WarRoom Battleground EP 961: Passive-Aggressive Brazil Archbishop “Excommunicates” Faithful For Attending Traditional Latin Mass
Stephen K. Bannon’s WarRoom dissects Brazil’s Archbishop Pereira excommunicating Latin Mass traditionalists, aligning with Pope Francis’s Traditionis Custodis—yet Frank Walker argues the move lacks legal precedent, exposing Vatican schism. Meanwhile, Ireland’s Bishop Call urges doctrinal rigor amid Gen Z’s turn to online traditionalism, while the Vatican’s proposed Pontifical Commission for Digital Culture sparks fears of censoring Catholic influencers. Critics dismiss it as a "post-truth" power grab, contrasting Archbishop Sheen’s beatification with Archbishop Vigano’s suppression, and warn of doctrinal drift as nationalist movements outpace Rome’s control. [Automatically generated summary]
You won't be able to see this at folks, but we have had a refurbishment here in the International Bureau studios.
So you should have an even cleaner reception of the signal and the sound than ever before.
Hence, that's why the last couple of weeks I was doing it from my car.
Welcoming a new face for the Wednesday audience, Joseph Robertson, a political consultant in the UK.
He's been on the Friday show quite a few times, but as a traditional Catholic, we wanted to tap his expertise on our weekly review that we do here on Wednesday evenings of all things Christian.
Not exclusively Catholic, not exclusively traditional Catholicism, but that tends to be the angle that we're focusing on.
Frank Eugenio, old hands, and the Wednesday posse will know them very much.
We're going to start off with a development from Brazil.
Now, this caught me even my hardened, cynical BDIs somewhat by surprise.
And this is the latest for you of Leo Church.
A Brazilian archbishop has excommunicated traditionalists because of schism.
And obviously, the shadow I would suggest for this story is the SSPX consecrations that are taking place, set to take place on July the 1st.
Frank Walker, I saw this story.
Tell us really what the justification of this is in the diocese there in Brazil.
Well, I mean, you don't know today what will carry weight in Leo Church and what, you know, what they'll hurl the moniker of schism at you with, what they'll excommunicate you for.
They don't really need a reason.
Don't need a legal justification, but you always would hope that they might refer to it.
And I think that they now with the SSPX, and which is not mentioned in this story, but the SSPX is going to consecrate bishops, and they're a traditionalist group, and they're going to do it on their own, which is against the church law.
And they say it's because it's a state of necessity.
So, what's happening is that Leo Church is floating a few different responses to see what happened.
This bishop in Brazil, Bishop Pereira, has said that anybody that goes to an unauthorized Latin Mass, anybody that attends one, is automatically in schism and excommunicated.
You know, just in the last few years, Pope Francis made Traditionis Custodis, which severely restricted where you can see the Latin Mass and required people to go to these far-flung places and have and have it not very often.
And so, that's what he means.
If you don't do that, if you don't go to Mass there, then you're out of the church.
He's throwing you out automatically.
This is kind of a far-fetched solution.
It's a can, like they say, canon laws previously unseen in the past.
The SXPS, only the bishops that were consecrated, because they did this before, a couple of bishops, those were excommunicated, but the people never were for attending.
So, they think that this could be easily challenged if he ever tried doing it.
But, well, you know, he's doing it anyway.
In fact, when Pope Benedict said that they needed to be more free with the Latin Mass, he completely ignored them.
So, I mean, was he in schism when he did that?
So, this is a very good point, but I think they're throwing it out there to see what sticks.
This is Archbishop Pereira's predecessor, who flatly ignored the 2007 motu proprio summorum pontificum from Pope Benedict XVI, which, as you were saying, Frank Walker,
liberalized, to use those words, the traditional Latin Mass, basically giving it the possibility to participate in that mass to any stable group of parishioners that wanted it.
And of course, that really did split the church.
I wouldn't even say split it down the middle because the church was pretty modernist by that stage, anyway.
