no abortion and no gay marriage.
And I know that Pope Francis is very concerned about showing those people that the church is about much more than that.
Well, you show those people that the church is about much more than that, By proclaiming to them the gospel of God's love and salvation and the path to salvation as we understand it.
Not by bringing up all these other issues that are just politically correct issues.
But I think that's part of what is driving some of this.
And in and of itself, of course, it's a very legitimate thing.
We do want people on the outskirts to feel like, hey, maybe there's a lot more to the church than what you've seen in some of the headlines about our opposition to uh... these evils and the it also plays into the math we're talking about earlier work is people almost the the feeling the excuse to say okay well sure one party is not for life one party is pros and sex marriage in one party is pro transing of the children but the pope does talk a lot about environmentalism and that party does talk a lot of warming and make sure they have an electric car and so you elevate one issue
above many other issues in sort of public life it tends to just bite by force of of repetition gain a new importance as compared to issues that as you suggest tend to be more fundamental to catholic teaching than whatever debate you're having about carbon emissions today And then, you know, you mentioned the contrast from Benedict to Francis.
Benedict, in fact, before he even became Pope, you know, there was a famous letter he sent to Cardinal McCarrick, then Cardinal McCarrick, in 2004, saying that, you know, as you bishops deal with another presidential election, Make sure voters understand that, you know, they can't be electing pro-abortion candidates.
And he went on in that letter to clarify the weighting of the issues that, you know, it's not like capital punishment in a war, which could sometimes be justified under Catholic teaching, but abortion can never be.
And he, you know, he did the opposite of the dynamic that you're pointing out here that Francis seems to do at times.
There's a pretty fascinating article in the New York Times recently with one of their usual headlines that is counterintuitive to them, but perfectly intuitive to people who actually understand religion.
And the counterintuitive headline was, as the Catholic laity gets more liberal, the priests get more conservative.
And the idea was that the priests are increasingly out of touch with the laity, when what the real headline should have been is what we've discussed before, the priests are getting more conservative because the people who actually go to church regularly are more conservative.
And so when you say Catholic laity, what you're really talking about very often is people who were baptized but don't go to church regularly.
I mean, we have this in the Jewish community also, right?
Tons of people who are Jewish but don't go to synagogue, have never been to synagogue, you know, eat on Yom Kippur, right?
All of that.
And so to say, you know, Judaism is getting more conservative as the quote-unquote laity gets more liberal would be to completely mix up the math.
The question that I have is when it comes to the future of the Catholic Church, Now, Pope Francis is obviously getting up there in age as well.
There's already talk about who is going to succeed Pope Francis.
There's a lot of question about which direction the church is going to move.
Is it going to continue to move in what appears to be a more progressive direction politically in line with Pope Francis?
I mean, there's a lot of theory that he was an actual liberation theologist in line with sort of Marxist economic teachings back when he was a cardinal.
And so the question becomes, is the church moving more in that direction or do you think that the kind of new wave of more conservative and traditionalist priests is going to move the church back in a more right-leaning direction?
And that question becomes especially interesting given the fact that the real areas in which the Catholic Church is seeing success are not in the West.
I mean, they're actually in South America, they're in Africa, they're in Asia.
The Catholic Church is having some real problems of bleed out in places like the United States and Europe.
Right.
But it's picking up adherence in other parts of the world.
I think there's going to be a pendulum swing in the next conclave, the election of the next pope, because I think a lot of the cardinals are deeply concerned about what's going on.
Just from a purely pastoral angle, aside from their own ideology, they're seeing the hurt, the confusion among the Catholic people, the division.
Maybe a sign of where we're going is the recent election that was held among the American bishops.
They chose a new president of the Bishop's Conference.
Every few years they elect a president.
And they didn't choose anyone from among the bishops that Pope Francis has been elevating who really do share his ideology.
They chose someone who's considered more conservative.
That may be a sign.
I think among the bishops, too, there's a sense of, you know, we've got a problem on our hands here, and how much further can we go in this direction of confusion and liberalism and just outright wrong theology and wrong morals?