So, you have a lot of these bishops who refused point blank to obey Benedict XVI and make those provisions.
I think I don't want to stick my neck out on this, but I think Bergoglio was one of them.
I seem to remember he was certainly resisting Benedict to his face over the Regensburg address quite famously.
But I think he was resisting the Samorum Pontificum measures back when he was Arch Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina.
So that's a good point, right?
Pereira's predecessor at that time, point blank, refused to make any allowance for the Tridentine Rite Mass.
Not very ecumenical of you to say that anyone even celebrating a TLM, a traditional Latin mass, outside of the officially sanctioned ghetto in the diocese is not even Christian.
I wonder, Frank Walker, have they made that clear to the Protestants in Brazil, in the diocese, in the Archdiocese?
Have they made that clear to whatever Anglicans that they meet there might be there, that the Archdiocese doesn't even consider them Christian?
No, I don't think they would have a problem with that at all in their case.
You know, there's a good comment at the end of this, and it reminds us that Pope Francis said that the SSPX Latin Mass group is able to hear weddings, to say weddings and hear confession.
So according to this Brazilian bishop, you would be in schism.
You would be automatically excommunicated for doing what Pope Francis himself has allowed you to do.
So I just think that the whole thing is just far-flung, and that's why he makes statements like that.
You are not even a Christian if you do this.
This would go to the Vatican and they would have to adjudicate this.
And in the past, these kinds of things have lost.
But what will they do now?
Will they have to remove what Pope Francis said about the SSPX and confessions and weddings and things?
Will they have to back off and change the canon law?
How are they going to respond to the SSPX?
Are they going to try to excommute everybody, excommunicate everybody like this bishop is doing?
Or will they just do it to the bishops?
It's very interesting.
Pope Archbishop Vigano has a great piece out today about this.
And people like Bishop Snyder and Father Murray and Cardinal Burke and everybody who has defended the Leo Church against the SSPX in spite of all of the heresies that have come out of Leo Church, Archbishop Vigano said, this is about doctrine, not about the mass.
But just yesterday, Pope Leo said something, well, this couple of days ago, to a parish council in Italy.
He said, in the church, we find small groups or tendencies that promote very individualistic spirituality, but this is not the group of friends that Jesus left us, the communion of fraternal love.
So this is, I think, Leo responding in a timid way to a small group of people to the challenges from Latin Mass Catholics and the SSPX.
Are we not in communion?
Are they not in communion with Leo because Leo is what Jesus left?
It's about fraternal love or is it about doctrine and obedience to doctrine, which Archbishop Vigano and the Latin Mass Catholics would say, the SSPX says they want us to dialogue about doctrine.
You can't dialogue about that.
So I think they're thinking things out and see what sticks.
Even Leo himself is trying to figure out how to respond to the situation with the SSPX.
Yeah, let me just read out the 2023 declaration of Bishop Brace Perr's predecessor, Archbishop Antonio Munith Fernandez, who said, he had this read out in all masses back in, as I say, 2023.
He said that it was permanently prohibited in the territory of the Archdiocese, that is, Macheo, to frequent or invite heretical priests that are not in communion with the church and want to follow the old rite.
These masses, wherever they are celebrated in the territory of the archdiocese, are canonically prohibited, as the law commands.
That's a very strong reading of canon law, and I'm sure this is going to go, this will be appealed to the Vatican, whether these threatened excommunications are just or not.
But I have to home in here on the word heretical priests, because at the very most, you could argue that the, at the very most, you could argue that these priests are schismatic.
And I wouldn't obviously argue that, Frank Wookiee, you wouldn't either.
But it's interesting where the word heretical is allowed to be applied in the ecumenical post-conciliar church, right?
If I lived in Macheo in Brazil, I would live stream myself going to one of these prohibited schismatic masses and I would challenge the Archbishop to excommunicate me.
That is what I would do.
If only we actually had a bishop here in Italy that was prepared to do the same thing, I'd get out my trusty Alfa Romeo and I'd be driving there on Sunday.