I think there'll be a pendulum swing in the right direction.
So one of the big questions that's come up inside the Catholic Church, and as I say, we have a bunch of people who I work with, Matt Walsh, Michael Mills, who are really dedicated Catholics, and both of them are big fans of the Latin Mass.
This obviously was a major controversy inside the Church with regard to Pope Francis' position on the Latin Mass.
Why do you think he made the decision that he made?
And for those who don't know or understand the controversy, what was the controversy about Latin Mass?
The Church is, to quote a mentor of mine that I think many of our listeners would know, Fr.
Benedict Rochelle, the Catholic Church is so old and so big that almost anything you say about it is true.
And because of the old and big history that we have, the Mass has been celebrated in various ways over the years.
There are certain essentials, and then there are certain non-essentials.
And some of them are cultural, some of them linguistic, but there was a big, big change at the time of the Second Vatican Council, obviously, in the way that the liturgy was conducted.
Preserving the essentials, a lot of the old traditional elements fell away, but it's not that you couldn't still say the Mass in that way that it had been received for hundreds of years, you know, in Latin, The priest and the people are facing in the same direction, the idea being we're all looking towards God, and various other differences, much more solemnity, the Latin music, the chant, and so on.
So the controversy here that you're referring to is Pope Benedict said, Let's have the option.
Let's have the choice.
Let's have the variety.
The church should thrive on variety when it comes to the non-essential elements that, yeah, if a congregation, if a priest individually prefers to say the Mass the way that it was before the Second Vatican Council, as long as he's not saying that the Second Vatican Council was not valid, there are people who hold that, as long as he's not saying that,
Why not use this beautiful liturgy and music and form of worship that we've inherited over the centuries?
Well, Francis comes along, and for reasons that I'm not sure I even fully understand, he says, no, you can't have that.
You can't have that option anymore.
Drastically limited, practically got rid of it.
Why?
And I think it has something to do with the fact that it's not just a question of, shall I use English or Latin?
Shall I face this way or face the people?
I think it's simply the point That that liturgy represents an entire mindset that includes the priority that we give to certain moral issues, the more fundamental ones, that includes even some, to some extent, political loyalties.
It just is a whole package.
And I think what Pope Francis is trying to say here, trying to do, is to signal that that's not the direction he wants the Catholic Church to go.
That's a big thing.
That's a big message.
But I think that's part of what's going on beneath the surface.
The Latin Mass issue is really fascinating to me because, again, to take my own religion inside Judaism.
You know, when I pray, and I pray three times a day, I pray in Hebrew.
And this has always been a thing in Judaism and attempts that have been made by conservative or Reform congregations to move away from Hebrew.
And originally, it was not into English, it was into German.
If you look back at the original Reform movement, it didn't work out well for German Jews, obviously.
But the idea was that when you assimilate into a culture and that when you allow people to speak in the vernacular, that this is going to allow them to more closely commune with God.
That actually seems to have been Yeah.
the opposite of what has been achieved in the Jewish community.
The people who actually pray most consistently are the people who pray in Hebrew, and what it's served as is mostly an entree into the religion, meaning you are praying in a language you don't fully understand, which is why you need to learn the language so you understand exactly what you're praying, meaning you have to engage more.
It's basically an encouragement that if you want to know what you're doing, you really should learn what you're doing.
And it seems like that's what the Latin Mass would be for Catholics as well.
You're praying in a language you don't really understand, which means that you should really learn that language so that you can begin to understand many of the writings of the Church, which were written originally in that language.
What do you think is the practical impact?
You're hitting on something here that's so extremely important.
It really goes to some of the core elements of of spirituality that cut across religious lines goes to the question of who is God.
There's a phrase in Latin, mysterium tremendum et fascinosum.
Are we to be afraid of God or are we to be attracted to God?
When we encounter God, should we feel like running away, or should we feel like embracing Him?
And the reality is, He's both at the same time, right?
He is God.
He is infinitely beyond us.
You can never understand Him.
You're going to understand what He reveals to us, but God is God.