No problems whatsoever.
Stand by, Frank.
We'll back with you a little later on in the show.
We're coming to Jenny Holland in just a moment over an interesting intervention in Ireland, just south of the border, where she is.
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Jenny, I was seeing over in the Irish Catholic, a bishop there had pointed out to an audience at a speech he gave largely 100 or so progressive Parishioners, that young Catholics, so he told them to steal themselves because they weren't going to appreciate what he had to say.
But that young Catholics are seeking doctrinal solidity, not adaptability.
And I thought, well, this is a story for Jenny Holland, who's picking up on all of these things.
Yeah, I was delighted to see something that looks like good news for once coming from this island of Ireland, where the news is generally quite bleak in terms of the woke takeover of all elite institutions and broader culture generally.
Young Catholics Seeking Doctrinal Solidity00:11:29
But yeah, so Bishop Niall Call from Donegal, a bishop of Rafo, gave a speech in which he basically defended tradition, perhaps not to the extent that we might hear on the Wednesday war room.
He called for integrating synodality with tradition, which I suppose is a start.
But actually, the quotes from that article of his speech I found quite moving.
He spoke about Irish people under the age of 30 not having any inherited memory of Catholic Ireland and how they were growing up with sort of fragmented identities due to growing up online, essentially.
And he urges the church to offer them doctrinal solidity and to hew to tradition to give, because that is what young people are seeking.
This is super interesting.
The context of this, broadly speaking, one little fact is that Donegal, County Donegal, where he is a bishop, was the only county in Ireland to vote no on the abortion referendum in 2018 when abortion was written back or was legalized essentially with overwhelming majority from the voters of Ireland.
So it's like a little outpost of Irish traditional Catholicism in a sea of progressive church going.
Of course, Irish church attendance has fallen precipitously since the heyday, you know, maybe 50 years ago, where it was something like 90%, although it is still high compared to other Western European countries.
Interestingly, I found that a recent European study quoted a figure of 17% of young people going to weekly mass versus like a 7% from the survey prior.
So yet again, we are seeing young people under the age of 30, Gen Z, turning back toward the religion that they really did not grow up with in the sense that they are turning towards the more traditional, Let's say old-fashioned because in this instance it really is from their perspective.
But why are they doing that?
They are doing that, as he says, for solidity, because they have grown up in a sea of choice and opinions and images and all this ephemera that is actually very bad for the mind and the soul.
Would this confirm the thesis that we propose basically every week, every Wednesday on the show, that there is a revival taking place in Generation Z right across the West.
And it's a parallel movement.
There are huge, it's not numerically equivalent.
There are huge numbers of people, really sort of boomers and Generation X falling away from the church year by year.
But there is, and it's statistically notable, a young generation of guys, young guys, young 20-year-old men who are coming into the church.
And these guys are on fire with the faith.
And we have posited on the Wednesday show that when they come to the church and they're stepping over the threshold for the first time with a certain image of what Catholicism is, it's a very different image on the outside from the inside, they're going to have somewhat of a shock.
And the question that we've been asking ourselves every Wednesday on the war room is what kind of welcome are they going to be given?
And would you say this, the Bishop Cole's intervention here is his attempt to try to go out and meet them halfway?
I mean, you might think of it as slightly mild-mannered.
I don't know.
I don't know the man personally.
But in general, this is an issue of quality versus quantity, right?
So you're absolutely right.
Overwhelmingly, the numbers are going in the wrong direction in terms of raw numbers of mass attendants and people who profess religious adherence to on surveys and stuff like that.
But what you do have is you have a very dedicated, fervent group that is, yes, small, but very high quality in terms of dedication and, you know, even probably, I don't want to say use the word purity, but something approaching doctrinal purity.
And bear in mind, in Ireland, even kids who are not growing up in going to regular Mass, this is a guess for me, but I would guess that almost every child here has gone to a Mass either for the funeral of a relative or a relative's communion.
It's still very, the church's rituals are still very embedded in the culture.
But like you say, I mean, as we always, we always point this out, the mainstream hierarchy of the church is very squishy.
And it's a little bit like a simulacra.
It's not, it doesn't feel like you feel like you're when you go to mass.
And I've done this recently, actually.
I felt like I was sitting there listening to platitudes that I could get from a Hallmark card.
Loneliness is bad.
We all need to be nice to each other.
And that's what Jesus wants: for people not to be lonely.
And, you know, I'm hardly a religious expert or a theologian, but I'm like sitting in the pew thinking, I don't think that's what this is about, actually, at all.
So those kids are seeing this sort of these boring platitudes.
So in church, they're finding the boring platitudes.
And then online, they're finding like robust intellectual arguments for traditional Catholicism.
And they are going to then go back to the church and perhaps, hopefully, fingers crossed, push it back to some sort of intellectual rigor, which is what Catholicism was always known for.
You've got to put the blame firmly where it belongs.
Look, you said earlier on then that perhaps the good bishop wasn't necessarily framing this in war room vernacular in war room vocabulary.
I'm very glad you put that out there because I do have to warn, even though I don't want to encourage someone who leaves the fold of just syncretism and modernism and tries to make an effort, I don't want to just slap them down because what they've said isn't word perfect.
But I have to point out, I do feel duty-bound to point out that he does say that the task is not to choose between synodality and tradition, but to integrate them.
And that, of course, is a danger with all conciliate hierarchies that their constant attempt to assimilate and to absorb and things which have no place in the traditional Catholic faith.
And therefore, I have to give a warning, folks.
Not for the first time, but when it comes to the conciliate church, their approach, if I might call it SSPX Light, is always the oil slope towards modernism.
Do be careful, folks.
Do be folks.
But I did enjoy very much what we were saying about young people seeking coherence and tradition.
And that's a gift to the church rather than a problem to be solved.
But as we said before, Jenny, on the Wednesday war room, there is going to be a tension when these guys start coming in the church.
I characterize them as the guys that will have sort of crusader icons or iconography on their social media avatars.
They're going to come in, stand in the, they're fired up, ready to fight, ready to defend Christian civilization against its enemies.
And they're going to be greeted by these people who have no other objective than turning them over eventually to the post-conciliar mush.
Yes, I have to add, this is a tale of demographics, right?
So you have a population in Ireland, Gen X and Boomer, that are still solidly mainstream media consumers.
So they watch the state broadcaster RTE.
They believe every single word that RTE broadcasts.
They believe every single word that's written in the Irish news, which is the equivalent of the New York Times.
They are unaware.
To put it kindly, to give them some generosity, they are unaware that there are these multiple crises building, not just in Ireland, but in the United Kingdom, and that they're the, as you put, the correct word is enemies of Christianity are in the they're inside the gates.
Okay.
So we are not, you know, it's the hour is late.
The young people, however, they don't watch RTE.
They don't read the Irish Times.
They are online and they are listening to podcasts.
They are looking at TikToks.
They are following all there's a plethora of right-wing pundits, communicators, influencers, even, you know, some better than others.
But they are at least out there reflecting to a far greater degree reality than RTE is doing.
So, you know, to give the old people like us, Ben, maybe a little bit of slack, they are less likely to be aware that there is even these problems happening literally on their doorstep.
But the young men in particular don't have that luxury.
Why?
Because they can't get jobs.
They can't afford homes.
They can't even get rentals anymore in Ireland.
Half of the, you know, there's counties where you can't find a GP any longer.
The pressure on the young, the economic and sort of material pressure on young men is enormous.
I don't know if you were just alluding to my Australia speech just a few moments ago, but about that I might mention a quick word at the end of the show.
Jenny, I know you've got to bounce now because you've got to wrap up this book that you're writing about which we'll talk in the future.
And all the great places on right-wing social media, very quickly, 20 seconds.