Only God is God.
He's infinite.
And so when we worship Him, when we encounter Him in prayer, there's got to be both the fascinosum.
There's got to be, I want you.
I want to be near you.
And there's got to be the tremendum.
It's the Mount Sinai and the thunder, lightning, and the people were afraid.
There's got to be both at the same time.
Using a language that we don't understand or don't fully understand helps us to understand that, hey, we're encountering something bigger than we are, bigger than our mind, bigger than the world of the familiar and comfortable.
And not time-bound.
The liturgy, whether it's a person praying privately or in the community setting, the liturgy isn't something we create.
It's not about, you know, hey, let's create an experience.
Let's have a concert.
Let's decorate the place in a way that's going to make us feel a certain way.
No, you're entering into something Not only bigger than you are, and bigger than any human being is, but you're entering into something that is historically rooted and is taking you back to the beginnings.
Of course, the further back we go, the more, obviously, Jewish and Christian life and spirituality and history converge into one.
We have the same foundation.
So, that's essential.
Essential for not only being faithful to what God has revealed, but for persisting through the centuries as a religious community.
So this is why these are not just matters of what language should we use.
Or what position should we face?
These do go to very deep matters of spirituality.
And it's actually one of my real concerns with what Pope Francis did, because by saying that you shouldn't pray in this particular way, and essentially, it almost creates a harder gap between those who buy into Vatican II and those who don't buy into Vatican II.
It seems like the easiest thing for him to do would have been to say, okay, well, you can pray this Mass.
That doesn't make you separate from the doctrines of Second Vatican Council.
There should be a diversity of practice inside the agreement that we all agree with the Second Vatican Council.
It seems like it opens up wider a gap between people who agree with the Second Vatican Council and people who don't agree with the Second Vatican Council.
So for those who are not steeped in this sort of stuff, what did the Second Vatican Council do?
What is the controversy over it?
And how widespread is the movement inside sort of the Catholic Church to Let's open up again some of the issues of the Second Vatican Council.
Yeah, the Second Vatican Council was what we call a pastoral council.
I mean, it issued 16 documents that reaffirmed Catholic doctrine, but asked the question, how can we more effectively present this teaching to the modern world?
In other words, it's a council that was rooted in the conviction the world has very much changed.
and is changing faster than it ever has, how do we preserve our witness to the faith in this changed circumstance?
So a pastoral council gives rise, not to changes of doctrine, but to fostering new ways of articulating it.
That, in a nutshell, is what the council tried to do.
And in, for example, saying that, well, it's not just the clergy who are the the holders and keepers and teachers of the faith.
It's everybody in the church.
Now that's always something that the church has believed, but they put a renewed emphasis on it.
And some people looked at that and said, well, wait a second.
The Vatican Council is downgrading the importance of the clergy.
No, it wasn't.
It was putting a spotlight on the role of the laity.
I think that's something good.
As far as the liturgy goes, let's have full, conscious, active participation in the liturgy.
Those are the words that the Council documents use.
Well, there's nothing wrong with that.
We want people to be fully entering into the liturgy.
But the changes represent to some people an actual abandonment of, for example, the teaching of the Mass as a sacrifice rather than simply a meal.
I mean, in reality, it's both.
But, so again, some see it as a departure from that core teaching about the Mass as the sacrifice of Christ.
So these are the things that we're dealing with.
I think it's got to start, of course, when people are in this dispute about the Vatican Council.
It's got to start and always go back to, hey, let's read the 16 documents.
Let's see what they really said, first of all.
It's sort of like in our American political debates, hey, let's read the Constitution.
You know, that might be a good starting point.
And then go from there.
So in a second, I want to ask you to get back to some of the politics of the intersection between religion and politics.
But first, folks, there's a lot more to this conversation.
We're going to get into what post-Roe America will look like, the dynamics of the 2024 presidential race, and how will Father Pavone's own story end.
For our Daily Wire Plus members, you want to hear this stuff.
And if you'd like to hear the full conversation, click the link at the top of the episode description.
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