One of them, one of the places people should be checking out, of course, is your own social media accounts.
Yes, so you can find a weekly video essay from me on YouTube at Saving Culture from Itself and a whole back catalogue of my essays on Substack at jennyholland.substack.com.
Well, before the break, you heard Jenny Holland accusing me of being old.
It's a perfect opportunity now as we bring in Joseph Robertson for his Wednesday show debut to talk about the imminent beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen to point out that I'm too young to remember when Fulton Sheen was in his prime in the golden age of American Catholicism in the 1950s.
Joseph, tell us a bit.
I'm being sarcastic.
I mean, he died in, I think, 1979, but everyone or all Catholics will remember his reputation.
His weekly shows, I think, had like 30 million people viewing in a piece.
It's big news this.
We'll bring in Frank Walker as well.
I'm not saying that Frank is old, but we'll bring in Frank just in a few minutes.
But tell us a bit then about the developments in terms of the beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
There'd been some delays, some sort of tussles between the New York Archdiocese and his home diocese in Illinois, where he was born.
What's the latest developments?
I know that the New York Times had a big article on this just a short while or so ago.
Yeah, well, I think one of the reasons why there's been such a delay is because Rome hasn't really spoken on this for some time.
And Fulton Sheen has, you know, obviously been a mega star in Catholic households, right across the spectrum of both the what we call the post-Concilia Church, all the way through to very traditionalist groups.
He's quite a unifying figure among most circles.
And it was kind of surprising to see that, you know, there has been a sort of stagnation around his calls for canonization for quite some time.
I remember people talking about this even 10 years ago, sort of wondering whether or not he was going to be escalated on the path of sainthood.
And obviously, now we have news that he is going to be taking the second step, or the church is going to be taking the second step on that path to canonization.
And as you'd expect, there's been an outpouring of positive coverage around it.
People once again remembering him for the brilliant TV evangelist that he was, of course, reaching a massive audience back in those early days of televangelism.
And it's interesting to see that, as well as the canonization side of things, there's also a big question mark over whether or not we will ever have somebody quite like him again gracing our screens.
And you would have thought in today's day and age, with the amount of social media and interaction that we have, that someone would have stepped up and taken on the mantle.
But that does seem to be another source of debate.
I think the dates where we can expect the hierarchy to confidently transmit the fullness of the Catholic faith, that's our job now.
I don't know if you've been following the story of the miracle which was attributed to the intercession of Bishop of Archbishop Sheen.
And this goes back to it was actually in his home diocese of Peoria in Illinois in 2010 that a boy stillborn had been born and had been named actually James Fulton after the Archbishop.
And so they prayed to the Archbishop for his intercession.
And after about an hour of prayer and medical intervention, the boy came to life.
And that's been examined, that story both by the diocese and by the Vatican.
And that has been declared to be a valid miracle.
I just thought before we bring in Frank Walker, who's so old, he's definitely going to remember when Fulton Sheen was on the television, unlike myself.
I just wonder if you'd just explain for us to our largely evangelical audience, what do Catholics mean?
Because there's a lot of confusion about this.
What do Catholics mean when they pray to a saint for their intercession?
Yeah, well, it's a much avoided topic, I think, because quite frankly, although there are some accounts, particularly on X nowadays, who tend to scream at Catholics for idol worship, I think the vast majority of Protestants and particularly evangelicals who maybe resonate more with a traditional Catholic sense of morality than many of our counterparts, even within the post-conciliar church, have sort of shied away from that.
And so the topic doesn't really come up as much as it used to.
But to break down Catholic worship and where the intercession to the saints fits in, you've got to understand three terms, which are dulia, latria, and hyperdulia.
So dulia is a form of sort of a form of praise of honor that's given to anybody who's made it to heaven.
Hyperdulia is reserved for the Blessed Virgin, honoring her as the mother of God, but still not worshiping her.
It's purely a form of intercessory prayer and honor.
And then Latria is reserved for worship to God alone.
And that is essentially the basis of our theological understanding of what the hierarchy of saints means.
There's a strong emphasis on ancestry prayer, so very similar to the way that a court works.
If you want to approach a king, it's quite difficult.
If you want to go through one of the courtiers, it makes the process a lot easier.
That doesn't mean you can't approach the king directly.
It just means that you have an added layer of intercession on the way through to making that plea.
And so Catholics' view of heaven is very similar in the sense that you want assistance to make your prayer as efficacious as possible.
And whereas from the evangelical perspective, they will immediately counter, but as you had taken into consideration in your response, you know, Protestants will say, I can just pray to Christ directly.
I don't need to go through anybody else.
And as you've pointed out, you can absolutely do that.
And yet, here, the history of miracles and intercessions throughout the history of the Catholic Church is that if you pray to saints for their intercession, not that they grant the miracle themselves, that they are in the court of heaven.
They will go to God and they will intercede for you.
Stories like this happen.
They're rare because they're miracles, but they do happen.
And the history of the Catholic Church is littered with examples of such events like this coming forward.
I think the best analogy, of course, the traditional Catholic argument is exactly as you described it, a royal court.
But you can either go to the king directly or you can attempt to go through one of his courtiers.
I'm not saying President Trump is a king, okay, or any US president is a king, but it's the same concept.
You can go, if you're perhaps a VIP in America or in a foreign country, you can, of course, go direct to President Trump, but you can also find someone in his circle and say, look, I'm working on this.
A presidential intervention might help.
Could you sort of just stick it on his desk and put it under his eyes?
Come back to you in about 10 minutes' time for you to recite your socials where people can join you on social media.
I'm going to present a story in just a quick moment, but before I do that, this is a story that caught my interest.
I just want to share that with you folks.
And I will also ask for Frank and Joseph's response.
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So as we come up to the close of the show, I wanted to bring to your attention that as part of this synodal process, one of these, I think this is the 20th study group that had been created by Pope Francis, late unlamented Pope Francis, psychopath that he was.
He created a number of these study groups and one of them has just reported.
This is the digital mission group.
One of the 10 study groups established back in 2024.
And amongst its recommendations, it's suggesting the formation of a Pontifical Commission for Digital Culture and New Technologies.
The group here is highlighting ethical risks associated with digital platforms.
Folks, that's us.
And the report is saying that many participants in an international consultation have pointed out to the misuse of online platforms for polarization, manipulation, and the spread of false information as a significant challenge for ecclesial life and evangelization.
And they note that online environments can intensify ideological postures, oversimplify complex debates, and encourage confrontations that weaken ecclesial communion.
Folks, if you are Catholic and you are an online influencer, you need to be very careful about what they're doing here because they are moving towards a censorship paradigm.
Let me bring on at this point, Frank Walker and Joseph Robertson.
It seems clear to me, guys, that they are very concerned.
This study group is very concerned that the Vatican is losing control of its ability to shape the narrative on its globalist, environmentalist, pro-invasion agenda.
And we saw earlier, Frank, you opened the show with this story, how excommunication was now being wielded towards traditionalists.
I would like to suggest that they're going to make increasing use of that as public voices, nationalist voices on the Catholic right grow in prominence because the agenda certainly is moving in our direction away from the Vatican's ability to shape it.
I just wanted, you know, you've both seen these developments.
Frank, let me go to you first.
Am I right to be concerned about this?
Point one.
And point two, will you take any notice of whatever the Pontifical Council of Digital Censorship, or whatever they're going to call it, tries to do to rein in Canon 212?
If I was going to do something like that, I would have done it years ago.
But yeah, you're right.
The reason that they have a Leo Church, you know, and that wonderful Friends of Jesus fraternity of love that he's creating is in order to push the globalist platform.
But they haven't done very, they've done very little to Control the internet, control the message, but they want to do that really bad.
I mean, they've been talking about AI for a long time.
And like Jen mentioned, that bishop up in Donegal, who's come up with this new slick way to make synodality that is actually doctrinal and coherent and stuff like that, they're getting pressure from actual, decent, normal people.
And they're getting a lot of pressure because that's why the big birth and growth in young people.
I mean, every day I see new people joining the church.
Minneapolis is up 50%.
They just reported today.
And the people that are joining the church, they have to stop that.
And they really only have one tool.
They're not going to be able to appeal to anybody.
They're not going to be able to create this alternative of Leo media that everybody loves.
No, people are, that's inhuman.
They're going to only be able to censor.
They're going to censor like they did to us during the virus.
And so they have to create sort of a platform, a mechanism to look at everybody out there and find ways to hit them on their ideology, which means that you're politically Catholic, you know, or you're a Catholic.
They call you an ideologue.
And they call misinformation means the truth.
They have to shut all those things down.
And they're counting on the Leo Church.
I mean, they invented Leo Church for a reason and Francis Church.
They're counting on them to make sure that people like Bishop Sheen never happen.
They really don't want Bishop Sheen's to happen anymore.
They want to stop that completely.
Doctrinal drift.
What they mean is doctrine.
They're a manipulation and sensationalism.
What they mean is appealing to people.
They want to set all that down all the way and then they want to teach seminarians to do the same.
It is amusing to watch the anti-Catholic modernists welcoming Bishop Sheen's beatification through gritted teeth.
Because here's a guy, had he been alive today, this is a guy who would have been punished and persecuted like Archbishop Vigano, right?
But because he's dead, they can say, oh, he was so great in the 1950s fighting communism and all the rest of it.
I can't help but think of that line in the gospel, Frank Walker, where Jesus condemns the Pharisees and said, look, these are the kids who are building monuments to the prophets their forefathers stoned.
And that's, I think, that's how I see the modernist establishment welcoming Archbishop Fulton Sheen's beatification and hopefully imminently canonization as well.
Joseph, let me read to you, if I may, from this report.
And then just quickly, we'll close with your take on this.
This report specifically urges bishops' conferences and diocesan digital teams to recognize ethical risks and the potential for polarization, a dynamic the writers say often appears to be embedded in social media platforms themselves.
You're very active on social media.
Are you remotely bothered by anything the Vatican might do to rein you in?
Well, Ben, I mean, unfortunately, I live in the UK, so whatever the Vatican does, it's not going to be as bad as what we already have here.
Now, in terms of what they're trying to achieve, the first thing I'd say is that the sinister part about it isn't necessarily the push towards censorship.
That's just what we've grown accustomed to from any governance, really, across the Western Hemisphere.
But what is bizarre and frightening in all of this is the lack of spirituality and the lack of actually looking at anything integral to what the Vatican is meant to do, which is to represent Christ on earth.
And that really is my major area of concern, as with all these things, as with climate change.
You know, the church can be wrong when it comes to science.
It can make, you know, all kinds of human error in terms of fallible topics like science, like the way that creation works external to scripture and tradition.
But this has no semblance of Catholicism, no semblance of morality, no semblance of religion.
It's becoming increasingly like a one-size-fits-all NGO that doesn't really consider Catholicism, let alone Christianity in general, to be true.
And that's what really concerns me.
We're in a post-truth Vatican right now.
And it's creating so much chaos among the faithful for the simple reason that actually the church once used to be quite authoritarian in some ways.
It used to be authoritarian when it came to morals, tradition, and hierarchy.
It didn't take a position necessarily on what was happening in the world around it all the time.
But now it's quite the opposite.
It's a transition towards a technical dominance of the world around it and absolutely no spiritual interest whatsoever.
I strongly recommend both of those points of contact.
Thanks very much, Joseph.
Hope you'll be back and join us again soon.
Frank Walker, Before you give your social media contacts, just give me 30 seconds because you are so much older than I am on Fulton Sheen and how you think American Catholics will welcome his elevation to the honors of the altar.